Interesting issue- please help

[Ludesbrews]

Hey all,

After brewing a few batches of beer I decided to try a few batches of cider. I made two, loved them, and decided to try three different variations all at once.

The three variations (all made on the same day) have been in the single gallon carbons for about 6 months.

My question:

Where do I go from here, if I can go anywhere at all?!

Backsweetening? Carbonating?

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Ludesbrews

 

[Maylar]

Both are possible. What do you want?

 

[Ludesbrews]

Both are possible. What do you want?

Drinkable cider May taste each one to see what I’m working with.

Will carbonate both for sure.

Any advice on carbonation? I have priming sugar. Each is about 7/8 a gallon.

Ludesbrews

 

[GeneDaniels1963]

I carb in 1 qt swing top bottles (the heavy brown kind). need a little more than 1/2 tbs of sugar per bottle. Also, here is a link to a bottle priming calculator:
https://www.northernbrewer.com/pages/priming-sugar-calculator

 

[kraizter]

What variations have you tried?

You might want to adjust what type of priming sugar you use depending on what you used in each cider.

For example, in a cyser (cider and honey), you may want to use honey as a priming sugar even though it takes a bit longer to carb.

It really depends on what you currently have and where you want them to go. If this is a taste test, I suggest keeping priming sugar the same to truly compare each batch.

 

[Ludesbrews]

I had 3 gallons, I took a bit out of each.

First gallon: 1 cup light brown sugar, 1Tbsp cinnamon
Second gallon: 1 cup white sugar, 1 Tbsp cinnamon
Third gallon: 0.5 cup honey, 1Tbsp cinnamon

Danstar yeast (1/3 packet each) at 64degrees

 

[Chalkyt]

I have used the Brewersfriend carbonation calculator with good results. But more recently I have successfully used Table 15.3 from Claude Jolicoeur's book to simply add sugar or juice at bottling to increase SG from the fermented FG up to a level that gives me the carbonation I want.

Basically the table says 2 g/L for Perlant (slightly fizzy) and 4-8 g/L for Petillant (about the same as beer) carbonation. This covers the range 1-2.5 volumes of CO2. In rough terms about a teaspoon of sugar per litre works O.K.

I have found that using Jolicoeur's "change in SG" method lets me add unfermented juice or FAJC (or sugar, or perhaps even honey) to reliably produce bottle carbonation without having to figure out how much sugar this represents.

If you added a cup of sugar per gallon (4.5 litres) for carbonation it will probably give you something quite fizzy in the order of 3 vols of CO2 . A cup of sugar is about 200g which is around 40 tsp so you have added something like 10g or two tsp per litre.