Hi,
I am planning to bottle sparkingling apple cider. I will let the fermentation go to completion and then add the cider with unfermented juice for sugar into the bottle and then cap the bottle.
I want the carbonation to be slightly less than for beer which calls for adding 1 cup corn sugar per 5 gallons of fermented product at bottling time.
A hydrometer will indicate % sugar by weight in unfermented juice. How do I convert that to "cups of corn sugar"?
Thanks
A cup of corn sugar is about 5.25 oz. A lb of sugar adds 47 points or
1.047 per gallon.If you figure it out that equates to about a 3 "point" addition per gallon.
I would take your fermented cider put the hydrometer in and add juice until you get a 3 point increase (say from 1.005 to 1.008, and yes you do want the higher bump because of dillution). You could measure the juice and then try to do the math and calculate how much juice you will have to add, but the addition of juice will dillute the cider so you have to account for that which complicates things greatly.
cidersugar wrote:
Cidersugar,
I'd look at the nutritional information of your juice, and use that to calculate the amount of juice you'll need to add. Looking at a kids juice box from my fridge, I see it has 21 grams of sugar per serving, and a serving is the entire 6.75 fluid oz juice box. An English to metric conversion table tells me that 1 cup (US) is ~229 grams. So if you want to add a cup of sugars (I know you said you wanted less, but you didn't specify so I'll use a cup as an example) you'd need to add ~10.91 juice boxes, or ~73.6 oz of the juice. Of course, adding this much juice has a greater impact on your total volume than adding 1 cup of corn sugar, and so this may be the 'slightly less' that you are looking for.
Cheers, Ken
Cidersugar - I make beer and get very good carbonation with 3/4 cup sugar per 5 gallons. Since you want lower carbonation that a typical beer try 1/2 cup sugar per 5 gallons. You will still get some carbonation but not a big head like a Pilsner beer. More like a British Ale. The 1/2 cup corn sugar will weigh about 70 grams.
I would just go ahead and use corn or table sugar for the carbonation. But if you want to use juice here's a way to estimate the fermentable extract (sugar?) in juice.
Water weighs about 8.329 lbs/gallon. Calculate the weight of one gallon juice in pounds [sp.gr.*8.329] Convert the specific gravity to Brix [here's a simple conversion; Brix = [(259/sp.gr.)-259]*[-1] Calculate the weight of extract in juice [(weight of 1 gallon juice * Brix)/100] Now you know how many pounds of extract is in a gallon of juice. Convert to grams and you can calculate how many gallons of juice will be needed to provide 70 grams of sugar.
Note: This assumes all the extract is fermentable. If you are working with clear apple juice this is probably a good extimate.
Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA
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