Total Newb Questions about Backsweetening and Carbonation

[CJohnson27]

Good Afternoon Everyone,

I am new to the site and from all of my digging I cannot seem to find my answer! So I figured I would ask and get educated!

I started a batch of cider a week ago. We are doing 5 gallons of Simply Apple with a Can of concentrate. I used a cider yeast.

It is a week in and the airlock is bubbling, now, after not for a few days. After doing more digging I should have let the juice warm up a bit more and I should have let the yeast warm up as well. Live and ya learn....

So my questions:
I plan on putting it into a secondary fermentor once the airlock chills out and remains dormant for a few days. I plan on transfering it and tasting it then to backsweeten then if needed. We are shooting for the ever popular Angry Orchard Crisp Apple flavor. My question is I do not want to use a artificial sweetener to sweeten it. If I use apple concentrate will it reactivate the yeast and cause it to go through the fermenting process again?

My second question is I plan on glass bottling it with the sealed caps. I bought the carbonation drops. From my home brewing store in town he said put one in each bottle, fill it up and cap it and it will carbonate them. With the backsweetening will this work, will it mess up anything in the cider? I do not want to put it in a keg. I want to bottle it and store it in a basement room until we decide to pull it out throughout the summer as it is all my fiance drinks.

Sorry if these are dumb questions I just did not see the answers anywhere else! Not to say I didnt miss it!

Thanks!

Cody

 

[Dee]

Normally, fermentation is finished when the yeast have converted all the available sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. To prime a bottle for carbonation, you'd add a little more sugar, giving the yeast more food, and cap it up. With nowhere for the carbon dioxide to go, it forces its way into the liquid solution, carbonating the drink.

The yeast don't know when to stop. If you add too much sugar, the yeast will make too much carbon dioxide, and the bottles will literally explode.

If you want to backsweeten, you need to add something like potassium sorbate, which basically neutralizes the yeast. Then, you can add as much sugar as you want, and the yeast can't reproduce to eat it. Unfortunately, the yeast won't be able to carbonate the cider, either.

If you want backsweetened, and carbonated, you'll need to look into pasturizing the bottles, which means you add sugar, let the yeast eat part of it, then you kill them off by heating the bottles.

Trying to backsweeten by just adding a lot of sugar, then closing the cider up into bottles is going to result in a really bad day.

Also, the carbonation drops are basically just sugar cubes. Just a convenient way to measure the priming sugar.

 

[Drewed]

What I do is rack to the secondary and let sit until clear.
I then rack to the bottle bucket and back sweeten with concentrate, or sugar. I can't stand the taste of artificial sweetener, and I'm lactose intolerant, so no milk sugars for me! I then bottle with carbonation drops. I monitor the carb level with a soda bottle and pasturize when ready.

 

[CJohnson27]

What I do is rack to the secondary and let sit until clear.
I then rack to the bottle bucket and back sweeten with concentrate, or sugar. I can't stand the taste of artificial sweetener, and I'm lactose intolerant, so no milk sugars for me! I then bottle with carbonation drops. I monitor the carb level with a soda bottle and pasturize when ready.

So you sweeten after it clears in the secondary and goes to the third. Doesn't that reactivate the yeast?

I don't want the artificial taste and am also lactose intolerant.

And so do you put a drop in a soda bottle and periodically check it? Then pasteurize when has a good carbonation?

 

[Maylar]

If you sweeten with fermentable sugar you don't need carbonation drops. The yeast will consume some of it and make the bubbles. Typical carbonation consumes 2-3 gravity points of sugar.

Read the pasteurization sticky - the soda bottle gets "hard" with carbonation. Judging when it's just right is a bit tricky. Or you can make a carbonation monitor -

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=591360

 

[CJohnson27]

If you sweeten with fermentable sugar you don't need carbonation drops. The yeast will consume some of it and make the bubbles. Typical carbonation consumes 2-3 gravity points of sugar.

Read the pasteurization sticky - the soda bottle gets "hard" with carbonation. Judging when it's just right is a bit tricky. Or you can make a carbonation monitor -

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=591360

Wow that pressure bottle with gauge is genius! Are those parts I can just find around town? or do I need to order them online?

So I think my plan will be....
On Sunday it will have fermented two weeks. I plan on putting it in a secondary and tasting. I will backsweeten with concentrate at that point and then let sit for a few more weeks, Probably two.

After two weeks I will transfer to a tertiary carboy and let sit for another couple weeks. At that point I will put in the carbonation drops and seal up for a few weeks. one with the gauge to watch for the carbonation pressure I am looking for. From what i am seeing 25psi is the target?

Once it hits that point I will pasteurize them in the 160 degree water for 10 minutes and store in the basement for a month before drinking.

My thoughts is that backsweetening in the secondary will let the yeast eat and die off then transferring to a tertiary will then stop all the process completely. My question is after it has gone in the secondary after backsweetening will that be the actual taste I will end with?

Also does that seem like a good process to follow or anything I can improve on? Being new to this i am trying to learn as much as possible. As soon as this goes into the secondary I plan on starting a second batch.

