Hey,
I am making cider in my dorm so my beer brewing equipment isn't here so I use the following method \ equipment to try my hand with hard cider (it's more conviniant in dorms then brewing beer).
I have a glass carboy with a stopper and an airlock. I made sure the system's air tight. I buy 4 litres of non preserved, pesturized apple juice, I mix in about 4 cups of table suger, then pitch S-04. In the batch under descussion I used 1/4 of a standard package.
I sanitize the equipment with hot water.
Now, I let the batch sit for 2-3 months in the carboy. I saw clear signs of fermentation like foam and some bubbling and the juice got lighter. However, there was no bubbling in the airlock but I saw a lot of bubbles going out of solution in the active fermentation.
After that I wanted to bottle. I took off the airlock, and a layer of foam you excpect in a beer glass started coming out of solution. I then shiphoned into sanitized bottles with 2 table spoons of cane suger per bottle.
I started noticing the problem when I tasted some of the shiponed cider. It tasted very sweet, but since I mixed the priming suger already I thought that's the reason and that it will go away. Then, I let the bottles sit for 2 weeks.
I tasted one of the bottles today. It gashed a little, but after pouring some of the cider into a pint glass things calmed down. I had brews like this before and since i'm new to cider I just made a note to put less priming suger next time.
To my dismay, the cider still tastes desturbingly sweet - I wanted dry cider. Also, I put a lot of suger (Some of you will probably tell me even too much) and yet the brew was not strong at all. I was very disappionted at the result, and worse - I have 4 litres of this sweet apple juice.
I thought maybe the problem is that the yeast didn't have enough nutriants. I thought about buying a pack of yeast nutriants and maybe a fresh pack of s-04, pouring the batch back into a caroy and give it another go in the fermentation.
What do people here make of this?
I am making cider in my dorm so my beer brewing equipment isn't here so I use the following method \ equipment to try my hand with hard cider (it's more conviniant in dorms then brewing beer).
I have a glass carboy with a stopper and an airlock. I made sure the system's air tight. I buy 4 litres of non preserved, pesturized apple juice, I mix in about 4 cups of table suger, then pitch S-04. In the batch under descussion I used 1/4 of a standard package.
I sanitize the equipment with hot water.
Now, I let the batch sit for 2-3 months in the carboy. I saw clear signs of fermentation like foam and some bubbling and the juice got lighter. However, there was no bubbling in the airlock but I saw a lot of bubbles going out of solution in the active fermentation.
After that I wanted to bottle. I took off the airlock, and a layer of foam you excpect in a beer glass started coming out of solution. I then shiphoned into sanitized bottles with 2 table spoons of cane suger per bottle.
I started noticing the problem when I tasted some of the shiponed cider. It tasted very sweet, but since I mixed the priming suger already I thought that's the reason and that it will go away. Then, I let the bottles sit for 2 weeks.
I tasted one of the bottles today. It gashed a little, but after pouring some of the cider into a pint glass things calmed down. I had brews like this before and since i'm new to cider I just made a note to put less priming suger next time.
To my dismay, the cider still tastes desturbingly sweet - I wanted dry cider. Also, I put a lot of suger (Some of you will probably tell me even too much) and yet the brew was not strong at all. I was very disappionted at the result, and worse - I have 4 litres of this sweet apple juice.
I thought maybe the problem is that the yeast didn't have enough nutriants. I thought about buying a pack of yeast nutriants and maybe a fresh pack of s-04, pouring the batch back into a caroy and give it another go in the fermentation.
What do people here make of this?
