Bottle Priming Questions

[bea...@gmail.com]

Hello,

My cider has been maturing for about 6 months, very clear and ready for bottling soon.  I usually force-carbonate but this year I will bottle prime some of the batches and have a few questions I was hoping some of you could help answer. Thanks very much:)

John

1) Any advice on type of sugar? I have a liquid invert, corn sugar,  table sugar.  

2) I have looked at some bottle priming calculators, which suggested differing amounts of sugar.  Any advice on amount of sugar to add for carbonation or good reference guide to calculate?

3) How long should cider be matured AFTER bottle priming?   (Note: The cider will have previously been matured for about 7 months prior to bottle priming)

4) What is the best method for addition of sugar for bottle priming:  a) mix sugar into entire cider batch (5 gal) and then bottle OR b)  add sugar into individual bottles ?

3) If I mix the sugar into the cider,  would that add any undesirable oxygen during the mixing?

4)  Would it be ok to mix the sugar and cider in my keg. Shake it up and then bottle the cider from my keg using my counter-pressure filler (beer gun) ? 

5)  Is there a difference in the longevity of cider that has been force-carbonated compared to bottle primed?  Will one have a longer shelf life or impart different flavours or mouth feel over the other?  

[Matthew Moser Miller]

Hi John,

I've always done bottle-conditioning the ten years I've made cider (and for beer as well, though I know that's not strictly relevant here), so:

1. I use corn sugar/dextrose if I've got it, as it's neutral, fully fermentable and has little to no effect on flavor. White table sugar can work in a pinch.

2. The amount of sugar to add depends on the carbonation level you're going for in the cider (and, crucially, what carbonation level your bottles can tolerate). There are certainly more scientific ways to do it, but I use the dosages recommended for a given # of atms of pressure from the calculator site(I use Brewer's Friend, though I'd be interested to hear what others use). That site tells me a given value of sugar in oz, which I then weigh out if I'm feeling finicky or convert to volume using a powdered sugar calculator (which converts weight to volume). My target level of carb varies depending on the batch's tannin's etc., but I usually aim for between 2.25-2.75atms, which is within my margin for error for my bottles even if they had a little RS and lots of dissolved CO2.

3. After bottling, I'd bottle condition for at least a month, ideally longer. You get a lot of your CO2 produced before then, but it takes a while to equalize throughout the liquid (in my experience, at least). You've also roused the yeast, so waiting longer lets that yeast die, drop out of suspension, and hopefully form a heavier cake that will leave you a clearer product when you open the bottle.

4. I've always found it easiest to draw off enough of the cider form the batch that it dissolves my priming sugar fully (I also add my bottling dose of sulfite to this mix). Then, I slowly stir it into the whole batch again, trying to gently circulate up from the bottom so the dosage gets equally dispersed throughout. Dosing each bottle with sugar seems like a) imprecise, unless you're making a solution for greater accuracy, and b) a ton of unnecessary finicky work, ESPECIALLY if you're trying to be accurate.

3 (II). You will be oxygenating the cider some at priming, just as you do when you move it to your bottling fermentor. This is one of the many reasons to add a touch of sulfites at bottling, as an antioxidant. Some oxygen would also not be the absolute worst thing, given that you're having your yeast referment in a contained vessel; if it's a very reductive environment, you can get additional off flavors.

4 (II). I've never done that with the shaken-in-keg approach, so somebody else will have to weigh in on that. But I would think that doing so would knock CO2 out of solution, either lowering your final CO2 levels or (if you allow it to redissolve) meaning you'll start bottling after giving the yeast a chance to start working on the priming sugar, which I'd think would make it more likely to foam.

5. There's an argument that aging on fine lees (which is effectively what bottle conditioning is) allows the lees to work as an antioxidant, absorbing oxygen that would otherwise bond with the cider. Extended lees contact is also how you get some of the biscuity notes in sparkling wines, and (I think?) there's some recent research about the breakdown of lees increasing mouthfeel and perceived sweetness (though I can't find the study I'm thinking of at the moment). I, for one, prefer bottle conditioning. I think it lasts longer and ages better since there's continued microbial breakdown. That said, it will also probably be less STABLE (i.e., unchanging). But I think unless you're sterile filtering into your kegging, you've got a similar (albeit reduced) microbial presence that you would have if you bottle conditioned.

Hope that helps,

Matt

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[bea...@gmail.com]

Hi Matt,

Thanks very much for your detailed observations and advice. Can you clarify what you mean in question #4. You suggest that shaking up the cider with priming sugar in the keg may "knock C02 out of solution".  I would be adding a little C02 to my keg before I shake it,  therefore I would think it may increase the C02 rather than decrease..would it not?     After mixing the cider and priming sugar in the keg,  I was planning to transfer the cider from keg to bottles right away,  so that bottle conditioning (fermentation) would occur in the bottles,  not the keg. Does this seem reasonable?  

John

[Matt Moser Miller]

Hi John,

It may be reflective of my inexperience with the keg and pressurized format (even at the commercial cider work I’ve done, we didn’t do much of any pressurized kegging)—my assumption was that the shaking would agitate the liquid, knocking the CO2 out of suspension (temporarily). I was under the impression that, if kept under that pressure, it would take some time for the CO2 to be reabsorbed into solution. I thought that the amount of time it would take to reabsorb would mean the yeast would start fermenting the priming sugar; in either case, I would expect increased foaming either from the off gassing CO2 with immediate bottling or from the increased flocculation points/turbidity the growing yeast pop of a delayed bottling.

But as I say, most of that is theoretical/conjecture from me; it’s possible that Martin Thoburn, who is active on these boards, may have more experience with the bottle conditioning from a sugar-primed keg? Or others, of course.

