I am going to try a quick way of making of lightly carbonated apple cider and I have a question about adding wine stabilizer at bottling time. With the juice and yeast I use, the cider clears after about a week and a half of fermentation in the original juice bottles I get the juice in at the grocery store. I plan to chill this when it clears and bottle it right away without adding sugar. I just want to capture the natural carbonation from the fermentation by chilling it and then siphoning it in plastic soda bottles. I haven't tried this yet so I don't know if the carbonation will be sufficient but I like just a small amount of carbonation so I think it's worth a try. My question is about how I stop fermentation.
I have read that I should add sodium bisulfite and postassium sorbate when bottling. I am wondering if this work with cider that hasn't aged, it has just fermented for about a week and a half.
On the other hand, sodium bisulfate is also used to kill natural yeasts (active or dormant) and other microorganisms before adding wine yeast in wine making so I think it should also kill any yeast that exists in the cider. So, I am wondering, do I really need to add potassium sorbate which acts by preventing refermentation? How can the yeast begin to referment if the sodium bisulfate has killed it? Is it recommended by the industry to just sell chemicals or is it really necessary?
Thanks