keg or bottle cider??

[joecheberline]

Hello,
I'm making my first cider soon, and I'm trying to find out if I should keg it or bottle it. I brew a lot of beer and have only kegged it. Any info would be great.

Thanks Joe

 

[JStutz82]

KEG! if you dive into the many threads on cider making if you want to bottle you have to kill off the yeast and if this is not properly done, if you plan on back sweetening, you will have bottle bombs. By kegging you can force carb and keep it cold enough that the yeast will not eat the newly introduced fermentables.(Assuming you have a keggorator)

 

[TopherM]

Definitely KEG!! As the last poster said, the backsweetening procedure for kegged cider is SIMPLE while the backsweetening procedure for bottles is a PAIN IN THE AZZ!

Plan on making 4.5 gallons of cider, using Nottingham or S-05 yeast, let it ferment out completely, then cold crash in the kegorator and add 0.5 gallons of fresh apple juice to the kegged cider. This will give you a MUCH better cider flavor than any type of artificial sweetener.

I make alot of cider. PM me if you have any questions, and I'd be happy to help!

 

[zachattack]

I've only made one cider, in my limited experience I'll agree with these guys but for different reasons.

I wanted dry cider so I bottled it as-is, but even with cold crashing before bottling there's tons of apple/yeast sediment in each bottle that's really easy to stir up. Bottle carbing took forever (maybe because of the cold crashing and the fact that I was already at 10%ABV) and even still the carbonation is lower than I'd like due to limitations of glass bottles.

So I'd keg it and carb the crap out of it (4+ volumes) if you like bubbly cider, which I do. Just make sure your system's balanced.