Cherry Cider ready to bottle... what do you think?

[Chalkyt]

Sorry this is a bit long winded but there are a few issues.

My 2 litre (1/2 gallon) cherry cider "experiment" seems good (taste and colour i s great). After a month in secondary, today I racked it off the lees and cherries. It was fermented with SO4. OG was 1.072 and very robustly went to 1.015 in a week. The SG is now 1.003 and I am getting an airlock bubble every minute or two so I wonder if I should just bottle it now and hope for some carbonation.

It was a late season thought using "left over" apples. 1kg of Cox's Orange Pippin, 2kg of "front tree pippins" (we don't really know what they are), 1kg of Pink Ladies and 1kg of beurre bosc pears. The pears were another "experiment" because I understand that they have a high level of sorbitol which doesn't ferment and so might leave some sweetness... it seems to have worked, but it might also be due to the cherries. (Bad experiment... shouldn't have two variables but the idea of adding the cherries was too much to resist!)

When it was transferred to secondary I added 250g of (our) frozen pitted cherries. Since then it has been in the cool store at around 55-60 degrees F.

As a reference I also have a gallon (different apples, no cherries) that has been fermenting for a bit over two months with SO4. The OG was 1.055 and it is now 1.002 with no airlock bubbles. So, the dilemma is will the cherry cider only go down to 1.002, leaving me with practically no carbonation if I bottle it now without any priming sugar or added juice (I have some in the fridge for just this purpose).

The alternative to "do nothing" is to add sugar or juice to bring the SG up to say 1.005 and bottle. I plan to bottle tomorrow but can leave it for longer but I will have to do something about the air space.

Any wise opinions?

 

[Chalkyt]

A bit of an update... I decided to be "brave" and bottle. After checking the SG of the two month old SO4 gallon in the cool store again, I figured that the cherry cider with SO4 would probably bottom out at around 1.002. So I figured that if I bottled at 1.005, at best I would end up with a slightly carbonated batch and at worst a mini volcano. So, added around 50 ml of 1.060 apple juice which brought it up to 1.005 and bottled. They are stored in the "bomb bin" (garbage bin with a clip-on lid), just in case.

 

[JimRausch]

I see I'm too slow replying, but here's what I would have said if I was online yesterday (I was camping with the Scouts):
1. Beautiful looking cider!
2. If you want it carbonated, I would add some juice, bumping it up about 5 -8 points.(I see you did that). I would also bottle one in a plastic soda bottle to be better able on judging your carb. level. I am a big fan of backsweetening/carbing and when I like the level based on that soda bottle, I cooler pasteurize the batch to stop things where they are.

 

[GeneDaniels1963]

Looks good, but what about taste? Have you tried it at all?

 

[Chalkyt]

Thanks for the replies. Yes, it tastes very good. Despite the OG of 1.072 it doesn't taste "alcoholly". There is some sweetness at this stage, in fact I added some Xylitol to a taste sample and didn't detect any worthwhile change.

I had included about 20% pears because they are supposed to be high in sorbitol (2g/100ml compared with 0.5g/100ml for apples) in a quest to soften the tartness that comes with dry cider. I understand that sweet cherries are also "high in sorbitol" but can't find any numbers. The original idea was to see if pears would add some sweetness to straight apples fermented with SO4 (and I was also hoping that SO4 would bottom out above 1.000 and so retain some unfermented sugars), but as I said above, the temptation to use the cherries was too much, so yesterday I rolled the dice and decided to bottle. Maybe next autumn (March/April for us in Oz is apple time) I will do the "pear experiment" again.

So, the short answer is that it is a very drinkable outcome but I don't know if it is due to the pears or cherries.

 

[RPh_Guy]

This article is based on Italian cultivars:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/43084998/Fruit_quality_and_bioactive_compounds_re20160225-20610-q2rhdl.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1528452501&Signature=Itwpg5/pEAAIdAk+OoIG2TrCPvM=&response-content-disposition=inline; filename=Fruit_quality_and_bioactive_compounds_re.pdf (table 3)

It gives a huge potential range of sorbitol content for cherries depending of the varietal.

I believe pears generally have the highest sorbitol of any fruit (e.g. 50% more than "prune juice" according to this site). Personally I don't do well with perries because of this.

so ... ??? There's probably no way to know unless you have a sensitivity to sorbitol and are willing to try it out