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Cider Digest #0909
Subject: Cider Digest #909, 7 July 2001
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #909 7 July 2001
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Dupont (NYTimes talks cider (j/kbooth)) (Dick Dunn)
Bottling cider (Richard Storms)
Re: Watering trees and bottling (Terence L Bradshaw)
V.L.S. Charley's Cider Book ("John L. Emmett")
Re: Cider Digest #908, 2 July 2001 (lealon e watts jr)
Cider flavour descriptors (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Alain_M=E9nard?=)
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Subject: Dupont (NYTimes talks cider (j/kbooth))
From: rcd@talisman.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 01:23:42 -0600 (MDT)
In Cider Digest 904, Jim Booth <jameshbooth@worldnet.att.net> mentioned
(from a NY Times review):
> > DUPONT, CIDRE BOUCHE, BRUT DE NORMANDIE 1999 $7
> > Deep apple scent, tart apple flavor.
among others
I had remembered seeing some French ciders a few years back in one of our
larger stores, but hadn't sought or seen them for a while. This prompted
me to go looking. The staff tried to be helpful and suggested several
locations in the store, but couldn't hide their skepticism.
So I went wandering around, and finally found the cider mentioned above, in
an implausible interstice between the Champagne (that is, the real thing)
and the CA sparkling wines. That's just a hint in case your wine merchant
is also puzzled as to where to shelve this stuff...and finds himself flum-
moxed by the label but able to deduce that a French something with a wired-
down cork should be treated as a French sparkling wine. Hey, it's a bit
off, but I'd rather see a good cider next to Champagne than next to alco-
pop and Hooch and the other get-your-date-drunk garbage! Good cider
deserves good company.
As to the cider itself: Well worth seeking. Despite the word "Brut", it is
_not_ particularly dry. You wouldn't call it "sweet", but there's a
noticeable amount of residual sugar. And it's got a LOT of character. Un-
like the commercial mass-market ciders, it isn't diluted with fermented
sugar-water, so it's thoroughly apple and it's got good body. Very good
just by itself. Try it before you serve it with food, to be sure the
sweetness doesn't fight with what you're serving.
- ---
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
...Simpler is better.
------------------------------
Subject: Bottling cider
From: Richard Storms <orion@iw.net>
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 06:12:19 -0500
Several years ago, when the apple harvest was absolutely fantastic, I brewed a
batch using a champagne style yeast. Found that unless it was very cold,
carbonation levels caused quite an "eruption".
I bottled in recycled Grolsch bottles using new rubber rings from my local brew
store/health food outlet. Find a local pub that carries this Dutch beer. Barter
off some of your cider for all the bottles you can carry (most bars, etc. will
be glad to save 'em up for you.)
Get the empty carton, if you can since they are sized differently from anything
else available. The bottles can be a pain to clean (aren't they all ?) but they
are pretty near indestructible.
Rich Storms
Sturgis, SD
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Watering trees and bottling
From: Terence L Bradshaw <madshaw@quest-net.com>
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 09:53:01 -0400
>John Ray provided some welcome advice for newly planted trees, but what
>about well-established ones?
Well-established trees, especially in adobe (clay?) soil, should need
little watering to support a good crop, unless you are in a very dry
area. The critical time to water trees is during bloom and the first
thirty or so days after petal fall when the fruit are growing due to cell
division. After this point ant fruit growth is related to cell elongation
(swelling) and excess watering will give big fruit with a diluted flavor
profile, which works well for commercial fruit growers but is the bane of
the cidermaker.
>But I'm a bit concerned(and my wife is a LOT concerned!) about using
>something like Roundup at
>the drip line. Won't this just facilitate the poison getting to the
>roots of the tree?
There are reasons to be concerned with roundup usage in the orchard, but
having the poisons get into your tree or its fruit should not be one of
them. At the risk of sounding like a nozzlehead, I will say that Roundup
is EXTREMELY safe from a mammalian toxicological standpoint. It also does
not work within the soil profile and is very quickly degraded by soil
microbes. Roundup will affect plants whose FOLIAGE it contacts, so
spraying around apple trees with rootsuckers can cause problems, and it is
very toxic to stone fruit. The bigger issue with bare-ground orcharding
stems from soil erosion. Were it my site I would allow the grass to grow
up to about one foot or so in height, then hit it with one shot of roundup
so that the dead sod would still anchor the soil. This would free up root
competition for that critical six-week period, after which the grass is
allowed to grow back and soak up excess water and nitrogen that you do not
want in your cider fruit. If you do not want to use herbicides at all, I
would recommend a weed mat such as burlap or landscape cloth be installed
under the trees and then mulched.
