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Sweet Cider
Ok, so I just tried my cider after just over a week in the bottles. It's really dry and alcoholic (I'm decently buzzed after one 12oz bottle). I want to make sweeter cider next time, but here's my dilemma: I want sweeter cider, but I know that adding sugar to make it sweeter just gives the yeast food. I really don't want to make bottle bombs. What are some pointers to making a sweeter cider that's still decently (5-6%) alcoholic?
Thanks
Gabriel
I've read that carmelized sugar can help, and a few people have tried a light malt. Both of those will add alco (not as much as sugar or honey though), but if you don't want to add any you'll need a swetening agent that can't ferment. Splenda is pretty popular for that, but that sounds desperate to me.
Best solution i've heard is to stop fermentation when you're with k-sorb then keg it with juice concentrate, honey, or whatever you want. I guess force carbonation gives you a lot more options.
If you add some sort of fermentable sugar, you will be giving the yeast more food, and actually make your cider more dry rather than sweeter. You need some sort of unfermentable sugar. Lactose works, as well as Splenda, as drogers mentioned.
Another option is to sweeten each bottle as your pour it. I also understand that cider takes a long time to mature, so you may try leaving the bottles for a while longer and give it another shot. The flavor should improve with age, so you may find you like it as it is.
sweetening a "too dry" cider is very simple. First, do you keg or bottle your cider?
make a batch of cider like you normally would, and let it ferment out to dryness. No point in trying to stop it..now once it's fermented out and cleared you can add K-meta (campden tabs) and postassium sorbate to basically put any remaining yeasties into retirement...Now you can backsweeten with whatever trips your triger..brown sugar, apple juice concentrate, splenda, regular sugar, honey...whatever....I personally use 2 cans of frozen apple juice concentrate to 5 gallons of hard dry cider, keg and then carbonate. It works great.
Good luck
add more sugar to your must, prior to fermentation, and use a yeast with a known alcohol tolerance.
if you sweeten your must such that the original gravity is 1090 or 1100, and you use a yeast that quits at 5-7% ABV (like an ale yeast), then you will have residual sugar for a sweet cider.
the sugar will not ferment because the alcholo level in the must will rise enough to become toxic to the yeast and they will go dormant. but they will still be alive, so you can prime and bottle carbonate your cider.
this option allows you to bottle your cider but still get carbonation. if you use potassium sorbate to kill the yeast you will not be able to bottle carbonate. at this point, if you wanted carbonated cider, you would be forced to keg.
if kegging is an option for you, do whatever floats your boat. if you are bottling, just sweeten the must with whatever you want (cane sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, molasses, etc) and use a relatively weak yeast.
I was afraid that by sweeting the must before you ferment with an ale yeast that is 5-7% and leaving the extra fermentables in the must you would get eather no carbonation or bottle bombs am i wrong here. I know that the alcohol is toxic to the yeast but how do you go about bottle carbing when the yeast has reached its tolorance with the level of alchol. It may be a dumb question but i have been wanting to make a sweet cider and this sounds like a great idea so much that i have ordered some dry ale yeast to do it i just would like some more insite on the carbonation process after fermintation (bottle bombs are no good).
The only way I have been able to accomplish this feat. Sweet, carbonated, bottled cider or mead is a little risky, but it works.
1. Ferment to completion, using a mead or cider yeast, for example Lavin L-47.
2. Secondary until clear.
3. Back sweeten with your chosen fermentable sugar.
4. Test a bottle after a week, and then another at least every other day, until you get the amount of carbonation you want.
5. Pasteurize the bottles.
Techniques vary,
In the stove- slowly raise the temp to your minimum heat setting, usually 170 or 180, leave it for 20-30 min, turn off the stove & allow to cool.
In water- using your brew pots, place the bottles in warm water, again slowly bring the temp up to 170, hold for 20 min, turn off heat & allow to cool.
I do the water, when a bottle blows it's in the water, covered. No cleanup.
I prefer not to think about stove cleanup ramifications.
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