Thanks again everyone!
Cody

 

[Dee]

If you give it two weeks after backsweetening, the yeast will convert the sugar into more alcohol and carbon dioxide. Yeast never really "die off" unless you perform some kind of mass genocide, like pasteurizing or adding potassium sorbate.

Granted, I've never made cider, but I've backsweetened hard lemonade. You want to stop the yeasties before they eat all the sugar from the backsweetening.

Here's about the best info I was able to find when I started my search:

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/how-to-backsweeten-mead-and-cider/

"Backsweetening is a process commonly used in mead and cider making to sweeten the finish of a fermented drink just before packaging."

 

[bernardsmith]

Hiya CJohnson27 and welcome. I think the key idea is that if you are back sweetening then there is no need to add carbonation drops as well. Let me try to explain why: Let's say that to sweeten the cider you will be adding 6 oz of sugar for each gallon of cider (I don't know - this is just an example. It will give you a final gravity of about 1.015 ). But you have filled a plastic bottle with this back -sweetened cider and you press this plastic bottle every day to see when it will have become brick hard because of the pressure of the carbon dioxide that has built up. It's at that point those talking about pasteurizing say you MUST pasteurize all the glass bottles so that they will not explode because of the pressure that will have built up inside them. OK. But for the plastic bottle to have become brick hard only a tiny fraction of the 6 oz will have fermented - almost all of the rest of that sugar will still be in each bottle as unfermented sugar. My guess is only about 3 grams of that sugar will have fermented (about 1/10 of an ounce) So adding another teaspoon's worth of sugar is not necessary... Save those carbonation drops for a time when you are happy with a dry cider that you want to carbonate - or a beer that you want to prime..

 

[Maylar]

Wow that pressure bottle with gauge is genius! Are those parts I can just find around town? or do I need to order them online?

0-60 psi gauge might be something you'll find, but it'll have pipe threads (NPT) that won't seal into a plastic cap. The adapter takes care of that. McMaster is an awesome supplier with lightning fast shipping.

 

[CJohnson27]

Hiya CJohnson27 and welcome. I think the key idea is that if you are back sweetening then there is no need to add carbonation drops as well. Let me try to explain why: Let's say that to sweeten the cider you will be adding 6 oz of sugar for each gallon of cider (I don't know - this is just an example. It will give you a final gravity of about 1.015 ). But you have filled a plastic bottle with this back -sweetened cider and you press this plastic bottle every day to see when it will have become brick hard because of the pressure of the carbon dioxide that has built up. It's at that point those talking about pasteurizing say you MUST pasteurize all the glass bottles so that they will not explode because of the pressure that will have built up inside them. OK. But for the plastic bottle to have become brick hard only a tiny fraction of the 6 oz will have fermented - almost all of the rest of that sugar will still be in each bottle as unfermented sugar. My guess is only about 3 grams of that sugar will have fermented (about 1/10 of an ounce) So adding another teaspoon's worth of sugar is not necessary... Save those carbonation drops for a time when you are happy with a dry cider that you want to carbonate - or a beer that you want to prime..

I get the sugar instead of carbonation drops. I understand the concept that adding the sugar makes the carbonation. So if I'm adding concentrate before going into the secondary fermentor won't it burn off by the time I bottle it? Or will I have to add sugar again?

 

[bernardsmith]

That depends on when you add the sugar and how long you allow the yeast to ferment that sugar before you bottle..

 

[Drewed]

Agreed with Bernardsmith, I sweeten my cider then bottle it the same day.

I was adding the carb drops as well so I wouldn't loose the 2 or 3 points of sweetness, as that is all i really sweeten too. I.E. I start with a dry cider at 1.000, and sweeten to 1.005. If I don't add the drops, I could end up in the bottle at 1.002.

 

[CJohnson27]

Progress update:

We transferred to the secondary last night. I added some campden tablets and potassium sorbate that I did not realize I purchased so I could backsweeten without restarting fermenting again. Definitely has the smell of Angry Orchard but is not as clear as I hoped and the taste is definetely not there. It is very bitter and dry. Not what I expected.

Plan is to let the campden tablets and Sorbate go to work for a couple days and then tomorrow night we will backsweeten and let sit for probably a month before going to racking and bottling. Plan on using concentrate and probably some brown sugar to sweeten and let sit.

Any other advice out there?

Thanks again!

 

[Drewed]

Do you have any apple taste at all? You could sweeten with thawed frozen apple juice concentrate. I've done that, but the wife thinks it adds a frozen apple juice concentrate flavor ( go figure ) so I've started concentrating my own by using a gallon of cider from the orchard simmered down by about half with 2lbs of sugar added.

 

[CJohnson27]

There is more of a faint taste of apple. I get more of a bitter than anything. The fiance thought it was decent, surprisingly. I thought it was awful lol

It was really cloudy and not clear. I am assuming the longer it sits in secondary it will clear up?

 

[Drewed]

Yep. Let it sit.