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Cider Digest #1067
From: cider-request@talisman.com
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Subject: Cider Digest #1067, 16 August 2003
Cider Digest #1067 16 August 2003
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Re: Colonial New England Sugar (Mark)
Sorry foks! ("tugger")
Cider Apples in Northern California ("gmarion.dri.edu")
Apple skins. (Andrew Lea)
FYM! (Andrew Lea)
Re: Cornell Study and Slow Foods ("Gary Awdey")
Commercial Cider Production ("5585")
Re: Cider- whatever it is- issues (Ross McKay)
Cider from pasteurised juice (Ross McKay)
first perry attempt (Ross McKay)
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Subject: Re: Colonial New England Sugar
From: Mark <scaffnet@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 08:37:11 -0700 (PDT)
Regarding NE sugar trade...
In the excellent book 'Cod' by Mark Kurlansky he
details the triangle of trade that the NE fish
was essential to: the dried cod was shipped to
the Carribean where it provided a cheap,
preserved protein source for slave plantations
that grew sugar. The sugar was made into rum down
there, and then shipped back up here. The codfish
supply was essential to the slave based economy,
but the indirect connection allowed the NE
merchant class to maintain an air of personal
innocence and moral superiority despite their
intimate economic involvement in slavery.
And on another note, Abolitionists latched onto
maple sugar as a more moral and healthful
substitute to cane sugar. It was locally made, by
free men, and besides, they reasoned, one could
never be sure what insects, dirt or 'other foul
substance' would be put into sugar by resentful
slaves. I'll let you connect the dots as to what
foul substance they were referring to...
Mark Lattanzi
------------------------------
Subject: Sorry foks!
From: "tugger" <tugger@netreach.net>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:58:24 -0400
Dick and others
Sorry for complaining. I'll stop whining and just make
cider from what I can get til I return to my PA orchard
where I can produce my own juice.
Would like to correct one impression from Dick's note. As
written by Dick it appears that I wrote the several
paragraphs he quotes near the end of his note where he asks
me to walk in the newcomers shoes. While I have personally
grafted, planted nurtured each of the 500 trees in my
orchard and have the experience(s) the quote refers to I am
not the author of the material in those paragraphs.
Mike
------------------------------
Subject: Cider Apples in Northern California
From: "gmarion.dri.edu" <gmarion@dri.edu>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:53:11 -0700
Terry Harrison in Healdsburg, CA generally has cider apples for sale.
He can be reached at 707-433-6802 or terrycar@sonic.net.
- --
Dr. Giles M. Marion
Earth and Ecosystem Sciences
Desert Research Institute 775-673-7349 (phone)
2215 Raggio Parkway 775-673-7485 (fax)
Reno, NV 89512 gmarion@dri.edu
------------------------------
Subject: Apple skins.
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 20:08:23 +0100
John Howard wrote:
> Several days ago someone asked if leaving skins in the fermentation would
> increase tannin levels similar to red wine process. As a fellow complete but
> eager novice, I've been hoping one of the more experienced hands was going
> to comment on this.
The answer is yes in principle but it makes an awful mess and is much
more difficult to handle practically than is red wine. You might feel
the gain was hardly worthwhile. You'd probably do better by
re-extracting pressed apple skins /pomace in a second incubation /
extraction. I covered this off rather obliquely in CD #1054 on 8th
July. Check the archives!
Andrew Lea
- ----------------------------------
Visit the Wittenham Hill Cider Page at
http://www.cider.org.uk
------------------------------
Subject: FYM!
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 22:07:48 +0100
Ben wrote:
> I think that what marks
> these ciders is the rough "country" edge that we call FYM (farmyard
> manure), which is not a defect but the result of Brettanomyces bacteria
Dick asked me to expand on this a wee bit. Most sensory scientists
agree on 'barnyard' / 'farmyard' in wine and milk as being largely due
to 4-ethyl phenol. Now all the Californian and Oz winemakers seem to
believe this only comes from Brettanomyces infection (it is a yeast,
actually, not a bacterium). If you look on Google you'll find lots
about it. In fact many winemakers now use 4-ethyl phenol analysis as a
'unique' marker for Brett infection which in my view is plain wrong and
very unscientific since many micro-organisms can produce it from
suitable substrates (p-coumaric acid in wines and ciders, tyrosine in
milk).
My colleagues at Long Ashton discovered over 30 years ago that it could
come from various lactobacilli in bittersweet ciders and this has been
're-discovered' in wines and whiskies several times since. Up to a point
it is a very desirable quality attribute and is indeed characteristic of
the spicy aroma of a good bittersweet cider.
So I agree with Ben to the extent that a little of that character is
good but a lot is not! My guess is that when lactics do it, the flavour
rarely if ever becomes excessive. If Bretts do it, maybe it gets too
much, or maybe they produce other unpleasant things too of which 4-ethyl
phenol is just the most evident.
