Search results

Anyone ever use citric acid as a preservative in their soda? I'd like to use it so that I can bottle my grape/peach soda and not worry about keeping it cold. I'm wondering what the dosage should be. Any help would be appreciated.

I keg my cider at 18psi for about two weeks and it's nice and carbed up. My question is, will I always lose the first pint or so to pure foam? Basically, I turn my CO2 down to 5psi for service. My line is 15 feet (3/16") and I serve between 35-40 degrees. And every time, the first glass and a...

Just curious: what are you favorite yeasts for making cider? I'm thinking largely of the flavor profile of the final product, not the ease with which they produce ethanol. I, for one, have had great success with Lalvin EC-1118. Despite being a powerful champagne yeast, I have gotten some nice...

If your must is around 65 degrees and perhaps below, say down to 60, at the time you wish to inoculate, do you heat it up to say 70 to get the yeast going well and then let it cool back down? (I like a slow fermentation). If so, how do you accomplish this. My concern is that sometimes the area...

The goal is to create a permanently sweet and stable cider without adding anything to the cider. This means halting fermentation. Cold-crashing works but is not permanent. One idea I had was to stop fermentation by killing the yeast by heating the cider up to 140 by running the cider from one...

If yeast dies at 140 and ethanol doesn't boil until 170ish, what's wrong with stopping fermentation via heat? Presumably you'll never really clear after that kind of heat, and you might alter the flavor profile, but are there other reasons that this is not adviseable?

Has anyone ever tried using a counter pressure bottle filler to purge the 02 from a carboy? The idea would be to do this when you're going to be left with a sizable head space during bulk storage of a cider that is no longer fermenting and thus will not produce CO2 on its own. I'm thinking of...

So I'm fermenting some fresh cider I froze last fall, and right now I'm around 1.035 and in fervent primary fermentation. Tonight I went down to check temperature and gravity and got some very interesting measurements. SG is going along as predicted, but, here you go, the temperature of the must...

As always, I'm thinking about a few experiments for this fall's harvest. This year, they all hinge on primary, where I have what I think is an important question. This question refers to a freshly pressed cider with a yeast inoculation occurring shortly after pressing, say within 1 hour of...

Does anyone have a good design for slat plates, the ones that go between the main pressing board and the drain of a hydraulic press? My pressing board is about 24"x12", so the slat plates would have to be about the same size. Ideally, I'd like to use hard wood and keep them as thin as possible...

When I set up to force carb I don't seem to be able to reduce the psi if I have over opened the valve by mistake. Here's what I do. With the co2 tank shut and the pressure in the regulator reduced to 0, I attach the co2 to the keg, open the c02 and slowly set the psi by opening the valve...

I'm moving into kegging and force carbing my ciders and I was wondering what you all think about psi for a sparkling cider. I have one keg that's been under 5-6 psi for 3 days at between 32-40 degrees, I pulled a sample tonight and didn't really notice any carbonation. I've heard that you need...

I'm getting ready to blend and then bottle a lot of what I've got from last fall. Some stuff I'll leave dry and some I'll back sweeten. As for the back sweetening, I'm planning on using two techniques to see which I like best: potassium sorbate + SO2 and heat pasteurization. However, I've been...

I've got many a gallon of cider in bulk storage. We're getting close to that 6 month mark, and after testing ph, so2, and taste yesterday, I'm becoming increasingly incapable of waiting too much longer before bottling up at least some of what I've got from last fall. In any case, this is the...

Question: if you are going to backsweeten after secondary with the intention of then kegging and force carbing, what do you use to make sure that fermenation doesn't start up again? From what I understand, SO2 will not kill the yeast or even hold them at bay indefinitely, that eventually the...

I've got some small white splotches developing on the top of one 5 gal. carboy in secondary. If I gently shake the carboy they sink but then come back. No noticeable smell and no effect on the flavor, but I'm concerned that this is film yeast. I just measured the free SO2 and it is at 20 ppm. I...

Has anyone ever tried adding malic acid to their cider after primary to lower the ph? Any reason why this may be a bad idea?

This weekend I racked a 5 gal. batch of Jonagold cider after about 1 month in primary. SG was down to 0.099 and bubbling had come almost to a halt. During racking I noticed a fairly strong sulfur smell. I have never noticed this before and am wondering if this is something that will dissipate...

I'm wondering how many of you sulfite after primary for preservation purposes. I have two batches, both sulfited prior to primary, one with 125 ppm and the other with 50 ppm. Do you guys find it necessary to sulfite afterwards, or do you find that your stuff keeps well without SO2? If you do...

If you don't have any reserve cider (fully fermented), what do you use to top off when you rack after primary fermentation? I'm referring to filling up the space that is left in the new carboy after having left the lees behind. Given the amount of lees I have, there will be a significant amount...