Hey all. I am very new to home brewing and have tried to do a few ciders. So far I have made some very dry and still cider. I prefer sweet and carbonated. I tried the 5 day cider recipe in the recipe section. When I bottled it, it was still going like gang busters. It was carbonated in 8 hours so I put it in the fridge. When I popped one open this evening it was super carbonated, but smelled and tasted like sulfur. Can anyone tell me what I did wrong? If I let it go for a little longer would it have helped? Thanks!!
My Cider smells like Sulfur
- Thread starter ryanj77
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:
dcarter
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2006
- Messages
- 389
- Reaction score
- 28
That smell is completely normal and will dissipate in a couple of days in the fermenter. You just bottled way too early. Cider usually stays in the primary for about a month and secondary for a couple of months to mature.
Follow up question then. The attempt before this one was left in the primary for 3 week and then in secondary for a month. After bottling with some carbonation tablets all I got was a dry, still cider. What could I have done to make it carbonate and turn sweet. I don't want to use artificial sweetener. Thanks for the reply.
bristolcity
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2014
- Messages
- 78
- Reaction score
- 1
Prime a 500ml bottle with a tea spoon of sugar before you pour the cider in mate leave for two weeks roughly that's one way of carbonating
bernardsmith
Well-Known Member
A smell of sulfur smells suggests a smell of burning matches. Is that what you mean or do you mean it smells like bad eggs (hydrogen sulfide). If the latter that means that you have stressed the yeast and you may want to whip air into the cider. If that does not help you may want to strain the cider through sanitized copper cleaning wool. A sanitized copper penny will remove the smell too, but the real cure is to ensure that you do not stress the yeast.
If the smell is of burnt matches (sulfur dioxide) then you may have added too much K-meta (campden tabs, for example). That smell will dissipate over time
If the smell is of burnt matches (sulfur dioxide) then you may have added too much K-meta (campden tabs, for example). That smell will dissipate over time
After 5 weeks the fermentable sugar would have been pretty much gone. Carb tablets add a controlled amount of sugar for carbonation but it would take a while (maybe 2 weeks). They will not add sweetness. For that, you need to either add non-fermentable sugar (I use Xylotol) or add enough sugar to both carbonate and sweeten then pasteurize to stop fermentation.
The smell was of rotten eggs. How would I have stressed the yeast. This is something that I have never heard of. Also, how much sugar should I add at bottling to carbonate and back sweeten? 
I am using 16 oz bottles.
I am using 16 oz bottles.
bernardsmith
Well-Known Member
Yeast can be stressed in many ways - trying to ferment at temperatures that are not preferred by the strain of yeast you chose (too hot or too cold), fermenting a liquor that is deficient in nitrogen , deficient in organic nutrients the yeast needs to reproduce, allowing the yeast to autolyse (rupture and break apart and decompose). But none of those causes would self -evidently appear to explain your problem with hydrogen sulfide. My guess is this:
I have no idea how likely your cider was to fully ferment in five days. Insofar as you say that even when you placed the bottles in the fridge they were (over) carbonated that suggests to me that the yeast was still very active when you cooled the cider down and this low temperature resulted in not a cessation of fermentation but a stressful fermentation and hence the production of hydrogen sulfide.
I would leave your carboy to quietly ferment in its own time and not force the yeast to be a slave of the clock as if it were some kind of factory worker.
I would also be very careful around those bottles - from what you say they are over-pressurized with CO2 and are likely if they are plastic to swell up like balloons. If they are made of glass you likely made grenades. If you are going to bottle while the yeast is still actively fermenting then you really have no way of knowing with any certainty how many "volumes" of CO2 will be in those bottles - there may be far more pressure caused by the trapped CO2 for the bottles to remain intact. They will then explode. What you might do is very carefully open each bottle and allow the CO2 to escape.
If I were you I would not think about bottling any fermented drink until I was very confident that all the fermentable sugar had been converted into alcohol (and CO2) . I would then remove all the CO2 in the liquid and then add 1oz of sugar per gallon to carbonate. Realize, of course that cider ain't beer and beer contains proteins and it is the proteins that - all other things being equal - create the head (much like it is the protein in flour that traps the CO2 when you make bread ). Cider has no proteins (which is also why when you add yeast unlike beer the final gravity can fall to around .996 or lower (beer you might expect the final gravity to fall to around 1.010)) so even a fully carbonated cider will not have a head - there are no entangled protein chains to trap bubbles of CO2.
