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Cider Digest #0628
Subject: Cider Digest #628, 25 November 1996
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #628 25 November 1996
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
pasteurizing (Dick Dunn)
E.Coli details ("Bruce P.Stevens")
pastuerized ciders (kathy)
Re: giving children cider (Michael S Ferdinando)
E. Coli and children drinking. (Russell Mast)
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Subject: pasteurizing
From: rcd@raven.talisman.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: 23 Nov 96 10:49:13 MST (Sat)
Michael Vezie <mlv@pobox.com> wrote:
> ...John Ross <johnross@halcyon.com> wrote:
> >I talked today to an administrator at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
> >about their response to the e. coli contamination in fresh apple juice. I
> >explained to him that many of us who make our own hard cider buy fresh juice
> >from cider mills or farm stands, and that we would not be able to do so if
> >the cider producers were required to pasteurize all their product.
>
> We wouldn't? Why not?...
Here, it depends on whether you care about the juice having been "cooked"
along the way. Flash-pasteurizing is a lot gentler than heating up a
kettle of juice on the stove, but it's still hard on the juice. Where the
folks who are making cider from commercial juice in the US are already
often up against a poor choice of apples, pasteurizing won't help them any.
It will also remove the choice of using the natural yeast, of course.
> Now, if they start requiring preservatives, that's another story, of course.
The reports I'd seen were indicating that they wanted either pasteurizing
or preservatives. I'd assume the preservative-of-choice would be sodium
benzoate, which will stop yeast dead in their tracks. (You can supposedly
neutralize it by heating the juice, but then we're back to the "pasteurize"
concern.) What seems most likely with a preserve-or-pasteurize law is
that the large producers who turn out the heavily-filtered clear juices
for supermarkets would continue to pasteurize, while the smaller producers
who are turning out unfiltered juice would mostly go with preservatives,
on the basis that it will do less to alter the character of the juice than
heating it. This would leave us with the better commercial juices for
cider becoming unusable.
The curious thing to me--maybe I've just missed a key news report--is that
I still haven't seen anything that pins down the cause of the Odwalla
problem. I would think you'd want to know what caused a problem before
you'd set out to solve it. Speculation has been that the tainted juice was
the result of contamination with manure--by using windfalls and/or a dual-
use orchard for juice apples. These would seem easy to solve, and a solu-
tion could be augmented by using fairly short pull ("freshness") dates...
I guess I'm nervous that the pasteurize-or-preserve approach allows sloppy
production practices to continue--not actually attacking the root cause of
contaminated juice, but simply getting rid of the contamination (we hope!)
after it's there.
- ---
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Boulder County, Colorado USA
...Simpler is better.
------------------------------
Subject: E.Coli details
From: "Bruce P.Stevens" <meadmanb@sprynet.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 96 08:21:04 -0400
Just a thought from me personally on this whole issue and its
relationship to us as cidermnakers...
WHAT ABOUT SCRUMPY?
When you add raw protein in the form of beef or pork to a cider there has
got to be gazillions of escherischia etc's running around in the barrel
but the English .....and one American I know of have made it
and lived to tell of it over all these years. Does the government
require all meat to be pasteurized before it is sold......
nooooooooooot yet ,eh?
What about those who have added raw egg whites to the barrel to aid in
clarification over the course of apple histoir? Tell me why they are free
and clear of E.coli and I'll clue you in to the basis of all this rot.
Alcohol is good for you and the government hates to admit it. We Yankees
survived on cider, hard that is, for years when our forebears cleared the
Eastern forests to plant grains and apple trees like their ancestors in
Merry Olde Wales.
Children drank ciderkin, a lightly alcoholic beverage made from fermented
repressed juice of pomace . The PH was low and the alcohol kept the bugs
down as well! Folks worked hard all day and did not drink the beaver
infested water.
Now that we are all lazy, fat buttocksed whiners, the forests have
regrown and urban America is preventing the use of leg hold traps (read
liberal democrats in Massachusetts) ..... Now from this the beaver
population is soaring and our groundwater is getting reinfected with
parasites from wild goose and beaver dung in the reservoirs of our major
cities, because we can't discharge weapons with lead in it, to keep the
bastards away.
The kids that got ill ....supposedly from apple juice, are likely to
have contracted it thru the smear stains under their thumbnails . If
they were smart enuf to wash their hands before eating and stopped
drinking unfiltered water ...this tragedy wouldn't have occured. Their
parents should be sterilized to prevent the miscreants from having more
dumb kids and we would all be better off if people lightened up a little
bit!
Now that I've vented abit we can get back to reality and go easy on the
sarcasm
I am checking with some professionals I know, from my years in the
sewage treatment business and expect to have some info on the viability
of the nasty little buggers soon.
