Cider newb - my plan

[MowenB]

Hi all,

I've been reading posts and it is a lot to digest, and I'm getting turned around. Was hoping someone would comment on my plan.

I took ten gallons of cider and divided into two identical batches: 5 gallons cider, 2 lbs brown sugar, 2 cups maple syrup. One got a wpl English cider, the other wyeast French saison. Both are humming away and smell fantastic.

I was going to wait until the bubbling slowed (2 weeks) rack to secondaries and leave it a month.

Then I was going to lightly prime, bottle in champagne bottles, cork, cage, condition a month or two. Not planning to pasteurize.

Stupid plan? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[sa101]

what sort of end product are you wanting? sweet? dry? strong? weak?

 

[Sewer_Urchen]

Sounds like a fine plan. Your cider will end up dry. It's pretty close to impossible to get a sweet sparkling cider. The best way is to backsweeten to taste with splenda, because it's non-fermentable. There is a way to sparkle, then heat pasturize, but this is risky, can end up with bottle bombs or just the cap blasting off, results can varry.

My advise would be to leave in the primary for a longer time. I usually, with cider, leave in the primary for 6 weeks. If you rack to the secondary too soon, fermentation may not be done, and you'll slow the process down to the point where it'll look like you have clear cider, but when you prime and bottle there will still be fermentable sugars left from the primary and you might have bottle bombs. Champagne bottles will withstand more than beer bottles or (I use Martinelli's sparkling cider bottles). Make sure you use mushroom corks, or plastic champagne corks, and then wire tie them down. Regular wine corks will just get blown out of the top. American champagne bottles, most of them anyway, can use regular beer caps too, but be sure you flip the rings on the red cappers from 26 to 29, 29 is a larger ring made to go around a wine bottle neck, 26 is the size for a standard beer bottle.

Good luck!

 

[MowenB]

what sort of end product are you wanting? sweet? dry? strong? weak?

In the 8 months I have been brewing I can't seem to get the hang of using a hydrometer. So without a starting point I did not have a target in mind. I looked at a couple of recipes and did something in the middle. Other than that, I was going to aim for a dry, sparkling.

 

[MowenB]

Make sure you use mushroom corks, or plastic champagne corks, and then wire tie them down. Regular wine corks will just get blown out of the top. American champagne bottles, most of them anyway, can use regular beer caps too, but be sure you flip the rings on the red cappers from 26 to 29, 29 is a larger ring made to go around a wine bottle neck, 26 is the size for a standard beer bottle.

Thanks. Just one follow-up: will bottle capped champ bottles hold up as well as corked/tied bottles? I always assumed the bottles were similar, it was the cork that made the difference.

 

[sa101]

Sounds like a fine plan. Your cider will end up dry. It's pretty close to impossible to get a sweet sparkling cider. The best way is to backsweeten to taste with splenda, because it's non-fermentable. There is a way to sparkle, then heat pasturize, but this is risky, can end up with bottle bombs or just the cap blasting off, results can varry.

Wow! I hate to be a hater, but this is terrible advice!!! Just take a quick search in the recipes section and you'll find a HEAP of sweet cider info, and its not difficult.

The basic equation for fermentation is; the longer it ferments, the drier and stronger it's going to be. Buy a hyrdometer! They're easy to use, cheap, and essential for brewing, you won't look back.

The longer you let it ferment, the stronger and drier it'll be, which also means you need to let it mellow in the secondary as well as bottle condition. You'll basically let the yeast eat all of the apple sugars, so it'll taste "funny" at the beginning (unless you backsweeten). But the longer you let it chill out in the secondary and bottle, the better it will eventually taste.

I'm not a massive fan of long fermentations, but you're on the right track using champagne yeast. Also, I'd elect to cap your champagne bottles, takes the risk out of air getting into them, which will just ruin all your hard work!

good luck!

 

[Sewer_Urchen]

Just take a quick search in the recipes section and you'll find a HEAP of sweet cider info, and its not difficult.

Sweet still cider is easy, yes...but sweet and sparkling when conditioning the cider naturally is difficult. If you want a sweet AND sparkling cider, my advice is not terrible at all, splenda is an excellent way of backsweetening...the only other tried and true way to have a sweet and sparkling cider is to kill the yeast and force carb in a keg. If you don't have a keg and are planning on bottling a sweet/sparkling cider it's tricky, especially if you are using champagne yeast, which will ferment out every ounce of sugar and keep on going right up to 15% alcohol content or more!

Mowen, if you are just going for a basic sparkle than a capped bottle will hold up to the pressure fine...if you want that champagne "blow the cork across the room" sparkle, you can use more priming sugar and, yes, I would reccomend the mushroom cork and wire cap.

There is probably lots of info on how to use a hydrometer on this site...but the long and short of it is, it's simply telling you how much sugar is in the water, the higher the hydrometer reading, the sweeter the cider, wine, etc. The starting point/Orriginal Gravity "OG" is used primarilly for the purpose of comparring to the Final Gravity "FG" once fermentation is complete to calculate your alcohol content "ABV" (Alcohol By Volume). The basic formula is OG-FG * 132.25 = AVB in a %. The OG also gives you a good idea how to replicate the cider if you want to brew it again. Say you like this years batch, cider pressed in Sept is less sweet than cider pressed in Nov. So next year you have an OG goal to get your cider to so you can brew pretty close to the same cider next year.

Sweetness of the cider is more relevant to the yeast you use. All yeast will die when the alcohol reaches a certain point, the alcohol kills the yeast. A beer or english cider yeast will die out, usually by a max of 8-9% alcohol level, each strand of yeast will tell you where it can brew up to...A sweet wine yeast (Like Red Star Montrachet) will usually kick out around 11-12%; And a champagne/dry wine yeast (like Red Star Pasteur, or Lalvin D-47) can go up to 15- sometimes 18% before the alcohol kill it. SOoooooo, if you are brewing your cider with a wine yeast, it's going to be pretty dry, and if you backsweeten too much before you bottle, it will just keep fermenting and fermenting until there is either no sugar left, or your bottle blows up. By the way, a blown up bottle is bad, you don't get to drink that...

I don't know what sa101 is talking about when he says the longer you ferment, they dryer it is...that's terrible advice; it's true to a point, but dryness is more relevant to the type of yeast you use, if you stop fermentation (with potasseum sorbate, or campden tablets or by other means), than you can't have a sparkling cider unless you keg...period...

If sa101 knows of some magic way to make the yeast stop fermenting in the bottle once its reached carbonation, and yet still have sugars left over to make it sweet, I'd love to hear them.

If you're aiming for a dry, sparkling cider, than just stick with your orriginal plan, because that's what you'll get.