Monitoring (for Bottling)

Once you’ve re-racked you’re ready for the next step of my my standard recipe. Monitoring! At this point it’s mostly waiting game, even more so than during the first round of monitoring for re-racking.

At this point your waiting for the fermentation to continue to completion with any residual sugar. If you’ve added any extra ingredients, you’re also waiting for their flavors to be imparted on the cider. You may also be waiting for malolactic fermentation.

You can also use this stage to bulk age the cider before putting bottling it so you don’t have to leave it in bottles as long.

In general, this step involves waiting 1-3 months (possibly more if you’re patient). You mostly want to make sure that the airlocks are full and that nothing is going bad with the cider.

Leaving it in longer isn’t bad, you’re basically just aging it. However, if you want to bottle it quickly or you think you have a stuck fermentation then you may want to grab your (sanitized) hydrometer and measure the specific gravity, you’ll need to do this over time in order to see whether it’s going down or not.

Once your brew is fermented to your desired sweetness, it’s time to bottle it.