15 replies to this topic

[jayb151]

I'm not sure about this, it's just an idea I have been throwing around, but has anyone ever tried adding malt to cider to back sweeten (or what I'm thinking would be called front sweetening). Here's what I'm thinking. Last year I got some fresh squeezed juice from a local mill. Because I don't keg, I have a hard time back sweetening in the bottle. What if I took a pound or two of cara-pils, mashed (or steeped it), and added it to the apple juice? I think it would add sweetness and body, but would not be fermentable by the yeast...therefore I would have a "front sweetened" cider.I'm not too worried about color, though I don't want to go overboard. I just want to produce a cider that tastes good. Last year's was bone dry, and I'm really not a big fan of that!

[jayb151]

True. Really, I'm not going for a caramel flavor as much as some sweetness. A friend brought me some of his back sweetened cider and it seemed to just "pop" more. Is there anything else to recommend to achieve this end? Lactose? something else?

[jayb151]

The typical way is to stabilize and backsweeten with either more apple juice or with honey.

Right but how would I carbonate in the bottle then? Backsweetening is something I'm trying to kind of get around, if you know what I mean.

[MtnBrewer]

Keg it and then dispense from there or CPF into bottles.

Because I don't keg...

[jayb151]

Haters!

[dondewey]

I'd go with a darker caramel malt.

[davelew]

There might actually be a name for that, but I don't know it. It sounds intriguing and I think the tastes could match well - maybe like a malted carmel apple??

ABC (Apple Butter Cyser) is the only recipe I've seen with both malt and cider in it (although ABC als has honey, sugar, raisins, and a ton of other stuff).https://www.skotrat..../recipes/5.html

[ANUSTART]

You said carapils, which IIRC, doesn't offer much flavor just dextrin - right?

I think that's the generally accepted knowledge for beer, where the carapils is a small part of a grain bill. If it's the only grain in an otherwise all apple juice cider, I'm betting the grain flavor would be noticeable. Just a guess though.I agree it would be a good experiment, you may have to throw in some 2 or 6 row to get it to convert, and mash pretty hot.

[davelew]

What if I took a pound or two of cara-pils, mashed (or steeped it), and added it to the apple juice? I think it would add sweetness and body, but would not be fermentable by the yeast...therefore I would have a "front sweetened" cider.

The more I think about it, the more I think that adding malt to cider is a bad idea. I have no idea why it's a bad idea, but I know that people have been fermenting cider and fermenting beer for thousands of years, and if nobody has combined the two and come up with a name for it, there must be a reason. I don't know what that reason is, but I think there's a point to fermenting beer and cider separately, then combining them in a snakebite, rather than fermenting everything together.My suggestion for a cider with a little sweetness is to torture your yeast. People complain abut stuck fermentations from bad yeast handling with beer all the time, and if you want extra sweetness in your cider, what you want is essentially a stuck fermentation. There's a Norman cider technique that might be applicable where you take some pectinase enzyme, and mix it with the cider (with NO yeast added yet). All of the pectin will drop out from the cider to the bottom of the carboy in one or two days. Then you rack the cider to a new carboy, leaving behind a lot of gunk, and add yeast to the second carboy. No yeast nutrient, no starter, just yeast. The yeast will be short on nitrogen and a few other nutrients, and end up with really low alochol tolerance. The yeast will peter out early, and leave you with some sweetness.

[jayb151]

The more I think about it, the more I think that adding malt to cider is a bad idea. I have no idea why it's a bad idea, but I know that people have been fermenting cider and fermenting beer for thousands of years, and if nobody has combined the two and come up with a name for it, there must be a reason. I don't know what that reason is, but I think there's a point to fermenting beer and cider separately, then combining them in a snakebite, rather than fermenting everything together.My suggestion for a cider with a little sweetness is to torture your yeast. People complain abut stuck fermentations from bad yeast handling with beer all the time, and if you want extra sweetness in your cider, what you want is essentially a stuck fermentation. There's a Norman cider technique that might be applicable where you take some pectinase enzyme, and mix it with the cider (with NO yeast added yet). All of the pectin will drop out from the cider to the bottom of the carboy in one or two days. Then you rack the cider to a new carboy, leaving behind a lot of gunk, and add yeast to the second carboy. No yeast nutrient, no starter, just yeast. The yeast will be short on nitrogen and a few other nutrients, and end up with really low alochol tolerance. The yeast will peter out early, and leave you with some sweetness.

But how do I carbonate in the bottle?

[MyaCullen]

But how do I carbonate in the bottle?

here is a link to this same topic on another websiteLink to advice from Ken Schrammit appears as I suspected that heat pasteurization is the most likely course of action

[davelew]

But how do I carbonate in the bottle?

If your problem is lack of sweetness, carbonation might be a bad idea. Things taste even less sweet when carbonated. Why not make a still, uncarbonated cider?

[jayb151]

here is a link to this same topic on another websiteLink to advice from Ken Schrammit appears as I suspected that heat pasteurization is the most likely course of action

I think this might be the best option. I don't really like the idea of adding malt, just because it wouldn't entirely be a cider. I'm leaning toward heat pasteurization now...

[davelew]

here is a link to this same topic on another websiteLink to advice from Ken Schrammit appears as I suspected that heat pasteurization is the most likely course of action

That website talks about putting room temperature bottles into 150F water. In my opinion, that will break most of the bottles (assuming they are made of soda glass like most bottles, and not something more expensive like borosilicate).The suggestion of putting the bottles into room temperature water and then slowly heating the whole water bath to 150 sounds more reasonable to me.

[davelew]

I'm sure that won't happen, but the same website has a post about putting them in a cold oven and heating the oven to 150.

Soda glass has a CTE of 5ppm per degree F. Soda glass with 70 dF cider in it immiediately dunked into a 150 dF bath will see a strain of 400 ppm. The Young's Modulus of soda glass is 72 GPa. Multiplying 400ppm by 72 GPa, we get the induced stress of 28 MPa.This paper: https://eagar.mit.ed...rs/Eagar206.pdf says that the stress caused by pressurizing a bottle to 200 psi is 24 MPa. So, dropping a bottle into a 150F water bath is 16% worse than pressurizing it to 13.6 atmospheres.I maintain my conclusion that this will cause some bottle breakage; I have heard reports of bottle bombs at less than half that pressure.

[davelew]

I was told there would be no math.

It's not math, it's engineering.