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.

 

[fluketamer]

your belly ache is prolly not from the cider.

 

[Chalkyt]

As suggested above, eating apples are usually low in acid (typically around 3-4 g/L), so it would be worthwhile measuring the acidity before trying to "correct" it. The adverse taste might be something entirely different.

If you don't have a pH meter or indicator strips, an alternative is to use an acid titration kit but IME outside the USA or UK they can be a bit hard to get. If you can't get one, it is not hard to make something up from common household chemicals and still get reasonably accurate results.

I use a 6.7ml sample of cider, add a few drops of "indicator" which changes colour when the acidity is neutralised (i.e. the pH becomes 7.0) by adding a measured mount of base/alkali solution. The amount of alkali added until the indicator changes colour indicates the acidity of the cider. Bought kits are usually calibrated for 10 ml of wine so with the 6.7ml sample the results are for cider's malic acid rather than wine's tartaric acid.

Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH 0.1N concentration) is the commonly used alkali. This is readily available as caustic soda and mixed at the rate of 4g to a litre of water gives the right concentration such that each ml of this which is added to neutralise the acid equals 1g/L of acidity (e.g. if 5 ml changes the colour this indicates 5g/L). A cheap hypodermic syringe is a good way to add the NaOH one ml at a time. Even household "cleaning" caustic soda is more than 99% "pure" so any error from impurities is slight, since you only want to know roughly how acidic the cider is.

Simple readily available indicator solutions from pet shops which are used to monitor water in swimming pools and fish tanks are Bromo Blue or Phenyl Red. You only need a couple of drops. Both of these change colour around pH7.0

Hope this helps zero in on your problem..... Cheers!

 

[DaveDiamond]

Believe me, you would know if it had started turning to vinegar! You would not have drunk more than a few swallows, it's really horrible. Not noticeably more sour, it's just a horrible taste, no way would you have gone for a second pint!