Cider Yeast Too Dry

[cernst151]

My wife and I just pressed 25 gallons of cider and this weekend are expecting to press about another 10 gallons. We'll be fermenting 10-15 gallons of it as both plain cider and graff. We've done the cider a few times before but this will be the first time doing graff.

For the cider we typically use the White Labs WLP775 English Cider Yeast which gives us a very dry but very delicious end product. We enjoy dry cider but I think I'd like something just a little sweeter without back sweetening. Can anybody recommend a yeast that will be a little less attenuative but still not give any yeasty/beery character?

 

[UpstateMike]

Try a wine yeast. Click the link below to read a review of several wine yeasts and their qualities.

Country Wine Yeast: Tips from the Pros

 

[danz]

I ended up boiling and condensing some juice down before fermentation which caramelized and left some great apple flavor/aroma and some sweetness. Currently I am experimenting with a dry cider back sweetened with some boiled down juice and will let you know how that turns out.

Here is a link to my cider experiments https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/caramelized-cider-saison-iii-yeast-499006/

 

[Archer]

I am going to try WLP720 Sweat Mead/Wine yeast on one of my batches this year. Its supposed to leave more residual sweetness in the cider.

 

[cernst151]

I ended up boiling and condensing some juice down before fermentation which caramelized and left some great apple flavor/aroma and some sweetness. Currently I am experimenting with a dry cider back sweetened with some boiled down juice and will let you know how that turns out.

Here is a link to my cider experiments https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/caramelized-cider-saison-iii-yeast-499006/

I'd read many times that boiling the cider will make it cloudy and drive off aromatics. The images on your other post certainly look crystal clear and I'm not super concerned about cloudiness anyway. I'm happy to hear the flavor and aroma were still solid.

 

[danz]

I'd read many times that boiling the cider will make it cloudy and drive off aromatics. The images on your other post certainly look crystal clear and I'm not super concerned about cloudiness anyway. I'm happy to hear the flavor and aroma were still solid.

I was very pleased with this batch and took to to my local brew store and they enjoyed it as well. I will be boiling all my ciders in the future since I am not keen on a super dry cider.

From what I researched its hard to find a yeast to leave some residual sweetness and a nice flavor so why I opted to try and leave sugar behind. Give it a go next time

 

[bernardsmith]

My wife and I just pressed 25 gallons of cider and this weekend are expecting to press about another 10 gallons. We'll be fermenting 10-15 gallons of it as both plain cider and graff. We've done the cider a few times before but this will be the first time doing graff.

For the cider we typically use the White Labs WLP775 English Cider Yeast which gives us a very dry but very delicious end product. We enjoy dry cider but I think I'd like something just a little sweeter without back sweetening. Can anybody recommend a yeast that will be a little less attenuative but still not give any yeasty/beery character?

I don't know any yeast that is incapable of fermenting out every last gram of sugar in a regular apple juice must. The specific gravity of apple juice is about 1.045 (more or less) ...
But perhaps one technique you might try is not to focus on the yeast but on the juice itself.
If you freeze the juice and then allow it to thaw and collect the thawed juice as it thaws, then the first juice that thaws will contain far more of the sugar than the last juice that thaws. So, if you freeze say, 6 gallons of juice but collect the first 2 gallons of thawed juice that juice may have a gravity of close to 1.090 rather than 1.045. (no artificial addition of sugar) The first gallon will have even more of the total sugar and so your chosen yeast may be unable to ferment dry a must with a gravity of more than 1.100. The cider will have a much more intense flavor (almost like an ice cider) and your White Labs yeast may simply give up the ghost before all that sugar has been converted to alcohol because of its lack of tolerance to higher concentrations of alcohol.