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Cider Digest #0186
Subject: This year (so far)
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 12:06:56 EDT
From: gkushmer@Jade.Tufts.EDU
Hi all, I thought I would share with the rest of you what I am doing
cider-wise so far this year.
My first batch is a five galloner of an entirely natural cider. I dumped
five gallons of pressed juice (a special blend thanks to Paul Correnty)
into a sterile carboy and stuck on a 1" blow-off tube.
My second batch is four gallons of apple juice, six pounds of cranberry
honey (not refined) and two pounds of cane sugar (in a 1 gal sterile
water solution) all with Red Star Champagne yeast.
For the second batch, I heated the juice up to 180 degrees, added the honey,
scrapped off a layer of scum, and let cool in a cold-water bath. It reached
high krausen yesterday afternoon.
Tonight I hope to get off a third batch using four gallons of juice,
three pounds of cane sugar, and epernay wine yeast.
That's life - we'll see what happens. (No vinegar PLEASE!!!!)
- --gk
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Date: Tue, 06 Oct 92 13:27:23 EDT
From: Greg <UGG00081@vm.uoguelph.ca>
Subject: Re: Cider Digest #185 Tue Oct 6 11:00:02 EDT 1992
Please unsubscribe Greg Appleyard from cider-request.
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 13:38:33 EDT
From: jim@grunt.asrc.albany.edu (Jim Schlemmer)
Subject: Cider yield this fall in NE
I just started my first cider the other night and have some questions.
I got 6 gallons of cider from an orchard/mill place called Indian Ladder
in Voorheesville, NY (around Albany). I got to see them pressing which
was cool but there was no concept of choosing what mix of apples
went into your cider - they just used whatever fell off the trees
(of which they had several varieties so I'm not really worried). Anyway, I
get the cider home and proceed to do the tests for SG and acidity. According
to the cider article in last month's Zymurgy, over the last decade, New
England cider (that the author has sampled) fell in the 43 to 58 range for SG.
Well, mine was about 40 and it was pretty cold at the time of testing too.
The acid titration test indicated .50%, well below the recommended .55-.65%
range. Now the thing that perplexed me was that the author of the article
said dry, hot seasons tend to produce cider with high sugar and low acidity
where as cool, wet ones have an opposite effect. We've certainly had a cool,
wet summer up here which explains the lower than average SG but I guess I'm
suprised by the low acidity. Any explanations? My homebrew supply dude knows
the owner of the farm and swears that there's no way it was cut with water.
So I added gobs of corn sugar to bring the gravity up into the 70's and several
teaspoons of acid blend to bring the acidity up into the 60's. I started the
yeast in a solution of corn sugar and it was just past high kruezen when I
pitched it. My next question has to do with the yeast strain. I was hoping
to make a sparkling cider. The article suggests using wine yeast for still
cider and champagne yeast for sparkling. I realized that what my homebrew
supplier gave me was "Lalvin wine yeast" which had no indication of being a
champagne yeast on it anywhere except that it came from a place (written in
French) that was something like "Institute de Champagne".
So, Does anybody know if
1.) Champagne yeast is better for sparkling cider (I saw in a previous post
that melkor!rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Larson) recommended NOT using
champagne yeast at all but ale yeast.
2.) Wether or not Lalvin is just wine yeast or champagne yeast.
Thanks a whole lot,
Jim
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 14:01:06 EDT
From: localhost!davevi@uunet.UU.NET (David Van Iderstine)
Subject: Re: cider press experience
>From: jimf@iwtdr.att.com
>Subject: cider press experience
> 1) The flavor of my first batch has a definite pine taste,
I have a recommendation, as a woodworker. Wooden pieces made for
eating from (salad bowls, wooden plates, etc.) are finished with
a non-toxic oil prior to use. There are very few (4, I think) such
oils, but one of them is walnut oil. Locate a supply of this from
a woodworking store, and apply several coats to the entire press.
Once the wood is saturated, excess oil is wiped off the surface
with a rag. Allowing it to air dry for several days will allow
all excess oil to be wiped off, so initial pressings should not carry
significant oils with them. I would expect that a commercial
press would have been finished in this way.
Well, I just found the reference I learned this from, and it also
recommends poppy oil or hemp oil. It says health food & specialty
food shops carry walnut oil. It dries more quickly if applied hot.
"Heat in a saucepan, about 1/4 full, until fumes begin to thicken."
He waits 2 weeks for the 2nd application, then 2 or 3 months, then
a year or more.
A note on oak vs. pine: "real" presses are built from oak, IMHO,
more for strength considerations than flavor. The difference in
tensile strength between the two is really quite dramatic; more like
5 or 10-fold than just double, though I've looked and can't find a
table of species' strength to back this up. Oversizing the pine will
compensate for lower strength, as you've discovered.
dave davevi@pharlap.com
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