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Cider Digest #1054
From: cider-request@talisman.com
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Subject: Cider Digest #1054, 8 July 2003
Cider Digest #1054 8 July 2003
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
About thinning apples... (Tim Bray)
Re: priming (Tim Bray)
Re: King David (Benjamin Watson)
RE: Priming (Dick) ("David Llewellyn")
Primary Fermentation ("5585")
perry question (Steve Ruch)
Re: juice extractor advice (Dick Dunn)
King David (John Bunker)
Mixing cull and bittersweet fruit (Andrew Lea)
Cider carbonation (Andrew Lea)
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Subject: About thinning apples...
From: Tim Bray <tbray@mcn.org>
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2003 12:05:03 -0700
>Re: How much to thin apple fruit?
Prof. Merwin wrote:
>The usual goal for thinning dessert apples is to reduce the fruit
>load to one apple on every other spur.
But Claude Jolicouer pointed out:
>For making cider, I think there is no point growing big apples, as those
>contain more water and less goodies in proportion. A nice crop of small
>apples usually give me a juice with a lot more sugars, acids and aromas,
>eventually leading to a better quality cider. So I would suggest not to
>thin too much - just enough to prevent alternance.
And that leads to my question: How much would that be? The textbooks are
little help, as they are mainly aimed at producing big fruit for
market. Prof. Merwin suggests that for some varieties, thinning will still
not prevent biennialism (alternance), so it would seem to be waste of
effort and fruit.
I've been thinning by hand to two fruits per cluster, sometimes three if
the tree doesn't seem too heavily loaded and if the stems are long
enough. Some of the short-stemmed varieties (esp. Porter's Perfection) are
difficult to pick when there are multiple fruit per cluster - the whole
spur tends to come off.
But maybe I should thin more aggressively - I'm already seeing biennial
tendencies in my Golden Russets. Roxbury Russet, on the other hand, bears
prodigiously year-on-year. So is biennial bearing a characteristic of the
variety, unaffected by thinning, or can thinning really force a tree to
yield reliably every year?
Cheers,
Tim Bray
Albion, CA
------------------------------
Subject: Re: priming
From: Tim Bray <tbray@mcn.org>
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2003 12:14:48 -0700
I'm with Dick - ciders are generally better with less carbonation. The
great Norman ciders are barely sparkling ("petillant"). I've noticed that
my Russet Cider from last year actually tastes _better_ after it warms up a
bit and the carbonation dissipates. (Or maybe that's just because I've
drunk half of it by then.) So try a still cider and see if you like
it! Get over that American obsession with highly-carbonated drinks!
Now, about temperature: Should cider be served chilled, or just cooled
like Real Ale, or at room temperature? My own preference is cooled, about
55 F or so.
Cheers,
Tim Bray
Albion, CA
------------------------------
Subject: Re: King David
From: Benjamin Watson <bwatson@monad.net>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 17:36:15 -0400
> I am looking for thoughts on the King David as a hard cider apple, and
> on whether or not it is hardy to Zone 4. Anyone ever pressed it up?
The Fruit, Berry & Nut Inventory, 2nd Ed. lists King David as hardy
only to Zone 5, and in fact it is considered a "Southern apple",
hailing from Arkansas (probably a cross between Jonathan and Arkansas
Black or Jonathan and Winesap, which it resembles visually).
I've only used King Davids in my cider press schedule once, but it was
a good cider variety -- smallish, dark red, rather hard, seemed to have
some tannin in the skin. It's a late harvest apple -- I pressed them in
mid-October with a group of friends in northern New Hampshire --
definitely Zone 4, not Zone 5, so it would be worth trying this variety
in a favorable Z4 location.
I'd love to scrounge a bushel or two or orchard run KDs for this year's
pressing around Columbus Day weekend -- so if anyone knows of a
commercial orchard in NH, VT, or western MA that grows them, let me
know!
Ben Watson
Francestown, NH
------------------------------
Subject: RE: Priming (Dick)
From: "David Llewellyn" <fruitofthevine@eircom.net>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 22:09:41 +0100
RE. Priming
Interesting points about priming, Dick, and I agree with you that its a
useful tool to liven up blandness or mask mediocrity. However I also find
that for many people not used to 'real' cider, particularly the drier types,
a modest sparkle can induce them to enjoy it where otherwise they mightn't!
Also, can you please tell me whether I am correct in believing that
induciing a post-bottling fermentation (even without removal of the yeast
deposit) greatly improves the keeping quality of the cider? I find with my
cider that it ages/deteriorates very slowly (good for up to 2 years or more
after bottling). Though I have little experience of bottling still ciders, I
assume I would have problems with film-yeast, oxidation,etc. Thanks
David Llewellyn
------------------------------
Subject: Primary Fermentation
From: "5585" <5585@email.msn.com>
Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2003 06:44:16 -0500
I started my first cider a week ago and was surprised to notice the
primary fermentation only took two days. Is this common? Beer ansd
wine take so much longer.
Tim Taylor
------------------------------
Subject: perry question
From: sdruch2@webtv.net (Steve Ruch)
Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2003 11:57:48 -0700 (PDT)
I am going to brew my first cider next week. It will be 1 us gallon,
half apple half pear and some meadowfoam honey.
Should I add some tannin and/or acid for balance?
Thanks in advance,
Steve.
"I'm a man and I can change, if I have to. I guess," The mans prayer.
Red Green
------------------------------
Subject: Re: juice extractor advice
From: rcd@talisman.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 12:06:26 -0600 (MDT)
In CD 1052, Diane Gagnon <gagnond@endirect.qc.ca> asked about using a
juice extractor:
> Being a " home " producer, (25-50 litres/year) I processed the apples in
> a small commercial juicer ( centrifugal) with fairly good results ,but
> wounder if using a presser would increase quality ...
