Yet Another Bottling question

[habs20]

Hi All,

I have five gallons fresh press unpasteurized cider fermenting. I used 4 cups sugar and 2.5 pound honey to it with s-04 yeast. I am on week 3 now and air is still bubbling once ever 15 seconds. I did not take the SG as I broke my hydrometer. Planning to rack at 4 weeks to secondary leave there for a month and then bottle. I am thinking with the amount of sugar I used I will not need to prime with bottling. Is that a fair assumption? Plan to use champagne bottles.

Should I rack earlier to get off the lees?

Any other thoughts or suggestions will be deeply appreciated.

I am going to start another 5 gallons this weekend with no adjuncts other than yeast.

Much thanks!!!

 

[Desrever]

If you don't prime for bottling you will have very little or no Carbonation at all, in my opinion you should pick up a new hydrometer. I bottled 5 gallons of Apfelwein half with coopers carb tabs and half still, it all depends on how you like it.

 

[Wayneh]

I would let the fermentation come to an end. Then i would use priming sugar. I tryed what you are talking about and every bottle exploded when i would open it. You can get your cider to carb up by bottling it straight from the fermenter but its very tricky to know when, and i have brewed a lot of hard ciders.

 

[Calder]

With that much sugar and honey, your OG would have been at least 1.080 (possibly over 1.090 depending on the sugar content of the juice.

Assuming it was 1.085 and goes down to 0.998, it will be about 11.5 abv. I'm not sure that yest can handle that. You might want to get a pack of champagne yeast to add later.

Honey is slow to ferment, especially in a high gravity environment. It might take quite a while to get to FG.

 

[habs20]

Thanks all. This is a great forum with loads of great info and awesome folks will to help out the newbies. Cheers!