Cider 'shelf life'

[AmDD]

Hey all! Im new here and have started my first batch of cider, almost ready for transfer to secondary. Im pretty excited!

From what I read, i gather that you dont want cider to sit around too long once its bottled. I assume thats because it can continue to ferment and could explode. How long is too long? I guess whats going through my mind is I dont want to spend months making this stuff and have to drink it all in a weekend and then start the process over again.

Thanks!

 

[mkyl428]

I have a few bottles in my fridge I made over a year ago cider keeps pretty well, actually I like it better now than I did a year ago

 

[mkyl428]

Also assuming that you have reached a stable FG prior to bottling ( which you should) then you should not have to worry about bottle bombs, as long as you only add enough sugar to carbonate and your sanitization was in order....

Remember if you plan to backsweeten you need to use non fermentable sugar such as splenda

 

[AmDD]

Alright, I must have read wrong then. So the idea is to add just enough sugar to get a bit of carbonation and then the yeast will stop because its run out of sugar to eat, correct?

I think my next issue, if I continue doing this after this batch, is figuring out how long it takes from start to finish and how quickly I drink it.

 

[mkyl428]

Correct after fermentation has stopped and you are getting stable gravity readings over a few days you can rack to a bottling bucket and add a set amount of priming sugar to carbonate. I do not know what your batch size is but here is a online priming sugar calculator to help you figure out how much sugar you need http://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/

The calculator is for beer, but it will work for cider too, I usually carb mine somewhere around 2.4 volumes of co2

 

[dmtaylor]

Most cider is shelf stable for a very long time. Just make sure you don't bottle it before it's done fermenting, or it could indeed blow up on you. It will often finish at a specific gravity well below 1.000, down as low as about 0.992. Be very patient with it, don't rush it. Cider takes much longer to finish fermenting than beer does. We're talking many weeks or even months, instead of just days.

 

[MindenMan]

I agree with the above poster, cider will just take it's ole sweet time. Based on the fact we don't do Nitrogen level checks in the ciders we ferment, we never know how much natural nutrient is already in there. I have had different ciders with identical O.G.s, and their fermentation times were very different; one took ten days, and one took 4 weeks. Same yeast, same temperature same added nutrients...

 

[AmDD]

Great, thanks for the info all, Im sure I'll have more questions as I get deeper into this process.

 

[FloppyKnockers]

Not sure. Not even sure it would last that long in my house. Once it's spent a month in primary it gets bottles then stored in the beer/gun/golf/computer room for six months. After the six month mark it doesn't last long enough to find out if it spoils or not.

 

[phug]

It'll keep for over a year if you let it. I have some bottles that are a year and a half. Opened one the other week and it was fine

 

[Dragonmead]

From what I read, i gather that you dont want cider to sit around too long once its bottled.

That's not necessarily true. Some ciders have been found to last decades. Not that they should be kept that long. Yet after fermentation, conditioning, clearing, and stabilizing, your cider should be able to last at least a year.

Make a demi john or so, bottle it, then allocate some, maybe 12 bottles or so to ageing. Drink one every year and find out.

 

[phug]

It'll keep for over a year if you let it. I have some bottles that are a year and a half. Opened one the other week and it was fine

I just opened the last bottle from that batch this weekend. still good. which puts us at just under 2 years old on that batch since bottling. or to be more specific, bottling day was 06/14/2014, so we're at about 21.5 months since bottling. and that was farm fresh cider with only a campden tablet treatment prior to pitch.

 

[MindenMan]

Cider shelf life is mostly but not completely dependent on pH and alcohol level. I have 1 or 2 bottles left of a 2 year old high alcohol hard cider, and it is better to drink now than it was, but it is not done conditioning yet. Granted this is a really high ABV % cider; somewhere in the 12% plus range,( which makes it appfelwine) so another year I am sure will do more good than bad. If you have an area that is dark and 60-65*F, nobody knows how long your ciders will last.