Others on this forum disagree but it seems to me that unless you use a non fermentable sugar (stevia, for example or lactose) to back sweeten your cider you need to choose - sparkling cider or sweet still cider. Sure you can pasteurize your cider: that is to say, add enough sugar to both carbonate AND sweeten but pasteurization destroys volatile flavor molecules and catching the cider at precisely the right time where it contains all the CO2 you want AND the sweetness you like is a bit of a crapshoot.... But hey! yer pays yer money and yer takes yer chance.
All that said, one other possibility is that the yeast you bought was already "damaged" and prone to stress. If this was a brand name yeast and you still have the package you might contact the company that produced the yeast and ask if anyone else using yeast from the same batch has complained with similar problems.
I have no idea how likely your cider was to fully ferment in five days. Insofar as you say that even when you placed the bottles in the fridge they were (over) carbonated that suggests to me that the yeast was still very active when you cooled the cider down and this low temperature resulted in not a cessation of fermentation but a stressful fermentation and hence the production of hydrogen sulfide.
I would leave your carboy to quietly ferment in its own time and not force the yeast to be a slave of the clock as if it were some kind of factory worker.
I would also be very careful around those bottles - from what you say they are over-pressurized with CO2 and are likely if they are plastic to swell up like balloons. If they are made of glass you likely made grenades. If you are going to bottle while the yeast is still actively fermenting then you really have no way of knowing with any certainty how many "volumes" of CO2 will be in those bottles - there may be far more pressure caused by the trapped CO2 for the bottles to remain intact. They will then explode. What you might do is very carefully open each bottle and allow the CO2 to escape.
If I were you I would not think about bottling any fermented drink until I was very confident that all the fermentable sugar had been converted into alcohol (and CO2) . I would then remove all the CO2 in the liquid and then add 1oz of sugar per gallon to carbonate. Realize, of course that cider ain't beer and beer contains proteins and it is the proteins that - all other things being equal - create the head (much like it is the protein in flour that traps the CO2 when you make bread ). Cider has no proteins (which is also why when you add yeast unlike beer the final gravity can fall to around .996 or lower (beer you might expect the final gravity to fall to around 1.010)) so even a fully carbonated cider will not have a head - there are no entangled protein chains to trap bubbles of CO2.
Others on this forum disagree but it seems to me that unless you use a non fermentable sugar (stevia, for example or lactose) to back sweeten your cider you need to choose - sparkling cider or sweet still cider. Sure you can pasteurize your cider: that is to say, add enough sugar to both carbonate AND sweeten but pasteurization destroys volatile flavor molecules and catching the cider at precisely the right time where it contains all the CO2 you want AND the sweetness you like is a bit of a crapshoot.... But hey! yer pays yer money and yer takes yer chance.
All that said, one other possibility is that the yeast you bought was already "damaged" and prone to stress. If this was a brand name yeast and you still have the package you might contact the company that produced the yeast and ask if anyone else using yeast from the same batch has complained with similar problems.
frankjones
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 10, 2014
- Messages
- 475
- Reaction score
- 26
Rhino farts
bernardsmith
Well-Known Member
I just thought: there is one way to sweeten and create a sparkling cider. It is very simple and I never thought of it because I don't have the equipment but brewers do it all the time. It's called forced carbonation and what that means is that you push CO2 into the cider rather than use yeast to ferment sugar. What this means is that if you stabilize your cider with two chemicals - K-meta and K-sorbate, once all the sugars have been converted to alcohol and your cider is clear, then you can add enough sugar to sweeten the cider to the level you want. Since you have no viable yeasts left in the cider and since you have chemically knocked into a coma any stragglers, any sugar you add will remain unfermented and so sweeten your cider. You then pump CO2 into the sweetened cider (beer makers do this in kegs but it may be possible to do this with a soda maker like Soda Stream). Bingo! you have sweetened and sparkling cider.
Shy of having a keg, I've invested in a small CO2 tank and a gizzmo called a Carbonator. Probably the cheapest method of forced carbonation for cidermakers.
ThatKiwiWineBloke
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2014
- Messages
- 4
- Reaction score
- 1
Save yourself headaches and potential scolding from pasteurising or exploding bottles! Get yourself either a Keg set up or a Tap-a-Draft. ferment your cider to dryness and clarify. Do a acid/sugar trial to determine the desired backsweetening levels to balance and add Kmeta and KSorbate. I bottle into tapadraft bottle with just a little yeast activity and have not had any leakers, I am not concerned with a little cloudiness in the cider and the yeast activity consumes the O2 in the headspace. When your ready to consume Carbonate with CO2 cartridges. Simple.
ThatKiwiWineBloke
>25 harvests in 4 continents and counting!
NZ,AU,ESP,FR,RU,US
ThatKiwiWineBloke
>25 harvests in 4 continents and counting!
NZ,AU,ESP,FR,RU,US
