may seem strange but i Have to ask. Is there anything/reason that would make a cider not carbonate as much as beer in a keg with CO2? reason I ask, is that I wanted to pump enough C02 into my cider to make it highly carbonated …more like champagne. i forced carbed it rolling keg back and forth for 2 minutes at 30PSI with chilled cider, and then left it on 20PSI for another 5 days. its nowhere near the level of carbonation i expected, and if it were beer it would have been super charged after that schedule.
I’ve never tried to quick carb cider like that, but left connected @ 12psi/2 weeks I get pretty comparable carb level compared to that level in beer (minus head obviously).
EDIT - I don’t go for champagne level carb though, so I can’t speak to any differences there.
Ok. Yeah it’s just that if I did that with beer, I would have had a bomb. Got me to thinking the different composition of cider vs beer night be slower or different carbonation.
how are you judgeing the carb level? obviously there won’t be any foam to speak of once the pour settles down. perhaps it’s an issue of an impression of carb levels? just a though. Coke is very very highly carbonated but it doesn’t seem hugely more gassy to me than beer (until you burp I guess) while plain water, when carbed up to ~20 PSI in the fridge is violently carbed.
I have never force carbed a cider, however I have had a lot of naturally carbonated ciders that are every bit as carbonated as a beer, some even like champagne, and I use the same amount of priming sugar as I would for beer. So my answer to the OP’s question is, I don’t think the two liquids behave a lot differently, between beer vs. cider. HOWEVER… you should never expect to get a HEAD on a cider. It just fizzes, like Coca-Cola. Don’t expect a white creamy head.
It’s possible there is a difference in carbability. I guess I’m no expert. But I don’t imagine it’s a huge difference.
I usually have a keg of common cider in the beer fridge on gas and, like the OP, it doesn’t seem to be as carbed as a keg of beer. No way to measure carbonation, just going on perception.
I doubt there is a difference in how CO2 is absorbed, but there may be a difference in how it comes out of solution. Perhaps most of the CO2 is coming out of solution during the pour and you don’t notice that because cider has no head. If it were beer you’d be pouring glasses full of foam, but instead you get glasses full of decarbonated cider.
I notice this with my ciders too. When I first pour from the keg, they are clearly carbonated, almost to the point of being sparkling. A few seconds later, the may be a bubble or two. It makes it really difficult classifying it for competition. I usually say petillant and hope the judge sees it before it dissipates.
there’s a significant difference in carbonation perception between my cider and my apple ale that is about 50/50 juice and wort. that i can charge up to the point it is like champagne…the pure cider not so much.
I added some heading powder once to some kegged sparkling cider at the recommended rate on the package. It helped create a bit of a longer lasting head. It’s gum arabic and corn sugar. Wife liked it without the foam better so no more of that for me.
I should have added on my posts that I like cider lightly carbonated, so I’ve never tried to push the envelope on high carbing. A couple weeks @ 12psi gives me all the carb I care for in cider.
i’m thinking there is a max carbonation for sure you can get out of cider in a keg. perhaps bottle would be different (like champagne is carbonated) but others have said its a crap shoot if and how much you will get in a bottle.
I have experienced gushers, so I do know that champagne-like carbonation is entirely possible with cider. In that case I blame the Brett that I used, which no doubt continued fermentation in the bottles for a very long time. The priming sugar in that case only made matters even worse.
i bet. i visited schramsberg in napa. they are a very old champagne producer (sparkling wine if you’re not in france and champagne region ;D ) . i toured their hand dug caves, and they still to this day have guys doing the riddling-turning bottles by hand each day. those bottles and cages withstand all the pressure.
I once saw some calculations done by Andrew Lea, a UK cider expert, on priming with sugar according to the nomograph we use for beer. The calculations said the sugar added could never account for the entire volumes of CO2 in packaged beer. He figured the carbonation must be supplemented by CO2 already in solution and maybe a small amount of fermentables left in the beer at packaging.
The point was that those last two sources don’t apply well to cider. Cider is often bulk-aged longer, which dissipates dissolved CO2, and is usually completely dry if priming with sugar.
Obviously, this doesn’t apply to force carbonating at all - but would explain pesky carbonation in bottles.
This is fantastic insight. Thank you for sharing! Makes perfect sense, and something I should no doubt pay more attention to in future.
What I’m getting out of this is that if you bulk age for a long time, or swirl or agitate the cider a lot before bottling, there’s not much dissolved CO2 left, so you’ll want to use extra priming sugar to compensate. This is in contrast to a fresh, not very disturbed ferment (such as with beer) where there’s a lot of dissolved CO2 so then the typical “3/4 cup per 5 gallons” rule is most applicable.
Interesting! Thanks again! For those who don’t know, Andrew Lea is like the number one smartest dude on the whole planet when it comes to all things cider. He’s like the Michael Jackson of cider, or of pop, for that matter. ;D