Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Cider Digest #0870
Subject: Cider Digest #870, 1 August 2000
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #870 1 August 2000
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Aged Cider (Rcapshew@aol.com)
Splenda / sucralose (Andrew Lea)
Cloudy ciders and fizzy juice (Andrew Lea)
Send ONLY articles for the digest to cider@talisman.com.
Use cider-request@talisman.com for subscribe/unsubscribe/admin requests.
When subscribing, please include your name and a good address in the
message body unless you're sure your mailer generates them.
Archives of the Digest are available for anonymous FTP at
ftp://ftp.stanford.edu/pub/clubs/homebrew/cider.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Aged Cider
From: Rcapshew@aol.com
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 22:18:57 EDT
In February 2000 I found a 1.5 liter bottle of cider that
I had bottled in September 1993. Most of my ciders
and wines I bottle in .75 liter or smaller bottles but
this one had been overlooked for years.
The cider was very clear and still quite palatable after
over 6 years! I had obtained the juice from a local
orchard that took pride in never adding any preservatives.
The exact blend is unknown but supposedly included
some Winesaps with 4 other apples. I haven't noticed
much of a decline on other ciders until over 2 years
old.
Bob Capshew
Southern Indiana
------------------------------
Subject: Splenda / sucralose
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 10:29:33 +0100
I find myself strangely amibivalent about the use of sucralose to
sweeten ciders (Warren's posting). As a chemist I'm fascinated by the
science behind it (tho it's not actually new and was developed about 30
years ago by the Tate and Lyle boffins a stone's throw from my lab here
in the UK - it's just taken that long to get regulatory approval, that's
all!).
But as a craft cidermaker I feel uneasy about artificial
sweeteners, not from any issue of food safety but simply because it's a
'cop-out' and makes life too easy. We wouldn't dream of adding it to
wine or beer, so why to
cider? Yet I know that retention of natural sweetness is one of the
most difficult problems a craft cidermaker has to address (witness many
postings on this Digest) and that nearly all mainstream commercial
ciders are artificially sweetened (saccharin and acesulfame are
widespread in the UK). What do other people feel?
Andrew Lea
- --------------------------------------
Visit the Wittenham Hill Cider Page at
http://www.cider.org.uk OR
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/andrew_lea
------------------------------
Subject: Cloudy ciders and fizzy juice
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 10:35:58 +0100
Ed Parks asked:
> I put up another batch from a friend's apple tree in September
> (about 20 gallons this time). After primary fermentation in a large plastic
> drum, I racked it off into 6-gallon glass carboys and put them under
> airlock. To date none of them have cleared. Is the batch bad or is there
> something I can do?
>
There probably won't be anything wrong with the cider itself - it'll
just be hazy, that's all. The most common cause is excess pectin which
varies hugely across different apple types and state of maturity. It's
quite difficult to do much about this after fermentation, but if you
want to use fruit from the same trees again, then try a winemakers
pectic enzyme added to the juice before fermentation. You can try it
afterwards but it won't be so effective since it's inhibited by
alcohol. Otherwise try various finings (on a small test scale first!) -
see Part 5 of the Science of Cidermaking on my website, and which also
contains details of a test for pectin and some other stuff on hazes.
Also with regard to Tim Bray's fizzy juice ex deep-freeze - yes it is
possible (but unusual) to get bacterial fermentation in the absence of
yeast fermentation. This used to be a problem in the 1950's in Europe
when bulk juice was kept cold under high CO2 for many months - the yeast
was inhibited but malo-lactic bacteria could still work causing gas
release and drop in acidity. Or this could just be a weakly fermenting
wild yeast. Perhaps the long period in the freezer knocked out the
stronger fermenters - I've known things like this happen to me.
Andrew Lea nr Oxford UK
- --------------------------------------
Visit the Wittenham Hill Cider Page at
http://www.cider.org.uk OR
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/andrew_lea
------------------------------
End of Cider Digest #870
*************************
