[picture] Is everything ok with my cider?

[Brew It Back]

IMG_4652

• Brew It Back
• Sep 26, 2018

This is my first time making cider, so excuse my ignorance. As a beer brewer, I am kind of alarmed by the amount of sediment in my cider. Mind you, this is after I racked from primary to secondary about a week ago. Also, the airlock is still very active (bubbles every few seconds), more than 2.5 weeks later now. The S.G. is currently 1.01, cider tastes quite dry, tart with a little bit of bitterness.

A bit of background:

This is a pear 60%/apple 40% cider, most of the pears were sweet and very ripe, some of the apples were tart, but mostly sweet. I did not check the ph level. O.G. 1.05

I let the food processed fruit sit with pectic enzyme and campden tablets sit for 24 hours, then pitched the yeast (Nottingham ale). The yeast seemed to be quite active, I pressed the fruit and transferred to secondary, though most of the juice had naturally separated in the primary. This is the part that makes me worried- when I first transferred the juice to the secondary it was much less opaque. At first I was quite pleased that fermentation seemed to be vigorous, but now I am worried that I may have cider sickness- since it's been 2 weeks and fermentation is still going strong. Also, seems like I lost almost half my cider to sediment..What should I do?

 

[gratus fermentatio]

Yeast make the juice more opaque while suspended in the must, happens every time, no worries. It'll eventually fall to the bottom when they're done fermenting, it just takes time. Is that really all sediment in the bottom 1/3 of the carbouy? Ordinarily I'd guess stratification, but with fresh pressed juice, I guess it could be sediment; if it is, I've never seen that much sediment in a carbouy before. How long has this been fermenting on the sediment? Next time, you might want to strain or filter the juice before adding yeast. I'd rack it off that sediment fairly quickly though.
Regards, GF.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Wow!

 

[S-Met]

When you say food processor, how fine was your apple chunks, applesauce, pea size? How did you press afterwards?

 

[Maylar]

Pear makes a lot of lees but yeah... wow.

 

[Brew It Back]

Yeast make the juice more opaque while suspended in the must, happens every time, no worries. It'll eventually fall to the bottom when they're done fermenting, it just takes time. Is that really all sediment in the bottom 1/3 of the carbouy? Ordinarily I'd guess stratification, but with fresh pressed juice, I guess it could be sediment; if it is, I've never seen that much sediment in a carbouy before. How long has this been fermenting on the sediment? Next time, you might want to strain or filter the juice before adding yeast. I'd rack it off that sediment fairly quickly though.
Regards, GF.

I'm not sure how to tell the difference, it doesn't seem to be very solid- yet more dense than the cider itself. During the pressing I used a nylon straining bag. I there a better way to do it? The press I used was pretty dinky.

 

[Brew It Back]

When you say food processor, how fine was your apple chunks, applesauce, pea size? How did you press afterwards?

I used the slicer function (some of the pears were frozen first), then pressed it with a small plastic press I borrowed from my local wine making place. I think I could have gotten more juice out of the fruit with a better press, but as I said earlier- most of the juice already separated during primary fermentation.

 

[S-Met]

Its possible that you have some excess fruit pulp from your pressing, but otherwise I would say RDWHAHC(ider).

Time wise we call it cider but its really wine. And since you used real fruit, there could be more complexities for the yeasts to work through. 2 months or more would not be unreasonable in secondary, 6-9 months may be how long it takes to clear. That cake at tje bottom will condense. If you carefully tip your carboy, you may even see the real cake at the bottom. Just give it time, lots of time. Check out the wine forums here for more skilled info regarding clearing a wine, sometimes 4-6 rackings or more. Each time you rack, be sure to add some juice back into the carboy to minimize the headspace.

 

[Brew It Back]

Its possible that you have some excess fruit pulp from your pressing, but otherwise I would say RDWHAHC(ider).

Time wise we call it cider but its really wine. And since you used real fruit, there could be more complexities for the yeasts to work through. 2 months or more would not be unreasonable in secondary, 6-9 months may be how long it takes to clear. That cake at tje bottom will condense. If you carefully tip your carboy, you may even see the real cake at the bottom. Just give it time, lots of time. Check out the wine forums here for more skilled info regarding clearing a wine, sometimes 4-6 rackings or more. Each time you rack, be sure to add some juice back into the carboy to minimize the headspace.

Thanks, in that case I'll just let it do it's thing for a few more weeks and rack again. I'm kind of reluctant to add store-bought juice to my fresh-fruit cider, especially since I'm losing so much due to sediment..But I guess it's a better option than moving my cider to smaller 1 gal carboys.