Working out when to bottle slow fermenting sweet/medium ciders

[hugo shuttleworth]

I make my cider in a barn in Devon. I made three batches in 2025: a Somerset Redstreak that fermented fully by Christmas and was bottled early; a late blend that I keeved; and another late blend that I racked several times in the hope of making a medium dry Pet Nat. 

Fermentation of the latter two slowed to a crawl over the winter but I expected it to pick up pace and neither have, despite average temperatures over 10 degrees for at least a month since early April.

Both ciders are still fermenting very slowly as we approach mid-May and showing promise. My question is, given the difficulty of calculating FSU with temperature variations in the barn, can I not just take off samples, ferment to dryness at say 25 degrees then work out the SG to bottle at (0.005 above the SG of the finished dry samples)?

Many thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Hugo

[Terry Chalk]

There may be more technical replies than this, but what you are suggesting is more-or-less what I do, i.e. ferment down as far as it goes then add primer (juice, sugar syrup, etc) up to a SG that reflects the carbonation and residual sweetness that I want. I hot water pasteurise to stop any further fermentation once the bottles are carbonated enough so the "excess" SG remains as sweetness. A bit rough and ready, but bottle pressure between 1.5 and 1.8 bar is what I aim for (i.e. about 0.005 of fermentation). The exact amount of carbonation really doesn't fuss me as anything between 2 and 3 volumes is fine as is modest sweetness in the order of SG 1.005 (10g/L of sugar or about 1/2 tsp in a cup of coffee). But I am doing this as a hobby, not for commercial purposes so absolute precision isn't needed.

[gareth chapman]

Yes you can try that but if your cider is slow because it is nutrient depleted then a rise in temp might not have much effect.

Personally I would also take sg readings and try and work with the FSUs or at least try and get the cider to a 1 point of sg drop in about every 16 to 20 days before bottling.

[Hugo Shuttleworth]

Thanks very much for your replies.

I realise I said 'ferment to dryness' when what I meant was 'ferment until it stops'... I am aiming for residual sweetness.

I will keep taking SG readings and hope I haven't overshot. I'd prefer not to add priming sugar but I'll definitely look into pasteurising...

--
--
Visit our website: http://www.ciderworkshop.com
 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Cider Workshop" Google Group.
By joining the Cider Workshop, you agree to abide by our principles. Please see http://www.ciderworkshop.com/resources_principles.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cider Workshop" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cider-worksho...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cider-workshop/dfe78a64-1d4e-43bd-bc08-2cf9a7a03f61n%40googlegroups.com.