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Cider Digest #1408
Subject: Cider Digest #1408, 8 September 2007
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #1408 8 September 2007
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
sweeter cider necessary in tasting room? (Dick Dunn)
Re: English Cider (Dick Dunn)
Re: Cider Book for Sale (Claude Jolicoeur)
Somerset Redstreak ("deirdreb@mindspring.com")
Re: What's with the apple pie? ("Gary Awdey")
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Subject: sweeter cider necessary in tasting room?
From: Dick Dunn <rcd@talisman.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 16:07:12 -0600
I've been "following with interest", as they say, the discussion about
tasting-room sales and what will/won't draw tasting/sales.
How important is it to have sweeter ciders just to please more palates,
even if a cidery would rather focus on dry ciders? Another way to ask
the question, in a broader sense, is How idiosyncratic can a cidermaker's
overall set of products be? If you want to focus on particular style(s),
is it a mistake not to have other styles...or is it a mistake to let
yourself be -distracted- by styles other than what you're trying to focus
on? And how does selling from a tasting room affect that, in positive or
negative ways?
For example, suppose I had a tasting room here in beautiful suburban
Hygiene, at a major country intersection where there's a lot of drive-by
(non-destination) traffic. If I had no cider over 0.5% RS, I can see
several possible effects on drop-ins:
* Even if they want something sweet, they might give a dry cider a taste
and "get" the idea.
* They might taste it, not like it, shrug, and go on their way.
* They might taste it, think it's bad (note that's NOT the same as
disliking it!), and give me bad word-of-mouth visibility.
Still, it seems (and off-digest discussions suggest this is correct) that
if your cider's a bit eccentric compared to the six-pack world, the tasting
room gives you a chance to explain what you're doing ahead of the first
taste. Maybe it gives you a chance to guide the folks who aren't going
to like it into the reaction of "not my style" rather than "this is bad."
I'm curious in general about idiosyncratic "product lines", but particularly
about dry-only ciders. I note for comparison that both Farnum Hill and
Wandering Aengus seem to lean all their products toward rather sharp, yet
they're apparently both doing well.
- --
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
------------------------------
Subject: Re: English Cider
From: Dick Dunn <rcd@talisman.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 16:24:25 -0600
"Richard Anderson" <baylonanderson@rockisland.com> asked:
...
> Can we really make a English Cider in the US?...
Rich, I think there's an "existence proof" there in the ciders that Alan
Foster (White Oak) made - the answer has to be "yes". I've had other
good US ciders that are very close to English West Country - there were
a couple at Cider Day in 05 that escape me. (No, I'm not counting Harp
Hill.)
>...Is it just the use of traditional UK cider apples?...
How about oak aging?
>...I make our ciders almost exclusively from
> traditional bittersweets and bittersharps but never achieve the smoky
> flavors which some English style ciders have. In part, I think this is due
> to the lack of malolactic fermentation, which does not occur naturally or
> induced by the addition of a ML culture...
Sure, some of those flavors will come from ML. Are you saying you can't
even get MLF with a culture, or that if you use the culture you still don't
get the flavors?
Your blends are generally on the sharp side. Is this a case of "you can
only get MLF when you don't want it"?...that is, the phenomenon Andrew has
explained where it's harder to get ML bacteria to start at lower pH (which
is perverse for us since it's the lower-pH ciders that need the reduction
in acidity that MLF would give).
- --
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Cider Book for Sale
From: Claude Jolicoeur <cjoli@gmc.ulaval.ca>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 20:56:09 -0400
in Cider Digest #1407, 4 September 2007, chris horn wrote:
>Subject: Cider Book for Sale
>From: "chris horn" <agent_strangelove@hotmail.com>
>Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:19:15 -0700
>
>I have listed a brand new copy of the wonderful French cider apple book
>'Pommiers à cidre; