Cheers! A Guide to Making Sparkling Cider

Make some room, Champagne and Prosecco. Sparkling cider is here to stake its claim as the superior bubbly beverage this upcoming holiday season!

Crisp and refreshing, this apple-based delicacy serves as the perfect addition to any family dinner or friendly gathering. So raise a glass, and get ready to toast to the wonderful world of sparkling cider!

The following is an excerpt from Cider Planet by Claude Jolicoeur. It has been adapted for the web.

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Making Sparkling Cider

Nowadays a large proportion of the cider production is made effervescent (pétillant, which is a mild effervescent, or sparkling), and some additional processing is required to produce them. Such ciders contain some carbon dioxide (CO2) gas in solution, and they are kept in a pressurized container (bottle, can, or keg). There are numerous techniques to obtain the effervescence.

These are sometimes called method, a word often seen in French writing (méthode), as it is used a lot for the marketing of champagne: The méthode champenoise is universally recognized as a standard for very high-quality (and expensive) sparkling wines from the region of Champagne in France. In cider making, the following described methods are most often used.

Except for the last one (injection method), all produce the required CO2 gas by fermentation, a process called prise de mousse in French. When this fermentation occurs inside hermetically closed bottles, the cider is often labeled as bottle conditioned, a term that, unfortunately, doesn’t have the same exact definition in all regions.

In general, the methods that produce the sparkle by prise de mousse, although cider makers often use modern technologies at some point during the process, are considered more traditional than the injection method, which is definitely a modern process.

Basic Method

The most basic bottle conditioning method simply consists in letting the cider ferment to dryness, and when it’s ready to bottle, some sugar is added so that the fermentation of this sugar inside the hermetically closed bottle will produce the desired sparkle within a few weeks. The quantity of sugar addition varies between 6 and 15 g/L for a pétillant to fully sparkling cider. Optionally, some yeast and nutrients may be added with the sugar.

Normally this method produces completely dry ciders. However, if the in-bottle fermentation is interrupted by pasteurization of the bottles, then it is possible to obtain a cider with some residual sweetness. This basic method is also called bottle conditioning, although the term can be used for the ancestral method, which is described later in this section.

The basic method is not used in modern cider making, as it leaves a sediment in the bottle that may be objectionable when the cider is offered for sale. It is however popular with small craft cider makers and also with hobbyists, as it is easy to do and doesn’t require any special equipment.

Traditional Method

This method is the same as the méthode champenoise used for the making of champagne in France. Since the word champenoise is reserved for champagne, all other sparkling wines and ciders made with this method then use the naming traditional method or méthode traditionnelle.

In Spain, the term cava is used with the same signification. Legend says the method was invented by Dom Pérignon (his true name was Pierre Péri- gnon, 1638–1715) for conditioning the wines of the Champagne region.

In reality, while Pérignon did make some contributions, the true origin of the method is most likely in England, in the years that followed the invention of strong glass bottles in the 1630s.* Some authors rather think Pérignon took the inspiration from the wines of Limoux, which at that time were processed with the ancestral method.

Additionally, an important step of the method, the dégorgement (disgorgement), was invented in France about a century after Pérignon’s death. The development of this method thus spanned over almost two centuries, and quite a number of cider and wine makers contributed to what it is today.

The traditional method starts with a base cider that is fermented to dryness. At bottling, a liqueur de tirage is added. It contains sugar, yeast, and, optionally, yeast nutrients and a fining agent (also called a riddling aid) that helps in obtaining compact lees, and it’s all mixed with the fermented cider.

The sugar addition might be as much as 20 g/L to produce up to 6 bars (87 psi) of internal pressure. Bottling is done in full weight champenoise bottles, closed with a crown cap, to which one may add a bidule in the neck (this is a small plastic cup that collects the lees).

Once the in-bottle fermentation is completed, the cider may be left on its lees for a varying period of time; the longer the time, the more it will get a flavor from the contact with the lees, a flavor often described as biscuity. Following this maturation, the producer proceeds to the riddling (remuage in French), which consists in bringing the lees to the neck of the bottle.

In more traditional cideries, the bottles are placed on a pupitre (a wooden rack) that permits changing the angle gradually until the bottles are in a vertical position, upside down. The bottles are also regularly shaken lightly so the lees move toward the neck. In large modern operations, the riddling may be done mechanically: The bottles are stacked in a metallic cage and shaken automatically.

