Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Cider Digest #0912
Subject: Cider Digest #912, 25 July 2001
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #912 25 July 2001
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
cider glasses ("David Johnson")
How the Asturians serve cider ("Preben B. Jensen")
CDs in the Trees! (Andrew Lea)
Potassum sorbate and yeast (jhecksel@voyager.net)
Party trick? - (David Pickering)
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 at www.talisman.com/cider
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: cider glasses
From: "David Johnson" <dmjalj@ckhnet.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:03:46 -0500
waiting for apples can be tedious.
I would say that I like to use the footed beer glass
similar to those used for a lot of the Belgian style
beers.
There is an example on the New Belgium brewery site:
http://www.newbelgium.com/frames.html
It is located under "beer culture". A lot of the
logic applies to cider as well as beer.
------------------------------
Subject: How the Asturians serve cider
From: "Preben B. Jensen" <lesa@direct.ca>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 21:10:04 -0700
In the previous issue of the digest,Tim Bray mentioned an interest in
knowing how the asturians serve cider.
Well,let me tell you, the asturians have elevated the process to
something approaching an artform.
Plinius commented on the asturian cider production about 2000 years
ago, so these folks have had plenty of time to work out the details.
What they learned is that the cider need to be aerated as it is served
. We are of course talking about still cider(sidra natural in spanish).
The person who pours the cider is called an "escanciador".
He proceeds by holding the bottle with one hand, high above his head
and pours the cider into the glass which he holds in the other hand.
Both arms are fully stretced ,one up and one down.
You can see the escanciador by clicking on:
http://www.sidra.com/escancia.htm
If you now click on the glass that he is holding, you will get an idea
of what the glass looks like and the correct way of holding it.
Preben B Jensen
------------------------------
Subject: CDs in the Trees!
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:38:34 +0100
I said I would report back on the virtue of hanging CDs in cherry trees
to keep the birds away......
It worked like a charm (indeed it _looked_ like some bizarre totem as
the discs festoon the branches and wink in every slight breeze)! The
result was very little bird damage, and that only on the side of the
tree where I didn't have enough discs to hang any. I shall certainly
try it next year and I recommend everyone with a bird problem to try
it! Much simpler and easier than netting! (And yes I've tried the
plastic hawks but they soon get used to those!)
Incidentally the birds that give me the problems are blue tits and
blackbirds (closest US equivalents chickadee and American robin
respectively) but I guess the problem species will tend to depend on
individual locations and neighbouring habitat even within a country.
Andrew Lea
Oxford UK
- --------------------------------------
Visit the Wittenham Hill Cider Page at
http://www.cider.org.uk OR
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/andrew_lea
------------------------------
Subject: Potassum sorbate and yeast
From: jhecksel@voyager.net
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 20:42:36 -0400
Hello all:
I found that my local grocery store (Meijers) carries pasteurized cider
(fresh apple juice) year round at $3.00 a gallon. It is fairly insipid
stuff but I am playing with it.
My problem is that my fermentation is not launching very well. The
ingredients list "Potassium sorbate to preserve freshness." Is that
inhibiting my fermentation?
I used Danstar Nottingham ale yeast. This may be a bad batch (over
temped at supplier's?) as I used it in ale and it took three days to
show signs of fermentation. I usually have a solid cap of foam after
eight hours.
If the consensus is that it is the potassium sorbate, then is any strain
of yeast particularly robust in the presence of potassium sorbate?
- --
-Joe Hecksel
Eaton Rapids, Michigan
>From there to here and here to there, funny things are everywhere. -Dr
Seuss
------------------------------
Subject: Party trick? -
From: David Pickering <davidp@netwit.net.au>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:00:00 +1000
After the recent notes in the Digest about tasting......
>From "The Apples of England" by HV Taylor; Crosby Lockwood, London 1936
In this connexion an experiment sometimes carried out in physiological
laboratories provokes thought. A person is blindfolded, his nose is
plugged, and his tongue is then touched alternately with pieces of onion
and apple. The mystified victim is unable to distinguish between the
two! If, however his nose is unplugged or the food is swallowed, his
full faculties come at once into play. If the experiment is repeated
using pieces of Cox's Orange Pippin and Morgan Sweet, similar results
are obtained, and it is realized at once that the nose and palate - a
popular term based on the fact that there is a back way into the nose
from the throat - play an important part in the appreciation of flavour.
Another item from the same book - anyone know anything about it?, was it
ever for human consumption?
Fermented crab (apple) juice was distinguished from cider and was called
verjuice. This is mentioned by Tusser in his famous poem:
"Be suer of vergis (a gallon at least)
So good for the kitchen, so needfull for beast:
It helpeth thy cattle, so feeble and faint
If timely such cattle with it thou acquaint."
The following was a medieval recipe for making verjuice:
"Verjuice gather crabbs as soon as the kernels turn blacke, and lay they
in a heap to sweat and take them into troughs and crush with beetles.
Make a bagge of coarse hair-cloth and fill it with the crabbes, and
presse and run the liquor into Hogsheads."
------------------------------
End of Cider Digest #912
*************************
