need some tips *sour*

[BenjiEDF]

without giving all of the background info and making this more confusing than necessary, what are some common mistakes that lead to a sour tasting apple cider? 5-6% alc and aged about 1 month in the bottle. Using store bought apple juice and champagne yeast (maybe the culprit?) I'm fairly pleased with the result, I've sampled some other homebrew cider and mine would pass as acceptable to good. I would like to get something a little less sour and more tart. Sweetness is not an issue, I like a dry cider. My favorite store bought cider right now is the Hornsby's Amber Dry.

The batch smells good, tastes good, but is sour and I'd like to fix that. I'm new to cider making but I'm really close to making a good drinkable product.

I don't want to make wine. I want to make a nice drinkable cider with a quick turn around (less than 3 months) if possible.

 

[gregbathurst]

Malic acid is what makes cider sour.

The easiest way to fix the sourness is with MLF culture, but it isn't cheap or fast, takes a couple of months for the taste to settle down. There are some yeasts that reduce the malic acid.
You only need a tiny bit of mlf culture so if you keep a sachet in the freezer you can use it for a couple of years. It takes about 2 weeks for MLF at 18C and then a month for the taste to settle back (because there are transient flavor molecules produced by MLF which dissapate).

 

[caseymac91]

When I let my ciders ferment completely dry they taste sour. The only thing that helps is extended aging or back sweetening. I have to add 1tsp malic acid per gallon to get that tart granny smith apple flavour. I use nottingham and S-04 yeasts. My ciders are never too sour, but it could be the fact that I backsweeten to 1.02.