[mjanop]

I have made ciders and Perrys before, but I was thinking of beach plum. Beach plums are a local fruit, the size of a cherry but very very sour. To make anything  (jelly, liquor) you have to add a lot of sugar.  I would love to try making "hard" beach plum cider. But, if I put a lot of sugar in it, the yeast will eat all the sugar and when I go to bottle, it will be sour again. Any ideas?
Thank you

[fredthecat]

I have made ciders and Perrys before, but I was thinking of beach plum. Beach plums are a local fruit, the size of a cherry but very very sour. To make anything  (jelly, liquor) you have to add a lot of sugar.  I would love to try making "hard" beach plum cider. But, if I put a lot of sugar in it, the yeast will eat all the sugar and when I go to bottle, it will be sour again. Any ideas?
Thank you

consider macerating them in vodka with sugar or something to make a liqueur instead? you can keep the taste (assuming you like it) and have it for years to come. i used to do this with sour green plums

[mjanop]

I have a couple of batches of liquor going already; I was kind of hoping for sparkling cider, but maybe not LOL

[erockrph]

There are a few options for sparkling sweet cider in bottles. YMMV, but none of them are really ideal to me.

First, you can backsweeten with a non-nutritive sweetener like sucralose, aspartame, saccharin or erythritol before bottling. These won't ferment and you'll be left with a "diet soda" version of your cider.

Second, if you keg, you can stabilize and backsweeten the cider, force carbonate, then bottle. Most people who are bottling don't necessarily have this option, though.

DISCLAIMER: I have never done the following and don't necessarily recommend it. There are inherent risks of bottle bombs if not done properly. Still, I have read successful reports of others using this method.

Third, you can bottle at your desired sweetness, allow the bottles to hit the proper carbonation level, then pasteurize in a water bath. You would either monitor fermentation and bottle when it is at the desired sweetness level, or let the cider ferment dry and backsweeten with sugar at packaging. You will need to test bottles intermittently to determine when they hit the proper carbonation level. You then pasteurize the remaining bottles in a water bath to kill the yeast and arrest fermentation. I don't have the specifics off the top of my head of how to set up and perform the actual pasteurization, but the information is out there waiting to be Googled.

[pete b]

You can make an apple cider with some beach plums in it. I similarly do a cider with a smallish amount of crabapples which results in a tart "rose" cider.

[fredthecat]

DISCLAIMER: I have never done the following and don't necessarily recommend it. There are inherent risks of bottle bombs if not done properly. Still, I have read successful reports of others using this method.

Third, you can bottle at your desired sweetness, allow the bottles to hit the proper carbonation level, then pasteurize in a water bath. You would either monitor fermentation and bottle when it is at the desired sweetness level, or let the cider ferment dry and backsweeten with sugar at packaging. You will need to test bottles intermittently to determine when they hit the proper carbonation level. You then pasteurize the remaining bottles in a water bath to kill the yeast and arrest fermentation. I don't have the specifics off the top of my head of how to set up and perform the actual pasteurization, but the information is out there waiting to be Googled.

i used to make sake/ricewine often a few years ago. i would make sure it was filtered to clarity, bottle it in wine bottles/sake bottles and batch pasteurize it in my boil kettle at 60C/140F. i would insert the thermo-metre into bottles and ensure it was 60C. i dont see a time for how long i left it at that temp. but i recall i never got CO2 in solution, let alone a bottle bomb in these bottles.


but again DISCLAIMER: that was one method at a different time, from me, a different person, different beverage. cant vouch for its safety and wouldnt recommend it anyway.