Need some help with 55 gallons

[mikehu2]

I have a 55 gallon plastic barrel that was filled from a local orchard press. Pitched Nottingham on 11/27 and then cold crashed on 12/15 at 1.007. Racked it on 12/20 to new barrel. I Took reading today and it's at 1.005 and tastes good. I'm still storing it in sub 40 degree temps. I would now like to force carb and bottle while retaining sweetness. How would you do this? I have a 5 gallon sanke keg setup, but looking to be as efficient as possible. I don't mind spending a little money on equipment as I plan to continue each year with a couple 55 gallon barrels. Thanks in advance!

 

[Pickled_Pepper]

It's probably going to be tough retaining sweetness unless you can keep it at near freezing temps. My experience with Nottingham is that it will still continue to slowly creep unless you go super low temps. Eventually they will just drop to 1.000. I like nottingham around 1.005 and below that it seems to lose some of the young "pub style" taste. I've never made 50+ gallons at a time and I usually keg and consume before it goes terminal.

If you want it sweeter on the final kegs, you could always freeze some of your original juice and top off the kegs before tapping.

 

[caseymac91]

Holy %$#@ balls batman. That's a lot of cider.

This is how you force carb bottles: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/we-no-need-no-stinking-beer-gun-24678/ Or you could just buy a beer gun.

Another option would be to let it finish fermenting, add priming sugar, and back sweeten with non fermentable sweeteners. Sucralose, stevia, xylitol, lactose.

 

[WilliamSlayer]

How to Sussreserve


Rack to a fresh carboy leaving all the settled out yeast and sediment behind.
This is KEY because kmeta and sorbate do not kill yeast, mearly inhibit further yeast reproduction.

Add:

1/2 tsp potassium sorbate per gallon.
1/4 - 1/2 tsp TOTAL potassium metabisulfite for the batch. (5-6 gal batch)

Add and stir gently. Give the cider 4-7 days.

Then rack to a fresh carboy and sweeten. If no re-fermentation occurs in the next few days you can move on to bottling. If planning on kegging/force carbing, you can rack to the keg instead of a carboy.

This my proven method for Sussreserve.


As to how much to sweeten, that is very subjective. You should pull a sample, taste, and add sweetener slowly to your desired level. Then scale up for the entire batch.


I sweeten with more cider, usually in a ratio close to 1:5 or 1:6 (1 gal cider to 5 gal hard cider).


Its very easy to make a sweet cider... OR a carbonated cider. But a bit tricky to make one that is BOTH. To do that you must sweeten, then artificially carb (force carb), or sweeten with something non-fermentable (like splenda or xylitol), and bottle carb with priming sugar. Bottle Pasturization is a method I have never tried but has worked very well for many other brewers on this forum.