Back sweetening Apple cider

[Pdunc]

I will be bottling my first batch of hard cider in a little over a week. I plan on using 12 oz bottles and plan to back sweeten with stevia. Any suggestions on the amount of stevia(can use sugar equivalent) for each bottle? I would like to have the cider just slightly sweet and somewhat fizzy.

[berryman]

I will be bottling my first batch of hard cider in a little over a week. I plan on using 12 oz bottles and plan to back sweeten with stevia. Any suggestions on the amount of stevia(can use sugar equivalent) for each bottle? I would like to have the cider just slightly sweet and somewhat fizzy.

I wasn't going to respond to your question as I have no experience with stevia and think others here do. But have back sweetend a lot of wine and cider but with sugar or honey and can help somewhat on that if you want.

[FrozenInTime]

Back sweeten with Lactose. Any other type of sugar/sweetner will kick off fermentation again unless in small amounts for carbing. Those small amounts will not back sweeten. A large amount trying to back sweetin, your creating a bottle bomb.

Saying that, you can back sweeten with honey, etc AFTER you kill all the yeast off. I have done that a few times, but again, you must kill *all* the yeast *first*. Much simpler with lactose.

[bpgreen]

I think stevia is a sweetener that can be directly substituted for table sugar by volume.

It's not fermentable, so it should work like lactose (but volumes may differ).

Note that it's important to remember that it's similar to table sugar *by volume* because it's much lighter than table sugar.

[mashani]

I will be bottling my first batch of hard cider in a little over a week. I plan on using 12 oz bottles and plan to back sweeten with stevia. Any suggestions on the amount of stevia(can use sugar equivalent) for each bottle? I would like to have the cider just slightly sweet and somewhat fizzy.

I wasn't going to respond to your question as I have no experience with stevia and think others here do. But have back sweetend a lot of wine and cider but with sugar or honey and can help somewhat on that if you want.

To be clear you need to hit the wine or cider with potassium metabisulfite or something similar to murder the yeast if you want to do this with any fermentable sugar and bottle it and keep it warm. Otherwise it will ferment and carb and/or explode like others have mentioned. Using such agents is common in still wine not just for this but to eliminate oxygen and improve long term storage. But beer people generally don't do this, so they wouldn't think about it. Or you could immediately refrigerate it. But you couldn't keep it at room temperature without killing the yeast.

[berryman]

To be clear you need to hit the wine or cider with potassium metabisulfite or something similar to murder the yeast if you want to do this with any fermentable sugar and bottle it and keep it warm. Otherwise it will ferment and carb and/or explode like others have mentioned. Using such agents is common in still wine not just for this but to eliminate oxygen and improve long term storage. But beer people generally don't do this, so they wouldn't think about it. Or you could immediately refrigerate it. But you couldn't keep it at room temperature without killing the yeast.

Yes on what Mash said. I use Potassium Sorbate if I want to sweetin wine, but you would not be able to bottle carb after as there would be no more active yeast. I have been kegging cider and wine now and just use unfermeted juice as a back sweetner, and as long as it stays in the cooler it will stay the way it is but if you were to take some out and leave at room temp. for a couple days it would ferment out and be a drier wine. A added benefit it does carb up some at the lower pressures used on beer, like a sparkling wine.

You could try an experiment and use the proper amount of table sugar for carb and one of the unfermentables mentioned above for the sweetner. Side Note: a little back sweetening goes a long way so go easy until you get it the way you want...

[bpgreen]

I've only made a couple of ciders and kegged them, so I used juice.

I haven't used stevia, but my understanding is that you can use the same amount (by volume) as table sugar.

It's not fermentable, so you don't need to do anything to kill the yeast.

[Pdunc]

Berryman, your last paragraph is what I plan to do. I will be using stevia(non fermentable) to back sweeten. When it comes to carbing it after bottling, should I use less sugar per 12 oz bottle than I use when bottling my wheat beer? For that I generally use 3/4 tsp of sugar. I don’t really want a product that is to dry, but has a bit of fizz. I also don’t want bottle bombs. Every thing I hear just seems to lead me to new questions. How long would you recommend leaving the cider in the fermenter before bottling? Is it generally longer than with beer? Does a long period of bottle conditioning really help cider, or does it just lead to bottle bombs? By the way, thanks to everyone for your responses.

[mashani]

If you back sweeten with stevia, but then want carb, then just use the same amount of sugar you would for beer to achieve the carb level you want. It will work exactly the same in cider vs. beer in that regards.

[Pdunc]

Thanks mashani.

[berryman]

I think you are on the right track on this. I make both cider or apple wine but I call it cider either way, but different. You asked how long in the fermenter? Ok if just using Apple juice or Apple cider and very little sugar and use beer yeast like s-04. I guess I should call it a cider and maybe about 4 weeks or so in fermenter and can drink this like beer, around 5 ABV or so.

But I make another Apple and make it like wine and use wine yeast and can get racked a couple times and can go for months. Notice I drink way smaller glass size on that as it about 3x. I don’t know what a Bd cider kit might come out but guessing about like first one so I think about 3-4 weeks.



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