Long Fermentation

[devilssoninlaw]

I've been sitting of some Apple and Pear juice waiting to harvest some yeast from my current 2 gallon batch of Apple cider.

On November 30, I started a simple 2 gallon batch of cider from store bought juice and 1 cup of Brown Sugar. I added some Safale K-97 yeast that I harvested from a recent Kolsch beer that I made.

It's been a month and a half and my fermentation lock is still bubbling about every 60 to 90 seconds. I'm glad I'm getting good results but I also am getting impatient waiting this one out!

 

[Blacksmith1]

I have a 5 gallon wine that started bubbling again after I racked and topped it. It was started over 6 months ago. Just goes to show there are no rules. Yeasts are microscopic anarchists.

 

[Chalkyt]

Yep, as above...

My 2018 WLP773 cider took six weeks to go from 1.060 to 1.030. I thought it was stuck, added DAP and it was still only bubbling at about two bloops per minute. The coolstore temperature was 50C so I moved it inside to 60C and things improved a bit. Two months later it was finally down to 1.002

After initially blaming slightly out of date yeast etc, etc it turned out to be one of the best ciders I have made. So my suggestion is don't panic, go with the flow and just check that the SG is falling so that you know fermentation is continuing

 

[landwaster]

I've read that some ciders slowly ferment all winter long, right up til spring.

 

[Maylar]

I've read that some ciders slowly ferment all winter long, right up til spring.

Historical farmhouse cider - press apples in November, the cider is done when the trees are blossoming again in May.

 

[wasully]

Those multi month ferments are at ambient temperature using wild yeasts, and may include MLF once spring hits, too.