Advice sought

[Pirate Pete]

G'Day


I have just made a small brew of cider with mixed berries.


Last time I made this it was too dry. I want to make it sweeter. Last brew had a final specific gravity of 1005 after fermentation stopped and it was really dry.

How can and make it sweeter. If I stop fermentation at a higher specific gravity by putting it in the fridge, will it still carbonate.

These may be dumb questions but I am new at this and need an education.

Looking forward to your advice.

Peter

 

[Pokey]

If u drink it from the fermentor no worries, it will not be carbonated though.
If you bottle it and add sugar it will still end up dry but over carbonated and possible bottle bombs.
There are some methods of stopping fermentation that people talk about, either heat or chemical to kill the yeast. I don't have any experience with doing that though.
Hopefully someone with a bit more experience can help out.

 

[indica86]

Very difficult to naturally carb cider at home and make it sweet. Pasteurisation can kill the yeast to stop it fermenting all the sugar, but then you need to keg and force carb for fizzzzzz.

 

[Grainer]

Putting it in the fridge will stop fermentation but if you take the bottles out in time they will become bombs.. you can also back sweeten.. but I find the addition of lactose helps .. my wife likes it also the addition of some essence helps as well..e.g. pear essence 1/2 a mini bottle for strongbow..

 

[manticle]

Bottling or kegging?

 

[TimT]

Backsweeteners - lactose, maltodextrin, stevia, sucralose, and aspartame are all unfermentable sugars - can add sweetness to the cider, since the yeast won't be interested in them.

Normally apple cider will come out quite dry, since almost all the sugar in the cider will get fermented out by the yeast. Yeast can't tolerate an alcohol content of above 14-16 % though - so you can work with that too by adding so much sugar before fermentation that not all of it will ferment out. You could try adding honey until the gravity of your brew was sufficiently high (I'm not sure, but a starting gravtiy of around 1.100 would probably work?) But note that honey can take a long time to ferment.

As an alternative, you could try the traditional way of sweetening with honey and berries on the day of drinking - or mixing with another sweet brew.

Another alternative could be to ferment ciders with a Scoby of some sort - a 'symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast'. My book 'True Brews' by Emma Christensen suggests some ingenious ways to make fermented sparkling beverages with kefir - a weird Scoby that produces fizzy-but-not-particularly-alcoholic brews. I recall in a discussion about ginger beer on this site a while back someone mentioned that they used to make ginger beer in the UK using a kind of symbiotic bacterial/yeast culture - the bacteria would feed off the alcohol the yeast made, so it wasn't very alcoholic at all. I know very little about this area but it could be rewarding to look into.

 

[Airgead]

A SCOBY will give you a very different drink to a normal cider - quite sour. Really nice but not a cider. Even those can ferment out pretty dry. They go slowly so they will keep fermenting in the bottle for ages until *boom*. Just remember the horror stories about exploding ginger beer. They are often considered a weak drink because they are designed to be drunk within a few days.

If you are kegging its easy. Ferment it dry. Let the yeast settle out. Keg it. Back sweeten with whatever you like. Either stabilise with sorbistat or keep the keg cold to prevent re-fermentation. Only thing to watch with sorbistat is that you need to make sure there is very little yeast left. It inhibits yeast reproduction it doesnt' kill it. So if there is a lot of yeast in suspension it will chew right through your back sweetning. If you let the yeast settle out before stabilising there isn't enough left to actively referement and the sorbistat prevents it from growing new cells which keeps the levels safely low.

Bottling is much harder unless you force carbonate somehow. Anything you do to stop the yeast early will also prevent it from bottle conditioning. Your only real option is to us an unfermentable sugar - lactose, sorbotol (be careful.. its a laxative), stevia....

Cheers
Dave

 

[indica86]

Backsweeteners - lactose, maltodextrin, stevia, sucralose, and aspartame are all unfermentable sugars

Not entirely true considering some are chemical derived artificial sweeteners.
Lactose is barely digestible and can lead to bloating and excessive fart production.

Choices are then... farts, chemicals, kegs.
I use wine yeasts that leave a fair whack of flavour behind, and while the cider is fairly dry, it still has a lovely apple taste.

 

[Bribie G]

I normally brew a bit strong and cut the cider with apple juice in the glass.

 

[_HOME_BREW_WALLACE_]

^ Can do this. I have also sweetened with juice in the keg. But if your bottling there really isn't much you can do apart from putting about 400-500g of lactose in your brew.

 

[mxd]

you can try juice and a malt extract and a beer yeast.

 

[Airgead]

Malt will work as it adds complex sugars that the yeast won't touch. You are moving away from a traditional cider taste though and into something more beery. While that may be fine with you, I know that if I did that for my missus she wouldn't touch it as she doesn't like the malt flavour.

Easiest thing is to add a shot of juice to the glass when serving. Or keg your cider. Or learn to like it dry.

 

[Bribie G]

Kegging with extra juice actually provides free gas, as it will slowly work even at low temperatures. If it dries out too much, add more juice. In my 3 keg kegerator a keg of cider will often push itself and another two kegs of beer as well.

 

[Pirate Pete]

Thanks for all the comments, very informative. While I only have a small batch I will try several of the suggestions. Drink out of fermenter and try a few non fermentable sugars. Lactose would be interesting as I am a smoker and this looks like being a 15-16% brew. Better be careful lighting up if lactose is fart inducing.

 

[peas_and_corn]

Not entirely true considering some are chemical derived artificial sweeteners.
Lactose is barely digestible and can lead to bloating and excessive fart production.

Not just that, lactose and maltodextrin aren't very sweet to begin with.

 

[Greg.L]

You can't use aspartame for fermented drinks, it will break down. Adding a bit of juice to your glass of cider is the easiest way.

 

[Airgead]

You can't use aspartame for fermented drinks, it will break down. Adding a bit of juice to your glass of cider is the easiest way.

As Wayne from Wayne's World once said - "I was not aware of that"

So is it the alcohol that breaks up the aspartame molecule (I'm assuming into aspartic acid and phenalalanyne) or is it partially metabolised by the yeast?.

Interesting.

Cheers
Dave

 

[imabeerpig]

Hi all,
And thanks Dave for your advice,
Hope to get some more from you and all the others on here,
Reading through this I see that sweetening cider is difficult.
Can I try this, with the recipe I posted yesterday in the General forum.
Make it as I plan in the first fermenter.
After racking into the second fermenter and doing a taste test, I will most likley add some honey and lactose (sounds like it will be allready getting to the dry stage).
When I keg I am thinking of dropping a couple of litres of good apple juice into the bottom of the keg and then top up with my brew.
like I said I am trying to make something that I dont have to play around with in the glass.
Hope this is not impossible.
Still looking for a good cider yeast that will work well at around 16 deg in my fridge.
Many Thanks to all that reply.

 

[Airgead]

The lactose will add a little sweetness (lactose isn't a particularly sweet sugar) and watch out for the lactose intolerant among those who will be drinking it. The honey will ferment out if you let the yeast take hold again.

Adding juice to the keg (or honey, or any other sweetener) will work as long as you either keep the keg cold to inhibit fermentation or stabilize with something like sorbistat first. Keeping it cold is easier.

For my cider I use wine yeasts. Up till last year I used CRU005 but this year did a test and will switch to 71B. Both do well at 16c or so. They can be hard to get in small quantities though. I buy mine in 1/2 kilo bricks designed for small winemakers. Most wine yeasts will work well and will ferment down to 16c. I'd use white wine strains rather than red.

Cheers
Dave

 

[imabeerpig]

Many thanks