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Cider Digest #0718
Subject: Cider Digest #718, 13 January 1998
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #718 13 January 1998
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
From whence Cider Flavour? (Andrew Lea)
Re: Cider Digest #715 (Elke und Eckard)
A quick trip to London... (johnjohn@triceratops.com)
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Subject: From whence Cider Flavour?
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 14:04:31 -0500
For those of you who can cope with the technicalities, and following the
points made by Charles Hudak and Sean Kelleher....
Yes it's perfectly true that if you do a GC-MS of an apple juice and a
cider there will be some peaks in common - mostly the homologous
even-numbered ethyl esters C2 - C10, the lower branched alcohols and some
aldehydes (e.g. hexanal and benzaldehyde). Many of these are indeed
reminiscent of apple, but they are generated biosynthetically by similar
pathways in both apples and yeast. The point is that the original juice
volatiles are almost entirely driven off in the early turbulent phase of
fermentation, and whatever remains at the end of cider fermentation comes
de novo from yeast, not apple. You can prove this by fermenting
aroma-stripped apple juice, which has no aroma before it begins, but ends
up as a cider which is practically indistinguishable from its non-stripped
counterpart. Equally, if you add yeast and ferment a sterile sugar
solution with the addition of trace inorganic nutrients, the full range of
fermentation volatiles is produced.
So the simplistic retort to all that is - why don't ALL fermented beverages
taste the same? And the answer is because the yeast acts on different
non-volatile precursors in the must or wort or whatever to give very
specific volatiles which are characteristic of the source (but which were
not liberated from that source until the yeast got to work). In grape
wines, the famous 'cat pee' aroma of Sauvignon Blanc arises that way and is
not found in the grape juice. In cider, for instance, phenylethanol is
probably liberated likewise (as well as being made independently by yeast
sugar metabolism), and so also is the characteristic 'cider aroma compound'
of molecular weight 172 which has not yet been unequivocally identified but
is probably the dioxolane between acetaldehyde and octane-diol. The
octanediol is liberated by the yeast from a glycosidic precursor and the
acetaldehyde is made by the yeast from the sugar en route to ethanol - it
puts some of them together and hey presto you have something that smells
characteristically of cider and not of any other fermented beverage!!
After all that, though, I grant you it pays not to be too dogmatic. One of
the many surprising things one learns in flavour chemistry of foods is that
there may be more than one route for each compound to get there.... for
instance the flowery terpenes in Gewurtztraminer or Muscat wine probably
come both from the original juice and the non-volatile
precursors........but that's enough techie-speak for now!
Andrew Lea
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/andrew_lea
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Subject: Re: Cider Digest #715
From: Elke und Eckard <eichen@advm2.GM.FH-Koeln.DE>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 00:54:09 +0100
In digest 715, Andrew Lea wrote
> Lots of Germans enjoy 'Frankfurter Ebbelwoi'
Lots of Germans? This is a speciality of the area round Frankfurt, and it
*might* be that lots of people round there enjoy it, but it's a small area,
and you can't even buy it in other parts of Germany. I tried, I don't like
it, and I don't know anybody who likes it.
> the French 'cidre bouchee' whis is sweet and low alcohol
The French cider you can buy in German supermarkets too *is* sweet and *has*
got low alc (3 - 5%). But that's cider produced by big factories. I've been
to France and found farmers who produce cider mainly to distill it. They
make a very fine cider (and a very fine calvados!), but it's not sweet, and
it's got more alc (about 7 - 10%). Could you make a sweet cider with that
low alc without adding any chemicals? It's not the stuff I like to drink:
Not because of the low alc (wonderful!), but because of all the chemicals.
BTW - I've been to south Germany (Bodensee), and they too make a cider -
they call it Most - to distill it. Not sweet, not low alc, but "Worlds apart
from Ebbelwoi": much better!
I hope there's no one from Frankfurt reading this digest, but if you do:
Geschmaecker sind gar sehr verschieden
und jedem recht tun faellt oft schwer
denn was dem einen nach Belieben
das missfaellt dem andern sehr
Eckard witte
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Subject: A quick trip to London...
From: johnjohn@triceratops.com
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 10:22:02 -0800 (PST)
My sister started a 3 week trip to London yesterday.
"Let me know what cider I should bring you back," was her parting
statement.
Any recommendations about what I should request of her? I doubt
she'll have the chance to leave the city much, nor hit any obscure
markets.
Any thoughts on customs issues on the way back in the states?
John
- --
John White
Triceratops Admin
johnjohn@triceratops.com
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End of Cider Digest #718
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