Cider Digest #0030

eZine lover (@eZine)

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Cider Digest

 · 6 months ago

Subject: Cider Digest #30 Thu Sep 19 18:00:08 EDT 1991 
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 18:00:09 EDT 
From: cider-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu (Are you SURE you want to send it HERE?) 

Cider Digest #30          Thu Sep 19 18:00:08 EDT 1991 
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues 
Jay Hersh, Digest Coordinator 
                              
Contents: 
  Yeast Attenuation (bob) 
  Mail you've seen before (hersh) 
                              
Send submissions to cider@expo.lcs.mit.edu 
Send requests to cider-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu 
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Date: Thu Sep 19 11:56:50 1991 
From: semantic!bob@uunet.uu.net 
Subject: Yeast Attenuation 

> Cider Digest #25          Wed Sep 11 11:00:11 EDT 1991 

I just received HCD 025 again today, somekind of timewarp 
going on out there.  (Must be those damn PEXky people ;-) 

- ---- 

> From: douggr@mexia.itx.isc.com (Doug Green) 
> Subject: Cider with ale yeast 

> a gallon of Tree-top apple juice and added some Red-star ale yeast. 
> the initial SG was 1.050.  I let it ferment at 80-90 degrees for 
> about three weeks and when I checked the SG it was 1.000!  I didn't 
> think ale yeast was supposed to be very attenuative.... 

IMHO a yeasts 'attenuativness' does not reflect how much sugar it will 
ferment but rather what kind of sugars it will ferment. 

So no matter what the SG, a yeast will continue to ferment all 
of the sugars it can until it hits some limiting factor.  Such 
limiting factors include: are there any more sugars left that this type 
of yeast can ferment; are there enough nutrients in the wort to  
keep the yeast healthy; are their toxins in the wort which might 
kill the yeast. 

In beer an ale yeast ferments all of the sugars it can, this doesn't 
mean that there arn't anymore sugars left, just ones that an ale yeast 
can't process, and thus some residual sweetness.  (Ever hear of  
brewers using Crystal malt to add residual sweetness to their beers?) 
These sugars plus all of the other non-fermentables add to the beers FG. 

Now, again IMHO, cider has very little non-fermentables in it and 
most of the OG comes from simple sugars.  The kind of sugars that 
all yeasts can process.  I think (?) glucose, fructose and sucrose 
are the main ones. 

So anyway your cider must was mostly these simple sugars and the 
ale yeast just went to town. 

> did some type of infection set in that chomped up the extra sugars 
> after the ale yeast was done? 

Probably not. 

> Has this happened to anyone else? 

>From what I've heard ciders are suppose to ferment way down and 
come out real dry. 

- ---- 

Please feel free to add to or correct anything I said up their, 
I would enjoy hearing more about yeast attenuation. 

- ---- 

Now onto my own expirements. 

So cider is supposed to ferment dry.  Well I would  
like a little residual sweetness in my cider. 

So I figure if I boost up the OG of my cider the yeast will 
ferment until killed off by the alcohol it producess.  Of course 
my long standind question is how high does the original gravity 
have to be to get some residual sweetness? 

Well last weekend during a 3 hour sparge, I had nothing better to 
do.  So I took about 3 pounds of sugar and stirred it up into a 
gallon of water.  This yeilded an OG of 1.130.  I then added a bunch 
of yeast nutrient and adjusted the pH with acid blend until I got it 
in the 5.0 range.  I then boiled and cooled it, added some Whitbread 
ale yeast, and stuck it aside.  I wish I had some champagne and wine 
yeast around at the time to due a comparison, oh well. 

At this point it's still fermenting.  When it finishes I'll let 
you know where the FG is, what the % alcohol is, and how it 
tastes.  (Just think a pure cane sugar must, fermenting at 80F, 
what a flavor profile!-) 

Cheers, 

- -- Bob Gorman            bob@rsi.com           uunet!semantic!bob -- 
- -- Broad-mindedness: The result of flattening high-mindedness out -- 

 
------------------------------ 

Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 15:38:13 EDT 
From: hersh@expo.lcs.mit.edu 
Subject: Mail you've seen before 

 
>From our system operator here 

"To one and all.  The SunOS product sendmail 
that we use on expo simply isn't reliable.  It often dumps core in the 
middle of sending a message, leaving it locked.  The next time expo 
gets crashes or gets rebooted, they get processed from the beginning. 
We're about fed up enough with this and other problems to consider 
replacing the system with something more reliable." 

Sorry. Maybe this will get fixed someday. 

 - Jay 

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
assume that you are moderate in everything. 
you now have an eXcess of moderation, a contradiction. 

eXcessiveness is clearly the way to go... 

 
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End of Cider Digest 
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