Cider-How much sugar to add and what SG to rack at for a Sparkling Drink

[Mick]

Hi all, first time posting on here, i have seen all the helpfull hints
and tips that have been shared on here so hopefully i can jump on the
band-wagon!

I like medium-sweet fizzy cider but am a little aprehensive of racking
too soon into pressure bottles- (champagne and swing-top bottles) to
get a nice fizz.

Normally i would do my seckond and final racking into bottles when the
wine or cider is clear and the SG is under 1.000 if i dont want it to
have a "Sparkle".

But now i do want it fizzy could anyone reccomend a safe SG to bottle
at to get the rite amount of pressure and sweetness if wanting it
fizzy?

I would prefere to bottle it when its still slightly active to save
having to use champagne yeast. But whats your experiences? Or would it
just be easier to pressurise it artificially in pressure barrels with
Gas and tap it off into bottles?

Many thnaks. Mick

[Andrew Lea]

Mick wrote:
> Hi all, first time posting on here, i have seen all the helpfull hints
> and tips that have been shared on here so hopefully i can jump on the
> band-wagon!
>

Welcome to the group.

>
> But now i do want it fizzy could anyone reccomend a safe SG to bottle
> at to get the rite amount of pressure and sweetness if wanting it
> fizzy?

It's like this. If you are using strong re-usable crown capped glass,
or plastic PET, you can prime to an SG up to 1.005 (10 grams sugar per
litre). If you are using proper champagne bottles you can go up to SG
1.010 (20 grams of sugar per litre). Higher than that and you will
likely have explosions and take somebody's eye out. You are unlikely to
retain any sweetness by natural conditioning (unless you have done the
specialist technique of keeving) - all that sugar will ferment away. The
only safe way then is to pasteurise or use an artificial sweetener.

> I would prefere to bottle it when its still slightly active to save
> having to use champagne yeast. But whats your experiences? Or would it
> just be easier to pressurise it artificially in pressure barrels with
> Gas and tap it off into bottles?

This thread is already running (twice!!). In brief, if you use champagne
yeast you may get quite a heavy sediment unless you disgorge which is a
lot of work. If you allow natural yeast carry over your sediment will
probably be lighter but it may take much longer to 'condition'.
Carbonating artificially - the commercial way - is always an option if
you have the kit. Your choice!

Andrew

--
Wittenham Hill Cider Page
http://www.cider.org.uk

[olbol]

Sorry for being dumb. So, there's no 'a bit of yeast' and whatever
yeast it's there, either added or leftover from racking, it will
consume all sugar present in a bottle to deliver fizzy but dry cider?

[Andrew Lea]

Yes. In theory at least, just one yeast cell could divide and multiply
to consume all the sugar present. There is nothing to stop it (unless
nitrogenous nutrients are lacking as they might be be for instance after
keeving).

In cider and wine *all* sugars are totally fermentable. Maybe you are
confused with beer where around 50% of sugars are non-fermentable. This
is the BIG difference which sometimes confuses people with a brewing
background. It is easy to bottle condition a beer and yet to retain
residual sweetness. This cannot be done with cider or wine.

[Dries Muylaert]

In my experience champaign yeast doesn't give excessive lie, if not
added in much greater quantities than needed. It also is fairly easy
removable, that is it gets loose from the bottom of the bottle quite
easy. It is selected for that quality I presume.
Fermentation will be stopped at 6 bar. Yeast doesn't survive more. 6
bar is a lot of pressure. However, in champaign making the sweetness
is added with the liquer after disgorging, that is after removing the
lie, not by residual sugar in a bottle fermentation.
Even if you bottle a clear cider and if there is fermentation, there
will be some form of sediment. Perhaps not even yeast for the greater
part. I can imagine that the change in pressure will lead to all sorts
of things dropping out of the cider. In a good cider this sediment
will be a film at the bottom of the bottle. It will cloud up if you
move the bottle from vertical to horizontal , but believe me, I tried,
it can't be removed. It's in suspension or glued to the bottom,
nothing like champaign yeast. That's the reason why it is accepted in
a traditional cider. If you want to avoid it in a cider with residual
sugar, you must microfilter the cider before bottling, but than
ofcourse there will be no fizz. This microfiltration can also change
the taste of your cider. Reason why I prefer the small lie, and of
course, the fizz that keeps the cider young and fresh. As it should
be.

