A bit confused!

[Dave_Brew]

Hope you guys can help me get my head round this one! I've got some raspberry cider on the go, 9L of Asda apple juice and a bottle of that polish raspberry syrup, it's OG was about .06. Now whats confusing me is that I don't want to let it go too dry but I also want to carbonate it in the bottle. Also when making it I was thinking about a FG of .01 say to keep it sweet. Now though I just don't see how I can do this. If it was a still wine I'd just stop it at the required FG and bottle but don't want to stop it as I want it to carbonate in the bottle. Wont it just carry on fermenting down to dry in the bottle even if I add priming sugar? Do I have to leave it to ferment out and back sweeten or is there a way to do it naturally so to speak?

Cheers

[fatbloke]

Hope you guys can help me get my head round this one! I've got some raspberry cider on the go, 9L of Asda apple juice and a bottle of that polish raspberry syrup, it's OG was about .06. Now whats confusing me is that I don't want to let it go too dry but I also want to carbonate it in the bottle. Also when making it I was thinking about a FG of .01 say to keep it sweet. Now though I just don't see how I can do this. If it was a still wine I'd just stop it at the required FG and bottle but don't want to stop it as I want it to carbonate in the bottle. Wont it just carry on fermenting down to dry in the bottle even if I add priming sugar? Do I have to leave it to ferment out and back sweeten or is there a way to do it naturally so to speak?

Cheers

Well, pretty much any yeast will ferment a batch with a starting gravity of 1.060 dry. Plus leave some room for carbonating in the bottle. Yet to get one that's sweet and carbonated, you're gonna have to use a non-fermentable sweetener to achieve the sweetness level you require, then prime the bottles with brewing sugar/glucose to achieve carbonation - unless you have a kegging setup and then can just sweeten with non-fermentable and force carbonation - which would help a bit as it wouldn't leave any sediment from bottle priming in the bottom, but you'd have to run the kegging setup to get a slightly higher level of carbonation in the brew, then chill the keg down in a freezer so that when it's opened for you to bottle the brew it's done as cold as possible without freezing the brew, and the brew should (theoretically) retain the level of carbonation required......

It's quite hard to stop a strong fermentation at a particular point. Sulphites only stun the yeast and sorbate stops reproduction, but unless you filter the brew with a "sterile" grade filter, there'd still be some yeast cells left in the brew which, again theoretically, could restart fermentation if fermentable sugars are added to sweeten, or that the yeast didn't ferment them all out in the first place.

[Dave_Brew]

Thanks for that mate and that's basically what I thought I'd have to do, as in back sweeten with Splenda say. I should have thought about this before starting as it's going to end up stronger than I wanted. Could I put a liter of cooled boiled water in there to being it weaken in a bit? Any idea how much this would bring it down?

[fatbloke]

Thanks for that mate and that's basically what I thought I'd have to do, as in back sweeten with Splenda say. I should have thought about this before starting as it's going to end up stronger than I wanted. Could I put a liter of cooled boiled water in there to being it weaken in a bit? Any idea how much this would bring it down?

I'd have thought so, but that will also alter the "mouth feel" won't it, so you'd end up having to put a bit of glycerine in to restore that.

I'd just let it finish "as is", then rather than Splenda, try the newer "Stevia" based artificial sweeteners - I understand they're non-fermentable and are unlikely to give any of the "metallic" taste that some others can have.

Then you should be able to bottle prime as normal.......