Save yeasty cider after bottling?

[curranw]

So how can you save yeasty cider after you've bottled it? My cider was in the primary for around 2 weeks, secondary for a month or so, and a tertiary for a couple more months (basically moved it whenever I saw 1/4 - 1/5 inch of yeast)

Here are my thoughts, correct me on any details:

People I know like sweet cider, so I sweeten the cider as I'm bottling it, and then I stove-top pasteurize it. My cider tends to be a bit yeasty after doing this. This makes sense in my mind, as I'm bringing the cider out of dormancy to carbonate the bottles. How do I fix this?

In a carboy, I'm able to siphon out most of the brew without the yeast, in a bottle you obviously can't do that. Will the yeasty flavor go away on it's own? Or will it not, since there is no way to get rid of the yeast causing the yeasty flavors after bottling?

I hear a lot about cold crashing, but is that at all useful after pasteurizing?

Or is the solution to just use non-fermentable sugars? I prefer to not do this, as the only non-chemically nasty one is expensive.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi curranw. I guess I need more information to make better sense of how and why you taste yeast after what? three months aging? What yeast are you using? How much yeast do you use? What is the volume of your batches of cider? What is the original gravity before you pitch your yeast? What is the gravity before you back sweeten? Do you add yeast to your bottling bucket? Might the pasteurization process leave you with lots of dead yeast and might a process that removes most of the yeast through racking not be better ? That may mean that you can backsweeten OR carbonate and if you want to carbonate and backsweeten you may need to force carbonate....

The lees you find at the bottom of your carboy tend to be made up more from the particulates from the fruit than the yeast. There may be a thin layer of dead yeast cells.

 

[WVMJ]

Your post is a little confusing, are you priming, letting it carb and then stove top pastuerizing? You can always just tell people its your version of Scrumpy An option if you dont like it yeasty after you let the yeast carb it is to keg it, force carb it. WVMJ

 

[curranw]

Apologies for the lack of information, I thought the problem would have a simple solution.

I brewed 5 gallons of cider and used D47 yeast. I used the "normal" amount of yeast, basically the package is made for 5 gallons of beer/cider/mead.

I had stopped checking OG many brews ago, so I can't get you that information. I made a cyser this time around, with 1lb honey/gallon cider, so I'd assume the OG is pretty high. I fermented till completely dry. I then backsweeten to around 1.01, carbonate, then force pasteurize.

I've never heard of adding yeast to the bottling bucket. Do you do this if you cold crash multiple times and get basically *all* of the yeast? Anyways, I didn't do it.

The yeasty flavor was in the cider as I was bottling it, I was surprised it was yeasty after 3 months of aging, and taking the brew off of the lees 3 times. I was in a situation where I had to bottle it at that time, so I bottled anyway.

I'm basically curious if further aging helps remove the yeast bite, or does the dead yeast from pasteurization makes that impossible.

I've been contemplating force carbonating for a while. Seems expensive and kegging less "sharable".