[Claude Jolicoeur]

There seems to be quite a bit of talking about priming to get a
sparkling cider these days, so here is the way I do it.

First I use Champagne bottles, with plastic mushroom shaped "bouchons"
securely held by a "muselet" (i.e. a little gadget made with metal
wire that holds the bouchon in place). I am not saying that other
types of bottles or stoppers are not good, but when I open a bottle, I
like it to look good, and there is a sort of pleasant ceremonial in
undoing the wire and opening the bouchon - then there is the nice
noise and the bubbles that escape the bottle... Same as you would do
with a bottle of real Champagne, and since I think my cidre is at
least as good as Champagne (yes, I am modest and proud to be so),
there is no reason not to give it the same ceremonial! The only thing
is that I don't have the proper corks - these need special equipment
which is too expensive for me.

Second, I do my mixture pre-bottling in a large plastic bucket (30
litres). I rack my cleared dry cider in this bucket and mix in the
priming sugar and about 1/3 packet of rehydrated Champagne yeast
(sometimes I skip the yeast). I think it is easier to mix the sugar
that way than adding an individual dose to each bottle. I use dextrose
as priming sugar, at a dosage of about 500 ml per 20 litre batch. I
use less if the cider is not completely dry at time of bottling. I
then fill the bottles from this mixture.

So the description above is the procedure I would recommend to
beginners. When you have more experience and a good feeling for your
cider, and you know that it is low in nutrients and may not ferment
all the way to complete dryness, you may try a more risky procedure to
get a naturally semi-sweet or semi-dry sparkling cider...

The first risky procedure is to bottle a few SG degrees above the
point you guess the fermentation will stop. For this you need to
monitor the SG regularely and have a plot of SG against time. You also
need a very slow fermentation in a nutrient depleted cider. If
evrything is right, by May or June, looking at your plot, you may
estimate that the fermentation will stop at about 1.006 for example.
In that particular case, you could bottle when the fermentation is
still active at say SG 1.012 and get the perfect semi-dry mousseux
cidre. You don't need to add any sugar or yeast then since there is
still some active fermentation going. It is however risky because if
you didn't estimate the final SG right, you may get bursting bottles
if the fermentation decides to go to complete dryness... On the other
hand, if you played it on the safe side, you may not get it as
sparkling as you wanted if the fermentation stops at say SG 1.010.

The second risky procedure (although not as risky as the first), is to
let the fermentation go to the point where it gets stuck. Depending on
the nutrient content and if you did a keeve, this point may be
anywhere between SG 1.030 and 1.010 (if lower, there is no real point
in doing this). Normally, this should be between 9 months to over a
year after you started your cider. You may then introduce just the
right amount of yeast nutrient to carry the fermentation another 5
points of SG, and bottle immediately. Hopefully, the nutrients will
just be sufficient to cause the in-bottle fermentation required to get
the perfect mousseux cidre. For this to work, you will need to
experiment with the nutrients available to you. For example, in my
case, the nutrients I can buy in a wine shop is normally rated for a
dosage of one teaspoon per gallon. With some testing, I have found
that 1/8 of a teaspoon in a 5 gallon batch (20 litre) will just be
sufficient to carry fermentation 10 points of SG. So, with a stucked
fermentation at say SG 1.018, I could add 1/16 tsp of nutrient per 20
litres and bottle, to get the perfect semi-sweet sparkling cider. A
cider I did this way won the "Best of Show" grand prize last December
in the Great Lakes Cider and Perry competition - it was from the 2006
harvest, and bottled at a SG of 1.013 in October 2007. The nutrients
introduced at time of bottling were just sufficient to carry it to a
semi-dry mousseux cidre.

And a last point, I normally let my bottles stand for a year before I
drink them. So most of my ciders are drank 2 years after harvest - one
year of fermentation in carboys, and a year in bottles. Patience is
the mother of all virtues for a cidermaker...

Claude

[Mick]

Thanks for very detailed info the information to eveyone. I tend to
find all my beverages fermenting out to dryness as i use neutrient.
Maybe its time to start experementing with not adding neutrient. Me
and a freind are doing some keeved cider at the minuite, which should
turn out to be interesting!

Many thanks. Mick