Cider and Fruit in the secondary... gravity high?

[jasonclick]

First off... I've been brewing beer for about 5 years but am brand new to ciders. This is my second cider and the first with fruit. Here it goes...

I fermented 2 gallons of store bought juice with WLP 775. The OG was 1.058. FG was 0.998.

I racked the above into secondary. Secondary I have 2 pounds of dried apricots that I re-hydrated and pasteurized in 3 quarts of unfermented apple juice. I assume 2 pounds of dried apricots is probably equal to 4 pounds of fresh fruit. I though the cider that I fermented would start up fermentation again in secondary but I just sampled it (still in secondary fermenter) and its very sweet. I put on my refractometer and it is at SG 1.055. Here are my questions....


-I've never made beer or cider on fruit... should it have fermented out or should I expect it to be very sweet?
-Should I just wait longer (its been in secondary for a week) and see of the gravity goes down?
-Should I add yeast to the secondary to see if it ferments more? Maybe all of the yeast dropped out of it in primary?


As a side note... I've got 2 more gallons of juice i've been fermenting. I can always use this to blend and bring down the sweetness.

Thanks for any help!

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi jasonclick. Interesting question. I would have expected the yeast to have gone for broke on the apricots leaving you with nothing but the pits... but you say they did nothing.. I wonder... might those apricots have been treated with preservatives to enhance their color and shelf life? Could they have been bathed in sorbates or something similar? You might want to check. My money is on preservatives.

 

[jasonclick]

they were dried apricots and from what I remember they just had an acid added as a preservative. i checked before throwing them in there because I was concerned about that as well. they didn't have anything for color preservation because they were basically brown color. I got them from a food supply company that was meant for an ingredient and not really for shelf appeal.

Anyways, the issue is I need to pour this in a festival in about 2 weeks so i added a little US-05 to it this morning. If that doesn't start it up I'm going to use it to blend with another straight cider I have in another fermenter.

 

[dmtaylor]

Refractometer is not at all accurate in presence of alcohol. It tends to read way higher than it really is. Use a hydrometer.

Added fruit will take at least another month to ferment out. Patience.

No need to add more yeast.

 

[SeppukuCoconuts]

Refractometer is not at all accurate in presence of alcohol. It tends to read way higher than it really is. Use a hydrometer.

Added fruit will take at least another month to ferment out. Patience.

No need to add more yeast.

I second waiting. You can't rush cider. Its more wine making that beer, and half of wine making is waiting. I'm pretty sure the other half is also waiting. The yeast you used should still be pretty active in the secondary with all that sugar.

The few times I've added fruit to a cider secondary it usually started quick, but I've usually used montrachet yeast.