What makes a cider/wine turn watery after a few months?

Question

I made a cider with the below recipie and I have noticed that as it ages it is starting to get a watery taste.

What would cause this? The bottles are stored out of sunlight and are never moved till I take them to the fridge.

Recipe here: Date made 19/09/2013 OG 1.092 FG 0.995

21L Juice (7bottles)

Yeast Nutrient (Boil up raisins (that don’t have sulphite on them) and small amount of water, mash up the raisins and simmer)

10- 14Cup’s corn sugar or dextrose (the more sugar the more kick it will have)

1 Lalvin EC1118 Yeast

Steps 1.Boil up yeast nutrient and mash up raisins

2.Take out a little juice from the bottle and add sugar.

3.Shake out the sugar(even do this for the fermenter batch as it saves time and stirring)

4.Put in the yeast nutrient(make sure that it isn’t still too hot) and shake the bottle

5.Add the yeast and shake the bottle a. If you are making a fermenter size batch then pour it all in the fermenter

6.Leave that until the fermenter has stopped bubbling and leave for a few days.

Answer 1

If you take gravity readings, you'll notice that the final gravity is extremely low. Cider is notorious for fermenting very low, and you're adding to it by tossing in sugars which are 100% fermentable (meaning that 100% of the sweetness will ferment out). The reason it is "watery" on your palette is because there is no sweetness. I'd be willing to be you have a final gravity of well below 1.000 (with 10-14 cups of corn sugar, definitely below 0.090, maybe even 0.80). Most people will back-sweeten with a sugar that cannot be fermented by the various saccharomyces strains, such as lactose. You really will need a hydrometer for this, as you will have to stir it in, and get it up to the gravity you want (likely somewhere between 1.006-1.010 depending on how sweet you like your cider).

While I haven't tried this myself yet, I've heard people having a lot of success using normal ale strains of saccharomyces, as they are less attenuative than most of the wine and champagne yeast strains. This would end with the yeast being more sweet, but it could very well still be dry (< 1.000), so lactose may still be necessary.