Is my cider fermenting?

[Applee]

This is my fist year making cider. I have pressed 64 litres of apple juice from my trees. I filled 10 Demijohns and 1 big plastic tub was half filled to 14 litres (which I thought was doing really well and active but not smells very much like vinegar)

I pressed my apples filled up the Demijohns added 1 cup of sugar then left open for a couple of days then I put the airlock on.

One of the Demijohns was started a week before the rest (20/09/2015) and I have believed it has been fermenting as I see small air bubbles. I got hydrometer 9 days after I had bottles it so wasn't able to get original gravity, but on the 29/09/2015 it read 1.052. I have left it since then and it has lots of little bubbles in the liquid coming to the surface, and makes the airlock bubble every now and then but now it is 11/10/2015 and I took a reading today which read 1.052 again.

Does the small bubble indicate it is fermenting? There is gunky stuff at the top of the demijohn.


Should I add yeast, and if so do I need to kill the natural yeast?

 

[Yooper]

This is my fist year making cider. I have pressed 64 litres of apple juice from my trees. I filled 10 Demijohns and 1 big plastic tub was half filled to 14 litres (which I thought was doing really well and active but not smells very much like vinegar)

I pressed my apples filled up the Demijohns added 1 cup of sugar then left open for a couple of days then I put the airlock on.

One of the Demijohns was started a week before the rest (20/09/2015) and I have believed it has been fermenting as I see small air bubbles. I got hydrometer 9 days after I had bottles it so wasn't able to get original gravity, but on the 29/09/2015 it read 1.052. I have left it since then and it has lots of little bubbles in the liquid coming to the surface, and makes the airlock bubble every now and then but now it is 11/10/2015 and I took a reading today which read 1.052 again.

Does the small bubble indicate it is fermenting? There is gunky stuff at the top of the demijohn.


Should I add yeast, and if so do I need to kill the natural yeast?

You haven't added yeast? If not, I would have added some before now. Hopefully the cider isn't spoiling, but if tastes ok, you could add some yeast.

If it does taste ok now, I'd probably go ahead and add some campden tablets/ potassium metabisulfite and wait 24 hours before adding my chosen yeast strain. That should kill or at least slow down any microbes in there before the yeast can take hold.

 

[Applee]

I did read about the method of adding campden tablets and then adding yeast, but I was trying using natural yeast as I wanted to stay free of chemicals.

Im not against adding some kind of yeast but do I really need campden tablets?

 

[Applee]

p.s. it all seems to taste ok (apart from the 14 litres which smell of vinegar), just slightly carbonated I am not sure if that is the apple juice fermenting or what(maybe going bad), I assumed it was but as it's been like that for 2 weeks I am not sure. But it is all drinkable doesn't taste amazing like it did before it went into the demijohns tastes a little bit dull and fizzy, almost like store brought apple juice.

 

[Applee]

It seems to have not posted my original reply:
I said:
I was trying to go for a wild yeast non additive cider I don't mind adding Yeast but is it essential to add campden tablets?

Also I wasn't sure because what I have done might still be ok just very slow, or is it a terrible idea and just add yeast and campden tablets?

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Aplee and welcome.The campden tabs kill any colony of wild yeast and bacteria to allow any inoculated colony of yeast to get a good foothold without competition from other strains of yeast. If you are confident that your apples possess the yeast or the bacteria that you want to ferment the fruit sugars then allow those "volunteers" to take over... Of course, whether there is enough yeast and whether any bacteria are too limited is pretty much a crap shoot unless you are fermenting in an area that has fermented cider "natrurally" for - I dunno - a hundred years or so...In other words, you and others have "cultivated" and "cultured" and encouraged those "wild yeasts". But if this is a new activity in your locale and so there may be a handful of yeast cells floating around... then my money is on the bacteria and not on the yeast - ie vinegar. But hey! You may be lucky.