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Cider Digest #0372
Subject: Cider Digest #372 Mon Nov 15 18:00:02 EST 1993
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 93 18:00:04 -0500
From: cider-request@x.org (Are you SURE you want to send it HERE?)
Cider Digest #372 Mon Nov 15 18:00:02 EST 1993
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Jay Hersh, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Recipes, etc. (Peter R. Hoover)
cider press catalog (CompuCom) <v-ccsl@microsoft.com>
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Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 08:37:35 -0500
From: prh4@cornell.edu (Peter R. Hoover)
Subject: Recipes, etc.
Having been a lurker on this list for about a week now, and having slogged
through a modicum of old digests, I am struck by the low volume of most
cider recipes. In this area, it used to be the custom to cellar one or more
barrels (50 gallons each) every fall, for standard drinking purposes
through the year, the local water not being trusted (or relished). So when
I started making hard cider some fifteen years ago, this was my aim. One
cold winter evening when my wife went down to the dirt-floored cellar for
another pitcher of cider, and accidentally left the tap on the barrel open
just a bit, I changed my aim a bit. I still smell vinegar down there.
But, in any case, here's the recipe I used for my cider this year.
Take:
One Toyota pickup truck load (approx. 8 bushels) little hard pears, full of
tannin, but very sweet;
3 bushels Northern Spy apples (drops) from a local orchard;
2 bushels wild apples and pears from local abandoned orchards;
3 gallons fresh Stanley prunes (depitted, mashed, depectenized with Clarex);
1 quart unsweetened Montgomery sour cherry juice that had been sitting in
the refrigerator for months waiting for me to decide how to use it;
The kernels from the pits from those 3 gallons of prunes.
Take the apples and pears, and the pot of prune juice down to the local
cider mill, with a 60 gallon barrel. Convince them to run the whole mess
through their mill (at the end of the day, just before they clean the
pomace grinder, which gets pretty gummed up by the pears, they claim).
Press out about 64 gallons of juice, putting the excess into whatever
containers can be scrounged. Drag the whole mess home. Put about ten
gallons of fresh juice in the freezer. Set some aside for immediate
consumption. Begin to work on the hardening process.
I siphon about 50 gallons of juice into a 60 gallon plastic barrel that has
the top cut off so I can get insidce to clean it. With a hydrometer it
tests out to about 8% potential alcohol, so I don't add any sugar. I take
out about a gallon, pitch that with an old packet of Montrachet yeast, wait
a day, and throw that into the barrel. Nothing much happens for a couple
of days, so I extract another gallon and pitch it with some fresh Epernet
yeast, let that work about a day and pitch it back into the barrel.
Heavy-duty ferment begins in about a day, and continues about ten days.
During this time, the barrel sits in my kitchen, covered with a towel to
keep the air out, and that covered with a screen to keep inquisitive cats
out (more on that at another time). When the ferment has mostly settled, I
scoop the partially fermented juice (now about 1.5% potential alcohol
generation remains), into six 6.5 gallon insulated carboys, and set
fermentation locks. Fermentation continues in these for about a week,
still in the kitchen, and then I rack off into clean carboys, which I leave
for another two weeks. During this time I begin sampling a fairly strong,
tart, and astringent cider, which gets strangely smoother after the first
glass, and has a self-limiting quality (you can't get out of your chair to
get a fourth glass). My aim is to set outside in a barrel whatever remains
when it gets really cold, and do the apple jack trick with the auger.
Anybody out there who has tried this or other variants for further
concentrating the essence? Also, anybody who has worked with similarly
large quanities of cider, with stories appertaining thereto to tell?
Peter R. Hoover
Cornell Publications Services
East Hill Plaza
Ithaca, NY 14850
607 255-9454
(prh4@cornell.edu)
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Date: Mon, 15 Nov 93 12:30:30 PST
From: Scott Lord (CompuCom) <v-ccsl@microsoft.com>
Subject: cider press catalog
Looking for address for company's that sell cyder presses.
thank you
v-ccsl@microsoft
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End of Cider Digest
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