decided to chance it, & bottle it

[parrothead600]

I started out with 5 gallons of orchard pressed cider, unpasturized & no preservatives. I added the recommended amount of campden tablets, yeast nutrient & pectic enzyme. A day later I added a packet of SafAle S-05 yeast & let it go for about a month. It cleared up nicely and the gravity reading was .998 so I racked it to the secondary to let it age. About 3 weeks later, I noticed that the capsule in the air lock had dropped & much of the water in the air lock was gone, indicating that it had created a vacuum in the carboy & "swallowed" some of the water in the airlock. It was still floating yesterday, today it was not.
I decided that I should backsweeten, prime & bottle it & try it later to make sure that it didn't get an infection. My question is: How long will it take to determine if it did get an infection? What should I look for to indicate that it did go bad?
If my calculations are correct, the ABV should be about 7.8% so hopefully there is enough alcohol to protect it (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Next time I using Vodka in the airlock.

 

[batty]

pretty unlikely that you would get an infection overnight @ 7.8% just from having little (or even zero) liquid in the airlock I'd say.

if you did get an infection, i could take a long time to develop, or could happen relatively quickly, depending on the beast, quantity, temp, etc. If it's already bottled, your only real choice to determine is taste and smell (you'll know), and even then, it's not like it's going to kill you.. just might not taste as great. then again, you might like it more!

overall though, infection risk is minimal. cheers,

 

[GinKings]

+1, your risk is minimal.

I noticed that you plan to backsweeten and prime when you bottle. I hope you are doing something to keep the yeast from eating the backsweetening sugars. Otherwise, you could have overcarbonation and possibly bottle bombs.

 

[parrothead600]

+1, your risk is minimal.

I noticed that you plan to backsweeten and prime when you bottle. I hope you are doing something to keep the yeast from eating the backsweetening sugars. Otherwise, you could have overcarbonation and possibly bottle bombs.

Yes, I used Splenda to slightly backsweeten it. Only used a 1/3 cup for the 5 gallon batch.