First cider, read through the posts but still have questions

[Dike]

I just bought a gallon of fresh apple cider, and a half gallon of strawberry apple cider, from my local farmers market. I'm going to make two separate test batches. I've read through the posts and it seems that I'm going to end up with a fairly dry cider at the end of this. I prefer slightly sweeter ciders, and understand that back sweetening is the easiest way to accomplish this. However, I don't have a kegging system and am stuck with bottle conditioning. Most of the posts I've read suggest using potassium sorbate to stop the yeast and then add a bit more juice to sweeten it up. It seems that this would prevent any carbonation from forming in the bottle. Is there a way to get a slightly sweet, carbonated cider, in a bottle?

What yeast should I be using to get a slightly sweeter cider?

Should I be adding extra sugars, raisons etc?

Is yeast nutrient required?

Is there anything special I should be adding to the strawberry apple cider?

Is it okay to ferment this in the plastic bottles it came in, with an airlock added?

[Bugeater]

This would be a little tricky. The way to end up with a slightly sweet cider without sorbate would be to use a low attenuating yeast and/or sweetening up the juice to the point that the yeast would crap out before using up all the sugar. This, however, would not leave viable yeast for carbonation.

I did have some limited success a couple years ago by backsweetening with some Splenda. It is mostly unfermentable, but I didn't like the flavor. You might be able to do the same thing with a little malto-dextrine.

I have done cider with all sorts of yeasts. Champagne and wine yeasts chew through everything and turn the cider bone dry. My favorite is the Wyeast sweet mead yeast, but you do need to sorbate and back sweeten a bit. I had a nice cider am few years ago that a guy in our club made using a Belgian yeast.

Lots of room to experiment with ciders, but kegging certainly gives you more options. Something to watch out for with the juice is to be sure to taste it first. A nice tart juice seems to work best. Some variety of apples make a really bland juice. You can still use those, but you will need to add something like raisins for the tannic acid. The sugars you add to sweeten/fortify the cider is another area to play with. I like to add turbinado sugar to mine.

Have fun with your cider, and let us know how it comes out.

Wayne

[Dike]

Thanks for the reply Bugeater. You've been really helpful in every thread I've started on here!

I got the sweet mead yeast you suggested and decided to just go incredibly simple. It will be dry, but so be it. I just warmed the juice to warm temp and pitched the yeast in both the apple, and the strawberry/apple ciders. They're small batches; a half gallon of the straw/apple, and a full gallon of the plain apple. About how long should I plan on letting these sit in the fermentors? About 3 weeks to a month?

I think I may experiment a little at bottling. I'll prime half the batch for bottle conditioning. I think I'll try back sweetening the other half, and adding some potassium sorbate.

[dmtaylor]

Bugeater is right on the money in every respect.

I too would choose the sweet mead yeast. Then sorbate and sweeten and you will likely have some carbonation after several weeks in the bottle. The nice thing about sorbate is that it prevents the living yeast from reproducing anymore but it doesn't kill them outright, so you can have live yeast in there without fermentation going super crazy and ending up with bottle bombs.

I would also avoid Splenda. It worked, but only for a couple of months. After that it seemed to degrade and put an artificially sweet flavor in the cider that was not good. But for a couple of months, I honestly didn't notice anything artificial. So if you're going to drink it real fast, it could work. But I really can't recommend it.

You are right -- a good cider is going to take roughly a month to ferment out. If the gravity falls too fast, add the sorbate in two charges -- one when the gravity gets down to around 1.010-1.015, and the other on bottling day. So you'll need to test gravity at several points along the way.

[spiderwrangler]

dm and bug, have either of you used or heard of anyone using that newer sweetener stuff? Truvia?

+1 to everything they've said, a sweet carbonated cider is going to be tougher to get if you are wanting to bottle condition. Not sure that malto-dextrin would add much sweetness, does it change during the ferment? I've tasted it dry and it didn't taste like anything.

Dike, do you know if the apple component is the same between the two, just strawberries in one? Be interesting to have the side by side, I haven't used strawberries myself, but general consensus seems to be that the flavor is really lost during ferment, be interested to see what you pick up between your batches.

[Dike]

I imagine that the apple component is the same in each batch, but I can't say for sure. It came from the same farm, but the kid at the stand didn't have a ton of info, aside from that fact that it had been passed through UV instead of pasteurized.

[pfooti]

Malto-dextrin in my experience doesn't taste like much. Some lactose might help- as I understand it, lactose doesn't get digested and is how people sweeten stouts. I've never brewed with it as I'm lactose intolerant.

The only other thing I could think of would be bottling in an EZ-cap bottle (grolsch-style), bottle fermenting, and having a pipet setup where you could open the bottles, dose them with the mixture of sugar, sorbate, and metabisulfate and close the bottles. If you overcarbed a bit and did the whole operation at very low temps (~33F) (and quickly), I bet you'd be able to preserve the carbonation. Another spitballing idea, since I've never tried this either, although I'm thinking about it because I am about to run into the same problem with my ginger ale. It's way too dry already, and it's not even carbed yet.

[spiderwrangler]

You could serve it with an ounce or so of juice or cider.