>Subject: bottles
>From: Martin McGee <yakkherder@yahoo.com>
>
>Now, my question is, will the carbonation in cider be
>to great for beer bottles?
Beer bottles will work just fine, just watch your priming rates.
>Does anyone have a favorite bottle type/brand?
Whatever's in the neighbor's recycling bin. Actually I bottle mostly in
(still) wine bottles, but also use beer bottles, champagne bottles,
growlers, kegs, whatever. The best bottles to use are those that are free
and whose labels easily come off. Sam Adams labels, for what it's worth, do
not come off easily.
====================================================================
Terence Bradshaw Pomona Tree Fruit Service
93 Stowe St PO Box 258, Chelsea, VT 05038
Waterbury, VT 05676 madshaw@quest-net.com
(802)244-0953
The views represented by me are mine and mine only................
------------------------------
Subject: V.L.S. Charley's Cider Book
From: "John L. Emmett" <jlemmett@earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 11:53:06 -0700
Hi,
Well I Finally got a hold of a copy of Principles and Practice of
Cider-Making by Vernon L. S. Charley through the library interlibrary loan
service. They found it at a South Dakota university library. As most of
you know it is a translation of Warcollier's 1928 book on cider with
extensive notes by the translator. After reading it (all 316 pages), I
decided that I really wanted my own copy and spent a day slaving over a hot
copy machine first making a copy, and then recopying it into a both sides of
the page format. I took the result to Kinko's and had them bind it like a
book. I turned out very well including the drawings and photographs. Since
it was so much work to do this, I made two copies in case anyone else out
there wants a copy as much as I did, and is willing to spend $35 for it. If
you do, contact me.
John
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Cider Digest #908, 2 July 2001
From: lealon e watts jr <lwatts@worldnet.att.net>
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 15:08:30 -0700
A few ideas about weed control. I don't know how many trees you have,
but here you go.
Chickens: If you only have a few trees, chickens are very effective for
control of alot of weeds. I have a small orchard area on our half acre
with about 14 semi-dwarf trees of various types. Our flock of 20 or so
chickens (number varies due to clutch hatches and/or predators) will
keep bare earth under the trees. Nothing much will grow there besides
horehound and cheeseweed(mallow). I hoe these out once or twice a
year. Good for a small area.
Second suggestion: Mulch, and heavily, with wood chips. I am able to
get truckloads of wood chips dumped at our place for free. In our area,
tree-trimming contractors have to pay to dump the chips at composting
centers, or the dump. If I catch them on the street, most of the
workers would rather dump them at my place rather than have to take the
extra time to go down and dump them at the composter's. Periodically
you rake the mulch back and fertilize and then re-spread the mulch.
Very few weeds sprout through an eight or ten inch layer of mulch and
those few that do are very easy to hoe out or hand pull. You will have
to learn how to water differently with this method. It takes longer for
water to percolate through the mulch, but once the ground is soaked, the
water stays in longer due to the mulch's insulating qualities.
I really recommend a good mulch. Feeds the soil slowly, controls weeds
well, especially in an area with little or no summer rainfall. I
cleared our front yard of bermuda grass by mulching over and not
watering the grass and regularly pulling any green thing that pokes it's
little head out of the mulch--no Roundup necessary, just time.
Maybe a combination of the above two would be good, plus you have all
that good chicken manure in the chicken house to spread. . ..
- --Lauria Watts
Quote: " Right now I'm
using a sprinkler and yes, the weeds love it! But I'm a bit concerned
(and my wife is a LOT concerned!) about using something like Roundup at
the drip line. Won't this just facilitate the poison getting to the
roots of the tree? It's not something I want to take a chance on eating
- - - or drinking. Any thoughts?"
------------------------------
Subject: Cider flavour descriptors
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Alain_M=E9nard?= <amenard@citenet.net>
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 20:43:34 -0400
I plan to work next fall with an oenologist in order to make a
classification of savours specific to the ciders of Quebec. I have in
file an article provided by Andrew Lea a few months ago giving
information on Jerry Rutter's cider flavour descriptors. Are there some
Flavour Wheels in USA or UK adapted to cider products?
Alain Menard
Abbotsford
Quebec, Canada
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End of Cider Digest #909
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