Sour tasting ciders and mead. What gives?

[Sebass]

Hi guys. So all ciders and even mead came out SOUR tasting. They are dry as i used Montrachet yeast. I even tried Premier Blanc and both yield dry but SOUR taste.

I'm ok with dry but sour taste notes bother a bit. I am looking for opposite of that, slightly sweet. Same thing happened with my mead and i also used Montrachet yeast on that.

The grape juice wines that i used Fleischmann's active dry yeast (bread yeast) came out tasty and sweet.

I do also use star san to sanitize everything when doing anything. I use those S type caps too. Are my apple wines turn slightly vinegarish in there? I'm not sure where this taste is coming from.

It's gross. It makes me wanna not drink it at all. The grepe juice wines are good. No issue with them. It's littery every apple juice that i used wine yeat on. Grape juice with breat yeast, no issues.

Thought on this so i can correct my brewing process? Thank you.

 

[Toxxyc]

Sour has different categories. I like to define them as:

1. Yeasty - a sour tastes that reminds of sourdough. Usually because of yeast in suspension.
2. Tart - a tart, mouth-puckering sour note that I usually find in fruity ferments - like Granny Smith apples or cranberries.
3. Brut - also called "bone dry". The absolute lack of sweetness in the solution can make many people mistake the dry notes for sour. Often compared to the same taste as heartburn, but not as vomit-like. This is the most common one in dry wines and ciders, if you ask me. Can easily be fixed by stabilizing the brew and backsweetening a little bit.
4. Vinegar - sour because of the presence of acetic acid. Usually due to bad sanitizing schedules, a bacteria called acetobacter (sp?) has found its way into your brew and is busy consuming ethanol and turning it into acetic acid - literally vinegar.
5. Vomit - specifically baby vomit. Smells like sour baby breath, or off yogurt. Typical smell of butyric acid, also caused by an infection.

So I'm willing to bet you have either 1, 2 or 3, or a combination of them. Bread yeast has a typically lower alcohol tolerance than brewer's yeasts, so chances are it stopped earlier, leaving some residual sugars behind in the solution, which made the brews taste sweeter. Brewer's yeasts, specifically wine yeasts, generally ferment very well (albeit slow), and will eat through all the sugar they can find (up to a certain ABV, of course). I'm going to wager that because you used wine yeasts, you fermented through all your sugar and you're mostly tasting Number 3 - brut, dry, mouth-puckering dry bite.

Get some potassium metabisulfite and potassium sorbate, read up on how to use it and then backsweeten your brews with a little fruit juice or honey to remove that "sour" dryness.

 

[Sebass]

So i measured gravity and Mead came out from 1.132 to 1.020, 14.7% abv and Pear Cyser came from 1.100 to 1.000, 13.13% abv.

I racked it already once and i just racked mead again. There was some still yeast on bottom. Small layer. Cyser is pretty clear with no yeast layer but i dropped pectic enzyme. Cyser cleared up nicely. Mead is still murky.

If i had to descibe it i would described it as Dry with aftertaste of sour, vinegar taste. Maybe it's combination of 1 and 3 as you described.

 

[Toxxyc]

Stop racking, you're wasting mead. I rack my mead only once, and that's right before long-term bulk aging. There's no need to get it off the yeast every time you notice a little bit (there are millions of yeast cells in suspension anyway). I would usually cold crash and fine the mead and leave it on finings at freezing for a week or three before racking off onto stabilizing chemicals before either bottling or bulk aging.