Cold crashing and priming for carbonation, does that work?

Question

My wild fermented cider from freshly pressed apples has been on the carboy for almost one and a half months now.

Cider is cloudy and there's still some very, VERY occasional airlock activity (once or twice a day?).

I assume by now most fermentation has stopped. I've been trying the brew, and it's great. I like the taste it has now and don't think letting it ferment for longer will make a big difference. I would like my cider to be as clear as possible before bottling, but would also like to prime for carbonation. Here are my questions:

1) Is there a good way to clear my cider before bottling, hopefully with a method that doesn't require a very long amount of time?

2) Should I cold crash my cider to ensure fermentation has stopped? If I'm then priming, would that work if the yeast has been cold crashed?

This is my first batch, so hope my questions are interesting to some of the readers!

Answer 1

There are two steps needed here:

• Ensure complete fermentation
• Reduce the amount of yeast in suspension.

If you are concerned that the fermentation is not complete, you could raise the temperature of the cider to around 20C, and/or gently swirl the yeast back up into suspension. This will promote more rapid yeast activity, without being so high as to cause off flavours. Of course stirring the yeast will certainly not help the beverage clear, but the important thing at this stage is to ensure fermentation is complete before bottling.

Once fermentaion is done, cold crashing really helps yeast drop out of suspension. Even down to fridge temperatures (~3C) for a few days works well.

By-The-way: cold will not stop fermentation, only slow it (obviously frozen solid is a bit different). The best way to determine if fermentation is complete, is to take a measurement of sugar content with a hydrometer (AKA saccharometer).