Backsweetening and bottling question

[cheyneco]

My typical routine is to add juice or dissolved sugar into the bottling bucket, then rack onto this and gently stir. Immediately after it finishes racking I stir it one more time gently for a minute or so, taste test, then begin bottling.

The last two batches I've made, the further I get in the bottling process... The sweeter the cider. Clearly the sugar is slowly settling to the bottom, so the last 5-10 bottles are grossly sweet (were talking 1.090 sweet) while the rest are a gradual scale from dry to semi sweet.

How can I prevent this and get consistent level of sweetness in every bottle? Should I wait a few hours before bottling? A day? I bottle carb and pasturize too, if that makes a difference.

Thanks

 

[cheyneco]

Bump

 

[worlddivides]

You do it the same way you do for sugar for carbonation. You boil the sugar in water, which dissolves the sugar into the liquid so that it isn't granulated and sinking to the bottom. This also sterilizes/sanitizes the water so that no bacteria can get in your cider. You then cool this liquid down. I usually put it in a sanitized jogging water bottle in the freezer for a little bit and then in the refrigerator. Then you slowly mix it into the cider as the cider is being siphoned from your fermenter into the bottling bucket, stirring with a big sanitized spoon every now and then. This should evenly mix the sugar in.

For me, since I'm using Xylitol for the backsweetening, I dissolve both the corn sugar for carbonation and the Xylitol for sweetening into the same boiled water.

I'm assuming that when you say "dissolved sugar," you are just dissolving sugar into cold water and not boiling it or are just pouring it into the cider and stirring it there.

 

[cheyneco]

I heat the sugar in water on the stove top until fully dissolved, pour it in the bottom of the bucket and rack on top of it. Maybe I need to let it cool longer and mix it in slower. What I thought was the sugar settling, could actually be the warm sugar water rising to the top... Since heat rises... causing the last portion of bottles to be extra sweet?

 

[bernardsmith]

The liquor from the wine is going to be far less dense than the liquor from the fruit juice or the sugar water. We are talking about cider here in relatively small batches and not large barrels of really expensive grape wine? I would add rack a few inches of the cider into my bottling bucket and then the sweetener to the top of the carboy. If the carboy was a gallon size or a plastic Better Bottle I would plug the mouth and gently invert the carboy and slowly mix the sweetener. I would then rack the contents into my bottling bucket.
If the carboy was five gallons and glass, again I would remove a quantity and add the sweetener to the top of the carboy and I would rack cider from the bottom into the bottling bucket but allow it to run down the sides of the bucket rather than keep the siphon tube on the floor of the bucket.