There are some winemakers out there encouraging Brett infection on the
basis that this provides character. I'm not so sure. Bretts also seem
to be responsible for mousiness which (IMO) is never characterful in a
cider or a wine. I might encourage some lactics but I would never think
of inoculating with Bretts. And the Leuconostoc oenos I used last year
did not produce ethyl phenol - but other 'wild' lactic bacteria around
these parts do.
And then Mark Beck asked:
> I've been wondering about using Belgian Trappist/Abbey yeast in a
> cider. This yeast certainly gives beer a unique flavor that I think might
> work well in a cider. Anyone out there tried this?
I'm no brewer, but one of the distinguishing features of many Belgian
Gueze beers and in part responsible together with lactic bacteria for
the unique flavour is claimed to be ....Brettanomyces!! Which was I
understand first isolated and characterised from a Belgian beer!
Andrew Lea, nr Oxford, UK.
- ----------------------------------
Visit the Wittenham Hill Cider Page at
http://www.cider.org.uk
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Cornell Study and Slow Foods
From: "Gary Awdey" <gawdey@att.net>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 17:38:20 -0400
Dr. Olga Padilla-Zakour mentioned the same study to me a few weeks ago at
Cornell's annual cider workshop and I've been itching to get my hands on a
copy to understand better what it does and does not suggest. Part of me
wants to prove part of it wrong (how can folks prefer cider made from heat
pasturized juice?) and part of me wants to be openly, critically objective
and learn from it. Given the number of apple varieties involved and the
number of other variables, it sounds like there would have been a
substantial number of samples to try. One thing I'm wondering is if the 50
ppm sulfite samples were further subdivided into all natural yeast
fermentation (meaning yeast that occurred naturally in the fruit), partial
natural yeast fermentation superceded by later addition of cultured yeast,
and immediate fermentation with cultured yeast. I would also really like to
know what experience with tasting various regional styles of cider the
members of the taste panel had. If none, then nuttiness and BYN (Barn Yard
Notes--I think Ben Watson coined that term) and 'stinky cheese' notes would
almost certainly be judged inferior. Similarly, Charles McGonegal mentioned
a few months ago how an interesting anise taste conferred on a particular
cider by the apple varieties used met with a confused and not entirely
delighted response in a blind tasting (showing how the unexpected may be
less likely to be well received). You can look at this different ways:
Lacking the experience to understand certain historically-derived regional
tastes or preferences members of a taste panel would probably not rate the
ciders the same way as someone raised on scrumpy or French farmhouse cider.
On the other hand, tests by inexperienced cider drinkers might be more
representative of the huge untapped market of potential new cider drinkers
in North America (at least in it's earliest stages). Ciders with a "clean"
taste seem to do very well with new cider drinkers while the more
experienced may look for rmore variety. A test that favors ciders made from
heat pasturized juice may not necessarily bad for traditional ciders,
because as one recent contributor to the UK Cider group suggested for
"industrial" cider this may be the way that many who come to value the
regional cider traditions are first introduced to cider just as many who
appreciate fine craft beers and ales began with mainstream lagers.
I've noticed that first-time cider drinkers seem to prefer sweeter ciders
(there are exceptions but that seems to be the general trend in my very
unscientific observations). I've also noted that many first-time cider
drinkers scrunch up their face at very dry ciders and think it has started
to turn to vinegar (well, I know of a couple of instances in which that did
happen, but even when it hasn't started to turn that often seems to be the
first suspicion). However, I've also found that if you forewarn the same
drinkers that the first taste will be a shock to the palate, citing as an
example the first taste of grapefruit tasting sour and subsequent tastes
being pretty good, then they're much more likely to be receptive and enjoy
the cider (and later perhaps even regard the sweeter ones as too sweet). It
is because of the speed and magnitude with which cider tastes may be shaped
by experience in new cider drinkers that I see the need to intrepret the
findings of taste studies with a great deal of care and evaluate how the
studies are set up critically to understand the limits of what you can learn
from them and what still needs to be studied.
I'm very glad that there is an organization like Slow Foods to promote
traditions that might otherwise be lost (or at least unavailable except to a
much smaller number of people). At the same time I'm glad there are
programs like Cornell's Food Science & Technology that are taking a fresh
look at basic assumptions about cidermaking. Some of the newer technology
used by large cidermakers (like use of concentrated juice from European
cider fruit) may be at odds with the mission of Slow Foods, mainly because
the scale of equipment must normally be large in order to maximize returns
on investment, and the overall effect tends to be a homogenizing one. There
may be some apple varieties that have superior "organoleptic" qualities
(whatever your definition of superior may happen to be) when they're heat
pasturized. I have no plans to use heat pasturization to find out what they
might be, mainly because I'm concentrating on use of apple variety as the
principal factor in determining quality. However, if enough cidermakers
embrace technology judiciously (with an eye toward delighting the cider
drinkers with quality and wider selection rather than simply toward cutting
costs) then perhaps one day Slow Foods will find that certain new practices,
while not traditional, may nevertheless be used to produce cider that is
distinctive and worthy of recognition.
