Will I be able to recover my high-acidity cider?

[Andreas Könberg]

I have been producing cider at home for a couple of years. Mostly because I wanted to be able to provide guests with something truly home made. I use apples from the garden (normal sweet garden apples) and use very basic tools, some sort of container and various rudimentary tools to extract the juice.

This year the liquid has turned out to be very acidic. It tends to vary over time, like a day-to-day thing but after having a couple of pints of it on Saturday, I got some sort of belly ache, probably due to the acidity.

Obviously, I will be able to sweeten the cider, using the method I want, but will it be drinkable further down the line? My idea is that the cider has oxidized and the cider has already turned into vinegar.

So, a couple of questions, sweeener (in this case, juice, sugar or honey) does not raise the ph-level right? I will make the cider being more drinkable, but it will still hurt ones stomach right?

Can I salvage what cider I have using some type of method (if it is cider-vinegar at this point, which I don't know)?

For the next season I surely will invest in proper fermentation vessels and a bunch of other equipment to make my cider producing life more effective.

Cheers!

Andy in Sweden.

 

[Maylar]

Apples have malic acid in nature, but sweet table apples don't have a lot of it. If it's turned to vinegar you would know it by the smell, and there would be a bacteria film (mother of vinegar) that would be obvious. Severely oxidized cider can have sour and vinegary notes so that's my guess for your situation. If that's the case, there is no recovery from that.

Please describe your fermentation process.

And for future equipment, consider getting a pH meter to measure acidity.