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Cider Digest #0549
Subject: Cider Digest #549, 18 August 1995
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #549 18 August 1995
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Early Macintosh? ("Patrick O. Ruth")
re: Ciders in Cornwall (Dick Dunn)
yeast stuff (Gordon Muir)
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Subject: Early Macintosh?
From: "Patrick O. Ruth" <patr@Mercury.mcs.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 09:24:15 -0500 (CDT)
Greetings to Ciderspace,
My front yard sports an apple tree that had 'Macintosh' on the label
when bought a few years back. The label also indicated that it
was on dwarf stock. Naturally, the tree is now so tall that I can't
get to the top branches, and I'm not sure that it is really a Macintosh.
Most of the Macs around here, 22 miles west of Chicago, seem to mature
in perhaps the third week of September or so. Mine will have some
apples ready in a couple of weeks, the last week of August. The apples
*look* like Macs, but have a slightly different taste that's hard to
describe. This wouldn't be 'Early Macintosh', a Lodi x Macintosh
hybrid, that I've seen in a couple of texts? I do have a Lodi, and it
bears some years at the end of July. Naturally, I don't do any cider
with it since there's nothing to blend it with, and the first pies of the
year get priority. Does anyone know how I might tell if my 'Mac' is
the 'Early'? If it is, what is it's cider potential? If all else
fails, I suppose that I could press out a gallon or so and evaluate.
I didn't see any reference to it while winging through the Stanford
archives, starting with the 1992 digests.
Pat Ruth
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Subject: re: Ciders in Cornwall
From: rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: 16 Aug 95 00:54:50 MDT (Wed)
D Moore <102475.2737@compuserve.com> writes about Cornwall cider country.
We were in Somerset last year and got out toward Devonshire/Cornwall. It
seemed to me that Somerset was closer to the center of cider-making, but be
that as it may...all that part of the country is wonderful.
> I prefer sweet cider to dry, so I pretty much ignored the dry
> stuff like "Strongbow".
Our preference leaned to the dry side.
> Local farm cider or "Scrumpy": I found this to be very
> disappointing. Generally this was a still cider, that was
> very low on taste.
The "farm cider" we found was still, dry, but quite tasty. I spent a lot
of time trying to poke around, find what variations I could, and under-
stand the origins of the taste. (My wife, who is English-born-and-bred,
was dragged along, not at all unwillingly.) What I came round to was that
the cider depends on the apples...and the best apples do make an amazing
cider. (The best cider makes a rather nice brandy too, but that's for
another post.)
> A commercial version of farm cider, (does that make sense),
> called "Scrumpy Jack" is widely available on tap. This is a
> medium sweet sparkling cider. I found this to be a decent,
> slightly tart cider. It might be better cold, but cool is
> the best you can do England.
We liked that OK but (de gustibus...) preferred the more dry. I don't mind
the sweeter cider; it has its place. It's just that, living in the US, I
would like to be able to get a still dry cider when I want one, so being
able to walk across the street and buy several liters for a few pounds has
become a precious memory.
I found that the more tart ciders were better at cooler temperatures. The
dry and not-so-tart suggested themselves for the same sort of low-cellar-
but-not-cold-temperature that I'd give a good white wine, for the same
reasons.
> "Blackthorn" makes a Dry, CiderMaster, & Sweet cider...
Blackthorn should be Taunton, available in the US (although I'm not sure
what they do to it before they ship it here). Taunton is in Somerset.
For the western country, Somerset is a good place to base a vacation...
you can get into Devon and Cornwall (with a drive that Americans find
rather less surprising than the English) and you can equally well travel
east to some of the mystical tourist sites in Wiltshire. Cider, most
excellent by US standards, is to be found everywhere, along with food that
accompanies it well.
> A short note on "Mead".
Alas. If it exists in England, we didn't find it in the west country,
although that's a discussion for the mead-lover's digest.
> I only found two, both from the same maker.
>..."Cornish Mead Wine"...
>..."Cornish Liqueur Mead"...
>...Trash.
at best!
I brought back a small (8.5 cl) bottle of the "Cornish Mead Wine" just to
convince folks that, at least where we were, the art of mead-making is in
worse shape than in the US. (Actually, there are two commercial wineries
just in Colorado making decent mead now.) I think the stuff that Moore
describes and I brought must be used in those ersatz medieval recreations.
It was a lone disappointment in an otherwise wonderful trip.
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Subject: yeast stuff
From: gmuir@islandnet.com (Gordon Muir)
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 12:19:46 -0700
Hello from a newbie,
I'm an experienced homebrewer and have been working with a lot of different
yeasts lately however I'm just doing my first batch of cider and haven't a
clue what sort of yeast would be appropriate.
I'm not looking to do a dry champagne-like cider. On the other hand I don't
want anything that ends up being cloyingly sweet either. I'm experienced
enough to know how S.G. influences what you end up with.... So here's the
question. What sort of yeast will give me a cider with a nice bouquet, mild
sweetness and a good apple taste.
I will be kegging the finished product so I'm open to suggestions of testing
and forcing the yeast to quit working. I would prefer to let it ferment out
if possible.
I have two apple trees in my new backyard. One gives tart apples and the
others are sweet and juicy. No idea what varieties they are.
Sorry to blab on but I sure would appreciate any help the old hands here can
give me:-)
Thanks, G. Muir
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End of Cider Digest #549
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