'sweet' Cider.

[Dave70]

I'm not realy a cider drinker, or brewer for that matter, but since sampling a few at Tazzies 'Taste of Tasmania' wine and food gorge-a-thon, my wife has become a fan of the sweet stuff, so I plan on knocking up a batch.
Now then, is the sweetness (as opposed to a draught or dry) the result of the juice or apples used, the yeast, adjuncts or a combination or all?
I will be bottling this stuff, so do the same rules apply a bottling beer in regard to carbonation?

If anyone has a recipe, method or linky to head me in the right direction I would much apprreciate it.

cheers.

 

[manticle]

It's mainly to do with when fermentation stops which is harder to control when you're bottling.
You could use a yeast which will attenuate less (for example a wine yeast will attenuate right down and leave it dry).

You could add Campden to kill the yeast when it's at the level you want. I wouldn't personally recommend that as I hate sulphites in my cider but it's one method.

Otherwise you could add lactose which is milk sugar and sacch yeasts won't ferment it

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

I've been playing with supermarket juice cider in anticipation of a bumper fruit harvest this year (based on no reasoning whatsoever, but the trees are looking good).

Champagne yeast produces a beautiful cider, if you like champagne. My latest has raspberries in it and it is pink, but still dry. I like it.

My next experiment is to use a German Wheat Beer yeast to see what it does.

Where am I going with this waffle? I've realised that for experimenting with this stuff, all you need is to buy a few 3litre bottles of juice and make some cider, then you have nice, disposable test fermenters for the next few 2.5 litre batches, which is between 3 and 4 bottles. You can then quickly chew through the options and if someone (like me, f'rinstance) gives you some crap advice, you haven't actually lost too much...

 

[barls]

personally i like the sweet mead yeast in it.

 

[Fourstar]

Doesn't it have to do with the apple variety and its flavour profile: sweet, bittersweet, sharp?

Depending on the blend of apples you end up with your usual sweet/dry cider?

 

[manticle]

As far as I know most Ciders are a blend of these anyway. While you might favour one type or another, it's more to do with the finishing gravity.

I'm not a cider expert although I've made a few and will make some more but the reading I've done suggests sweeter ones will finish around 1018-1020. Dry can be as low as 1000.

This from a great article about naturally brewed breton style ciders here:

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/cider_2.htm

I've not tried to make a sweet one but I've followed some of the other methods (predominantly clarification) and it's not let me down. My aim is to eventually make one of these.

 

[Dave70]

You could add Campden to kill the yeast when it's at the level you want. I wouldn't personally recommend that as I hate sulphites in my cider but it's one method.

From what I can gather from googling around, this seems to be the idea (in a round about way)

So how about this method.
Add an additional amount of sugar (suggestions?) to the fermenter and use a yeast that carks it at around 6 - 8% ABV?
Only problem I can see with this is dead yeast = no carbonation in the bottles so I would need to catch it just before it reaches its FG.

But then I risk bottle bombs if I don't time it just right.

Dam. I brew beer. Why can't she just order off the menu...

 

[kevin_smevin]

From what i understand you'll struggle to make a sweet bottled cider. The reason is that apple juice is made up of very simple sugars that the yeast love and they will consume them all, therefore no residual sweetness.

There are a couple of ways to make it sweet. One is to stop fermentation by adding camden tablets or crash chilling or filtering, but then you will not be able to bottle condition because the yeast is dead, and any yeast you add will simply pick up where the other yeast stopped and completely consume all of the sugar.

I've tried to add lactose with very little success. Its not a very sweet sugar at all so you need to add heaps. I added 500g to 23L and didn't notice any real difference.

The sweet mead yeast might work well, I think i'd like to try that. Mead yeast is probably very well suited to fermenting juice as it would have a similar nutritional profile to watered down honey.

A thought that just popped into my head is to use artificial sweetener. From what i understand most are sugar analogues; that is they have a very similar structure to normal sugar and thus give the same sweetness. The small difference though means that the enzymes in our bodies cant break them down, hence we get no energy from them. I'm not sure if yeast are able to consume artificial sweeteners but its worth checking out. You you may be able to make a splendid splenda cider.

good luck

 

[kevin_smevin]

From what I can gather from googling around, this seems to be the idea (in a round about way)

So how about this method.
Add an additional amount of sugar (suggestions?) to the fermenter and use a yeast that carks it at around 6 - 8% ABV?
Only problem I can see with this is dead yeast = no carbonation in the bottles so I would need to catch it just before it reaches its FG.

But then I risk bottle bombs if I don't time it just right.

Dam. I brew beer. Why can't she just order off the menu...

Dave70. That might work but it is risky. Cider made in Normandy is bottled while its still fermenting and the extra fermentation in the bottles carbonates the cider. They use champagne bottles though to make it a bit safer. They also use a method for keeving which is really cool but probably a little too complex.

 

[drsmurto]

As far as I know most Ciders are a blend of these anyway. While you might favour one type or another, it's more to do with the finishing gravity.

I'm not a cider expert although I've made a few and will make some more but the reading I've done suggests sweeter ones will finish around 1018-1020. Dry can be as low as 1000.

This from a great article about naturally brewed breton style ciders here:

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/cider_2.htm

I've not tried to make a sweet one but I've followed some of the other methods (predominantly clarification) and it's not let me down. My aim is to eventually make one of these.

Having lived in Bretagne (NW region of France and one of the 6 celtic 'nations') in the town of Rennes for 6 months during my uni studies I am a huge fan of breton ciders. Perfect match for galettes and crepes and i could regularly be found at a creperie with a bottle of local cider and a ham and mushroom galette.