The final operation is the disgorgement, which is done in one of two ways. The first is à la glace, where the necks of the bottles are frozen in a special bath, then the bottle is decapsulated and the lees are ejected with a frozen slush; or the second is à la volée, without freezing, where the crown caps are removed with a special tool during a rotation movement from upside down to right side up.

When a bidule is used, the lees then accumulate in it, thus making their elimination easier at disgorgement. A liqueur de dosage is then added, which might contain sugar if a non-dry cider is made.

Additionally, this dosage may contain a chemical stabilizer. The bottle is finally topped with dry cider and closed. Most of the time a mushroom-type cork is used with a wire cage, but some producers may use a crown cap or a plastic mushroom closure.

Nowadays, it is also possible to add the yeast in an encapsu- lated form at bottling time, a process that insures all the yeast is removed when doing the disgorgement. When doing so, the producer has to do a sterile filtration at bottling to remove all remaining yeast in the cider. In the United Kingdom, ciders and perries conditioned with this method are said to be bottle fermented.

Ancestral Method

The ancestral method is the simplest method to obtain a sparkling cider or wine, as no addition is required at bottling time. This method was probably the first to have been done in the history of fermented beverages. Its advantage over the basic method is that no sugar is added, and in historic times sugar was expensive and not always easy to obtain.

It will also yield a cider with about 0.5 percent less ABV than with the basic method, this difference being caused by the absence of added sugar that would produce additional alcohol during fermentation.

The ancestral method essentially consists of bottling the cider before the fermentation is completed so that the fermentation will terminate inside the hermetically closed bottles and thus produce the required CO2 gas to make the sparkle. A drop of specific gravity of 2 to 8 points inside the bottles will produce a slightly pétillant to fully sparkling cider, but generally cider makers will aim for a drop of 4 to 5 points, sufficient to obtain a nice foam at pour.

Somewhat different procedures may be followed depending on if a dry cider is made, or if the cider is to retain some of its natural sweetness after the process is completed. To obtain a dry cider, the producer bottles the cider while it is still in fermentation, when the quantity of remaining fermentable sugar is just enough to produce the desired sparkle.

For example, if the cider maker expects the fermentation to be completed at a specific gravity of 0.998, then bottling when the cider has reached 1.003 would ensure a drop of 5 points in the bottle for a good sparkle. For semidry to sweet styles, the cider is bottled at a higher specific gravity that varies between 1.010 and 1.025, and it will ferment about 4 to 5 points lower in the bottle before the fermentation stops.

The maker needs to take steps to prevent complete fermentation inside the bottles, which would result in overcarbonation and possible bottle explosions. One way is to pasteurize the cider in the bottles when the desired level of carbonation is obtained. The other way is to use the ancestral method in combination with the keeving process. Since the keeved cider has exhausted the supply of nutrients as the fermentation nears completion, it can then be bottled and the fermentation finishes inside the bottles and stops, leaving some unfermented residual sugar.

The ancestral method is thus mostly used by producers who keeve their ciders, and it is the primary method used in France among craft producers. These ciders are often called cidre bouché. In the U.K., the ciders produced with the ancestral method are said to be bottle conditioned, which may cause some confusion as the term is also used for the basic method. A new name that has started to become popular for this method is pét-nat, which is short for pétillant naturel (roughly translates to “naturally sparkling”).

There are two major inconveniences with the ancestral method when it’s used for ciders that retain some natural sweetness. The first is the control of the effervescence level. It is quite difficult to predict at precisely what specific gravity the fermentation will stop, and this uncertainty may cause the cider to be more or less sparkling than antic- ipated. Traditionally, success relied mainly on the competence and experience of the cider maker.

To help in making a more accurate prediction, it is possible to count the number of yeast cells per mL of cider and adjust accordingly. In-bottle pasteurization is another way to make sure there is no excessive sparkle.

The second weakness of this method is the lack of stability of the ciders. Because they contain some sugar and the lees are still in the bottles, these ciders are prone to a restart of the fermentation or of some activity by spoiling microorganisms if they are kept at too warm a temperature.

