Need help wrapping my brain around cider - keeping sweet but carbonated

[wantonsoup]

So I bought one of those 1-gallon glass jugs of organic apple juice from Whole Foods to make into hard cider.

Planning on keeping it simple, just adding yeast and letting it do it's thing with a stopper and airlock.

Anyway - I can't wrap my brain around how to keep it somewhat sweet, but still being able to carbonate it in the bottle.

I've read about stopping fermentation when it reaches the desired dry/sweet level by boiling for a few minutes to kill the yeast. That makes sense to me. But then, how do I carbonate if I've just killed all the yeast?

I don't understand how to keep sugar in the cider (sweetness) without the yeast converting it all to alcohol/CO2.

Do you have to back-sweeten with a unfermentable sugar to make a carbonated sweet cider? Hope I'm making sense here. :cross:

 

[GrogNerd]

So I bought one of those 1-gallon glass jugs of organic apple juice from Whole Foods to make into hard cider.

Planning on keeping it simple, just adding yeast and letting it do it's thing with a stopper and airlock.

Anyway - I can't wrap my brain around how to keep it somewhat sweet, but still being able to carbonate it in the bottle.

I've read about stopping fermentation when it reaches the desired dry/sweet level by boiling for a few minutes to kill the yeast. That makes sense to me. But then, how do I carbonate if I've just killed all the yeast?

I don't understand how to keep sugar in the cider (sweetness) without the yeast converting it all to alcohol/CO2.

Do you have to back-sweeten with a unfermentable sugar to make a carbonated sweet cider? Hope I'm making sense here. :cross:

Pappers has a sticky on stove-top pasteurization. think it's what you're looking for. what he says is "how to do a sparkling semi-dry (not bone dry) bottle conditioned cider"

haven't done it yet, but it seems to me it's bottling before terminal gravity, THEN boiling when you've reached the amount of carbonation you want while still leaving unfermented sugars

 

[wantonsoup]

Ah - so you actually boil carbonated cider. I see now. So I would bottle it when it's actually too sweet and then let the yeast eat a little more to make it bubbly in the bottle. Then boil.

THANK YOU. My brain could not understand. I think I should maybe add some extra fermentable sugar at the start to bump up the abv - I'm hoping to get over 8%, and higher is fine by me so long as I still end up with a semisweet carbonated cider without any weird off-notes (Which is why I'm trying to avoid adding anything in the first place)

I'm thinking about adding maple syrup to it at the beginning to bump up the OG and make the end result higher alcohol and sweeter. How much should I add for this 1-gal batch? And do you just pour thick syrup in or boil it into some juice first?

 

[rushchaser]

wantonsoup,

If you look at my post (the last one right now) in the pasteurization thread you can see my process. I just did the same thing you are asking about, and it came out great. If you have any other questions, fire away and I will answer where I can.

Rush

 

[wantonsoup]

Rush - that's exactly the sort of thing I am after. Thanks for posting. This is going to be fun!

 

[wantonsoup]

One more quick question- best way to dissolve sugars, should I pour off a cup or two of the apple juice, and heat it with the sugar until it's dissolved? I assume people aren't pouring undissolved sugar into the fermenter.. (and I'm thinking I'll be trying turbinado which isn't superfine like corn sugar)

 

[rushchaser]

You don't want to heat up the AJ, I read on here somewhere that if you get it to warm it can gel (bad). All I did was pour out about roughly a quart of the AJ into a sanitized mason jar, then added my undissolved sugar to the gallon jar with the rest of the AJ, shook it until all the sugar was dissolved (none settling on the bottom) then added the yeast and topped back up with the apple juice in the mason jar. I was using regular white table sugar and brown sugar, not turbinado, but I believe it would still work the same. I am sure if I am incorrect someone on here will correct me.

 

[phug]

One more quick question- best way to dissolve sugars, should I pour off a cup or two of the apple juice, and heat it with the sugar until it's dissolved? I assume people aren't pouring undissolved sugar into the fermenter.. (and I'm thinking I'll be trying turbinado which isn't superfine like corn sugar)

There's three camps.

Pour in the sugar, shake it til it's dissolved, and let the yeast sort it out.

Heat up some liquid to make disolving easier but only warm it up just enough for that.

Put your sugars in a liquid hot enough to dissolve them AND to kill off any nasties that are riding on your sugar. because the sugar may not be sanitized, and since you've spent so much effort on sanitizing everything else, why are you going to risk it with your sugars.


Your choice, if you're going to go for either of the hot liquid options, my recommendation is to use water as the liquid, heating up apple juice or cider can cause haziness issues, and cause pectins to set. Then let your sugar solution cool down to room temperature to add it to your batch, otherwise you may set some of the pectins and create a haze. I'm pretty sure I did that with a tea addition once.

Try to use only as much water as you need to dissolve the sugars, especially with small batches, as too much water will dilute your small batch.

I'm in the camp of, "do I have any obvious reason to suspect my sugar was contaminated? bag ripped, animal tracks in it? did I spit in the bag? no? go ahead and just shake it in and let it ride" if I thought my sugar was contaminated I wouldn't use it or I'd take extra steps.

I don't have that problem with my priming sugar, because I'm using Apple Juice Concentrate, so I'm no more worried about the cleanliness of that than my original juice.

Take it the way you want, plenty of people of god luck either way.