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Cider Digest #0844
Subject: Cider Digest #844, 13 January 2000
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #844 13 January 2000
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
pommiers a cidre book (John A Ray)
Salicylic Acid (kathy/jim)
Disease-resistant cultivars (DRC's) for cider (Terence L Bradshaw)
Sweet apples (James Elphick)
RE Tim Bray's query (Ciderist@aol.com)
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Subject: pommiers a cidre book
From: John A Ray <jar18@mail.wsu.edu>
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 09:08:03 -0800 (PST)
Greetings,
After a 30 day wait my new book on french cider apples by Bore and
Fleckinger has arrived (ISBN:2-7380-0718-X).
Ordered over the internet from www.alapage.com, Frances answer to
Amazon.com, it cost me 513 FF plus 59.9 FF for shipping. Converted to US$
is 87.34!! It's a beautiful book with lots pictures and gobs of data.
Happy brewing!
John Ray
Fort Collins, CO
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Subject: Salicylic Acid
From: kathy/jim <kbooth@scnc.waverly.k12.mi.us>
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 13:01:39 -0400
Talked to a HB shop operator and he had some customers who made
cider, and when fermented to the right sweetness, the family
recipe from grandpa said to add salicylic acid to kill the yeast.
Salicylic acid is available from pharmacies as is a precurser for
aspirn.
Has anyone heard of this practice?
Wassail, Jim Booth
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Subject: Disease-resistant cultivars (DRC's) for cider
From: Terence L Bradshaw <madshaw@quest-net.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 11:21:20 -0500
> This may be off the wall, but I'm anxious to hear about the use of some
>of the newer apple cvs. for hard cider production. In particular, some of
>the scab resistant cvs. possess very high acids.
> From the most acidic, the list would be as follows.
>1. GoldRush--highly acidic and high soluble solids.
>2. Enterprise
>3. NovaSpy
>4. Liberty
>
> If any of you have experience with any of the above compared to
>traditional cider cvs. please comment.
I have quite a bit of experience with both growing and making cider from
many of the DRC's, especially Liberty. Currently I use about 25% Liberty
in all of my ciders, and have since day one. In fact, I first made cider
with 100% Liberty from our research farm. Liberty alone, as noted above,
has a good acid balance for my taste, but is very low in tannin. Aroma
qualities are good at best and can be blown off if fermented at too high a
temperature. The best part of using Liberty, in my opinion, is that you get
high-quaility fruit with no fungicides, which is important to me as I use
only natural yeasts.
Hope this helps,
Terry B
Terence Bradshaw
Pomona Tree Fruit Service University of Vermont Apple Team
PO Box 258, Chelsea, VT 05038 122 Hills Building
(802)685-3412 Burlington, VT 05402
madshaw@quest-net.com (802)656-0490
------------------------------
Subject: Sweet apples
From: James Elphick <jelphick@sfu.ca>
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 20:21:11 -0800 (PST)
The cider that I made this year turned out quite nicely, although I think
that some residual sweetness would have improved it (it is a little sharp).
I like sparkling ciders (bottle fermented) and don't really want to
pasteurize to maintain sweetness. I was hoping someone could help me with
information on varietals that are high in unfermentable sugars (ie chemicals
which are or behave like sugars but are not appreciated by the yeasts of the
world). My understanding/assumption is that apples are fairly high in these
since the specific gravity of dry ciders does not seem to drop below 1
(unlike wines for instance).
Any suggestions?
In response to a small part of Tim Bray's message...
>4. Why would the pH of the two batches be the same, when taste indicated
>that one had more acidity?
>
I will try to explain this better than it was explained to me years ago in
first year chemistry... pH and acidity are related but not the same. pH is
a measure of free hydrogen ions (this contributes to the perception of
acidity). However, most of the acidity in a cider comes from hydrogen ions
that are bound to organic acids. These do not show up in a pH measurement
(since they are not freely floating around). They do show up in a measure
of acidity (eg by titration). In this method, the hydrogen ions are
stripped off the organic acids by altering the pH, and once they are all
stripped off, then you have reached the endpoint and the acidity can be
calculated.
The second possible reason is that pH meters are not generally very accurate
and the response from the probe can vary from day to day, and buffer
solutions used to calibrate the probe degrade over time. Having said all
that, they do tend to be more consistent in the range we are interested in
(pH 3 to 4.5) than closer to pH 7.
James Elphick
British Columbia,
Canada
------------------------------
Subject: RE Tim Bray's query
From: Ciderist@aol.com
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 02:03:05 EST
#1 Most likely it was to cold for the yeast to get going, they like the temp.
to be about 70F.
Your wine yeast wants a much higher temp also, but a slow ferment is supposed
to be good for cider.
I used Montrachet yeast in a batch last year, I thought it would never clear,
waited 10 months to bottle it. THen it took 3 months of conditioning, was
pretty good though.
#2 I don't think the temperature fluctuation makes much difference, as 5
gallons has enough volume to be pretty stable .
#3 There are allways mold spores present, so if you don't sulfite and it
doesn't ferment.........
#4 If your using those little paper strips, they are notoriously inaccurate.
I used to have exactly the same problem, then I bought a titration kit and
have only used it twice in 2 years, because it takes to long.
Shaun Shepherd
Portland Or.
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End of Cider Digest #844
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