Persistent, magically appearing cider haze

[smizak]

Hello,

I'm a fairly experienced beer brewer, but a novice cider maker, aside from EW's Apfelwein. For the first time this year, I decided to make a cider with some locally pressed juice. The juice was UV pasteurized and filtered at the mill, crystal clear and delicious. I added two pounds of a homemade amber candi syrup, ended up with an 1.071 OG. Also added a teaspoon of pectic enzyme and three teaspoons of Wyeast yeast nutrient. The nutrient was boiled and then cooled in a little water.

Fermented dry in ten days with two packs of Pasteur Champagne yeast. Tasted delicious, moved the fermenter to my fridge to drop out the yeast. After a week, still a very prominent haze. Added gelating, after another week, still hazy, almost no improvement.

I'm beginning to think this is not yeast haze. Is there something I'm missing? There is no evidence of infection, it tasted delicious and it fermented hard and fast.

 

[GinKings]

Beer and cider are different. I wouldn't expect it to be clear since it only finished fermenting a week ago. I'd rack to secondary and give it some time.

 

[Yooper]

There are lots of finings that you could use to clear this, but it really depends on what's causing the haze. It could be a pectin haze, a yeast haze, a proteien haze, etc. The way finings work is that they are "charged", either positive or negative. So, for a positively charged haze, you'd use a negatively charged fining.

Gelatin is a positively charged fining, which would work for hazes caused by tannins and yeast, so you might assume (maybe incorrectly) that you have a positively charged haze.

Super Kleer KC (or something like that) is special, as it has two packages. The first you add is one fining with a positive charge, and then the second you had has a negative charge, so it's a double whammy and is considered most effective.

Even though you've already tried gelatin, you could consider using some sparkelloid if you're not ready for the SuperKleer stuff. Sparkelloid works very well for me, clearing my white wines (like apple and dandelion). It's easy- you mix it up in some boiling water and add it. It's also cheap and you can buy a little bottle of it that you can use in future batches, unlike the SuperKleer which is a one-use-only expensive option.

 

[smizak]

It's been two weeks since it hit terminal. I'm just wondering if any experienced cider makers can clue me in on some other haze causes, maybe reactions with tannins and yeast by-products that I'm not aware of. I'm almost sure this isn't a yeast haze, two full weeks at 34F with gelatin finings and zero clearing.

Again, the juice was crystal in the beginning

 

[motobrewer]

i don't know the cause, but mine took over a month in the keezer after primary was over to drop really clear.

 

[Yooper]

It's been two weeks since it hit terminal. I'm just wondering if any experienced cider makers can clue me in on some other haze causes, maybe reactions with tannins and yeast by-products that I'm not aware of. I'm almost sure this isn't a yeast haze, two full weeks at 34F with gelatin finings and zero clearing.

Ciders and apple wines will often have a pectin haze (even using 1 teaspoon of pectic enzyme per gallon doesn't stop that sometimes) or a protein haze. It doesn't tend to be tannin or yeast in ciders.

Another thing (and why gelatin may not work, even if it IS a yeast haze) is pH. I copied this from Jack Keller's site, as he explains it better than I ever could: Secondly, as the pH of a wine increases, the strength of the relative charge of suspended particles decreases. For example, at a high pH, organic protein fining agents may not have enough of a positive charge to sufficiently bind with the negatively charged particulates. Thus, they may actually increase the turbidity of the wine when it is chilled or warmed. This effect is often called "overfining" and naturally should be avoided. In the case of a high pH wine, Sparkolloid (with its pH-independent strong positive charge) should be used.

 

[smizak]

Thanx Yoop, LHBS carries Sparkolloid, I'll give that a shot