Advice: Is my fermentation slowing down enough to keep residual sugar?

[Elias Sommer]

Hello dear cider group! This is my second year / attempt at making cider.

I have around 300 liters from quite tannic bitter sweet Brittany variety apples from 20/30 yr old standard orchards fermenting since mid/late November, though it took a while to get going. (Marie Menard, Douce Moen,..) I would love to keep some residual sugar, so I have racked several times. Since the last racking on the 4^th of February, my FSU has been around 25/23 at a temperature between 6 and 10 degrees Celsius. 

 Current SG is 1019.

In an ideal world, I would like the cider to be petillant / sparkling and have some sugar left, maybe at an SG 1012-1008.

Does this sound achievable or do you reckon it will ferment to dry? Should I rack again soon?

Thank you for any advice.

Elias  

[Patrick McCauley]

Did you use wild yeasts? How clear is the cider? I think the FSUs are too high at this point, and you may need to rack again, depending on the clarification and if there are any lees to rack off of. 

Pat McCauley

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[Elias Sommer]

Hi Patrick. 

Thank you for your reply- 

Yes, wild yeast, ripe apples, sweated for several weeks,  added a small dose of sulphite after pressing (as per Andrea Lea's book) and it took long to get going. 

I also forgot to mention that the juice was around 1060 SG at the start. 

The juice is not clear, and a pretty dark colour. After the last racking on the 4th, I took a bottle of it inside to observe and to let it ferment faster, 

and there is some lees that has settled at the bottle bottom.  Can't tell how much there is for the main batch, as it is in a stainless steel fermenter. 

It also tastes very nice for now! 

Thank you again,

Eli

[Patrick McCauley]

Hey Eli. For stopping fermentation short of dryness, clarity is very important, as the yeast can remain suspended in a cloudy cider, and there is likely residual nutrients in a cloudy juice. I suspect addition rackings will be needed if you hope to stop this fermentation short of dryness, and even then, sometimes the cider just does what it does. For my part, I like the cider to be going very very slow, and be very clear by time I get to 1.020-1.025. At that point, I only want to be losing 2-3 gravity points in a month's time. Not sure what the math is on that, but it's a low FSU rate. For a new cider maker, it sounds like you're on the right track! Nice work! In the future, if you really want it to remain semi-sweet, I would recommend keeving or a pre-fermentation debourbage. The debourbage works great on a cider like yours that was very slow to start. It's amazing how much sediment will drop out of a freshly pressed cider after a week or two. Good luck!

Pat McCauley

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[Claude Jolicoeur]

I agree with what Pat said. In my opinion, your main problem is that the cider is hazy, and this makes it rather unpredictable. Plus, you'd get heavy sediments in the bottles, and this is very good to provoke gushing.

If your cider was clear, you'd be in a good position, with a racking about now, the FSU would drop to probably around 10. You'd leave it until it gets to about 1.013-1.015 and then bottle to get about 3 to 4 points of SG drop in the bottles.

You could try a fining to clear the cider before bottling. I often do that on ciders that weren't keeved.

Le vendredi 21 février 2025 à 10:39:36 UTC-5, Patrick McCauley a écrit :

At that point, I only want to be losing 2-3 gravity points in a month's time. Not sure what the math is on that, but it's a low FSU rate.

Pat, that makes about 10 FSU, which is a pretty safe fermentation rate.

[Elias Sommer]

Thank you both for your replies! 

It sounds like it may not happen this year, alas! Though I do like a very dry cider, I fear my Breton neighbours would find it "trop dur". 

I may still try and rack again now and monitor the speed, then clarify before bottling when the time comes: 

Claude, is there a kind of finings product you would recommend? 

I also have a smaller 50L batch going, on which I used PME and calcium chloride. 

Unfortunately I had to rack it before a thick chapeau had formed, as I was leaving for work abroad, 

and when I came back a couple  of months later, the juice was very clear but had a  lot of brain-like white matter floating around.

I racked it then but the fermentation is probably slightly faster  than the main batch, maybe 1.5 points drop per week, currently at 1010. 

I am also tempted to put it in champagne/cidre style bottles soon and open a bottle every few weeks to monitor, but from the little I understand this will 

probably result in explosions... 

Thank you again for your time and expertise,

Eli

[Claude Jolicoeur]

Le mercredi 26 février 2025 à 18:30:35 UTC-5, Elias Sommer a écrit :

Thank you both for your replies! 

It sounds like it may not happen this year, alas! Though I do like a very dry cider, I fear my Breton neighbours would find it "trop dur". 

Where about in Brittany are you? I know some makers over there who make some "extra-brut" (François Séhédic's in Fouesnant is a very nice example) and these are getting more and more popular.

 

I may still try and rack again now and monitor the speed, then clarify before bottling when the time comes: 

Claude, is there a kind of finings product you would recommend? 

What I use most often is a silica solution such as Kieselsol, Bevasil or Levasil, followed by Chitosan. I also have had success with Bentonite. The main thing is to determine the right dosage, as the recommended dosages are often insufficient for cider. Ideally you'd make some tests in small 1L bottles (or even smaller) with different dosages to find what you need to make your cider drop clear.

[Elias Sommer]

Hi, Claude! 

I am in the Trégor region, Cotes-D'Armor Department, next to Pontrieux. 

I will try  and visit the Cidrerie you mentioned, and surely look out for some bottles, thank you! 

Actually, a good part of the apples in my mix this year come from Eric Baron's orchard from Domaine de Kervéguen, who I saw included in your book! 

He kindly offered me and my partner to pick from his orchard and he has been incredibly open and welcoming as soon we mentioned our interest in making cidre- 

in fact, all the makers that I have spoken to so far in the region have gone out of their way to be helpful. 

(Eric Baron also makes a very brut cuvée, "cuvée du paysan" I believe it was called, which I really liked, but this too had a small amount of residual sugar, a level  am aiming for) 

Kind regards,

Eli