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Cider Digest #1134
Subject: Cider Digest #1134, 12 May 2004
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #1134 12 May 2004
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Pectin haze? (Jack O Feil)
Nutrients in the orchard (Andrew Lea)
Re: Cider Digest #1133, 7 May 2004 (Tim Bray)
11th Annual BUZZ Off Home Brew Competition ("Christopher Clair")
safe juice (orchard grazing, Odwalla, etc.) (Dick Dunn)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Pectin haze?
From: Jack O Feil <feilorchards@juno.com>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2004 22:23:37 -0700
I made several batches of cider from the same frozen fresh cider.
the first two settled out clear but with the third batch I added about
ten pouds of Wickson Crabs, I ran them through a meat grinder .The reason
I put them through the grinder was that these apples were quite dry, so
to take advantage of the 21 brix I just ground them up and mixed that
pulp with thawed juice. The fermentation went well but racking was a
little messy with all that pulp but I got the job done.
After several rackings the cider would not clear beyond a
certain point, it remained hazy. Not knowing for sure I'm assuming it is
pectin haze due to the Wickson. Now we know that pectin in fresh cider
gives a pleasant mouth feel and differentiates it from cider that has the
pectin removed, pasteurized or not. Now this batch has more of what I
call body then the first two batches. If this is due to suspended pectin,
why would we want a perfectly clear cider or rate it higher than a pectin
haze cider, isn't palatability the most important thing in the finished
product? My reasoning and conclusions may be flawed, so let me know what
some of the rest of you out there think.
Jack Feil
------------------------------
Subject: Nutrients in the orchard
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Sun, 09 May 2004 10:07:45 +0100
Tim Bates wrote:
> Grazing is a very good way to get nutrients to your orchard
In traditional British and French cider orchards the reverse is actually
the case! When young animals graze an orchard in spring and summer,
and if they have no other source of feed, they actually deplete the
sward of nitrogenous nutrients since they incorporate it into their body
protein as they grow. This is then taken away when the animals are
removed at the end of the season. The mineral nutrients such as
potassium are effectively recycled through the urine, though.
The net effect is to keep the orchard lower in nitrogenous nutrients
than it would otherwise be. This means that the fruit and juice is also
low in nitrogen. Hence it ferments slowly during cider-making which is a
pre-requisite for the 4-5 month traditional winter fermentations, and
the ability to make naturally sweet but stable ciders.
Conversely, because of their external nitrogen inputs it's very
difficult to make traditional naturally sweet ciders from modern
intensive bush orchards.
(See 'Nitrogen the forgotten element' on my website!)
Andrew Lea
- --
Wittenham Hill Cider Page
http://www.cider.org.uk
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Cider Digest #1133, 7 May 2004
From: Tim Bray <tbray@mcn.org>
Date: Sun, 09 May 2004 08:15:20 -0700
Steve, thanks for the information about Bud 118. Can you tell us more
about the tree? How large does it grow, how long does it take to get into
production?
I also wonder if it will do well in low-chill areas, but you probably won't
know about that!
Cheers,
Tim
Albion, CA
------------------------------
Subject: 11th Annual BUZZ Off Home Brew Competition
From: "Christopher Clair" <buzz@netreach.net>
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 19:45:24 -0400
For anyone trying to access our website to download forms, we are currently
down due to the problems with the Home Brew Digest servers. I do not know
when we will be back up. If you need forms, please email me at
buzz@netreach.net. Feel free to use any AHA approved forms for entry or
bottles. We will extend the drop off/mail in deadline at Brew By You ONLY
(no other sites) until Wed., May 19th. The mail in address is as follows :
- ------------------------------
Brew By You
20 Liberty Boulevard, Ste A-4
Malvern, PA 19355
610-644-6258
888-542-BREW (Toll Free)
610-644-6629 (Fax)
http://www.brewbyyou.net
- ------------------------------
We apologize for any problems thst this has caused. Good luck to everyone
who enters and if you are interested in judging or stewarding, please let me
know!
Christopher Clair
buzz@netreach.net
http://hbd.org/buzz
"The mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer."
- - Ancient Egyptian Wisdom, 2200 B.C.
------------------------------
Subject: safe juice (orchard grazing, Odwalla, etc.)