Initially we know that the two standard methods used in the laboratory to
kill these little pukes are chlorination and autoclaving, (not
pasteurization). I can tell you that my partner in the apple business
uses chlorine to bathe the apples he uses for cider before crushing. All
his apples are also culls from the grading line and drops are not used .
But what about the drops they only use in England - don't they get dirt
with fecal matter on them there too or are their e.coli wimps compared to
the big armed bacteria that survive in the US?
Ours are passed thru a bath with agood dose of hypochlorite and then
allowed to get rinsed as they go up the inclined belt conveyor to the
crusher. That's what the state of Maine requires for cider ( read -
juice) pressing facilities at present. CL2 works wonders on the cell
walls of most organisms and breaks down the membrane to expose the inner
part of the cell to the environment...where it can't survive! That's what
CL2 does and it does it well.
More to come as we get the straight skinny from our friendly
bacteriologists .....someone should also check in with the Centers for
Disease Control to get their take on the whole scare?
Real men drink scrumpy....
ex Chem E, ex RC, ex ecute the IRS ! Lugar must be the Secretary of the
Treasury to dismantle the monster! Vote Dole - Kemp and play football !
------------------------------
Subject: pastuerized ciders
From: kathy <kbooth@scnc.waverly.k12.mi.us>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 09:50:34 -0500
The local dairy is selling pastuerized cider without perservatives for a
$1.29/gal.
I couldn't resist and put down 11 gal to make applejack. It fermented
great with the Red Star Champaigne yeast.
It may not be as fresh as it was in cold storage for a while before I
got it. Any suggestions as to what cold storage will do to the color
and the fresh aroma?
I'll freeze the cider in 2 L plastic bottles and drain off the alcohol
and the sugars. The chrystals will thaw and be bottled as cider lite.
The exposure to air and low alcohol makes a low stability product.
Cheers, jim booth, lansing, mi
------------------------------
Subject: Re: giving children cider
From: Michael S Ferdinando <msf2@cornell.edu>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 11:55:59 -0500
>Subject: giving children cider
>From: "Dana H. Myers" <myers@bigboy.West.Sun.COM>
>Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 13:14:40 -0800 (PST)
>
>Every one of my three children has, at one time or another, expressed
>interest in what I'm drinking, and sometimes I'm drinking something
>with alcohol when then they do this. I've always let them have a sip
>or two. Usually they only want a sip or two, but sometimes I have to
>give them something else to distract them. I don't think I'm being
>even the slightest bit irresponsible doing this. I want my kids to
>have a healthy attitude about drinking, and therefore I'm avoiding
>making alcohol a tabu.
>
This is kind of off-subject, but I agree wholeheartedly! I distinctly
remember that when I was in college, the other kids who abused alcohol the
most tended to be the ones for whom alcohol was a big mysterious forbidden
subject while growing up. I was raised in a household that allowed the
children a sip or two of wine or beer, and I consider myself an extremely
responsible drinker.
I remember one individual who came from a strict Muslim family, where
alcohol was against their religion. Not having any idea of how alcohol
affects the body, or of how much one should drink at a time, he downed half
a bootle of gin one night the first week he was at school. He ended up in
the hospital with severe alcohol poisoning.
Not a good way to learn that little lesson.
And now back to cider:
I just bottled my first 5-gallon batch over the week-end. It's very nice.
I highly recomment Wyeast #1007, German Ale. It came out dry, sharp, tart,
and smooth.
I'm looking forward to how it tastes after bottle-conditioning.
Michael S Ferdinando
Production Control Assistant--Cornellcard
Cornell University Office of the Bursar, 260 Day Hall, Ithaca NY 14853
607-255-8135 // msf2@cornell.edu // fax: 607-255-6442
"Ronald Reagan is not a conservative. He's an eighteenth-century liberal,
two hundred years too late." -- L. Pearce Williams, 1988
------------------------------
Subject: E. Coli and children drinking.
From: Russell Mast <rmast@fnbc.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 18:30:17 -0600
Keep in mind that one reason that people utilized fermentation thousands
of years ago was to purify drinking water. I wouldn't worry much about
E. Coli surviving in anything with a significant alcohol content. However,
there are some microbes that create poisons which are the actual source of
their damage. I believe that botulism is a case of this. I'm not sure
how significant this is to cider making.
Alcohol is still, today, a commonly prescribed treatment for "colic". I
was a collicky baby and my folks gave me whiskey. When that didn't work,
they gave me MORE whiskey. Now, whenever I start crying, I want whiskey,
but I don't know if I can blame them for that. Seriously, though, getting
a 3 year-old drunk for laughs is tantamount to abuse, but a sip or two
won't kill anyone. Also, though some places may try to peg you for abuse,
it's perfectly legal to supply your own children with alcohol in your own
house, to be consumed in your presence.
- -R
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End of Cider Digest #628
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