Help please!

[Wild foamy]

hi everyone

in my usual style i started something before i actually knew how to do it.

this time its cider brewing, i bought some yeast (5g, says it can treat 23 litres) so i decided to do 2.3 litres with 0.5g of yeast

i used store-bought apple concentrate and mixed it all up, drilled a hole in the cap of the bottle (im using a 3L bottle as a Demijohn) and used a piece of silicon pipe as a vent line (with the open end of the pipe in a bucket of water to let the CO2 out but no oxygen in) and it all went well, mixture bubbled and released CO2 and it stopped bubbling a few days ago so i assumed that the brew had reached approximately 15% alcohol and the yeast had died off.

i mixed in 2 parts regular apple concentrate to bring the alc level down to approx 5% and bottled it up in old(steralised) milk bottles (2 litre capacity, i filled them to about 1.75 litres) but the solution is very sweet and you cant really drink it in large quantities without feeling a bit overwhelmed by its sweetness

what have i done wrong and how can i correct it? id hate to have to put it all to waste, so please help me

thanks

Steve

(you can tell im new to this, eh? )

 

[Yooper]

What was the kind of yeast that you used? Also, what are the ingredients in the store bought apple concentrate?

The first thing to do is to open the sealed bottles so they don't explode. You can gently pour it into a fermenter-type container. Do you have any glass jugs? You also need some airlocks and stoppers for your fermenters.

I'd suggest buying some sanitizer, too, or else clean your containers really well and then use a dilute bleach solution to sanitize, and then rinse them really really well.

 

[Wild foamy]

i used youngs all purpose white wine yeast and the apple juice contains pure apple juice with no added flavours/sweeteners

i dont have any glass jugs, or air locks, or a fermenter-type container for that matter

its mainly getting rid of the sweetness im not too sure about.

 

[Yooper]

I understand that. I'm just saying that if the wine ferments the apple juice you added, the bottles you sealed up will explode. Glass grenades are dangerous.

Without being willing to invest in so much as an $.89 airlock, I really don't know how I can give you any other advice except to remove the caps off of the ones you've bottled so they don't explode.

 

[Bernie Brewer]

Well, if you used apple juice by itself, I doubt very much that you had a 15% alcohol concentration. There simply aren't enough sugars in there for the yeast to make that much alcohol. And when you added the concentrate, you didn't dilute it, you simply gave the yeast more food to eat, so now it's going to ferment some more. And since you closed it up in bottles, you're going to have bottle bombs like Yooper said.

 

[Wild foamy]

ah i see, well isnt my method of using a vent line into a bottle of water essentially an airlock? it prevents air from entering but allows excess CO2 to escape.

how much sugar should i be adding to get it to 15% alcohol? (grams of sugar/litres of apple juice) i did taste a bit before i mixed it in with more apple juice and it was rather brisk to say the least, a few days ago when i checked the bottles (which were sealed at that time) there was no build up of CO2 in them or bubbles/foam for that matter

should i possibly just add a little yeast to every bottle and put it through a secondary fermentation?

 

[Yooper]

I make an apple wine that is approx 12-13 % ABV. (The recipe is in my pull down under my avatar.). Anything over about 10% ABV takes a year to age. A 15% ABV cider will taste like rocket fuel for about 4 years. You will need some basic supplies to make it, like an airlock and a hydrometer. Yes, your venting was an airlock, but now it is closed up in sealed bottles. If it's not fermenting, it'll stay sweet. If it is fermenting, they'll blow up.

To make a higher alcohol cider, you take the SG of the juice using a hydrometer. You add enough sugar (or honey or any other fermentable) to bring you to the desired SG for the desired ABV. If you want it to taste decent, follow a recipe like one that is posted under "Man, I love apfelwein". That will give you a nice 8% ABV cider that is tasty.

I would suggest looking at some wine or cider recipes in our recipe database to get some ideas of what else might be good.