Cider to secondary...effects on gravity?

[Hedo-Rick]

Hello,

New to the forum, so first let me thank all the awesome people here for being so generous and sharing your great wealth of brewing knowledge.

I'm going to use Pappers stove top pasteurization method to achieve a semi-dry cider, but I'm a firm believer in the benefits of secondary, so I would like to rack my cider off the lees when I hit 1.012 and cold condition it for a few weeks around 40 degrees F, then bottle condition, let it naturally carbonate and then pasteurize.

Will my cider maintain 1.012 after racking and cold conditioning or will it continue to drop? If will continue to drop, roughly how much further will it go? Also, would the yeast still be strong enough for the bottle condition phase after sitting in cold storage for a few weeks? I'm using Nottingham ale yeast.

Thanks!

 

[smegger]

Racking to secondary will not stop fermentation. If left to do its thing it will ferment out completely just the same as if it were still in primary.
You'll just have less lees to work around, but still plenty of yeast suspended in the cider.