Weird cider smell

[HopIt]

Hi,

I've made 23 litres of TC using 2.5 litres of suma concentrate and 4 litres of apple juice topped up with water. Its fermented to 1.000 and the activity had stopped. This is after 2 weeks.

I had a taste and its quite tart and tastes vaguely like cider. I'm a bit worried about the smell though. It smells a bit strange. Kinda musty, maybe sulfury. To be honest none the beers I've brewed ever smelt eggy so it might be I just don't know sulfur when I smell it.

I only put 1 tsp of Young's yeast nutrient in and fermented at 20 degrees. I used 1/2 sachet of cider yeast (coz I split the rest) and a full sachet of us05.

Any advice?

[Jambo]

I can share my experience... I made some cider in November last year (from apples) and it was very suplhury while fermenting. Initially it tasted pretty awful and I was all for trying to make cider vinegar out of it, and cooked with it as much as possible! However a few mates were round a couple of weeks ago and we happily polished off the entire keg, was fantastic! So time is one thing which will almost certainly help. Yet to decide if I will make cider this year - not sure if I can be arsed tieing up kegs for 8 months in order to make a good batch.

My understanding is sulphur smell = stressed yeast, so lack of nutrients could be a factor. You could try more next time.

Fermenting down to 1.000 is normal for cider as all the sugar is fermentable. It will be as dry as a nun's chuff though by definition. If it isn't to your tastes, one approach is to kill off the yeast with 2 campden tabs per gallon and then add sugar to sweeten.

[oldbloke]

The smell will go - stressed yeast as suggested.
But I reckon you don't have enough apple in there[1], it's not gonna be the best cider ever. It will be cider though.

[1] 2.5l suma is equivalent to about 17.5l AJ. Plus your AJ, 21.5.
In a 23l brew...
The point of using Suma is to get more apple in than you can with just AJ. You've ended up with less.
Suma's too expensive if you're not using it to get that advantage, in my opinion. Though, it does have a great flavour and the acidity is spot-on.
I'd have brewed it to about 16l, or used more Suma, or more AJ, or both.

Also you don't mention tannin?

[HopIt]

I'll have another taste tonight and try to diagnose it a but more. From memory it was as much a taste as a smell. Not disgusting but not that nice either.

Apart from time what other remedies are there? Stirring with copper, splashing around or crash cooling?

I was planning to bottle this Friday to free up the fermenter (assuming it doesn't smell in which case I might buy another)

[HopIt]

I used 3 teabags boiled for 10 minutes

[HopIt]

Could I prime the bottles with apple juice to get more apple in there? Also I could sweeten with apple juice when drinking for more apple flavour

[oldbloke]

I used 3 teabags boiled for 10 minutes

That's about what I'd use for 4.5l, might be a bit short for 23.
I've gone over to powdered tannin now to make more room for juice.

I reckon most of the smell/off-taste will go with the bit of splashing it gets during bottling, and during conditioning.
It might want a bit longer to mature than most though. No biggie

You can prime with AJ, but the volume it takes up means it doesn't actually increase the apple quotient.
People do serve over AJ to sweeten, I stick a little bit of artificial sweetener in at the start of the ferment - could go in at bottling, I have done that in the past.
Still experimenting with how much to use exactly though

[HopIt]

Or I could just chuck in another 500ml Suma to save it. Would this ferment properly if I just poured it straight in?

[HopIt]

Suma: 85g sugar per 100ml = 850g per litre
AJ: 100g per litre.

So I did (2.5 * 850) + (4 * 100) = 2525g of apple sugars

Apple juice only would be (23 * 100) = 2300g of apple sugars

Why do I have more sugars than if I used AJ?

[oldbloke]

Oh, yeh, you get more sugar, but the idea with suma is to get more apple. You accept the raised ABV as a minor annoyance (or welcome it...)
They recommend diluting between 1:5 and 1:7 for drinking as juice. So we say, 1l suma = 7l AJ, roughly, for appliness.

I do it in gallons, and use 500ml Suma, 500ml or 1l AJ, and 500 ml OtherJuice: this gets the apple above what you can get with AJ alone. And an extra 1 or 1.5%ABV, but hey.
Scaling up to 23l (5gallons), you're actually only between 1 and 3.5 litres of juice short of my default recipe.
I'd be tempted to leave it as it is this time.
If you want to mess with it, I'd chuck in some nutrient, a couple of litres of cranberry, and maybe 1l of AJ.
But, really, I'd just bottle it and then leave it 3 months - it'll be OK.

[HopIt]

I get what your saying. But I am assuming that the sugar content is indicative of the amount of apples in the concentrate. Therefore since 2.5 litres Suma + 4 litres apple juice has more sugars that 23 litres apple juice, I don't think my cider is less appley than if I'd just used apple juice. In fact if you go by the sugar content its slightly more appley than apple juice alone.

Basically I'm questioning whether 1 litre of Suma is the same as 7 litres of apple juice because the sugar content doesn't seem to match up.

[oldbloke]

Ah, well - the label says 85.7gm/l carbs. AIUI, only about 85% of the carbs are actually sugar. Which, when you notice most AJs are a bit over 100g/l (some as high as 112), gets you the same sugar (and apple) in Suma as owt else. So my reason for using it is that it saves volume, so I can get more juice in, to get more apple. And I think it has the best flavour of the juices I've tried, of course. I don't mind the extra ABV but keep it under 7 except for 'special occasions' batches.
I've got this spreadsheet...

I may have got that wrong, but if I have I'm surprised I don't fall over more often after I've had a few.

[HopIt]

I'm looking at lidl apple juice from concentrate and sugar is 95% of the carbohydrates by weight. If its the same for suma, then surely 2.5 litres of is roughly the same as 20 litres of apple juice. Maybe Suma has a different sugar / carb ratio.

In any case I'll leave it and see how it turns out. Cheers for the help

[oldbloke]

I dunno where I got that 85% of carbs is sugar thing from now, can't find it on Suma's site. It's really annoying me that I may have been getting it wrong for ages!
I did do hydrometer and refractometer readings on one lot though and it seemed to be what I expected.