Carbonating question

[RLosli]

I have a 1-1/2 gallon batch of what I think would be considered “apple cider mead”. I took a 1 gallon batch hard cider recipe that I have used before and added 2 quarts of honey too it. The problem I’m assuming that I’m gonna run into is that I will hit the alcohol tolerance for the yeast log before all the sugar is consumed. If I am correct then that would mean that when I add the bottling sugar there will already be too much alcohol, meaning it will not carbonate the bottles.
I used a wine yeast that has an alcohol tolerance of 12-13%.
Original gravity 1.142
I have not taken the final gravity yet but based on the alcohol tolerance I’m guessing 1.041-1.055

My first question, am I correct in assuming that it will not carbonate as is?

Second, instead of adding bottling sugar could I dilute the alcohol content by adding water? There for allowing the yeast to consume the sugar that was left over from the fermentation.

Third, if I dilute the alcohol content should I use water, apple juice or something else? If something els then what?

Fourth, if I dilute the alcohol with water (or whatever I end up using) how much should I add, so that I get good carbonation but also don’t blow up any bottles?
(It’s a 1-1/2 gallon batch)

Or is there something entirely different that I should do?

(I don’t have access to a keg or any other method of forcing carbonation that I know of)

 

[JohnSand]

Interesting question, I haven't made mead. No suggestions come immediately to mind except to read the mead and cider sections and see how they deal with carbonating. If you don't get a reply here, I can move this thread to the Mead section, or you can post there.
Welcome aboard!

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, CBC-1 should tolerate up to an 18% ABV iirc, but it might rip through every bit of remaining sugar, too, with potentially explosive results...

 

[RLosli]

Interesting question, I haven't made mead. No suggestions come immediately to mind except to read the mead and cider sections and see how they deal with carbonating. If you don't get a reply here, I can move this thread to the Mead section, or you can post there.
Welcome aboard!

I would appreciate it very much if you could move it to the mead section. I can’t figure out how to do that.

 

[RLosli]

fwiw, CBC-1 should tolerate up to an 18% ABV iirc, but it might rip through every bit of remaining sugar, too, with potentially explosive results...

Is that another yeast?

 

[day_trippr]

Is that another yeast?

It is indeed, one typically used for conditioning bubbly products like beer, sparkling wine - and I imagine some meads as well

https://www.lallemandbrewing.com/wp...3/TDS_LPS_BREWINGYEAST_CBC-1_ENG_8.5x11-1.pdf
I'll report your original post to the moderators to move it to the Mead forum...

Cheers!

 

[RLosli]

It is indeed, one typically used for conditioning bubbly products like beer, sparkling wine - and I imagine some meads as well

Could punting multiple verity’s of yeast in the same batch cause any problems


And thanks for moving it to the mead forum

 

[CKuhns]

Multiple types of yeast are not a problem. What happens is that one strain will out perform all the others and take over causing the "others" to die off. The dominant one could use them as food. Often for folks without access to nutrients will recommend to boil (heat above 160 F) yeast and the dead yeast will be used as nutrients.

 

[RLosli]

I think that I have come up with a solution to my original question. I’m going to take the specific gravity of another batch of cider, that is ready to bottle, then I will add the bottling sugar. At that point I will take another gravity reading, and find out how much the specific gravity has risen. Then I will take the gravity of my “apple cider mead”. At which point I should be able to dilute the “apple cider mead” with water until I lower the specific gravity, by the same amount that the cider has risen after adding the bottling sugar.

I can think of two possible problems with this. First, I don’t know if the bottling sugar will make a measurable difference in the specific gravity. Second, I’ve been told that after yeast had reached its alcohol tolerance, if you dilute it (therefore allowing the yeast to work again), it will cause the yeast to adapt slightly in turn slightly rising its alcohol tolerance.

 

[JohnSand]

It's an interesting experiment.
If you have any doubts about over-carbing, keep the bottles in a bin. When I carbed my cider, I filled one plastic soda bottle. When that's hard it's carbed. Good luck, let us know what happens.

 

[mac_1103]

A pound of sugar in a gallon of water will have a specific gravity of 1.045 give or take.

 

[RLosli]

It's an interesting experiment.
If you have any doubts about over-carbing, keep the bottles in a bin. When I carbed my cider, I filled one plastic soda bottle. When that's hard it's carbed. Good luck, let us know what happens.