Gary Awdey
------------------------------
Subject: Commercial Cider Production
From: "5585" <5585@email.msn.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:16:33 -0700
Is there any books or publications in print that would help me set up a =
commercial cidery?
Any help would be appreciated.
Tim Taylor
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Cider- whatever it is- issues
From: Ross McKay <rosko@zeta.org.au>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 11:21:38 +1000
In CD#1066, Dick Dunn wrote:
>Mike, all of us can make good cider. Heck, you can make a decent cider
>from frozen grocery-store concentrate. (I've done it and I'm not ashamed
>of having done so. It was what was available to me back then.) Just the
>same, we can make decent wines from canned wine-grape-juice concentrate,
>and we can make decent beer from malt extract. But it doesn't make us
>leaders, nor distinguished in our craft, to do so.
I'll take this opportunity to pipe up, as a relative novice here. I
started off making cider in 2000 with a couple of commercial kits.
Dreadful! Which inspired me to buy some pasteurised juice from an
orchard and add wine yeast. So far, I've made two (dreadful) kit ciders,
one all-bought-juice cider and three ciders partly from bought juice and
partly from crushed apples. Yesterday I started my first perry from
crushed pears.
For me, making a craft cider is about making a drink that I like. I
don't like what I can buy locally, and I have the equipment to make
cider, so I do. I like my cider very dry, and it is convenient for me to
add a wine yeast, so I do.
If I had to toil for ten years without seeing any cider, I'd probably
not have even entertained the thought of starting. My last two batches
included some cider apple varieties, so the flavour is improving, but
I'm not yet ready to plant trees and get into the sort of effort
required to maintain them. Maybe one day, but not this decade.
I guess that I'm pretty much in Mike's position, except I don't much
like the "plain" flavour of my cider made from only pasteurised sweet
juice so I've sought out some cider apples. Note to Mike: I live about
200kms from the cider apples so it was quite a round trip, but I'll only
be doing it annually and SWMBO and I made it a nice day out. And the
additional flavour(s) made it well worthwhile!
[I've since been contacted off-list by someone who has pointed me to
another source, also a day trip away]
Do I belong on this list? I reckon so, unless someone tells me to bugger
off. I'm no leader in my craft, but I like my cider and enjoy reading
this list. If I didn't read this list, I'd probably be stuck back with
those dreadful commercial kits or (shudder) Strongbow.
Mike, if you don't like seeing the list filled with nothing but orchard
chatter and nomenclature debates, then make it something else - tell us
what you are doing with your pasteurised juice! Here, I'll start the
ball rolling with my next two posts.
cheers,
Ross.
- --
Ross McKay, WebAware Pty Ltd
"Since when were you so generously inarticulate?" - Elvis Costello
------------------------------
Subject: Cider from pasteurised juice
From: Ross McKay <rosko@zeta.org.au>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 12:11:52 +1000
G'day all,
Following on from my previous post/rant, I said I'd make a post about
cider from pasteurised juice. So here it is!
My first two ciders were from commercial kits - dreadful! So after
reading a bit of Cider Digest history and visiting a few good websites,
I decided to get some good quality apple juice and add a reliable yeast
instead - heck, it couldn't be any worse than those kits!
So I picked over some yeast recommendations, and decided to go with a
wine yeast because my tastes are rather dry anyway. My LHBS (local home
brew shop) carried a grand total of one wine yeast - Lalvin EC-1118. So,
dry it was going to be!
I didn't much care for the apple juice available to me in the
supermarkets, but I did like the juice from an orchard up in Bilpin, NSW
(in the Blue Mountains, just outside Sydney). The store-bought juice was
too harsh and acidic for my tastes, and I've since been told (by another
orchardist) that it is nearly all reconstituted juice from overseas. So
SWMBO and I drove up to Bilpin to buy some bottles. We were living a
little closer then, so it was a nice hour or so drive up there. I bought
18L of juice for fermenting, plus a couple of litres for drinking :)
After sanitising my fermenter (HDPE plastic barrel with spigot), I
poured in the juice and took a hydrometer reading - 1.050 or so. I
pitched the EC-1118 without rehydrating (yes, I know...) and it was away
pretty quickly. I bottled it about two weeks later when the SG was about
1.000, primed with a little table sugar for carbonation.
It was pretty harsh for quite a few months, but by six months it was
pretty damned good! The flavour was quite subtle and it was very dry,
but I liked it. Of course, it was almost gone by the time I realised
just how good it became after seven months.
