Cider has a slight vinegar after tatse

[Britinusa]

Im not sure if I can save it,
I bought pasteurized apple juice and used a champagne yeast, its about 6 weeks old now and has a slight vinegar after taste.
Will this lessen with time or is it turning to vinegar?

 

[Pickled_Pepper]

There is a chance it could be beyond salvage. My recommendation would be to drink it quickly if you can stand the aftertaste. If not, then you might have to let it run it's course and end up with apple cider vinegar for cooking. You might want to go back and look at your sanitation practices. Make sure to sanitize everything throughout the entire fermentation and bottling process.

Are you sure it's not just a sour taste from the cider fermenting completely dry?

 

[Britinusa]

I sanitized everything very well, had an airlock on it the whole time, its really clear and does not smell like vinegar.

 

[botigol]

Take this with a grain of salt, because I am still new at this, but 6 weeks sounds early to be drinking cider. I have only made apfelwein and Brandon O's graff so far, but the apfelwein didn't smell or taste much like apple for about four months. It also had some bretty and sour smells coming off of it for a while, but now smells fine. The graff seems like it needs more time as well, but previously had some bretty and sour aromas. Again, coming from limited experience, but I would say let it sit for a while...at least a week and see what's going on then.

 

[Albionwood]

Acetification is irreversible, so if that's what is really going on, it's best to just open it up and make some really good cider vinegar. But sometimes your palate gets fooled by other things and you think it's vinegary when it's not. As Pickled Pepper suggested, it could be just the sourness (tartness) of the acidic juice after all the sugar has fermented out. (Apple juice is 100% fermentable sugars, unlike beer wort.) If it doesn't smell like vinegar, maybe it's not.

Champagne yeast is notorious for hot solventy flavor and harshness when young; in my experience, ciders made with champagne yeast need months of aging.

The bacteria that make vinegar require oxygen. I make tons of cider from unpasteurized juice (pressed from unsanitized apples), in a facility with vinegar barrels right next to the cider fermenters, and don't get any vinegar as long as I keep the air out of the cider vessels. Sanitation isn't really that important in cidermaking. Keeping air out of the cider is much more important.

 

[ddays]

Hate to resurrect a dead thread but after having a complete freakout about having possibly turned 5 gallons of cider into vinegar I hopped online. I had previously had two beers sour so I've been very paranoid lately and have become very familiar with the taste of vinegar.
Because I never found any real way to identify an acetobacter infection in a young cider or if the cider fermented very dry making it tart/sour I came up with a brilliant solution, that put my mind at ease. I pulled a sample, I added sugar and then I drank it.
The bad thing is, now I just want to keep pulling samples, adding sugar and drinking it

 

[skadalajara]

The bad thing is, now I just want to keep pulling samples, adding sugar and drinking it

That's a good problem to have.
It also means when your cider's done, you can backsweeten it and have a cider you love.
The trick is to avoid sampling.