From: rcd@talisman.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 21:47:17 -0600 (MDT)
Regarding the effect on juice of orchard grazing and the Odwalla debacle
(CD 1132, 1133): I've heard enough off-the-record comments to suggest that
the "official" story of Odwalla's problem was...well, while not overtly
inaccurate, a somewhat abridged or adjusted version of the Whole and
Complete Truth. Naturally, I'm not an insider or confidant in the juice
business, and I attribute some of what I heard to competitive jealousy.
Still...
The fallout of massive E. coli contamination in "fresh" [?see below] juice
has some bad implications for cider making. Actually it goes beyond our
concerns. You take someone who wouldn't think twice about cutting up an
apple and setting it on a fruit plate for after dinner, or even shredding
it into a Waldorf salad that's kept around for a day...take that same apple
and mill/press it into juice, and they're afraid the juice will kill them!
It's as if somehow bacteria are created during the pressing!
It's much harder to get unpasteurized juice, even if you want to buy it and
consume it on the spot. This, of course, affects anyone who wants to make
cider working from the natural yeasts. At least it's mostly gone toward
pasteurization (and apparently a lot of it flash) rather than toward
preservatives.
There's an overall understanding of bacterial contamination that seems to
have been missing from most of the discussions and reports of the Odwalla
case: the load of bacteria present at the instant you drink the juice
depends (rough generalization here) on three factors: the initial
bacterial load, how favorable conditions were for growth of bacteria during
the time between preparation and consumption, and the actual time period.
Essentially you start with some initial population and it grows exponen-
tially (that's a scientific "exponential growth", not a popular-press mis-
interpretation of "exponential"), with the factors of the exponential being
related to the favorability-of-growth (primarily temperature) and the time
period.
Discussions have mainly focused on the initial bacterial load--whether the
fruit was massively contaminated, whether it was washed properly (or,
depending on who's holding forth, whether it was washed at all!...but I
think that's sour apples). There's not much consideration of the
conditions of storage of the juice, although perhaps that's reasonable if
Odwalla had followed standard practices of chilling, refrigerated shipping,
and proper refrigerated cases in stores. Cooling affects the growth rate,
and to be sure an unnoticed failure of cooling at some point could have
given the bacteria a big boost. What doesn't seem to have been considered
at all...I remember noticing this at the time...is the time period! I saw
Odwalla juices in stores with shelf dates more than ten days out...which
would suggest something like two weeks from production to pull-date. Then
consider someone buying the juice just before the pull-date and leaving it
in the fridge for a few days more. You can't beat the exponential! And
I would quarrel with the idea that a container of juice two weeks old could
or should be considered "fresh" anyway.
I'm wondering, though, if the argument for a very high initial bacterial
load is that if it hadn't been so high, the juice would have begun to
ferment before the bacterial contamination got out of hand. That depends
on the temperature effect on yeast _vs_ bacteria, I suppose...if the
storage temperature is low enough to limit severely the growth of yeast
but not low enough to slow bacterial growth (different "knee" in the curve,
although exponentials, like clams, don't really have knees). Anybody know
whether that might hold water?
As to grazing: I just can't see any justification of a "dual-use" orchard
with ANY of the intensive planting methods, not even with semi-dwarf trees.
Do the numbers! That is, what's the yield per acre for good cider fruit,
and what's the potential grazing value? I tried it with our place and came
up with something in the low-single-digits-percent. Not worth any risk.
(I don't know how to make a case either way for old standard orchards.)
As to gathering apples: The discussion seems to me to be mixing methods.
Gathering whatever random fruit you find on the sward is crazy! How long
has it been there? What about patulin/mold/fungus/just-plain-disgusting
crud? Shaking the trees and gathering is different, esp if you can start
from relatively clean ground, or shake onto a tarp. Bruising doesn't
really matter if you get to the fruit before too long. Hand-picking is
great, if the trees will oblige you. (E.g., I would have picked all of our
meager crop last year, but a windstorm pre-harvested all of the Somerset
Redstreak one evening, so I gathered all of those from the ground. I knew
it was OK because I'd been picking up falls every day or two.)
Well...that's a pretty disorganized ramble, but maybe a few people could
pick up some threads of it and set me straight.
- ---
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
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End of Cider Digest #1134
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