After that, I tried some cloudy apple juice from the supermarket. For
the Aussies here, it was Mountain Maid. It was not harsh like most
supermarket juice, and unfiltered, so I thought give it a try. I used an
ale yeast on it (generic Aussie home brew type from supermarket). Again,
I just pitched the dry yeast onto the juice and left it to it. Original
SG was 1.050 and final SG around 1.000, when I bottled it two weeks
later, again primed with a little table sugar. (Sorry Dick!)
Hmmm... not so good. I still don't know whether it was the yeast, the
juice, my methods or a combination of all three, but I didn't much like
this one so much. Still, it was more interesting than the kit ciders, so
I drank it :)
More recently, I've relocated further away from Bilpin so it is quite a
drive. However, I nearly simultaneously discovered that one of the
orchards there produces some cider varieties. So in February this year
when they were ripe, I drove the 200km or so to pick up a load of cider
and eating apples, plus some more apple juice.
I don't have an apple mill or press, so I used my juice extractor. It
takes small apples whole, so that made it a little easier, but I had to
stop after about a litre of juice to clean out the cover each time
because the solids stuck to it after a few. I had already tried it on a
batch of cider made with apple juice, pear juice and crushed Granny
Smiths (not bad, but not great) so I was confident it would work out OK.
Having tried my own cider made from just pasteurised juice, and cider
from a mix of juice, crushed Gala table apples and cider apples, I can
say that the cider apples really do add something! If you are using just
pasteurised juice, it is worth the effort to get a quantity of cider
apples to add to it.
For reference, I crushed the following for one batch of cider:
14.5L juice from crushing:
16kg Gala
4kg Foxwhelp
2kg Michelin
1kg Kingston Black
7kg Breakwell's seedling
To this I added 8.5L Bilpin apple juice, and pitched Lalvin D-47 yeast
(rehydrated this time!). Original SG was about 1.048, final around
1.000. As you can see, there was only about 14kg of cider apples in
there, contributing probably about 7L or so of juice - the rest was
sweet juice, making up 23L. I can really taste the difference in this
cider, so I'll be heading back for more cider apples next year! If I can
get enough, I might try a varietal cider, otherwise I'll stick to a
blend again.
Does all of this mean I'm leaving my pasteurised juice behind? No. I
can't do that, or I'd never make enough cider. I intend to load the car
up with as much juice and cider apples as I can manage next February,
and will try some different yeasts with the bottled juice by itself.
There is plenty of scope left with pasteurised juice, but I will be
getting more cider apples for that extra flavour in February!
cheers,
Ross.
- --
Ross McKay, WebAware Pty Ltd
"Since when were you so generously inarticulate?" - Elvis Costello
------------------------------
Subject: first perry attempt
From: Ross McKay <rosko@zeta.org.au>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 12:42:13 +1000
G'day,
Yesterday I started a perry - my first. I don't have access to any good
perry-making pears, so I just bought a couple of cases of Packham pears
from the local markets. FWIW, two cases (of 100 pears) cost $48 AUD.
At about 6 pears to the kg, and with 5 pears reserved for eating, that's
195 pears or about 32-33kg.
After stemming and washing (thanks SWMBO!), I put them all through the
juice extractor. I have a Breville (probably just an Aussie brand) that
takes whole pears, so that made it easier, but it clogs up after about a
litre's worth of pears and that slows things down a bit.
The juice is nice and sweet, and has a good pear taste. Of course, once
the yeast has done it's job, there will be buggar all sugars left, but
I'm hoping that the end result will be at least a pleasant perry.
I ended up with about 21L of pear juice in my HDPE fermenter, with a SG
of about 1.058. From (let's say) 33kg of fruit, that's about 630ml of
juice per kg of fruit. I'd be interested to hear how that compares with
a fruit press, or other methods of extraction. Obviously you don't have
the same pears that I have, but I'm interested nonetheless.
I pitched some Lalvin D-47 yeast after rehydrating. Since last night
when I pitched it, it has started off and is bubbling slowly. Starting
temp was 18 deg C, but fell overnight to around 14 deg C. It should warm up
again today though. I might insulate it somehow to keep the temp up
overnight, as our winter is hanging on and the air temp dropped to 7 deg C
last night.
When primary is finished, I intend to split the must into two batches. I
will rack 10L into a secondary for a month or so, to be bottled as
sparkling perry. Maybe I'll keep one or two bottles still to compare :)
The rest will be racked to secondary with some clover honey to make a
pear melomel.
Now, I know I'm preempting things a little, but I realise that Packham
pears are going to make rather plain perry and I'm thinking ahead to
next year: has anyone tried using some cider apples to enhance the
flavour of a perry made from dessert pears?
cheers,
Ross.
- --
Ross McKay, WebAware Pty Ltd
"Since when were you so generously inarticulate?" - Elvis Costello
------------------------------
End of Cider Digest #1067
*************************
