Help: prickly pear cider losing its color

[Ty520]

So one of our regular house ciders is prickly pear cider. It has this beautiful neon pink hue... Which just fades completely away after bottling.

It is such a shame because the hue is gorgeous and would be a huge selling point

It maintains the hue all the way through filtration and bottling so my best guess is that it has something to with sulfites and
/or oxidation

 

[VinesnBines]

A winery near me (now closed) used to bottle Sangria and warned that it needed to be consumed within X number of weeks. (I can't remember if it was two or four weeks).

If I was the winemaker, I would experiment with bottling a few bottles without sulfites and see how long the hue lasts. If it is K-meta, then I would try bottling and warning the consumers that it needed to be consumed within X months. This experiment might take an entire fermentation/bottling cycle.

If the hue goes away with oxidation, that should be an easy experiment; leave an un-kmeta glass out until the hue vanishes or not.

Since it is a cider, I wonder why you aren't treating it as a low ABV beer and bottling without kmeta with crown caps in beer bottles? Am I missing something?

 

[Ty520]

A winery near me (now closed) used to bottle Sangria and warned that it needed to be consumed within X number of weeks. (I can't remember if it was two or four weeks).

If I was the winemaker, I would experiment with bottling a few bottles without sulfites and see how long the hue lasts. If it is K-meta, then I would try bottling and warning the consumers that it needed to be consumed within X months. This experiment might take an entire fermentation/bottling cycle.

If the hue goes away with oxidation, that should be an easy experiment; leave an un-kmeta glass out until the hue vanishes or not.

Since it is a cider, I wonder why you aren't treating it as a low ABV beer and bottling without kmeta with crown caps in beer bottles? Am I missing something?

We add the prickly pear and backsweeten in secondary - we can't afford chancing refermentation

 

[sour_grapes]

I have no direct experience or suggestions, but your post reminded me of a long-ago thread on prickly pear wine. I vaguely remembered something about color. Here is a snippet from that thread discussing color loss: (Beginning of thread here: Prickly Pear Wine )

I just bottled my first batch of this.

It's a pale, white wine these days -- a far cry from what I saw after first racking (see attached images)...

I could never get the slight haze to clear -- I tried hitting it with pectic enzyme twice and also tried amylase enzyme twice (in case it was a starch haze).

My wife and I agree that it's a lovely, herbaceous wine with hints of clover and summer heat.

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[Ty520]

I have no direct experience or suggestions, but your post reminded me of a long-ago thread on prickly pear wine. I vaguely remembered something about color. Here is a snippet from that thread discussing color loss: (Beginning of thread here: Prickly Pear Wine )

Yep! Exactly our issue.

We also experience the haze issue they mention - a brute to filter. It's almost like some sort of gelatin. Kills our filters on the first run, but not an issue after

 

[VinesnBines]

We add the prickly pear and backsweeten in secondary - we can't afford chancing refermentation

Sorbate rather than kmeta? I think the first step is isolating the reason for the color loss if possible.