Posted this on distillers forum but need a answer sooner

first time for everything
Making cider.
First Gallon of fresh squeezed apple juice.
Had an airlock on it for about 2 weeks.
Finally started to outgas today with some regularity. about every 10 seconds.
natural yeast.
When is it done? should I stop it?
got 3 more gallons of juice in the fridge.
I ordered champagne yeast because it wasn't outgassing very much. supposed to be here today.
should I go ahead and use it or save it for 1 of the other gallons
Thanks for any help
just

You need a hydrometer. You use it to measure specific gravity, which, in the case of brewing, is another way of saying measuring sugar content. The way it generally works is that you'll take an initial reading, which will be 1.XXX (for example, 1.080). As sugar gets converted to yeast, specific gravity will drop, generally stopping somewhere around 1.000.

For reference-water has a specific gravity of 1.000, pure alcohol has a specific gravity of 0.790. One pound of sugar per gallon will raise specific gravity by 0.040, one pound of honey will raise specific gravity by aprox. 0.035 (aprox because different honeys have different sugar contents), and an specific gravity reading of 1.100 will make a wine with 13% alcohol if the final reading is 1.000. You can do some basic calculations using those numbers to get a good idea of alcohol content without a hydrometer, for example-when making mead, 3lbs of honey in one gallon will make make for an aprox 13% mead.

None of that helps, though, when making alcohol from plain fruit juice, if you didn't take an initial specific gravity reading, at least if you're trying to figure out alcohol %. You can still use a hydrometer though to figure out when it's done. When the reading gets down to around 1.000 and doesn't change for 2 weeks, it's done.

As far as the gassing is concerned....gassing isn't necessarily an indicator that it's still fermenting. A wine/cider can continue to out-gas for a while even after fermentation is complete. You can certainly drink it while it's still fizzy, but it will be cloudy from all the yeasts suspended in the liquid. The CO2 bubbles keep all that stuff floating around. If you let it sit for a while (a couple months of more) it'll settle out. You can then carbonate it using a keg or even by adding extra sugar at bottling time, but that's beyond my knowledge. I drink all my stuff uncarbonated.

We make about 100 gallons of cider each year. We press it, filter it and jug it. Same type of white plastic jugs used for a gallon of drinking water from Walmart. Press on lids with pull strip.

No yeast, nothing special, goes into fridge and in about 2 to 3 weeks, jug will start to expand. All that tells you is yeast or something has started to come alive and is converting sugar to alcohol. In terms of other fermentation processes........closer to a lager than a top fermented ale, wine or whiskey.

We tell people when the jug has expanded to the point the lid is ready to blow, cider is ready to drink. At that point, you remain in initial stages of fermentation but all gas has been retained, so cider is still sweet, but lightly carbonated and you notice tiny bubbles when poured into a glass. when you lift the lid, you can hear it hiss. Limited alcohol at this point, so kids can drink it. Depending on how fast you drink it that continues until that jug has been drained and is gone. If you let it go too long, fermentation starts picking up the pacce and the lid has to be vented or it will blow off, and may bubble over when it does. You will know from all the cider on the shelves. It also picks up more alcohol....drink enough and it will give you a buzz. If someone has trouble with alcohol, we warm them. Let it go too long and it goes flat and eventually turns into vinegar.

If using air locks and charging with some form of commercial yeast, you are doing something different from us. That might be apple beer, wine or hard cider. A few of our guys have tried fermenting the pulp and peels left from the squeeze. Never heard any of them mentioned it afterwards. They never brought any back for us to try.

Depending on sweet you want the resulting product without backsweeting, you dont have to let it go down to 1.000.

Champagne yeast wont make it outgas any more than regular wine yeast. Champagne yeast has a better tolerance to higher alcohol levels. Straight apple juice doesnt have a lot of alcohol content naturally so unless you added a lot of sugar to it, you wont get a lot of alcohol, it would be pretty close to what most american beer. "Lesser" yeasts can get alcohol poisoning and die off and/or cause off flavor at higher levels

When you say you used natural yeast, do you mean you just put it in the fermenter without adding yeast and just letting nature provide whatever wild yeasts was around or did you add an "organic" yeast? If the former, it would take a while before you get enough yeast reproduction before you start seeing an active ferment.

Wild yeast.
Air lock is bubbling at about every 4 seconds now.
just

Hydrometer SHOULD have come today.

2.6 seconds