Yeast Filtration

[HardPartsCiderCo]

Hey Everyone,

I just finished my first 1 gallon batch of hard cider made from pasteurized juice. I let it ferment for about 5 weeks and it is currently sitting in my fridge, unsweetened. My question is what is the best method to stabilize the yeast in order to back sweeten? How do commercial brands filter their products? Any help would be much appreciated.

HardPartsCider

 

[JuiceyJay]

Depends, back sweeten a still cider, or a cider you are going to carbonate?

 

[HardPartsCiderCo]

Depends, back sweeten a still cider, or a cider you are going to carbonate?

I don't plan on carbonation for this particular batch, but definitely in future batches I would like to use carbonation.

 

[HardPartsCiderCo]

Any help is much appreciated

 

[yarghble]

For a still cider, you can just add some juice or juice concentrate right to the batch and keep it in the fridge until you're ready to drink. For a back-sweetened sparkling cider, pasteurization seems to be the general consensus around here. The sticky thread at the top of the board has a good walkthrough for that.

 

[Yooper]

Most people would stabilize the cider. That means using a mix and campden tablets (potassium metabisulfite) and potassium sorbate.

Once the cider is completely clear and no longer dropping any lees (sediment), it is racked on the stabilizers. Generally, it's one crushed campden tablet per gallon mixed in some boiling water with 1/2 teaspoon sorbate per gallon. Check your packages to see if it's the standard "dosage".

Wait a few days, then sweeten to taste. Wait three days, minimum, to make sure fermentation doesn't restart, and then bottle as per usual.

This makes a sweetened uncarbonated cider.

Carbonated sweet cider is tricky, as the yeast doesn't know that it shouldn't ferment all of the sugar, and just enough to carbonate so most people would either pasteurize or keg in that case to avoid bottle bombs.

 

[HardPartsCiderCo]

Thanks! I'll look into these methods.

 

[HardPartsCiderCo]

Do those tablets change the taste at all?

 

[LeBreton]

When correctly used the taste should be unaffected. Ditto for pasteurization.