One for the home brewers (a carbonating question)

[JMikeyH]

Got all my apples picked and ready to make a whole batch of cider for the first time. I'm fairly comfortable with the process for the most part, but one area that is concerning me is that of bottle bombs. I'm mostly going to be bottling the cider into 750ml wine bottles with corks and I would like it to be slightly carbonated. With that in mind, how many grams of sugar per litre do you think I should add before bottling to give a mild carbonation and not risk popping out corks/exploding bottles? Not worth the risk and I should make flat cider?

I was thinking around 7g/litre, not sure if this is too much for the bottles to handle.

Cheers

 

[VSS]

If using wine bottles for sparkling cider then make sure they're the type that can cope with the pressure, and wire the corks. Personally, I always use beer bottles for sparkling cider, and prime with a teaspoonful of sugar in each bottle.
Having said that, usually I make traditional non-fizzy ("flat") cider, and just store it in demijohns with solid bungs.

 

[JMikeyH]

If using wine bottles for sparkling cider then make sure they're the type that can cope with the pressure, and wire the corks. Personally, I always use beer bottles for sparkling cider, and prime with a teaspoonful of sugar in each bottle.
Having said that, usually I make traditional non-fizzy ("flat") cider, and just store it in demijohns with solid bungs.

Yeah, I think they're regular wine bottles. Glass is quite thin anyway. I might end up doing the demijohn deal until I can get my hands on thicker glass bottles. What size bottles are you using a teaspoon of sugar in? 500ml?

 

[WH308]

Yeah, wine bottles won’t cope I’m afraid, years ago I had a batch of elderflower wine ferment slightly after bottling. It simply popped the corks out and flooded my kitchen. Plastic fizzy drinks bottles are pretty good.

Like VSS, I use a teaspoon per beer bottle. But it’s worth remembering not too bottle before the SG is low enough, otherwise you are back to the bottle bombs again.

 

[Dr.S.Jordan]

Use this ... Will give you consistent perfect carbonation everytime. Simply draw a line from the temperature when you're bottling through the CO2 volumes you want (I use 2.8-3 for my cider) and then get the amount of sugar you need on the right.

I also dissolve the quantity of sugar in the smallest volume of water and then add direct to the demi-john/bucket prior to bottling. Then you don't have to fiddle around with getting sugar in a bottle and can use any size of bottle you have saved up.

And definitely don't use normal wine bottles. They will shatter under small amounts of pressure. Either champagne-type bottles with plastic stoppers and wire cages or good old fashioned beer bottles with crown caps or swing top/grolsch style ones.

Happy Brewing!!!

 

[Essex stalker]

Yeah, wine bottles won’t cope I’m afraid, years ago I had a batch of elderflower wine ferment slightly after bottling. It simply popped the corks out and flooded my kitchen. Plastic fizzy drinks bottles are pretty good.

Like VSS, I use a teaspoon per beer bottle. But it’s worth remembering not too bottle before the SG is low enough, otherwise you are back to the bottle bombs again.

That brings back memories of when I was a kid, made what they called elderflower champagne and put it in Corona bottles for those who can remember them, luckily put it in a warm place in an outside shed as one morning I went out to look at it and there was shards of glass stuck in all the shed walls, the glass corona pop bottles had exploded like a bomb. Thank go no one was in the shed when it happened as they would of been cut to shreds

 

[VSS]

If you're making traditional cider (ie, without adding yeast, just relying on the natural yeast on the skin of the apples) then you won't be bottling this year's cider until April or May next year anyway, so plenty of time to worry about how to do the bottling!
When pressing your apples, put a few pints of the fresh juice in a carton in the freezer. You will need it later.
What I do, when bottling "still" cider into demijohns is to siphon it in from my fermentation containers (which may be buckets or other demijohns, depending on the quantity I make) leaving a bit of room for topping up each one. I then top them up almost right to the brim (leaving just enough room for the bung) using some of that applejuice that I kept in the freezer, with a Campden tablet dissolved in it, to end the fermentation. Then cork it up with a solid rubber bung.
If you ferment in demijohns and bottle in demijohns then you only need one extra one demijohn over and above the number of gallons that you are actually fermenting.

If you think that your cider tastes a bit wishy-washy at the time of bottling then chuck a bit of brandy in each bottle / demijohn to give it a bit of a lift!

 

[Dunwaters]

Heresy I know, but the big plastic soft drink bottles work well and they're almost bomb proof. Even if one does go off it just splits so a good bit safer than glass.
The 2liter size is just about right for a night in.

 

[sh1kar]

Champagne dosage is c 7g per litre as you say. Use champagne bottles with crown beer cap
S

 

[storm in a teacup]

Using normal wine bottles and corks won't stand up to much carbonation, not much pressure can push the corks out and worst case they can shatter. Beer bottles or champagne type bottles with wired corks would be a lot better.