Cider ended up too sweet. Help

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Bigblastbeat

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I recently made a 5 gallon batch of cider following the recipe detailed in this reddit post. My first attempt at a cider.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cider/s/qft8LfVAWz

It ended up too sweet as I maybe should of expected from the amount of sugar added. Also I unfortunately lost my OG reading so I am unable to tell whether my EC1118 is at its maximum tolerance. I racked once already and added some cut apples to bring back some of the apple flavor which I found was almost completely missing after the 2 months it was fermenting. There is no activity in my airlock for about a month now and no bubbles in my carboy.
Either way I pitched more yeast and added some fermaid incase it was possibly stalled.

So far the additions of apples and some acid and tannin blend have helped knock out the overly sweet taste but it still is very overwhelming.

I have also heard that fortifying a sweet cider with applejack or apple brandy can help thwart the sweetness down. Has anybody tried this?
 

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Wow..that amount of sugar is about what I put into a 4G batch. I'll tend to add some nectar or something to bring it up to a full 5G keg. Perhaps you should just make that into applejack and use it for cocktails or something. Only other suggestion I might have is to make a much lower ABV batch with a champagne yeast (which would be really dry) and combine the two.
 
Split, top with water. It'll cut ABV, possibly restarting fermentation, and sweetness if nothing else. Easy with adding more nutrients so late in the game. Believe it or not, time might bring back some apple flavor.
 
start over with grahams english cider recipe:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/grahams-english-cider.107152/

this is the best turbo cider recipe.

the acid from the limes, tannin from the tea, add whats missing from the store bought juice. use motts or apple and eve or aldi or treetop. dont use martinellis or other juice as your base. dont use orchard juice it takes forever to clear.
the ale yeast, is also very important . wine yeast doesnt just dry it out completely it also strips most flavor from any fruit juice.

but it needs nutrient. not raisins, not banana skins not a dead oyster or whatever else you here online. invest in nutrient if you are going to make cider or fruit juice wines, or especially mead.

now you can add sugar if you want to increase the abv.

this will still be totally dry and you have to back sweeten. everyones taste vary. i usually use 1/2 cup of sugar in 200 ml of water to make a viscous syrup then add that to the whole keg. this must be kept cold or fermetnation will restart. backsweeten with juices is a real treat. sourcherry with a 1/2 cup of sugar prolly my favorite. blueberry surprisingly not as good. but peach mango guave all work well. and they look amazing. and taste great and the girls coming running for these. with or without more sugar. they taste similar to bartenura or other fruity sparkiling wines if dried out or better than a lot of commercial ciders.

also if you want to do a spice start low. i would do 1 clove and 1/4 cinnamon stick. nutmeg a little less potent but still be careful.

welcome to hbt
 
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