Three Cider Scenarios

[dcrookston]

I am so new to this that I'm not just wet behind the ears, I'm positively soaking. I didn't fall off the apple cart yesterday - I'm still bumping along the road going "OW OW OW OW OW!"

In the basement right now I've got one gallon of cider that's been fermenting with a champagne yeast + some yeast nutrient for a week. The fermentation has really slowed down in the past few days. This is my first gallon ever - at least, my first gallon using a carboy and airlock and all that. I'm thinking I want to make this into a dry, still cider that will appeal to my Swedish friend who is visiting in January. (She thinks the American palette is FAR too sweet, so she'll probably like a dry cider.) In order to achieve this, is it okay to just let it sit on the lees until mid-December and then bottle it? Or should I move it to a secondary this week sometime, and bottle it later? I'm not really particular about the results here, so long as it's within someone's definition of drinkable.

For discussion, let's call this the Petra batch, since that's my Swedish friend's name.

I have another gallon of cider in the fridge that I'm going to make into the "5 Day Sweet Country Cider" that's stickied in the recipe list. When I do this, is it possible to back-sweeten the fermented cider with fresh preserved cider (potassium sorbate) and rely on the preservatives to kill the yeast? Or is it better to stick with exactly what the recipe says and just pasteurize it on the stove? I'm fine with the stovetop method but I was going to mull the preserved cider on the stove before mixing it with the fermented cider to make a holiday cider for me and my (American) friends to enjoy. This is the holiday cider.

Finally, the big, longer-term question: my dream cider. (I realize this is getting long, and I apologize if this should have been three threads instead of one.) I would ultimately like to brew a sparkling cider that is semi-sweet, buttery/creamy up front in both flavor and mouthfeel, has a solid apple flavor in the middle and a hint of molasses or brown sugar on the finish. Is this possible, and if so how do I go about creating it?

 

[streetmachine]

I just bought 3 gallons of apple cider. I am making 3 (1) gal batches on Wednesday. I will use a champagne yeast, sweet cider yeast and a dry cider yeast. Also planning on boosting the alc with white sugar/ brown sugar/ and apple juice concentrate (seperately). Since it'll be ready for the holidays I'll add cinnamon and nutmeg. Also I hear its better to let it ferment slowly like a lager at lower temps, (ie. The garage)

 

[Skyforger]

First cider - you can just leave it in primary until whenever you want to bottle it. You could also rack it into another vessel so you have less sediment to deal with at that time. Understand that when we talk about dry cider, we mean dry. No sugar whatsoever, a fair amount of acid and tannins from the apples, especially when young (i.e, less than a year or so). Taste it and see if that's what you're going for.

Second - you can back-sweeten with fresh cider, but the preservatives won't kill the yeast. You'll need to take care of that separately, whether by crashing or pasteurizing or whatever. This is because a) the potassium sorbate will become too diluted in the full solution - there's only just enough put in things for it to work; and b), sorbate doesn't kill yeast that's already there, it just prevents it from replicating. Won't do any good in a solution that has yeast in it already. You need campden tablets (sulfites) for that.

As for the third cider, perfection is elusive. But a few hopefully helpful tips: first, a creamy mouthfeel isn't ordinary in cider. You could possibly get something like that with the addition of malto-dextrin, a non-fermentable sugar. A buttery taste can be provided with by some yeasts, such as English ale yeasts, but getting them in the proper quantity is fairly difficult - requiring pretty close attention and meticulous temperature control. Too much and the product tastes like buttered popcorn, and just a bit too much yeast activity and it all disappears. But maybe you were being metaphorical with the 'buttery' description. I've fermented cider with lager yeast before and that gives it a certain rich nose that might be more what you mean. As for the apple taste, don't let it ferment all the way. You lose a lot of the apple flavor by fermenting it dry, and you don't really get it back again by backsweetening. It's easier to not ferment dry if you add some sugar at the beginning of fermentation to raise the OG. Make this brown sugar and you could take care of the final requirement.