I made a cider with Wyeast Cider yeast and 5.25 gallons of fresh, unpasteurized apple juice from a local farm. This was in September. I left it in primary the whole time, and it has shown no activity for months. I realize that most people put their ciders into secondary, but I thought it seemed like fun to let it age on lees (also, I do not feel the need or desire to get the cider cloudy. I was planning on putting this cider, as is, in a keg, and tapping it. I have a couple questions:
Do I need to let this cider age in the carboy for much longer before it would be good to keg?
Will the cider taste like beer if I keg it alongside a beer (I have a single regulator on my 2-keg kegerator)?
What do I do? (my thoughts are to keg the cider now alongside a keg of water, giving me cider and seltzer on tap)
You’re good to go. I start serving my cider on tap in about 6-8 weeks. Longer is definitely better, it changes. But if you are OK with the taste at this point then go for it. Tastes nothing like beer - for parties I wheel out a 2 tap fridge and have hefe next to cider. Impossible to mistake one for the other.
I don’t get that. I’m not a sommelier or a BJCP judge - but I don’t taste it. If everything was equally pressurized after the regulator, I suppose some exchange of odor/gasses could diffuse between the two. Maybe if you had Pliny on one and Cider on the other it could happen, but I usually do less hopped beers. Browns, Hefes and the like…