Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

FYI fairly good write-up on ciders (for cider noobs like myself)
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f81/making- ... es-117124/

However there is a fairly large argument going on with what type of yeast to add to a cider. I'm debating between the traditional champagne yeast and Nottingham.

I've read that Nottingham is easier to control the degree of sweetness if no yeast nutrient is used. So racking and cold crashing a couple times will cause the yeast to go dormant. Champagne yeast will produce a very dry cider.

What is generally recommended?

Zymurgy had a nice comparison of yeast strains in this newest edition. I'm planning on using wlp002.

In the past, I've found champagne yeast to result in too dry a cider (mind you, I wasn't back-sweetening).

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Pretty much any yeast will produce a very dry cider.  If you want a sweet cider without back-sweetening, you need to play with the acid balance to adjust the perceived sweetness (some acids taste more sweet than others).  Additionally, avoid anything sulfury as that will come across as harsh.  If you can get a good malic/lactic acid balance and retain a lot of apple aromatics, a very dry cider will come across as sweet.  I've had good luck with white wine yeasts and plan to try English Cider yeast this year.  I recommend treating it like a mead or white wine and do a staggered nutrient addition of DAP and Fermaid-K.  Aerate well and keep the fermentation temps under control.

If you want to back-sweeten, you need to either keep it really cold and add a neutral sweetener (e.g. a sugar syrup or wine conditioner) or else use sorbates to kill off the yeast.  I do not recommend filtering it sterile as that strips the cider of a lot of character.



On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 1:19 PM, JimPotts <brew-tech@crbeernuts.org (brew-tech@crbeernuts.org)> wrote:

In the past, I've found champagne yeast to result in too dry a cider (mind you, I wasn't back-sweetening).

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For the past 2 years, I've used Cote du Blanc. This year I'm toying with the idea of Premier Cuvee. Have bought both, but haven't made up my mine yet.

I'll bring a bottle of dry and back-sweetened of last year's batch tonight, so folks can see the difference. I froze a gallon of fresh cider from last year's pressing for the back-sweetening.

I had some good results by adding corn sugar to the cider, and pitching English Cider yeast. I have no idea if it's just a matter of yeast alcohol tolerance or what, but I wound up with a nice balance between alcohol and sugars.

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