Hope that clarified things!

Matt Moser Miller

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 1, 2021, at 3:25 PM, bea...@gmail.com <bea...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Matt,

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[Southernmost cider]

Hey Matt, would you use that same dose of dextrose if you were doing your in bottle ferment in tandem with yeast or is that just for sugar on its own?

[Wayne Bush]

For what it is worth, my practices on bottle priming are quite different to Matthew's.  I would respond to your questions as follows:

1.  You can use a lot of different types of sugar, but plain old granulated sugar works great and produces nice, fine bubbles.  Try a few different ones and see what you like best.

2.   Andrew Lea's book has good info on amount of sugar to use.  I use 10 grams per 75 cl bottle.  After disgorging, the result is nice, light, petillant .  Make sure you're using the correct weight/strength of bottle for the amount of sugar you are adding.  

3.   The longer the better.  In a warm place, the sugar should have fermented after about two weeks, but I agree a month is probably the minimum you'd want to mature in the bottle.  I've matured in the bottle for a couple of years and it keeps getting better.

4.    I add a bit of yeast to the cider in the bottling tank to make sure there is enough still active in the matured cider to do the job, but I add the sugar to each bottle individually.  It is not all that time consuming, and that way I can be sure the exact amount I want is in each bottle.  I would be a bit worried about the potential of uneven distribution of sugar throughout the bottling tank otherwise, but maybe this is unfounded.   I bottle 300 litres per session.  

5.  Put CO2 in the bottling tank to help minimize oxygen pickup while making any additions, and while filling the tank.

6.  I haven't tried mixing sugar and cider in a keg, but that process is essentially the charmat method.  I know of someone who has come up with a whole network of kegs that he uses in this way--and he's won lots of awards in the UK.  Google Tony Lovering of Halfpenny Cider.  If you contact him, he is wonderful about sharing information.

7.  Re longevity, don't know--I think bottled cider has relatively indefinite shelf-life.  But bottom line in my opinion is that bottle conditioned cider will by definition be better, higher quality, more complex than force-carbonated cider.   

[Matthew Moser Miller]

Hi Southernmost (not sure of your actual name),

I'm not quite sure I understand your question? I almost never add yeast at bottling (the only exception being one cider I bottled after a year and a half in primary/on gross lees), since I usually rely on there still being enough viable yeast since it's usually 6 months at most since the start of primary. When I rack before bottling (usually the day before), I tend to give it a very imprecise dusting of dextrose to start the process of rousing the yeast and to give it a slight layer of CO2 as they wake up and start chomping (though this is probably wishful thinking). Does that answer your question? If not, explain in more detail and I'll see what I can offer.

Wayne:

I think we're actually in agreement on most of these--the main reason I use dextrose is it dissolves more easily/with less agitation than larger crystal sugar. I've used table sugar when out of dextrose and it's been fine, and table sugar is what we used at Eve's for priming some of the traditional method ciders there without any problems.

I can see your concern about inadequate distribution for adding the priming sugar in bulk; for my home cider, I'm not really doing more than 8 gallon at a time. But at Eve's, we'd be working with 1000+ liter tanks and do the bulk dosing without issue.

The one thing I would disagree with: dosing each bottle individually means you're weighing out 10g of sugar 400 times/ bottling session, right? That just sounds incredibly time-consuming, and with way more opportunities to under- or overshoot the mark. But maybe it's that I have more confidence in my ability to measure once correctly than be consistently accurate...

Best,

Matt Moser Miller

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[John Pearce]

Thanks very much Wayne, you've given me a lot to consider and I will try to connect with Tony for a follow up question on a keg / charmat aproach. 

John

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[Wayne Bush]

Matt, thanks for your further posting.  I am really interested in your comment that you primed large quantities with bulk dosing with no problems--maybe I should try it.  Can you share anything more about the procedure/mechanics?  I bottle from a 300 litre tank with a mixer on it, which I hate to use for more than a few seconds at a time because I can just imagine oxygen jumping into the cider every time it is on.  How did you actually carry out the dosing on large volumes at Eves?  I'd greatly appreciate anything you can share about the specific steps/procedures for preparing the priming sugar (dissolving, dilution, etc) and blending it effectively into the volume to be bottled.  Do you need to keep stirring the bottling tank to make sure the sugar remains distributed throughout the tank?  Cheers, Wayne

[Albert Johnson]

Hi Wayne

At Ross on Wye we always add our priming sugar to the bulk containers - bottling from 220L blue plastic barrels, and 660L/1000L IBCs. I don't think we have any significant bottle to bottle variance at all within the same batch. Our method of 'mixing in' is to circulate the cider through a pump once we've added our priming sugar, and we also usually add some 'live fermenting juice' from the most recent season as usually we are bottling cider more than 12 months old. We bottle using a gravity filler that has a holding tank filled via pump - we just redirect the outflow of the pump to the barrel of waiting cider and circulate for 15 mins while we get the rest of the bottle shed ready.

Normally we have dissolved 1kg of sugar in about 1.5L of water to add in this way, but following Matt's post earlier in the thread, I've tried dissolving granulated sugar in a 3L jug of cider (without heating it) and bottled three batches this way. The sugar seemed to dissolve just as well as in boiled water, waiting to see how it turns out!

Cheers

Albert

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[Wayne Bush]

Hi Albert--that description is a great help--thank you.  I will try it the next time I bottle.  I have a similar gravity bottler and pump, and pumping it sounds like a better way to mix it--less oxygen pickup.  I'll give it a go!  Best, Wayne