Champagne cider

[Willbrew]

So i brewed a cider with 2 gallons apple juice and half gallon pear juice and i used a champagne yeast and it is ok but its a little TOO champagney. Is there another yeast i can use to tone this down while keeping good flavor?

 

[seabass07]

I prefer a clean ale yeast for the character it gives a cider. Champagne yeast usually leaves it very dry.

 

[WarrantedFED]

I have only used champagne yeast, and it comes out quite dry. I have heard that Nottingham retains the apple flavor well and is very comparable to Lalvin K1-V1116.

 

[biochemedic]

I used the White Labs Dry English Cider yeast last year, and it was awesome.

 

[70Cuda383]

my batch was 5 gallons, I added 3 lbs of brown sugar and 2 lbs of honey to it, with some cinnamon.

I used the dry champaign yeast from williams brew supply mail order company, which said it had a high alcohol tolerance and would consume all the sugar I added.

it fermented for probably 4 weeks!!

I added more sugar at bottling, but not enough, it really didn't carb...so it's more of a wine with a touch of "spice" from the low CO2 levels. I was worried about exploding bottles, and heard that ciders are more prone to it than anything else.

after 3 weeks in bottles...it had a very strong bite to it. at the 6 week mark, it was noticably smoother.

the rest of the batch is now tucked away, aging, waiting for another day.

I figured the alcohol content is up around 15-20% because of all the extra sugar that I added to it.

maybe next time I'll try an ale yeast instead of the champaign yeast.

 

[biochemedic]

my batch was 5 gallons, I added 3 lbs of brown sugar and 2 lbs of honey to it, with some cinnamon.
...
I figured the alcohol content is up around 15-20% because of all the extra sugar that I added to it.

maybe next time I'll try an ale yeast instead of the champaign yeast.

Probably not quite as strong as you've estimated, of course the only way to know for sure is if you actually have OG and FG numbers....

As an estimate: The extra sugars should have given you about 44 gravity points in 5 gallons In my experience, most cider has a gravity of about 1.050-1.055, so your starting gravity was probably somewhere between 1.090 and 1.100. Even going completely dry from 1.100 only gives you about 13-14% ABV maximal. Still, plenty strong for a "cider"...I agree that some would argue that you've made more of an apfelwine. Either way, I'm sure it will be good after it ages out a bit...