Cider with potassium sorbate

[Nerium]

I bought a 4L bottle of apple cider from the farmer's market and I've been torn between fermenting it with a kombucha scoby, or trying to get a batch of hard cider going. I just noticed yesterday that it's got 0.1% of potassium sorbate in it, I presume as a preservative.

Darn. I can't do anything with this, can I? I know that letting it ferment with the wild yeasts won't work, but can I still add, say, champagne yeast, and get something going, or should I just enjoy it as mulled hot apple cider?

[Christopher Weeks]

We've never gotten a preserved batch of cider to ferment, but I don't know if you can't or if it's just hard. I'd go for enjoying it as-is and look for pure cider for fermenting.

[Nerium]

I think you're right. I just bought some whole cloves and cinnamon sticks. Mulled cider, it is. I can at least add a splash of rum, right? (OMG, I sound like my dad).

[Fubar]

Potassium sorbate is a preservative and is also used as a stabilizer in wine making to PREVENT further fermentation. You can't ferment in anything that contains it.

[Tim Hall]

You could always give it a try...some yeasts can overcome a certain amount of preservatives, but it will probably be VERY slow going if anything happens at all.

[6810]

As others have said, it might be slow going but it can be done.

I frequently ferment wines to completion using store bought juice with no problem at all.

What I do is usually leave the opened juice out for 12-24 hours as potassium sorbate tends to evaporate out. The other thing is that local micro-organisms flock to the sweetness and start the work for me. A bit of shaking etc also helps to aerate the juice and speed up evaporation.

So by the time I get to making the must, the preservatives have completely or partially evaporated and the juice is already "alive"

[boogaloo]

Potassium Sorbate doesn't kill yeast it just prevents the yeast from budding. You can ferment the cider by introducing a bunch of new yeast. Go to a homebrew store and get a packet of yeast. Introduce that and then enjoy. Hell, you can even use baker's yeast.

I've had friends sorbate their wine and then bottle it. Only to have the bottles explode later because the yeast was still munching on sugar in the bottle. It can't reproduce but it sure can eat!