Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Cider Digest #1306
Subject: Cider Digest #1306, 9 March 2006
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #1306 9 March 2006
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Re: How to avoid the "cooked taste" (Bill Rhyne)
Re: "juciness" of varieties (Bill)
in bottle pasteurisation (john brett)
RE: Juice Percentage in Various Apple Varieties? ("McGonegal, Charles")
catching up on digest ("Mike Beck")
Stinky Fermentations (Jason MacArthur)
Re: Cider Digest #1300, 15 February 2006 (RELve@aol.com)
Send ONLY articles for the digest to cider@talisman.com.
Use cider-request@talisman.com for subscribe/unsubscribe/admin requests.
When subscribing, please include your name and a good address in the
message body unless you're sure your mailer generates them.
Archives of the Digest are available at www.talisman.com/cider
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: How to avoid the "cooked taste"
From: Bill Rhyne <bill_rhyne@yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 11:58:33 -0800 (PST)
RE: "cooked taste" from pasteurization
In the previous e-mail regarding in-bottle pasteurization, Dick said that
"That works but you will get somewhat of a "cooked" taste because of
heating the sugars."
This was a concern for us when we were developing the Rhyne Cyder product.
What we learned from reading and experimentation was that the cooked flavor
in apple juice happens when it is heated over 180 degrees Fahrenheit in
the presence of oxygen or air (open container). But it you heat the juice
at a lower temperature that is just hot enough to kill the yeast and in a
sealed container, the juice or cider does not exhibit that "cooked" flavor.
Oxygen is the one of the enemies of wine and cider and that is why there
is little air space in the packaging for still products. For champagne
or sparkling cider, the CO2 fills up the gap between the level of the
liquid and the enclosure to prevent spoilage. We liked the aroma of the
fermenting cider and we wanted to share that experience with consumers and
that is why we pursued making a natural sparkling cider with a secondary
fermentation in the bottle. To retain some natural apple sweetness, we
decided on a sealed in the bottle pasteurization to avoid oxidization
issues and because we wanted maintain the CO2 bubbles and aroma. Another
advantage of this process is that it makes the product stable for shipping
and storage. We have some ciders that have been in the bottle for 5-9
years now and they still taste great.
One of the challenges of our method is that you need to accumulate your
equipment to the scale of your operation in order to minimize your costs
(time, water, energy, others) and maximize your labor efficiency. It took
us a while to figure out what would work for our situation.
Enjoy!
Bill Rhyne
------------------------------
Subject: Re: "juciness" of varieties
From: Bill <squeeze@mars.ark.com>
Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 12:39:10 -0800
Varilyn - No, there aren't any comparisons of varietal "juicness" other
than the subjective ones, because there is no such variation, nor do
climate and amount of water available to the tree have any real effect.
The climate and water availability will affect the size and amount of
fruit production, but there is no measureable difference in volume of
juice from different varieties, if they are in equal condition. The
variations you see in descriptions are "organoleptic" - a variety
described as "very juicy" is one that has a higher amount of "free"
juice, a prime example being fresh Gravensteins, where you take a bite
and the juice sprays out and runs down your chin. A variety described as
"dry" [a lot of the later varieties, and cider types] has little or no
free juice, but still has as much in it's cells. In addition, some
apples that are described as "dry" are actually astringent, causing a
sensation of dryness when you bite into them.
The longer any apple is stored, the less free juice there'll be, but
ground up and put under tons of pressure, all apples are about 85%
water, and most of it can be extracted as juice - if the apples are in
decent condition, it's quicker/easier, if they're in poor shape from
long storage, it's slower and more tedious, but still possible.
The volume of juice you can expect from a "bushel" of any variety is
3-4US gallons, depending entirely on the equipment used and operators skill.
Bill <http://mars.ark.com/~squeeze/>
------------------------------
Subject: in bottle pasteurisation
From: john brett <jbrett@eastlink.ca>
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 08:45:06 -0400
Comments by Dick Dunn and Charles McGonegal about in-bottle pasteurisation
in the most recent Cider Digest caught my attention - particularly because
myself and partners are in the middle of putting an in-bottle pasteuriser
together that will be able to do about 10 cases at a go. The heart of it
is a used hot water furnace used to heat houses.
I attended Peter Mitchell's terrific cider seminar in Geneva last
December. He is a great champion of in-bottle pasteurisation for small
cideries. He claims all the testing has been done in the UK to show that
without a doubt it has much less adverse effect on flavor than sterile
filter,sulfite/sorbate and is more effective and reliable to boot. When
I asked him about reasons for the prevalence of the sterile filter,
sulfite/sorbate method on this side of the pond his response, if I remember
correctly, was that this is probably just force of habit, an investment
in the technology, and unfamiliarity with the pasteurisation method.
So I'm wondering if anyone out there has any thoughts/experiences
relating to the merits and drawbacks of each method. There does still seem
to be some controversy on which method has the most adverse effect on
flavour.
John Brett
------------------------------
Subject: RE: Juice Percentage in Various Apple Varieties?
From: "McGonegal, Charles" <Charles.McGonegal@uop.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 08:22:30 -0600
Good morning Varilyn,
It will be interesting if anyone has some observations of juice yield.
I will toss in two observations about how fresh-eating 'juiciness'
observations fail to correspond to press yields.
First, some juicey apples (ripe Cortland, for instance) are so crumbly
and slippery that they are hard to press effectively. You can't put
enough pressure on them and keep the racks in place and the pomace has
the wrong channel distribution for the juice to escape.
Second, some dry-seeming apples will yield the typical 3.5+
gallons/bushel. We press crab apples where the pomace looks like damp
sawdust and there is no free-run juice whatsoever. But the cheese stack
is perfectly stable under high pressure and there are tons of stems, so
the juice gets out easy. It still yields the regular amount of juice.