Transportation and exportation of such ciders is a highly risky enterprise. I have myself drunk French ciders in countries such as Australia or the United States that had badly turned. But the same ciders kept in a cool cellar and drunk at the farm were perfect. They are ciders that do not travel well. . . . To solve this, some producers now process these ciders by riddling and disgorging. Hence this becomes a hybrid method, where the ancestral method is used for the beginning, and part of the traditional method process is used for the finishing. Another solution is to use the transfer method, which is described later in this section.

Charmat Method

The Charmat method, also called closed-tank method (or cuve close, in French), was patented in France by Eugène Charmat in 1907. It was, however, mostly developed in Italy, where it is used to produce prosecco wines. Its principle is similar to bottle conditioning except that this conditioning is done in large tanks instead of in bottles, and thus the method could be viewed as tank conditioning.

These brite tanks, as they are usually called, are made of stainless steel and are built stronger than normal fermentation tanks to sustain internal pressure. Either a cider that still has some unfermented sugar, or a dry cider to which fermentable sugar is added, may be used as a base.

Optionally, yeast, nutrients, and a fining agent may also be added. The tank is then hermetically closed. The fermentation process then produces CO2 gas, which remains in solution as the pressure builds up.

Once the prise de mousse is completed, the cider is filtered to separate the lees and remove the remaining live yeast cells, and it is bottled using a counter pressure filler, which permits filling the bottles with minimal loss of the CO2 in solution.

The Charmat method is mainly used by larger commercial cideries, as it requires quite a large investment for the brite tanks and the equipment for filtration and bottling. The cider obtained is very stable with a good quality of foam.

It may be noted that for some PDO labels the specification requires the prise de mousse to be done in the bottles. Consequently, ciders made with the Charmat method may not bear such PDO labels.

Transfer Method

Two variants of the transfer method are better known and used for cider. For the first variant, the cider is fermented to dryness and prepared as for the traditional method so that the prise de mousse proceeds inside the bottle. The second variant is known as the méthode dioise and is used for the production of sparkling white wines, such as the famed Clairette de Die of the Rhône Valley.

A cider produced with this method still has some unfermented sugar when bottled, in a similar fashion as for the ancestral method. With either variant, once the prise de mousse is completed, the transfer process is performed: The cider is pumped out of the bottles and filtered to remove the lees and yeast cells. Simultaneously, the bottles are rinsed and sanitized.

Then the bottles are refilled with the cider, corked, and wire cages are fitted over the cork. Optionally, a liqueur de dosage may be added to sweeten the cider. All this transfer process is done automatically in a special machine that is pressurized to prevent the CO2 gas from escaping. The resulting cider is comparable in terms of quality and stability to what may be obtained by the traditional method, with reduced labor costs (which are quite high for the riddling and disgorging operations).

The transfer method is not yet widely used in cider making, but in recent years it has been successfully trialed in Brittany, and a few installations have been completed. The equipment is quite expensive, however, and so it is reserved to larger cideries or operations that are cooperatively owned by a group of producers. One important advan- tage is that the ciders are allowed to bear a PDO label because the prise de mousse is effectively done inside the bottles.

Injection Method (Carbonated Cider)

The injection method is the most widely used method in modern cideries to produce a sparkling consumer-grade cider. In this method, the cider is carbonated by using food-grade pressurized CO2 gas.

Two methods are most often used to inject the gas into the cider:

• On-line carbonation, where the CO2 is directly injected in the cider while on its way to the bottle filler. This is the method used in the soft drink industry. It usually produces coarser bubbles, but the technology has improved and some ciders carbonated this way have finer bubbles. This method is very fast, and it only requires adding the carbonator to the bottling line.
• Carbonation in a brite tank is a longer process. The cider is left under CO2 pressure until it has absorbed the desired quantity of the gas. In most installations the CO2 is injected through a “stone” that sits in the bottom of the tank; this way the gas is provided in zillions of very small bubbles that are easily absorbed by the cider. The cider may have to stay in the brite tank anywhere from a few hours to a few days depending on the pressure level and how much sparkle is desired. As a general rule, a longer stay in the brite tank results in finer and better-quality bubbles.

A variant of this method is used in Spain, where the injected CO2 gas comes from the main fermentation of the cider.

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Notes