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update from my bottles:

OH stood over the fermentation barrel, holding the lid to prevent a window-shattering cork velocity escape.
Me, kneeling with bottle in fermentation barrel, held at as low an angle as possible.
Carefully and gently prising plastic cork from mouth of bottle....

tension mounts

suddenly.............




a most mild 'pop'

no casualties, no collateral damage

same for all 5ive bottles

had a little taster.

I've never tasted a cider so dry!

Definitely needs some sweetening before consumption. Any tips as to how much sugar to throw in?

A good way to avoid your bottles exploding in the future is to use saccharin instead of sugar. It will be less fizzy, but still gives a nice sweetness.

Hate to disagree with you there AnC. Saccharine tastes really bitter to me. I prefer my alcohol untainted

I'm not a fan of Saccharine myself, but if you don't mind it, it might be worth a try.

Welcome to Ish, Aero and Clarkie.

Aero and Clarkie wrote:A good way to avoid your bottles exploding in the future is to use saccharin instead of sugar. It will be less fizzy, but still gives a nice sweetness.

I would not use saccharin, and as you can see I add no extra sugar, I was experimenting with bottling the cider at a stage where the natural sugar was at still sufficient level to keep it from being too dry, and create a nice fizz....went wrong somewhere!.

I'll stick to brewing to full dryness and adding a teaspoon....or I might try keeving next time, but that's a whole new black art!.

Cheezy wrote:.or I might try keeving next time, but that's a whole new black art!.

Ok, i'll bite what the heck is Keeving? not a word I recall in my brew studies . . .

MUMUUUUHAH, fell into my evil trap!.

Hmmm tough how to start this, but it's an old technique that all cider producers used to use to create the medium sweet sparkling type ciders, prior to modern technology and chemicals.
Only the French still employ the technique, with their bottle conditioned Normany ciders (usually in champagne type bottles), which if I'm honest I'm not a fan of as they are a bit too sweet. However in essence it's a way of retaining the natural sweetness of cider. It does involve a bit of chemistry, a lot of expertise and loads of luck. Hence why it fell out of fashion as soon as someone came up with an alternative way of producing medium sweet cider (ie pasturise,filter, sweeten, carbonate).

For those more interested check out good old Andy Lea at:

http://www.cider.org.uk

click on "Keeving-what's that?."

Read the articles, then discard as sheer madness!

Interesting. a bit beyond my means but hey. that maceration sounds similar to the mellowing of apples to improve their juice yield hmmm much to absorb ta,

Cheezy wrote:

Aero and Clarkie wrote:A good way to avoid your bottles exploding in the future is to use saccharin instead of sugar. It will be less fizzy, but still gives a nice sweetness.

I would not use saccharin, and as you can see I add no extra sugar, I was experimenting with bottling the cider at a stage where the natural sugar was at still sufficient level to keep it from being too dry, and create a nice fizz....went wrong somewhere!.

I'll stick to brewing to full dryness and adding a teaspoon....or I might try keeving next time, but that's a whole new black art!.

Oh, I see. I thought that you added a teaspoon of sugar to your bottles when bottling. It's just that someone I know puts a teaspoon of saccharin in his bottles to avoid the bottles to explode. I have tasted his cider and thought it was nice, although I prefer my cider still.

I have never tried bottling myself, prefer to syphon off my barrels when it has stopped (bubbling sound has stopped and the water level in the airlocks is in balance). I made 30 gallons this year: http://www.aeroandclarkie.co.uk/homemadecider2008.htm

Cheezy wrote:Results:
After an hour the fizziness was supressed, but still very volitile, and I lost a good 1/4 pt and was v. cloudy.
After 1:30 the fizziness was controlable to allow me to sucessfully get all the contents into the glass.
After 2 hours ice crystalls had formed and on pouring blocked the neck with slush, which after a bit of shacking "fired" out and resulted in some cider loss and more cloudiness. At this point I took the fourth bottle out and put it into the fridge as obviously things had gone too far.
After 30 mins in the fridge the cider had resorted back to the hour style and I lost most of it.

Conclusion.

1. 1:30 mins is enough to supress the fizziness to enjoy cider.
2. This method is only good for one drink, as 30 min either way results in over/under fizziness.

Just for your future interests chilling the cider to 4C over a period of several days will do more to absorb the CO2 than quick chilling will ever do, at lower temperatures more of the CO2 gets absorbed into the liquid leaving you with a fizzier but less pressurised container.

Bottling any cider before it's finished fermenting will result in lots of sediment and an un-controllable fizz factor, I heartily recommend you let the yeast finish it's job on the cider then bottle it with 1/2 tsp of sugar per pint in whatever bottles you are using and then sweetening it with apple juice at the time of opening... YUMMY!

Ah, I seem to have a similar problem with my home brew. I tried opening one to sample the delights of my labours and had to spend about 1/2 hour mopping up afterwards. What was left did taste quite nice though, so at least I sort of got the recipie right!
I maybe bottled them too early, before the yeast had finished.
I will experiment with chilling them for a couple of days to see what happens, as advised (thanks!)

Otherwise I am left with around 30 bottles of explosive beer (and not in a good way)
If all else fails, maybe I could somehow rig them up to open in sequence out in the garden, to create a "dancing fountain" show.

update: my bottles are still a little feisty, but not explosively aggressive.

we had a recent bbq where a group of 5ive of us shared a 75cl bottle (wine bottle size). ye gods it was strong. on bottling, i reckon it was in the region 7% alcohol (by vol i think) and i don't think it can get much higher naturally (high alcohol kills yeast and stops fermentation, hence a glass ceiling alcohol content, unless you're fortifying it...).

anyways, it certainly did the job.

i quite liked the taste too, tho a tiny drop of lemonade made it more suppable...

Ale or cider yeast will be suitable up to about the 9% mark without any real problems, most wine yeast can tolerate up to 14% but High alcohol yeast has currently maxed out as 21%

Bottled my cider back in Feb/March it tasted fantastic back then.
However, now it's very dry and not very palatable and extremely fizzy.
NThis year I'm going to try the following:
Bottle it in plastic bottles when clear enough and I like the taste of it, leave it for a couple of weeks to generate some fizz then add a little crushed campden to stop any further fermentation.
Fingers crossed!

benner wrote:Bottled my cider back in Feb/March it tasted fantastic back then.
However, now it's very dry and not very palatable and extremely fizzy.

Try adding a small amount of pure apple juice to your glass when you pour yourself s drink, it'll make the cider sweeter and reduce the fizzyness a bit.

benner wrote:NThis year I'm going to try the following:
Bottle it in plastic bottles when clear enough and I like the taste of it, leave it for a couple of weeks to generate some fizz then add a little crushed campden to stop any further fermentation.

As soon as you open the bottles to add the campden tablets you will lose the bulk of your built up CO2, you need to choose between sweet flat or dry fizzy cider and go with that.

If you wish to stop fermentation you may need to add Potassium-Sorbate as well as the Campden tablet.

The general guidelines I give everyone for bottle conditioning is to prime the bottles with 1/2 tsp of sugar per pint and leave the bottles in the warm for 1 week before moving the brew into a cold place for the next 3 to 6 weeks. This has the effect of making enough fizz to pressurise the bottles whilst allowing the rest of the built up CO2 to get absorbed by the liquid (it works better in the cold) turning it into fizz.

The cold temperatures also help the yeast go to sleep and stops it from using up all of the available sugars thereby leaving some sweetnes in your brew.