Finished Disgorgement - Some things for next year

Cider
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Hi folks - so I just finished disgorging my first bath of cider so I thought I’d share my results in case folks were interested or had any tips for me. I think overall it worked - but not as well as I had hoped. A little history of how I got here…

Early October - Apples were pressed, added the sulfites, let sit for 24 hours, added my yeast and let primary do its thing. (Im leaving out a lot of details here but this was pretty standard)

Late December - Primary was completed and it had sat on the lees for awhile at this point. I bottled and added 35 grams of sugar per gallon for bottle conditioning. I added Bentonite to help with clarity and to help with compacting the lees.

Early April - I started riddling the bottles to get the less compacted.

Early May - Disgorged

So in terms of disgorging I ended up building my own freezer disgorging setup. Basically a small chest freezer with a tank inside full of food safe glycol and water. I machined a top insulated plate for it that had holes for the bottles so just about 1.5 inches of the neck would be submerged. This worked better than I had expected - I was able to get the glycol mixture down to -10 within a day or so. The hard part was knowing when the plug was actually frozen all the way through. After about 5 minutes I could see it was frozen from the outside but learned that didnt mean it was an actual plug. I started letting the bottles sit for 10 minutes and that seemed to help - but I didnt always get a solid pop when I opened the bottle. In most cases the yeast plug itself would shoot out but the ice on the side of the neck would stay. I did pre-chill the bottles as well which I read should help with the neck freezing.

A couple of thoughts I have about this for next year…

  • I’d like to experiment with perhaps adding more priming sugar in part of the batch to see if that helps with more pressure during disgorgement.
  • Moreover Im wondering if I didnt leave enough neck room for co2 to be which meant I didnt have enough pressure in the bottle.

Im still researching these a little more to see if they make sense but in any case I think next year I’ll experiment with both of these to see if it helps.

I did end up splitting the batch into 3 cases - 2 to try back sweetening and one I left dry. One of the sweetening options I did was cider concentrate and the other was just simple syrup (both with a dash of sulfites in case any yeast remained). Im anxious to see what each batch tastes like in a couple months from now!

Anyone else disgorge their cider? Any other thoughts you might have?

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Next steps in cider making
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You probably already know this, but when back-sweetening, sulfites alone won’t stop refermentation, and you may end up with yeast in the bottle unless you also use potassium sorbate or something similar.

When I back sweeten I usually use frozen apple juice concentrate I make from the original juice.

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Thanks for the comment. I did a lot of reading about sorbates and it sounded like something to stay away from unless you were sure if the cider had gone through MLF. From my reading it sounded like disgorging had a good chance of removing 90% of the yeast and that sulfites might be enough in this case.

I guess time will tell if I see more lees (or if the bottle caps start popping…)

Do you disgorge and back sweeten?

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I tend to avoid sorbates since they can impart a perceptible flavor. Whether sulfites alone are enough to prevent refermentation when backsweetening depends on a lot of different factors, but with sulfites and disgorging alone you can never be completely certain you won’t end up with yeast in the bottle. The only truly reliable ways to prevent refermentation are sorbates, filtration, pasteurization, or keeping the cider continuously cold. Keeving can also work, but it’s much more difficult to pull off consistently and still doesn’t guarantee fermentation won’t restart.

I prefer dry ciders myself, but I make sweeter ciders for other people. My approach is to rack repeatedly so I begin with a low yeast population, then bottle and age for an extended period. After that, I cold-crash the bottles and backsweeten with sulfites. So it’s not much different from your method. Usually that’s enough to prevent refermentation after disgorging and adding FAJC, but even then it isn’t foolproof, especially with certain yeast strains. It’s reliable enough for my own use, but I’m not sure I’d trust it in commercial production unless I were serving it from my own taproom and could ensure the cider stayed continuously cold.

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Also, this sounds next-level awesome—I’d love to see a photo!

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