How long to wait for champagne yeast to do its thing?

[thaddeus333]

I am attempting to create a hard cider like a Hornsby's. I have added my juice, my brown sugar, my pectin and pitched 2 packets of champagne yeast exactly 2 weeks ago today. I transfered from the first fermentor to a second at day 7 and have been in the second since. I did not see much if any gas blow off through my airlock, but there was the faint smell of yeasties when I made the swap to the 2nd fermentor. I currently have no action in the airlock whatsoever now and wanted to know opinions on when I should bottle? Is no gas off a sign of a dead batch? How can I test the viability of the batch before bottling the whole batch? I have seen some recipes that say wait nearly 30 days to bottle while I have seen some as short as 7 days. Any help would be great help, this is my 2nd brew ever so I am a newby. Thanks in advance.

[Bugeater]

The best way to answer this question is for you to check the gravity with a hydrometer. There all sorts of factors that affect how fast a yeast will work. The temperature plays a big role. A very high starting gravity (i.e. lots of sugars) will be detrimental to yeast health and will slow fermentation. Nutrients, or lack thereof, will also affect yeast growth. As such, time is not a good measure of whether or not a yeast is finished. I've seen fermentation completely finished in 7 days and I have had other take six weeks or more.

Bubbling through an airlock is also not a good indication of fermentation. There are lots of factors that will cause bubbling or prevent bubbling that don't have anything to do with fermentation. A drop in barometric pressure (rain storm moving in) will cause bubbling even when there is no fermentation. Likewise a rise in pressure will have the opposite effect. Changes in temperature will do the same thing.

One more item, you shouldn't do that first racking until fermentation is mostly complete. By doing this after only a week, you have removed a majority of the yeast from your cider. This will increase the time necessary for the fermentation to reach completion. Don't worry about dead yeast affecting the flavor unless you have let it go for 6 or 7 weeks. Older brewing texts have instilled exaggerated fears of autolysis far beyond what they should be.

Who knows? Your cider may be done. Check the gravity and see if it is where it should be or at least taste it. If it tastes fine, go ahead and drink it. If you are bottling and don't have a hydrometer to check the gravity, I would wait another week.

Wayne

[seanhagerty]

I'm with Bug on this one. Wait a long time before you rack to secondary. I personally go longer than the 6-7 weeks, and have waited more than 6 months for some of the meads I have made and have waited a couple months on some of my lagers.

Take a hydro sample and figure out whats going on.

When in doubt, do nothing. It doesnt hurt to let things sit longer than they need, but bad things can happen if you rack too soon.


Sean

[thaddeus333]

Thank you so much. This helped a lot. I will check the hydrometer level today. Thanks again.

[thaddeus333]

OK so I checked the hydrometer level. It is reading an 1.000 on specific gravity, 0 on alc % and 0 on sugars. It tastes a lot like wine. Is this normal, can I fix this or do I just have a bucket full of junk? I don't understand what happened to the alcohol %. Thanks for your help.

[BrewBum]

OK so I checked the hydrometer level. It is reading an 1.000 on specific gravity, 0 on alc % and 0 on sugars. It tastes a lot like wine. Is this normal, can I fix this or do I just have a bucket full of junk? I don't understand what happened to the alcohol %. Thanks for your help.

What was the starting gravity?

1.000 definitely means that alcohol was produced. The zeros I think mean what the potential is from that starting point, so do read teh alc% or sugars number. You have know what you started with and what you end with.

You have made very dry wine/cider is my guess and it might go below 1.000 depending on long it has been in primary.

[Bugeater]

OK so I checked the hydrometer level. It is reading an 1.000 on specific gravity, 0 on alc % and 0 on sugars. It tastes a lot like wine. Is this normal, can I fix this or do I just have a bucket full of junk? I don't understand what happened to the alcohol %. Thanks for your help.

1.000 sounds normal for a cider fermented with a champagne yeast. It will taste dry like a wine because there are almost no sugars left. The alcohol % scale is meaningless at this point. That scale is used to estimate what the alcohol % of a must or wort would be if all the sugars present were converted to alcohol. Thus this would only be useful before fermentation and only if you get 100% attenuation. This scale is pretty irrelevant for beer since the final gravities will vary widely.

The yeast you used is pretty aggressive and will normally take the gravity down to 1.000 or even lower. If this is too dry for you, next time use a less attenuative yeast like an english ale yeast. To sweeten this back up you can add an unfermentable sugar like lactose. Alternatively you can leave it dry and mix with a little apple juice at serving time.

One last tidbit, a dry cider won't taste much like apples just like wine doesn't taste like grapes.

Wayne