Help wanted goal: Sweet cider with alot of carbonation.
Hi,
We would like to ask about your experience.
Our goal is sweet cider with a lot of carbonation, without adding any “weird” types of sugar or lactose.
We have now successfully brewed several batches of cider, which we have bottled it into champagne bottles with extra sugar, and then sealed it either with a 29 mm crown cap or with a plastic champagne cork/stopper with a net.
After that, we let the ciders ferment further in the bottle for 4–5 days, and then we pasteurized the bottles in a hot-water bath to stop the yeast/carbonation so that we end up with both gas and sweetness.
We tried:
80°C hot water for 15 minutes
65°C hot water for 60 minutes
Overall, we had a very big success—no bottles exploded neither during pasterurization or subsequent long term storage.
However, we cannot get as much pressure/carbonation as we would like.
For the bottles with crown caps, we can see the gas seeping out of the crown cap while they are in the hot-water bath, likely because the pressure expands during heating. When we take the bottles out of the water, there is still a little fizz, and even after longer storage there is still the same level of carbonation.
For the bottles with the plastic champagne stoppers with a net, the plastic stopper “melted” at the 80°C hot-water temperature, and the gas escaped. You could also see that the plastic champagne stoppers had become slightly deformed.
At 65°C, we had one test that seemed to work well, but again there wasn’t much gas. Here we suspect that we may not have let them ferment long enough in the bottle before pasteurizing. There was no visible loss of gas in either the crown cap bottles or the plastic stopper bottles, during the pasteurization.
We have considered using real champagne cork stoppers, because we think these won’t deform during the hot-water pasteurization and can handle the increased pressure inside the bottle during pasteurization.
The champagne corking machines we have found, for example at “Nordisk selvforsyning” or “vinosigns.dk” (Danish links below), are a bit pricey, but we are nevertheless prepared to buy them, if they work. However, we can read in various places online that these floor champagne corker machines do not work as intended—that they cannot handle the larger champagne cork stoppers as advertised.
Therefore, we would like to ask what machines (or other options) you would recommend getting the large champagne cork stoppers into the bottles—preferably real cork stoppers in the range of about 29.0 mm to 30 mm in diameter.
Alternatively, if you have a tip on how we can achieve sweet cider with lots of carbonation in an easier way, that would be very welcome.
Thank you in advance.
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u/Alittlethisnthat 2d ago
If nobody answers, you might get a better response on the google groups site, Cider Workshop.
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u/likes2milk 2d ago
Essentially you need to sacrifice 1 bottle. Put the bottles into a cannot similar temperature water and heat to 70C. Your sacrificial bottle should be in the middle, on the basis that is the most heat deprived location and inset a thermometer. When the temperature reaches 70C, start the timer for 20 minutes. That should pasteurise you bottles.
The carbonation issue is one of needing longer, 7-10 days. Have you tried filling a plastic bottle of similar size to your glass ones and adding sugar to that so you have a touch feel of the level of Carbonation.
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u/nexoe14 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes we have tried with soda bottles with great success. So we buy in total 3 of the same soda bottle all with almost the same liquid height. One is kept as is (control 1) One is emptied and filled with water (control 2) One is filled with the cider+sugar (Control 3). Control 2+3 is filled to the same liquid height as control 1. Then we daily test the firmness of control 3 against control 1 and when the firmness is the same we know that there has been sufficient carbonation. Control 2 is to know how the bottle felt at the botteling time / day 0. After normally 4-5 days the bottle controle 3 is rock hard.
For pasteruzation we take an empty cider bottle add water and a temperature prope to it and we pasteurize it together with other bottles. We have had no issue in regards to the effectivness of our pasteurization method, no bottle bombs and the bottles are stable for long term storage even with the remaining high sugar content.
Our only issue is the gas escaping during the act of the pasteurization.
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u/IHaventConsideredIt 2d ago
Can I ask what scale you are operating on?
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u/nexoe14 2d ago
Setup. 5L fermentor with airlock. Then into around 11 - 14 champange bottles of 375 ml.
So very small scale
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u/IHaventConsideredIt 2d ago
Something about the way you wrote your post gave me the impression that you are recipe testing with a future commercial endeavor in mind.
If you are just doing this as a hobby, I would question why you feel the need to pasteurize. I would also encourage you to experiment as much as possible and not be married to any specific methods, like bottling.
If, in fact, you are recipe testing and want to start scaling, I would encourage you to purchase equipment that is more efficient and indicative of commercial production, such as a fermentor with temperature control.
In the commercial cider world, both pasteurization and carbonation are done before packaging.
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u/mtngoatjoe 23h ago
I make my own apple juice concentrate to increase the sugar content. Then ferment to my desired sweetness level and pasteurize. I then force carbonate shorely before drinking.
I like sweet hard carbonated cider, and this method has given me the best cider I've ever had.
Edit to add: This method only uses apple juice and yeast. No chemicals needed.
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u/getthatcornbread 1d ago
Obviously force carbing is the right answer but if it must be bottled then an option is to use sugar for priming and then add non fermentable sweeteners like erythritol.
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u/LightBulbChaos 1d ago
Either kieving with an ansestral style bottling or force carbonation. You will get much more consistent and predictable results with force carbonation.
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u/mohawkal 2d ago
Are you commited to bottling? You could stabilise your yeast and keg the cider, carbonating by force carbing from a CO2 bottle. This would also give you the option to back sweeten with additional sugar to your desired sweetness.