Cider Update, late August

Just under three weeks from first press, 19 days to be exact, on August 21, we bottled 22 liters of the crab apple cider. Final gravity (after adjusting for temperature) was 1.024, giving us a 6.4% ABV. 

Now, here's the thing. These small, bright pink crab apples already have a high sugar content on their own, and the addition of honey pushes that to a potential alcohol content of 9%. What I'm saying is, at this stage, the wild yeasts have not yet consumed all the available sugar. If we allow the cider to continue fermenting, it will result in not only higher ABV but also higher pressure as the process produces carbon dioxide. (That's right, yeast farts.) Too high a pressure, and we get bottle bombs. Not a fun surprise. Very difficult to clean up. Also, longer fermentation means less sugar, but we really like the sweet-tart taste right now.

So. Moving the liquid from the fermentation bucket to the bottles aerates the cider enough that all the carbon dioxide dissipates. Flat soda. Because we like our cider to sparkle, we let the bottles sit at room temperature another three days, when we can see a ring of bubbles in the neck of every bottle. Then, we cold crash them.

Cold crash! I.e., refrigerate. Chilling the cider pauses -- or at least slows down -- the fermentation. I say "pause" and not "stop" because refrigeration does not kill this wild apple yeast; rather, it forces it into dormancy. We must now keep the cider chilled or else the yeast will wake up, and fermentation will resume. (We bought a used wine fridge for this very purpose.) Even in the fridge, the yeast may very slowly continue their work, and over the months, the cider may grow slowly stronger, drier, and fizzier. We will monitor any changes as we drink through our inventory.

The next update will focus on our second batch of cider, made with a variety of wild apples from around the area. It includes three quarts of pink crab apple cider; you may remember my passing mention of Experiment #1, for which we pressed a second load of the pink crab apples.

See the quarts of fresh pink crab apple cider we froze, now thawing here three weeks later to be mixed with the apple cider. For contrast, on the right is a glass of the original pink cider after fermentation and bottling. It lost its rosy color but kept that sweet pucker--and made an excellent refreshment to accompany the full-day's work of processing our next round cider Labor Day weekend.

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