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Cider Digest #1277
Subject: Cider Digest #1277, 17 November 2005
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #1277 17 November 2005
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
What's going on? (Andrew Lea)
Re: ice cider (Kristen Jordan) (Claude Jolicoeur)
ice cider ("Jay Hersh aka Dr. Beer(R)")
Azeotropes (Eli Brandt)
Sparkling cider and tirage (Donald Davenport)
Cider making workshops in December ("mark")
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Subject: What's going on?
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 22:11:41 +0000
Jack O Feil wrote:
>The last couple of
> batches were crystal clear until I remove the air locks and transferred
> it to smaller containers, in a short time after transfer the clear cider
> became slightly hazy and a fine film of white powder like material came
> to the surface. The taste was not noticeably adversely affected but I am
> curious.
That's almost certainly a film yeast. It will be caused by too much air
when you did the transfers, and maybe the film yeast inoculum was
already in the containers or your racking tube. A little will not be
too damaging, though a lot is not good for the flavour. If you keep the
ciders tightly closed it should not grow anymore. You can add some
sulphur dioxide too if you want to be sure it won't develop further.
Andrew Lea
- --
Wittenham Hill Cider Page
http://www.cider.org.uk
------------------------------
Subject: Re: ice cider (Kristen Jordan)
From: Claude Jolicoeur <cjoli@gmc.ulaval.ca>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:53:38 -0500
In Cider Digest #1275, RE : ice cider (Kristen Jordan)
>Of late we have been wondering how to produce an "ice cider". Being on
>the balmy west coast, ambient temperatures aren't generally conducive to
>apples freezing on trees, so we put a bushel of golden delicious in a
>freezer, then milled and pressed them just to see what would happen.
If I understand well, you milled and pressed the apples while hard frozen.
I think this is the problem. Apples should be pressed partially frozen in
order to yield a concentrated juice.
So, I would suggest, the next time you try, to remove the apples from the
freezer some hours before pressing (the exact number of hours depends on
the quantity of apples and the heat exchange with the room - some
experimentation is required). Then, when the apples are becoming quite soft
on the outside, but while there are still ice cristals inside, the time to
press has come. At that point, the ice cristals contain mainly water, so
the juice that will be extracted will be concentrated.
I find that it is not necessary to grind the apples once they have been
frozen, although some prefer to grind them. You can try pitching the
partially thawn apples directly in the press, and you can experiment on
this point also.
Also, as David Shenk reported in CD 1276, you can also concentrate juice by
freezing. Some cidreries in Quebec do ice cider this way, but this is no
more accepted as a new rule has recently been adopted that will only allow
the method of pressing partially frozen apples. I hope to be able to report
soon to the Digest the exact new rule for this (as soon as I get the
information).
Claude Jolicoeur
Quebec
------------------------------
Subject: ice cider
From: "Jay Hersh aka Dr. Beer(R)" <jsh@doctorbeer.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:48:16 -0500
when we were up in Quebec last summer the folks making ice cider told us
they used 2 different techniques. Letting the apples freeze on the trees
was one of them, but seemed less common. The other, more common one was
freeze concentrating the juice after pressing, but before fermentation.
The latter technique sounds way more practical to me, and the approach I'm
considering using.
Best of luck,
Jay
------------------------------
Subject: Azeotropes
From: Eli Brandt <eli+@cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:28:21 -0500 (EST)
"chris horn" <agent_strangelove@hotmail.com> wrote:
> There was an article in the paper about cooking with wine and the fact that
> not all of it boils or burns off...
A roughly valid way to look at that might be that as the liquid gets
to have less and less ethanol in it, its vapor pressure of ethanol
goes down correspondingly, so you never quite get rid of the last bit
of ethanol until all the water goes too.
> Can you get a pure mixture of azeotropes (no loose water or ethanol
> molecules)? Or is it more that the water and ethanol are not really bound
> together and it's just law of averages that some ethanol and water molecules
> vaporize together?
Yeah, it's more like that. An azeotrope is just a particular mixture.
It has the property that its vapor is the same mixture as the liquid
was (as opposed to, say, wine, whose vapor has more alcohol than the
wine did), so distilling it doesn't get you anywhere.
- --
Eli Brandt | eli+@cs.cmu.edu | http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/
------------------------------
Subject: Sparkling cider and tirage
From: Donald Davenport <djdavenport@earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:38:11 -0700
I am curious about the differences in methode champagnoise when it
comes to cider versus sparkling wine.
When the winemaker bottles, he adds a tirage that includes not only
fermentable sugar but also a re-inoculation of yeast. I've been
operating under the (apparently correct) assumption that there is
enough viable yeast left in my fermented-to-dryness cider that only
priming sugar is necessary to give a good sparkle. (I opened a
one-month old "test" bottle today and was happy to find there was
considerable carbonation. [Eat your heart out, Lawrence Welk!])
So why does the winemaker have to re-inoculate with yeast and the
cidermaker doesn't? Is it because the wine is aged so much longer
before being mis en boutille that the yeast has really completely
died? Or is there some other process at work?
Also, after six month plus when I get around to the degorgement and
topping off, if I add a little sugar to the dossage, do I run the risk
of the fermentation starting up again? (Apparently the wine guys often
add a fair amount of fermentable sugar at this point if they making
something like a demi-sec, etc. and I don't hear them worrying about
anything restarting?)
Or is clear, non-filtered, non-pasturized, non-stablized (and
non-keeved) sparkling cider destined to be bone dry? Not that I'm
complaining, just curious.
Thanks,
Don Davenport
Santa Fe, New Mexico
------------------------------
Subject: Cider making workshops in December
From: "mark" <mark@thealchemystudio.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:08:57 -0500
FYI,
sorry if this has been seen here before:
A week of hard cider making workshops will be presented at the New York State
Agricultural Experiment Station, December 5-9, 2005. There are 2 workshops -
Foundation, Dec. 5-7, and Building Expertise Dec. 8 & 9, 2005 Limited to 20
participants in each course - there are 4 seats left in each.
The instructor will be Peter Mitchell from Mitchell Food & Drink, Ltd. United
Kingdom. He is a highly qualified and internationally recognized expert in
cider & perry making, with over 20 years of experience and an award winning
producer in his own right.
To view PDF of brochure and registration form, please go to
http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/necfe/nande/workshops.html
Mark Lattanzi
CISA and CiderDay
------------------------------
End of Cider Digest #1277
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