TC not as good as anticipated

[Walrus81]

My first brew, has been conditioning and tried it on Monday, expecting great things.

Tastes like poo

When testing the gravity the penultimate test prior to racking @ 1.021 tasted great, but I thought that things needed to go on a little longer. I think that it may have gone on too long! fg 1.005

So a quick question, which is, how to stop fermentation early, i.e when it was at 1.021 (still bubbling like made at that point).

Campden tablets or just rack off?

I will try again with ale yeast and anther with White Labs.

Many thanks.

[MickyD]

Thing is if you put a Campden tablet in, it will shut the yeast down and you wont get any carbonation in the cider unless you can carbonate it yourself.

My TC ended at 0.996 and yes it was dry, but ever so drinkable. It actually got clearer and more tasty the longer it was in the bottles....unfortunately I drank it all before it got beyond 8 days in the bottle

When you say it tastes like poo, do you mean very dry? vinegary?

[Walrus81]

well, at 1.021 is was dry med. pretty good. With nice after taste good smell. As I prefer dry I thought I would let it dry out (so to speak).

Now it is past bone dry and the flavour is flat and some what vinegary! I may just leave it for a bit longer to see what happens.

[Vossy1]

You could always add non fermentable sugars to give some sweentness back

[Walrus81]

think I'll give a second batch a go!

[Vossy1]

Johnmacs your man on this one

[delboy]

I made a TC that i stopped early to retain more of the apple flavour and sweetness you use campden tablets and pottasium sorbate to acheive this.
As others have said though, you won't get any natural carbonation this way, it didn't affect me though because mine went into a corny for artifical carbonation.

Talking about TC, has got me in the mood for making another batch, im going to experiment with the yeast im using again (last time i used a hefe weizen yeast). This time im going to use some rudsheimer white wine yeast, its blurb sounds ideal. Also going to supplement with yeast nutrients to see if it rids it off the twang that was present in the last batch.
I'll be hanging on to some of the yeast so if it works well i don't have to pay another £5 for it.

[Walrus81]

Just tried another sample and it's better, so things are looking good!

lets hope that my next batch will work out better!!