Noob Racking off the Lees Question

[Cider4Life]

So, having only been making delicious hard cider for the last several months and becoming completely infatuated with the process...I find myself wanting to refine my process. I've been making blackberry and raspberry puree infused hard cider. It comes out beautifully crisp and clear, abv of about 7.7% The

Issue is that to get to this beautiful crisp clear goodness, I first have to rack away from my chunky lees, which you can see at the bottom of the carboys here:

While this seems like it should be a relatively easy process, and in a way it is, it leaves much to be desired by my OCD personality. Too much of the free floating lees within the (what appears to be) clear cider tend to get sucked into the corny keg during the siphoning process. This leads to much more waste after the secondary fermentation when the time comes for the first pours than I would like. I tried adding cheesecloth to the end of the siphon tube which failed in about three seconds after the first chunk stuck to the end and the siphoning stopped all together. Lately I have just acepted that some of these lees will inevitably get sucked into the corny keg but having found this forum, I thought someone out there might have experience with this sort of thing and might be able to offer alternatives that I had not thought of. My most recent experiment is with an apricot (closest in the pic, and blueberry, with two more blackberry going on the far end).

My goal is to minimize waste, maximize flavor and ensure the highest quality outcome I can from the process. I do add pectic enzyme as well as yeast nutrient. StarSan and PBW are my go to to ensure clean and sanitized equipment. My yeast is Lalvin EC-1118 (Saccaromyces bayanus; campaign yeast). Any insight is appreciated. Cheers!

 

[CKuhns]

The only option I have found to work for "floaty bits" or larger chunks of fruit from the puree (Or whole fruit) is to use a large mouth fermenter or bucket for primary fermentation. This allows you to use a sanitized mesh bag with a hand full of sanitized flat glass marbles in it for your puree and or pressed apple juice that may have chunks in it.

The idea here is when filling your wide mouth fermenter or bucket to pour your apple juice and puree through the mesh bag while filling the bucket. A 5 gallon paint strainer bag from your Big-Box hardware store fits well over the opening and works great (Prior to yeast pitch and you want to aerate it anyway) This captures any solids that may be present in the bag. Then tie the bag closed (I use a sanitized zip tie) and complete primary fermentation with the bag of "goodness" submerged from the weight of the marbles in the fermenter.

When racking to secondary or your keg remove the bag and discard. Allow it to drain naturally, I do not squeeze the bag as you could release some pectin from the fruit pieces. (Your call) Of course does not stop lees from forming and you still need to be pretty careful when racking from them but does capture those pieces of fruit floating around in your cider with the mesh bag allowing for the flavor from the fruit pieces to transfer to the juice / cider.

 

[beermanpete]

Try chilling the cider for a few days prior to racking. This will settle the floaters and help keep the yeast cake down during racking.

 

[Cider4Life]

Excellent advice, thanks so much