Cider Airlock Stopped Bubbling After 3 Days

[sreichenberger]

Hello everyone, I am relatively new to homebrewing and prepared two batches of 2.5 gallons each of Cider.

For the Cider I am particularly concerned with, I used the following:

• 1.5 gallons of pure apple juice straight to the fermenter
• 1.0 gallon of pure apple juice was heated to 70Cº. 15 minutes before turning the stove off I added a handful of crystalized lemon peel, 1 pound of sugar and a handful of crystalized ginger (was aiming for a higher alcohol content), one small capsule of Servomyces yeast nutrient and half a tablet of clearing whirlfloc
• Once the temperature was down to around 25Cº I pitched the Cotes des Blancs yeast in*

* I ended up using around 1/3 of the sachet of the Cotes des Blancs which was all I was left over, and I was concerned that the yeast amount was too little for 2.5 gallons of cider.

After three days, the airlock stopped bubbling on that one, whilst the other bucket I have going (the first one I made with about 2/3 of the yeast in the sachet) is still going strong.

Did I just screw up the first Cider by adding too little yeast in? Did maybe the crystalized lemon peel kill of the yeast for whatever reason? Any tips on how I could resuscitate this batch or should I just taste, take a reading, wait two days, take another reading and then if warranted bottle and drink?

 

[sreichenberger]

Update: I took the bucket and shock it a bit. Seems like that woke some of the yeast up, as the fermenter started to bubble yet very slowly.

However, is there too little yeast in there?

Should I pitch more yeast or add more nutrients?

 

[Munster51]

Let it ride. Cider slowly chugs away.

 

[sreichenberger]

Let it ride. Cider slowly chugs away.

Thanks, Munster. So I guess 1/3 packet of dry yeast for 2.5 gallons isn't too little to let the yeast do its thing?

 

[Munster51]

It could be any number of things. Just because you don’t see yeast moving around does not mean they aren’t working. You could not have a good deal on your FV and that is allowing the co2 to escape that way. I make, what I consider to be a lot of cider, about 15 gallons a month. The only true way to know it is done fermenting is gravity readings.