Beer Forum

Okay, I've made my first attempt at cider this week. Last Saturday, I used 4 gallons of Gravestein apple cider (pasteurized, 100% juice) 1 gallon of water with 4 pounds of orange blossom honey dissolved into it. It was fermented with a packet of white wine yeast at abut 65-70F, with Fermaid K as a nutrient.

It started with a pretty vigorous fermentation. which lasted a total of 5 days, when it finished. I just opened the lid of the fermentor and it gave a slight sulphury aroma, but it tasted dry without much apple flavor. Is this normal? Should I rack it to another carboy for conditioning, or kill off the yeast and back-sweeten it with some more juice or concentrate?

I've made one more cider than you, so I guess that makes me an expert.

It's going to be dry, because damn near all the sugars in there will have been fermented. If you were to take a gravity reading you might very well be below 1.000. (Hey! 100%+ apparant attenuation!) The cider is going to continue to throw a lot of lees (i.e., more junk is going to fall out of suspension), so you'll want to rack it once, maybe twice more until all of them seem to have dropped out.

As for the apple taste, I've found - cannot explain why, but have found - that the apple taste starts to show up again when the cider is about six months old. Not that it tastes exactly like fresh cider again, mind you, but that it starts to taste a little more like something again.

Hehe, I too have also just made one cider. I did mine with a wine yeast as well because I was looking for a dryer version. You could try a secondary fermentation with some apple concentrate or puree. Next time maybe try the same recipe but use ale yeast. It is less alcohol tolerant and will leave behind some of those apple flavors.
Hope it helps!

Hi guys,
Not to split hairs here, but my understanding was that apple juice+ honey+yeast = cyser! In this case, you used too little honey for your batch. If you can specify the type of yeast, we can figure out how much more fermentable sugars you need to add in order to end up with a dry, semi-sweet or sweet cyser that is if you want to continue fermenting it.
What I would do at this point, would be to cold crash the batch - put it in the fridge for 3 - 4 days to put to sleep all the yeasties and then rack it to another carboy on top of metabisulfide and sorbate. That will take care of all yeasties and prevent refermentations when you backsweeten. Observe for another 3 - 4 days and finally, rack again on top of frozen apple juice. Bringing up the sweet level, even a little, will enhance the apple flavor.

Hope that helped,
Brewbear