Apple Cider making

It's the first time I am making cider, I have juiced my apples and added the yeast. The first couple of nights the airlock was going nuts, bubbles every 10 to 20 seconds now it has slowed down a lot to bubbles every 1 to 2 minutes, is this right?

Reply to
jamesjaspersimmons
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Posted to another group due to lack of activity at rural group.

Reply to
Dean Hoffman

Reply to
nestork

This web site won't let me edit a post more than once for some reason. So, the following is how I meant to revise that last post:

You won't hear the fermentation in the primary fermenter because of the foam at the surface. You have to wait for the foam to start breaking up before you'll see bubbles in the open areas of juice and hear a "fiiizzzzz" sound coming from all the bubbles breaking at the surface of the juice.

You don't want to add sugar while your juice is in a secondary fermenter (the big bottle) because the foam that's produced will overwhelm the air lock and you'll have foam coming out of it instead of CO2 bubbles.

So, if you want to fix this batch of cider, sterilize a plastic pail large enough to hold your entire batch, siphon your apple juice into the pail and stir in anywhere from 4 to 8 pounds of sugar for every 5 gallons of juice you're fermenting. Then cover the pail with plastic and tie the plastic down loosely around the pail so that the CO2 can escape. I like to use clear plastic garbage bags because their transparancy allows you to see what's going on inside the primary fermenter (the pail). (Often, though, the fog that forms on the inside of the plastic makes it hard to see what's happening without the use of a strong light.

Within 24 hours you should have foam at the surface of your juice. Once the foam starts to break and you see open areas of liquid juice at the surface, then siphon the juice into your secondary fermenter and use your air lock. You might wait and extra couple of days after you see the first open areas at the surface of the juice. That's because the sooner you transfer to the secondary fermenter (the big bottle) the greater the liklihood that the amount of CO2 produced will overwhelm the air lock and cause foam to spew out of it. Also, when you siphon a liquid, you lower the pressure on it causing CO2 to come out of solution. So, after "racking" or siphoning your cider into the secondary fermenter (the big bottle) you'll notice that the fermentation appears to have stopped. It hasn't stopped. It's just that CO2 came out of solution with the siphoning, and the juice is no longer saturated with CO2, so the CO2 that is produced by fermentation is going into solution into the juice. Once the juice is once again saturated with CO2, continued fermentation will cause your air lock to start bubbling again.

Don't bottle until the fermentation is effectively finished. Otherwise the fermentation that continues inside the bottles will result in your cider being under pressure, and in a worst case horror scenario, that could be a little dangerous if someone dropped the bottle and it shattered.

Reply to
nestork

It could be right, or not. If you are telling the truth, it's right. If you're not telling the truth, it's not right.

. Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus

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Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Been a long time since I made wine but this is essentially the same thing. You would judge final alcohol content by intial specific gravity. I would use a wine yeast that was tolerant to so many ppm sulfur dioxide to knock out other bad yeasts. Usually run primary fermentation in a large covered food safe covered garbage type can then secondary slow fermentation in a jar with a bubbler. When bubbles stop, it is safe to bottle. Beer is made similarly except you brew to a certain specific gravity leaving enough sugar to ferment in the bottle and carbonate or let go flat and add sugar.

Also made root beer for kids. You mix extract with sugar and yeast, immediately bottle and after a day or two refrigerate to stop fermentation.

Reply to
Frank

Well you understand the principle well enough, but you've got the idea wrong.

Napoleon Bonepart recognized the importance of wine to France's economy and commissioned the emminent French scientist, Louis Pasteur, to find out why some batches of wine would turn into vinegar. This was the biggest scientific mystery of the 18th century, on par with our quest to find black matter in the universe. Louis Pasteur that discovered that several different types of natural yeasts grow on the surface of grapes, and one kind will turn the sugar into acetic acid while the other kind will turn sugar into alcohol.

Both kinds of yeast exist naturally on the grape's skin, and the vinegar kills the wine yeast while the alcohol kills the acetic acid yeast, so whichever yeast gets the upper hand at the beginning of fermentation generally goes on to win the war and convert the grape juice to either alcohol or acetic acid.

It was Camden tablets, named after the town of Camden in France where Pasteur made this discovery, and Camden tablets are now what we call sodium or potassium metabisulphate, which are the chemicals we use to sterilize our equipment.

Pasteur's solution to the problem was to use sodium metabisulphate to kill ALL of the wild yeast in the batch of stomped grapes, and then add wine yeast, thereby ensuring that the batch would turn to wine, not vinegar.

But...

Wine yeast is not more tolerant of sulpher dioxide...

Wine yeast is more tolerant of alcohol, and will ferment to an alcohol content of over 12 percent, and theoretically up to about 15 percent if left for long enough. Beer yeast tops out at about 6 percent, or if left long enough, about 8 percent.

Reply to
nestork

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