Help w/ 1st 5 gallon batch of sweet hard cider

[Misha64]

Hello all!

I have some basic mead-making gear and I was hoping to make and bottle my own sweet hard cider and I can’t seem to find any good, simple recipes/tutorials online that take me from fermenting to back-sweetening and bottling a final product. I am not super particular about how it will taste and I’m definitely not expecting it to be perfect, just a simple quick project that will yield halfway decent results. Based on my limited understanding of brewing cider I was thinking about using pasteurized (but preservative free!) apple juice, brown sugar, some yeast nutrient and champagne yeast in a 5 gallon carboy w/ an airlock, letting it ferment for about two weeks, racking it into another carboy, backs-sweetening it with stevia and bottling it. I’m terrified of blowing up my bottles or making something inedible. I’m a little unsure on the timing/amounts of sugar I should stick with. Does anyone have any advice or beginner recipes to share??

Thank you so much!

 

[Chalkyt]

Firstly, have a look at Yooper's post "Cider for Beginners" at the top of the forum. It will point you in the right direction.

Monitor the SG as your cider is fermenting... different yeasts will ferment at different rates but typically after two weeks your SG might only have dropped to something like 1.020, especially if you add sugar which will increase your OG above the typical 1.050 for straight apple juice. You might need to let it ferment for a bit longer to bring it down to a safe bottling level. As a guide, OG x 130 = potential ABV% if the cider fully ferments. So adding sugar will increase the ABV and extend the fermentation time.

You can assume that 1 gravity point change (i.e. SG change of 0.001) will result in 0.5 volumes of CO2 in a sealed bottle. So, bottling at 1.005 (either by bottling when your SG falls to this level or letting it fully ferment then adding sugar for bottle carbonation, not for sweetness) will give you a "normal" carbonation of around 2.5 volumes of CO2 at room temperature. The Stevia of course won't ferment so won't contribute any CO2, just sweetness.

Bottle bombs are caused by excessive carbonation in sealed bottles, but beer bottles are generally rated to well over 100psi and if you are using swing top bottles like Grolsch, their seals have a reputation for leaking at around 70psi (i.e. they have an unintentional "safety valve"). To get to this level of carbonation you would need to bottle at above SG 1.010. That is why it is important to use a hydrometer to know your bottling SG..

 

[z-bob]

4 1/2 gallons* of cheap bottled apple juice from Aldi or Costco, a half pound of white sugar, a packet of wine yeast (preferably not champagne yeast) and about 2 teaspoons of yeast nutrient. That will give you a flavorful dry cider about 7% ABV. (I make it all the time.) When all the yeast settles out and it's clear, wait one more week then package in clean beer bottles with 1/2 teaspoon of sugar in each bottle and seal with a crown cap. Or use 500ml plastic bottles with screw caps and 3/4 tsp of sugar. Or 750ml swing-top bottles with a slightly heaping teaspoon of sugar. I have a little stainless steel funnel for spooning the sugar into the bottles.

But you said you want it sweet. Get an unfermentable sugar alcohol like erythritol and experiment with how much it takes to get the sweetness you like. Or, make some simple syrup and put it in a squeeze bottle in the fridge. When you want a sweet cider, put a squirt of it in your glass and pour in a bottle of the dry cider.

*Edit: after a week or so, you can top up the carboy with most of another half gallon of juice. But you want that empty headspace in the carboy at the beginning so it doesn't foam up and make a mess.

 

[Maylar]

don't use any sugar. straight apple juice will give you 6 - 6.5 abv. and fermented brown sugar tastes nasty.

 

[z-bob]

I just got back from Costco where I bought some erythritol fortified with monkfruit extract. It was a lot cheaper than ordering it on Amazon. I'm going to try using it to slightly sweeten some cider I already have made to get an idea how much to add per bottle. (wild guess: a teaspoon per 500ml bottle)