Saturday, December 8, 2007

Racking the cyser

Last night I finally got around to racking the cyser I started about a month ago. For the first two weeks the fermentation was fairly constant and rapid (about 1 bubble in the airlock every 3 seconds) and then it slowed drastically to only one bubble every few minutes and most of the sediment dropped out, so I probably should have racked then. Oh well, it was in glass under an airlock, so there was no danger of oxidation, and I don't think that leaving it on the sediment for an extra 2 or 3 weeks will hurt much. I measured the specific gravity, and was very surprised, it read 1.001 (adjusted for temperature). Since it started at 1.121 this means that the alcohol by volume is 15.75%. The surprising part is that according to Wyeast the cider yeast is only alcohol tolerant to 12%. This means that I have a much drier cyser that I was planning on. There is a bit more room than I would like in the carboy right now, so I think I'll get some apple juice to top it off. This could restart fermentation, which might cause a risk of stuff getting blown into the airlock when there's little headroom in the carboy. However, since I'm already well above the alcohol tolerance for this yeast I don't think any fermentation at this point will be too vigorous.