Cider Beginner Gone Wrong (Maybe) - Suggestions Please!?

[bbbbeeer]

Hi Everyone,

I borrowed a friend's press and raided my parents apple trees and set about making my own cider with a kind "what could possibly go wrong" kind of attitude...

Pressed about 3 gallons of juice.... added 2/3 sachet of cider yeast.... It fermented a lot for about a week... then slowed and I left it about another 2 weeks before 'racking off' into another fermentation bucket...

Slightly confused by the huge range of recipes/instructions I found when googling, I then decided to bottle about a gallon (with a tiny bit of brewing sugar) and then skim off the 'scum' that had appeared on the top and add some more sugar (dissolved in a bit of water) to the rest.

Going on what a friend said, this should have restarted fermentation, but I could see no visible signs of this.... so... I thought maybe there's no yeast left in there... and added another 1/2 sachet.... and there's still not a lot going on four/five days later....

What looks like some yeast is floating on the surface...

Any suggestions for where to go form here?! Any help much appreciated!

Shall I just go ahead and bottle it and hope for the best!?

Thanks,

Sam

 

[RobWalker]

take a gravity reading mate, only way to really tell.

 

[bbbbeeer]

Looks like about 1.018 to me....?

 

[graysalchemy]

Firstly what was the gravity of the cider you bottled? Cider should ferment down to 1.0 or below. By the sounds of it it was still active when you bottled it, this is dangerous especially if you used glass bottles.

Do you know how much sugar you added second time? And also has the temperature changed. You need a constant temp of between 18 - 21c. Anything lower and it will be slow. If you added to much sugar then the yeast will eventually reach a point were the alcohol leval is toxic to the yeast. What I would do is give it a gentle stir to get the yeast of the bottom and leave it somewhere warm in the temp range as above. I wouldn't bottle it because if it did continue to ferment the bottles would explode.

You say you were a little confused may I ask why you decided to bottle some and then add more sugar? It just seems a little odd.

 

[alphacento]

Maybe you can try to make an yeast starter to see if it gets the fermentation process going again.

For what the bottled cider is concerned I would be careful when you open it.

Take care

 

[Crastney]

Hi Everyone,
I borrowed a friend's press and raided my parents apple trees and set about making my own cider with a kind "what could possibly go wrong" kind of attitude...

Oh dear...

...
Any suggestions for where to go form here?! Any help much appreciated!

Shall I just go ahead and bottle it and hope for the best!?

Thanks,

Sam

My suggestion would be, if it's in a sealed container, with a bubbler, to leave it somewhere warm ish (~20 deg C), for at least another couple of weeks, whilst you learn more about the process, and keep an eye on what it's doing. Then take a hydrometer reading, and depending on result go from there.

I would definitely not bottle it now, 1.018 is far too high, and as others have said, you risk bottles exploding. (and not in an "as you open them, pop, fizz" type thing but as in "sat in the cupboard, and suddenly going BANG, glass and cider everywhere" kind of way)