I recently acquired a used juice extractor--the price was right, and an
initial test indicated that it did a reasonable job. My intent is to use
it when I've got small batches of particular varieties for which I want
the juice kept separate. I also want to use it for test pressings. I
can't do much with my regular press with less than perhaps 8-10 kg of
fruit. The extractor is also a lot easier to clean than the larger
grinder and press.
The yield is pretty good--2/3 or a little more of the weight of the fruit
in weight of extracted juice. Because it's a centrifugal extraction after
the grinding, the juice comes out separated: a layer of pale, quite-clear
juice and a layer of brown foamy-pulpy matter. I've not had a chance yet
to ferment the result (no apples worth fermenting available yet this
year), but it seems to me that this separation might be helpful. After
all, in normally pressed juice, there are suspended solids and grunge
which are thrown off early in the fermentation, so why not be done with
(most of) them before starting the fermentation?
The extractor is not the answer for making any substantial amount of
cider. The basket has to be cleaned periodically in operation. And
the serious extractors are quite expensive--the one I got would be over
US $2000 new! You could buy or build a very nice grinder/press for a lot
less than that! But as I say, I was able to get one used at a good price.
On the other side, Claude Jolicoeur <cjoli@gmc.ulaval.ca> responded to
Diane Gagnon's question:
>...I have made tests with a centrifugal juice extractor and found the
> juice to be of lesser quality than pressed juice...
Claude, tell us more please. In what way did you find quality lacking?
- ---
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
------------------------------
Subject: King David
From: John Bunker <jbunker@gwi.net>
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 14:15:32 -0400
King David has been grown in Maine for close to 100 years. It is fully
hardy in zone 4. The flavor up here is extremely intense. A personal
favorite. I have not made hard cider with it.
Regards,
John Bunker
Fedco
PO Box 520 Waterville ME 04903
------------------------------
Subject: Mixing cull and bittersweet fruit
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 11:38:20 +0100
Following some vigorous discussion on 'UKCider' about ciders from cull
or dessert fruit, I delved into some inter-war Long Ashton Research
Station reports to see what might have been recorded and lost with the
passage of time. There's not much organoleptic detail but, as expected,
dessert ciders were regarded as thin and lacking body (even as far back
as 1922). Cox was regarded as the best of the bunch. The implicit
comparison was always with the UK West Country style . Also,
cidermaking techniques were very diferent in those days - arrested 'wild
yeast' fermentation and bottle conditioning was still the norm - so the
parallels for today are not too helpful.
But what I did come across were some trials for 1935 to investigate how
far a limited quantity of bittersweets could be 'stretched' by dessert
or culinary fruit. Rather than simply blending the fruit or the
resulting juices, it was shown that much better results were obtained by
pressing the bittersweets and the culls separately and then re-pressing
the cull juice after re-mixing with the bittersweet pomace. In this way
the cull juice is used to leach out further tannins from the
once-pressed bittersweets.
The 'best' ratio was regarded as 1:1. However, a noticeable improvement
was still obtained at 1:3. An example given, for instance, was where 1
cwt of Bitter Jersey apples were pressed to give a tannin of 0.27% and 3
cwt of mixed culinary apples gave a tannin of 0.07%. That culinary
juice was then mixed with the pomace from the 1 cwt of the Bitter Jersey
and immediately re-pressed (no need for any long incubation), to give a
juice with a tannin of 0.13%.
The author's conclusion was that ...."in the following May the blend
prepared in this experiment was found to have made a very pleasant
cider. It was of much higher quality than a cider prepared from the
same original fruit and obtained by blending the bittersweet and the
untreated culinary cider in a similar proportion".
I offer this for what it's worth for those who have only limited amounts
of bittersweet apples but want to maximise that character in blends with
regular cull or dessert fruit.
Andrew Lea
nr Oxford UK
- ----------------------------------
Visit the Wittenham Hill Cider Page at
http://www.cider.org.uk
------------------------------
Subject: Cider carbonation
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 11:02:26 +0100
Dick Dunn (our esteemed Janitor whose patient spam-trapping deserves
much praise) wrote:
> Mind you, I don't reject the idea of sparkling ciders. But that's not my
> preference. And I DO think that one point which can set serious ciders
> apart is for at least some of them to be still, and perhaps for most of
> the rest to be only slightly sparkling.
This is a point worth further exploration. To get a cider to be
slightly sparkling you need to be over the saturation level, which is
about 2 grams per litre of dissolved CO2. It takes up to about 4 g/l to
become seriously fizzy. That's overt carbonation which everyone can
recognise. And to be sure, the interaction (positive or negative)
between fizz and flavour can be a very noticeable one.
But the more interesting thing is what happens below that 2 g/l, where
the cider is still? In fact, the dissolved CO2 has a serious impact on
flavour as a dissolved 'ingredient' even if there is no fizz.
Typically the range between 0.5 g/l and 2 g/l is hugely important in
still ciders and table wines. Below about 0.2 g/l the drink tastes dead
and flat. This is nothing to do with being oxidised - simply a lack of
CO2. I understand that many modern table wines are deliberately adjusted
for dissolved CO2 as a control parameter. So, even the 'freshness' and
flavour of a still cider is dependent on 'hidden' CO2. And not many
people know that!!
Andrew Lea
nr Oxford UK
- ----------------------------------
Visit the Wittenham Hill Cider Page at
http://www.cider.org.uk
------------------------------
End of Cider Digest #1054
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