I couldn’t measure any difference in my other cider after adding the bottling sugar. So I decided to add 2 cups of water to the mead, which was just enough to see a very small difference on my hydrometer, not even enough to really measure. Then I bottled it and I now have it sitting in a cooler, (no ice or anything in the cooler, so it should stay about 70-75°) just incase I over carbonate it.
Putting some in a plastic bottle is a good idea, I’ll definitely try that with my next batch.

 

[bernardsmith]

If you added water - diluting the apple wine (cider is really not going to be made with the addition of sugars or honey - but then I am a purist) - then you have diluted your original wine... and if it tastes OK diluted then perhaps your recipe was not quite what you thought it was .. Me? I would have added more apple juice to your wine or mead and diluted the ABV without diluting the apple flavors... My guess is that most apple juice is going to be around 1.045 - 1.055 - let's split the difference and call it 1.050... If you made 3 gallons at 1.142 and added another 3 gallons at 1.050 the total of the 6 gallons would be equivalent to 1.096 and at that (around 12-13% ABV) you can have a more balanced wine , and one that you can carbonate... (if you had made 1 gallon at that near astronomical level of fermentables) then adding a single gallon of apple juice would give you the same 1.096 for two gallons.
That said, I guess I am a little surprised that the yeast never experienced osmotic shock from that concentration of sugar. (it's like you drinking a pint of olive oil to quench a thirst... ). At 1.142 that must has the potential to make 18% + ABV... That's not a wine but more like a dilute liqueur..

 

[RLosli]

If you added water - diluting the apple wine (cider is really not going to be made with the addition of sugars or honey - but then I am a purist) - then you have diluted your original wine... and if it tastes OK diluted then perhaps your recipe was not quite what you thought it was

When I added the water, I only added 2 cups to a 1.5 gallon batch of wine (or whatever it is that I made) so I wasn’t to concerned about diluting the taste. However if I had more apple juice on hand I would have used that instead.

I would have added more apple juice to your wine or mead and diluted the ABV without diluting the apple flavors... My guess is that most apple juice is going to be around 1.045 - 1.055 - let's split the difference and call it 1.050... If you made 3 gallons at 1.142 and added another 3 gallons at 1.050 the total of the 6 gallons would be equivalent to 1.096 and at that (around 12-13% ABV) you can have a more balanced wine , and one that you can carbonate... (if you had made 1 gallon at that near astronomical level of fermentables) then adding a single gallon of apple juice would give you the same 1.096 for two gallons

When I started this thread I had already started the wine about a week earlier and was trying to do some research to see if anyone had done this before, because my brew was already going, and I didn't realize that I wasn't gonna be able to carbonate by adding more sugar until about the next day when I was doing the math for the potential ABV (the calculator that I originally used said it had a potential of 19.3% but I also had a different calculator say 18.2%, either way I wasn't gonna get that high with the yeast that I was using) and also looked up the alcohol tolerance for my specific yeast, and food out that I wasn't gonna use all the sugar in the brew as is so there was no reason to add bottling sugar. That's when I came up with the idea of diluting it to restart fermentation.

Diluting the ABV to restart fermentation and carbonate the bottles worked. However if I were to do it again I would have used 3 cups instead of 2, because it does have carbonation but I would prefer a little bit more. I also would have put some in a plastic bottle so I could somewhat monitor the carbonation, and pasteurize if needed or cold crash if it was a small enough batch that was going to be consumed fairly quickly.

That said, I guess I am a little surprised that the yeast never experienced osmotic shock from that concentration of sugar. (it's like you drinking a pint of olive oil to quench a thirst... ).

I am also surprised that it never experienced osmotic shock. The only reason that I wasn't originally worried about it was because I didn't know that that was a thing until after the primary fermentation had finished. If its not already obvious, I'm very new to home brewing (this being the 3d brew that I've made). The other two brews were both very basic hard ciders, so I though that I would try adding some honey to one of the recipes. If I were to try to make something like this again, I would definitely use at least twice as much apple juice, or half the honey.

 

[Maylar]

I am also surprised that it never experienced osmotic shock. The only reason that I wasn't originally worried about it was because I didn't know that that was a thing until after the primary fermentation had finished. If its not already obvious, I'm very new to home brewing (this being the 3d brew that I've made). The other two brews were both very basic hard ciders, so I though that I would try adding some honey to one of the recipes. If I were to try to make something like this again, I would definitely use at least twice as much apple juice, or half the honey.

When I make a cyser I typically split the sugars between them - 1.050 cider and 1.050 honey. If I was making apple juice from concentrate, I'd go a bit lower on the apple SG.