Cider gravity reading

[MTate37]

My wife and I are making our first attempts at cider. In one gallon we started with the Whole Foods 365 apple juice and added nothing to it. We forgot to take a gravity reading before we pitched the yeast. In the second gallon we started with the Kirkland (Costco) apple juice with 1/4 tsp tannin and 1/4 can of apple juice concentrate. The OG of the Kirkland juice was 1.050. We pitched approximately 4 g of Nottingham ale yeast in both.

I was told by a source that I trust that cider does best in temps of 50-60 degrees. Temps that low can be a challenge in Alabama this time of year so we decided to use a swamp cooler. At the end of 24 hours using two frozen 20 oz water bottles the temp was around 52 or 53, which is just below Nottinghams suggested range. By removing one bottle of ice we've been able to keep the temp at a pretty steady 56 or 57, just above the bottom of the Nottingham range.

We took our first gravity readings since pitching and got a reading of 1.020 in both. It has been a week since we pitched. Is this a reasonable reading after a week?

I know the airlock isn't supposed supposed to be an indication of fermentation rate, but the bubbling has significantly decreased from the rate where it was six das ago. If we get another reading of 1.020 in three days is there anything that can be done to get the gravity to drop some more? We want to rack to secondary at 1.010 and then bottle around 1.000.

Thanks in advance for any advice. These are only are second and third homebrewing attempts so we're still figuring it out.

The Whole Foods gallon is a bit dryer, which we prefer

 

[Raffut]

I've actually got the same question...

I used 2 separate Whole Foods 365 apple juice carboys with no added sugar. I added some dried ginger and bitter orange peel for flavor. I primed and pitched champagne yeast (1/4 of packet per gallon) into the juice. I used less than the whole yeast packet since it states the packet is good for a 5 gallon batch, so I figured 1/4 would do the trick for each gallon.

It's been sitting for about 24hrs now with no activity (the airlock is elevated, just not bubbling). I'm worried there's not enough sugar or I didn't use enough yeast. The closet/brew temp is a consistent 67F. Since the airlock is elevated it's probably fermenting just not as vigorously as previous beers.

Should I be more patient or would you suggest I add some sugar to the mix?

Oh, and I also forgot to take a gravity reading

Thanks!

 

[hbtasdfg]

This is completely typical. 1.020 after a week is fine.

I haven't had problems getting cider to just go straight down to close to 1.000 most of the sugars are easily fermentable for the yeast. If you have problems with the gravity stalling use Lalvin EC-1118

 

[jamrs90]

This is completely typical. 1.020 after a week is fine.

I haven't had problems getting cider to just go straight down to close to 1.000 most of the sugars are easily fermentable for the yeast. If you have problems with the gravity stalling use Lalvin EC-1118

How about getting to 1.024 since pitching some nottingham yeast on saturday afternoon? I took an OG of 1.056 or so then added some more sugar after the yeast was in so I didn't get a completely accurate reading, but that seems to have gone pretty fast, although I did use a whole 11g packet of yeast in 2gals. of cider with an in-between measurement of my nutrient.

 

[Raffut]

Let my cider ferment and sit in it's primary container for ~ 3weeks. The fermentation had completely stopped and the final gravity was close to or a little under 1.000. I didn't add any sugar to the juice before pitching the yeast into the primary.

In order to get some bubbles (carbon dioxide) in the bottles I added 2oz of organic cane sugar to 3/4 cups of water and boiled for ~4 min to dissolve completely. I mixed this into the bottle bucket with the siphoned cider before transferring into bottles.

Looking forward to tasting the final product. The flat cider is okay, but next time I'll leave out the bitter orange peel and stick with the ginger.