Charles
AEppelTreow Winery
------------------------------
Subject: catching up on digest
From: "Mike Beck" <mjbeck@ujcidermill.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 15:18:47 -0500
Re #1304 #1305 Stopping Fermentation/ Sorbate (Ben Watson)
For what its worth, Placing that carboy in a freezer for a while will do a
dandy job of stopping a fermentation in its tracks. Sorbate can be added
after that to keep a fermentation from restarting. this process does a nice
job w/ pectin enzyme settlement as a bonus. A yeast I have had luck
stopping, called zymaflore ST is highly intolerant to So2 (75ppm is lethal).
Good fermentation kinetics to boot.
Charles, I looked up your presentation on the link in #1304
very nice, kudos to you for spreading the word. The Michigan State
University research you mentioned has some stuff posted on the internet. It
is also easily accessed through michiganhardcider.org
Re #1305 Cider Competitions
How do we separate beer mentality out of what should be wine competitions.
Cider is manufactured at licensed wineries. I think we need to frame
evaluations for judging as they do for wine competitions.
My 2 bits after being disconeted for several weeks
mike beck
st.john's, mi
------------------------------
Subject: Stinky Fermentations
From: Jason MacArthur <rotread@localnet.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 16:53:49 -0500
This recent thread re: stinky fermentations intrigues me. We often
have sulfurous odors coming off of our carboys during primary
fermentation, something we have come to think of as normal, if
unpleasant. In fact, every time I stick my nose into a carboy and
catch a sulfurous note I am reminded of my time spent in commercial
wineries and the way their vats smelled during primary fermentation.
This smell usually passes with time spent in bulk aging, and almost
never do our ciders have a sulfurous smell in the bottle.
We ferment with cultured yeasts, and add small amounts of yeast
nutrients at the beginning of fermentation. Our fermentations are
relatively rapid, usually taking between 3 weeks and 4 months, so I
don't think we are "starving" our yeasts.
I'll be the first to admit that our ciders often have off flavors,
but sulfurous notes are not among them, and so we have learned to not
be overly concerned by this noxious odor arising from our precious
must. Perhaps we should be; perhaps some of our problems with off
flavors(I would describe them as raisiny, or burnt rubbery) are later
manifestations of sulfurousness, I don't know.
Is our experience unique?
Happy cidering!!
Jason MacArthur
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Cider Digest #1300, 15 February 2006
From: RELve@aol.com
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 23:03:58 EST
In a message dated 2/15/06 7:31:40 AM Pacific Standard Time,
cider-request@talisman.com writes:
Subject: Re: Annie Proulx
From: Benjamin Watson <bwatson@worldpath.net>
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 18:54:58 -0500
I was more than a little humbled by the comments of our Cider Janitron,
Dick Dunn, who says he prefers my book, "Cider, Hard and Sweet" to
Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols "Cider".
I have something of a unique perspective, since I used to be an editor
for Storey, the publisher of Proulx and Nichols book. It first came
out, I believe, in the early 1980s, when the company was still called
Garden Way Publishing and based up in Burlington. It has much good
information, but I wrote my own book in a different way, because I felt
that (7-8 years ago) most people didn't know how to make cider, and
needed a beginner's book, rather than launching them into barrel
fermentation and keeving from the git-go. So I tried to be very
thorough and very basic. In essence, I took what I felt were the best
qualities of three books that were then in print: Paul Correnty's "The
Art of Cidermaking" (now out of print, unfortunately), Proulx and
Nichols' book, and Vrest Orton's classic, "The American Cider Book."
Then I added my own peculiar (and I do mean peculiar) touch to the
subject.
Annie Proulx is a fine writer, both of fiction and nonfiction -- but
she's moved from Vermont to Wyoming, writes exclusively fiction now,
and I gather is embarrassed that she ever wrote anything for the likes
of Rodale and Garden Way -- which is too bad. Her book on salad
gardening is one of my favorites.
At any rate, Storey continues to keep the book periodically updated (I
believe the third edition came out around 2000, about the time my book
went into paperback. Annie no longer works on the updates; they hire
someone else to do it when it needs doing. I don't know if Lew Nichols
is still with us, or still making cider -- he used to be in Vershire,
VT, which is where Proulx hailed from too, and where there is still a
commercial cidery (Flag Hill Farm, run by Sabra Ewing and Sebastian
Lousada).
In any case, although I keep saying this, I am planning to work on a
thorough-going revision and expansion of my book, hopefully starting
this spring, and in fact spoke with my publisher last week about it.
Since I was essentially a neophyte and just this side of an ignoramus
about cidermaking in 1999, I trust that I will do a better job this
time around. I am overhauling the resources, the recipes, and adding
things like an intermediate level cider making section, revised
varieties info., and info. on ice cider and perry. My goal is to have
the new edition out in the Fall of 2007.
Ben Watson
Francestown, NH
Dear Ben;
Thanks so much for having shared that information with us on the
Forum...absolutely fascinating. And I do hope you finish/release your book
by 2007-as a beginner, myself, I have about 30 apple/pear trees which will
be producing at that time. I don't know where I will be with my trees
(currently have them in peat pots in So. California, but await my dream
in So. Oregon...waiting on one elderly gentleman to sell out to me-I own
everything around him...however cannot trust locals up there to take care
of my orchard, having already lost about 2/3rds of what I'd planted!). So
much for lessons learned.
So will keep watching/awaiting your next effort. Hopefully it will carry
me through my first harvest ;-) best regards, Robert e
LEe jr. p.s. this web link hasn't been updated since most
of trees were lost. _http://www.thewaldoinn.com/page1.html_
(http://www.thewaldoinn.com/page1.html)
------------------------------
End of Cider Digest #1306 *************************
