Sparkling Cider Bottling Problem - Foam

[rickprice407]

My son and I have brewed and bottled a lot of beer over the years and a few hard ciders here and there. We carbonate using forced CO2 into kegs (20 to 25 lbs over a couple of weeks) and never have a problem. We use a Blichman beer gun to bottle with.

We brewed a batch of Apple and a batch of Cranberry/Pomegranate a few weeks ago, carbonated it for 2 weeks and went bottle it tonight. MASSIVE foam regardless of the pressure I was using on the keg. Seemed to be liquid at the output and them got foamy quickly regardless of the hose length.

Anyone ever run into this and is there anything we can do?

Thjanks,

Rick

 

[UpstateMike]

Try chilling the bottles first? Is the keg cold, or room temp?

25 PSI seems a bit high for cider. Maybe you could vent the kegs for a bit and let the cider get "flatter".

 

[MarkKF]

So what do you all think is the right pressure over how long for cider?

I've heard 25 psi over two weeks and 5 psi to bottle.

 

[Yooper]

So what do you all think is the right pressure over how long for cider?

I've heard 25 psi over two weeks and 5 psi to bottle.

It's temperature dependent. 25 psi at 39 degrees will be almost explosive in carbonation, while 25 psi at 65 degrees will be undercarbed.

The colder the beer or cider is when bottling, the better as warm carbonated beverages foam like a son of a gun (think of shaking a bottle of warm soda). I use about 2 psi to push my beer when I bottle with my beergun.

If you're getting a lot of foaming, you can try using a longer beerline on the beergun to minimize nucleation points.