First cider tastes like wine. Please advise!

[dkrueger84]

Hi,

I just finished brewing my first rudimentary cider batch. The basic recipe (excluding yeast nutrient, etc) was 2.5 gallons of preservative free apple juice and 1 lb of dextrose. OG was 1.060. (small 2.5 gal batch.) After 15 days, SG is 1.00 flat. I tasted the sample and it has a very white wine like taste, though some apple flavor is still noticeable. I had heard about this issue before from people who have used wine or champagne yeast, but I used Safale us-05 ale yeast to try and prevent this from happening.

I have seen a few passing comments that a wine like taste can be a sign that the cider just needs to age, but these seemed to be more asides to the primary issue of people using wine yeasts. Any advice? Will the wine taste mellow with age and become more cider-like? If so, how does that happen? To me, that seems somewhat counterintuitive as I would expect a fresher cider flavor upfront and it later developing into a wine taste, but i don't really know what I'm doing so obviously my thoughts don't matter too much. Thank you for any help!

 

[KevinM]

Yeast will eat sugar and produce alcohol as long as they live. This would be the result. A dry, not very sweet cider. Look at the bottle pasturizing sticky first. Check about backsweetening too.

 

[bravos4evr]

I went scouring through old threads here before I joined and the consensus seems to be that if you let it age the apple tends to come back a bit. My first batch was very white wine tasting as well. But if you compare it to stuff like Woodchuck and/or Hornsby's it may never end up quite like that. Most of the "real" cider I've had is on the dry side. (not that i don't like the big brands , I do, i drink the bejeesus out of em) But, who knows, I don't know what I'm doing really anyway!

 

[RobWalker]

Everything you make, regardless of ingredients, will have a very "boozy" sort of taste at that stage. I'm guessing what you're saying tastes like wine is that - it's because you havn't treated the cider in any way whatsoever. No dramas - it's easy to do.

If you're kegging, degass it (you can use a degasser, or just stir it for a few minutes in the open air really) and let it age in the keg for a while. The apple taste will mature in time - cider is decent after a few weeks, and great after 3 months. Carbonation and Sweetening both help get rid of the winey taste - you can use co2 in a keg or add priming sugar to your brew which will create carbonation. Sweetening can be achieved with a non-fermentable sugar (lactose, table top sweetener etc) or by topping up with the original juice or any type of sugar and stabilizing so it can't ferment any more - you can still carbonate with co2 but not with sugar if you choose this.

Bottling - 3 weeks in a bottle will condition your cider and the taste will improve massively. It's no rumour that cider tastes better from the bottle - the glass ageing is the reason why! Add 1/2 tsp priming sugar per pint bottle for carbonation, and in 3 weeks it'll taste awesome. If you want to sweeten and carbonate in the bottle, check out Stove Top Pasteurizing or Cold Crashing.

Your High OG might be responsible somewhat for the taste too - at 1.060 you're looking at anywhere from 7.4% to 8% depending on how dry it ferments - try aiming for 1.045 for a 5% brew, which will taste much better.

 

[dkrueger84]

Thanks all. I did check out the other stickies, but was a little uncertain about this whole backsweeting, what and how much to use, etc. Also, while cold crashing seems advisable to stop the SG where I want it, would I need to add more yeast come time for bottling if the cold kills them, or would it just make them dormant? Also, wouldn't adding priming sugar re-start fermentation and cause the rest of the residual sugar to ferment as well? Seems like that could increase the risk of bottle bombs.

It seems like a lot of recipes add a decent amount of sugar, I may try dropping that a bit for the next batch to lower the OG. But if I do that though, I wonder if I would still end up with the same problem in that the yeast will still consume all of the apple sugar... Maybe trying to find a very low attenuating yeast is the nextstep. or are there any good non-fermentable sugars that I could add? I saw someone mentioned splenda in another thread I think....?