I went as far as pruning my apple trees right back to stumps and grafted them with french cider varieties. My grafts failed and i ended up chopping the trees down which may have contravened some law since they were apparently >100 years old.

My last cider was a blend of 3 varieties - granny smith, fuji and one of the delicious. The thought was that i needed to combine cooking and eating apples to get a more complex apple flavour. Used the cider yeast (Wyeast 4766) and it was very good. Dry, but tasty.

My next plan of attack is to get in contact with some local growers who have cider apple and buy some fresh pressed juice. Its about that time of the year.....

If you read that article in your link it implies that by choosing the apples you determine the FG. My memory tells me that Breton cider is drank virtually still, not sparkling and was quite cloudy. I did almost live in the local irish bar so my memory is dodgy at best.

 

[brewerben]

Some of your options for bottling sweet cider are :

1. Ferment Dry + some sweetener that won't referment (e.g. artificial). There was the mention of lactose aabove, but I've never tried this.
2. Stop ferment at desired sweetness (e.g. using PMS, crash chilling and filtration), followed by sterile bottling OR bottling then pasteurisation
3. Ferment dry, add back desired sugar in whatever form (e.g. sucrose or apple juice) again followed by sterile bottling OR pasteurisation

You will have the issue of needing to carbonate artificially, assuming you're not aiming for Apfelwein style.

You should be able to achieve good pasturisation of the bottles in small batches on the stove in a big pot of water. Will need some patience and temp control though! The best final quality will come from sterile filtration as pasteurising will have a noticeable effect on flavour, but it's better than making grenades.

From what I can gather from googling around, this seems to be the idea (in a round about way)

So how about this method.
Add an additional amount of sugar (suggestions?) to the fermenter and use a yeast that carks it at around 6 - 8% ABV?
Only problem I can see with this is dead yeast = no carbonation in the bottles so I would need to catch it just before it reaches its FG.

But then I risk bottle bombs if I don't time it just right.

Dam. I brew beer. Why can't she just order off the menu...

 

[manticle]

If you read that article in your link it implies that by choosing the apples you determine the FG. My memory tells me that Breton cider is drank virtually still, not sparkling and was quite cloudy. I did almost live in the local irish bar so my memory is dodgy at best.

The season of harvest seems to influence the gravity. Interesting. I wonder how that works.

I think the easiest solution for the OP is to use a good quantity of lactose and a lower attenuating yeast than wine or champagne.

 

[pdilley]

Some of your options for bottling sweet cider are :

1. Ferment Dry + some sweetener that won't referment (e.g. artificial). There was the mention of lactose aabove, but I've never tried this.
2. Stop ferment at desired sweetness (e.g. using PMS, crash chilling and filtration), followed by sterile bottling OR bottling then pasteurisation
3. Ferment dry, add back desired sugar in whatever form (e.g. sucrose or apple juice) again followed by sterile bottling

#4. Ferment dry, bottle under natural carbonation. Keep a fresh bottle of store bought apple juice in the fridge and mix any where up to 50% apple juice to hard apple cider from the bottle in a large glass at serving time. Use less for low alc ciders and almost half the glass for high potency apple ciders. Drink and enjoy.


It's the only method I do.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[manticle]

I always wondered about this but if you're into sparkling cider, it would dull the tingly carbonation effect I would have thought.

 

[pdilley]

Plenty of risidual bubbles but at 50% you are down to small bubbles. Cider and it's alcohol are acidic enough to leave a tongue crispness and even without carbonation burn of say kit ciders straight from the bottle. The black rock + 50% juice in a large glass is enough for me as it's high alc to start with.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[manticle]

I guess my other hesitation is that you are changing the profile of the cider you carefully crafted (particularly if it's all apple which is my aim).

Then again I don't mind the dryness with a touch of lactose to hold it from bare bones and dust. It's the apple flavour I'm most interested in.

Anyway OP different methods at everyone's disposal - try one and see what works for you.

 

[jivesucka]

most cider turns out dry, quite possibly the lowest you'll see your hydrometer sink, rather disturbing, you think it's been stolen lol. i guess the antidote is to either use more sugar or a different strain of yeast. but it's tricky with cider because you'd have to assume the packaged yeast matches the packaged culture.

 

[Dave70]

The black rock + 50% juice in a large glass is enough for me as it's high alc to start with.

While we're on the subject, what % alcohol can you expect from just your standard apple juice cider with no additional fermentables?
Ive got a S05 and Lalvin EC-1118 sitting in the fridge I need to use up, Im guessing I'd be better off with the wine yeast yeah?

 

[alford_j]

I made an 11L "onecan" cider with only the blackrock kit and kit yeast recently. Thread is here. Good batch size if the missus only has a couple every now and then. I bottled half without lactose and half with 13g per litre and it has taken the bone dry edge off nicely. You would need more than this to make it "sweet". Mine is only 2 weeks in the bottle so I will reserve my judgment for a while longer, but for the amount of time/effort involved it is more than drinkable.

Alf

 

[manticle]

While we're on the subject, what % alcohol can you expect from just your standard apple juice cider with no additional fermentables?
Ive got a S05 and Lalvin EC-1118 sitting in the fridge I need to use up, Im guessing I'd be better off with the wine yeast yeah?

If you're still chasing a cider on the sweeter side of things (sweeter cider ha ha) then the 05 will probably attenuate less than the wine and leave more residual sugar. Alc will be a bit less with lower attenuation.