First Cider Batch - Questions on Back Sweetening

[Sir Becket's Brew Haus]

As a fairly regular beer-brewer, I'm anxious to bottle my first batch of hard cider... mine is based on Honeycrisp apples (a personal favorite that I hope will be just as awesome as a hard cider). Tomorrow marks the 30 day "patience" period so theoretically, it will be ready for bottling, though I haven't taken a finished-gravity reading yet. The batch size is 2.5 gallons. I have a can of frozen concentrate, and I also have 16 oz of clover honey.

Questions: Will using both make it potentially too sweet? Should one method be scrapped? If I wanted to definitely use the honey, how much honey is typical for this batch size and how much hot water do I dissolve it in before adding to the bottling bucket?

 

[CKuhns]

(You probably already know this so i apologize in advance.) Like beer to sweeten a cider you must be very near dry 1.000 gravity and then to sweeten it and bottle it you either must add remove, kill or inhibit the yeast prior to bottling. Otherwise it will carbonate in the bottle and over carb causing at best "gushers" and worst bottle bombs.

The only way I know of bottle carbonating and sweetening is to pasteurize after carbonation but that for me is a little risky, many folks do it. I have been known to sweeten then bottle and immediately pasteurize for a "still" sweet cider.

To answer your question. To sweeten it you can filter to 1 micron or pasteurize to 160 Deg F (See Pappers) "Sticky" at the top or use those chemicals (I don't use them so cant help here) some folks use to "inhibit" the yeast from reproducing. (Preferred by many on this forum)

THEN - Sweeten to taste using whatever sugars you prefer. I have typically shot for an additional .004 to .008 from 1.000 that gives me a semi sweet cider. This is somewhat a personal preference as we all taste sweetness a little differently. To hit the target above I use about 1.5 oz of sugar per gallon OR 1.7 oz of honey dissolved in a very small amount of cider from the carboy itself. Just enough cider to get it to dissolve. I do prefer FAJC as after thawed is obviously liquid. You can do the math with your FAJC as the sugar content will be printed in the ingredients list, but might have to convert from grams to ounces. For 2.5 gallons it likely will be about half a can plus or minus a llittle depending upon the sugar content.

 

[Sir Becket's Brew Haus]

THEN - Sweeten to taste using whatever sugars you prefer. I have typically shot for an additional .004 to .008 from 1.000 that gives me a semi sweet cider. This is somewhat a personal preference as we all taste sweetness a little differently. To hit the target above I use about 1.5 oz of sugar per gallon OR 1.7 oz of honey dissolved in a very small amount of cider from the carboy itself. Just enough cider to get it to dissolve. I do prefer FAJC as after thawed is obviously liquid. You can do the math with your FAJC as the sugar content will be printed in the ingredients list, but might have to convert from grams to ounces. For 2.5 gallons it likely will be about half a can plus or minus a llittle depending upon the sugar content.

Many thanks for the response and those calculations... I love the chemistry behind home-brewing (and it's a great way to get kids involved with math conversions ). I wouldn't have thought to use the hard cider itself as a means of dissolving the honey in but makes the most sense by far.

 

[Sir Becket's Brew Haus]

Hydrometer reading was 1.000 yesterday... was cider clear... taste-test was dryer than the Sahara as expected. To experiment before bottling, I added 2 tablespoons of dissolved organic honey (dissolved in 2 oz of unfermented apple juice) to my approx 4 oz of test-cider with ice. Tasted much better. But I could not detect any Honeycrisp apple flavor. It was good and satisfying, but not what I was shooting for. I'm half tempted to buy a bottle of cheap champaign and mix with unfermented honeycrisp apple juice just to know if that would work for me, but there must be a way to get the flavor I'm desiring trying to make hard cider.

 

[CKuhns]

Try adding a little acid I find it helps a bunch with the flavor. - I use an acid blend (Citric, Malic and Tarteric I believe) About 1/8 tsp per gallon. Again is subjective and better to under shoot, you can always add more but cant take it out once in.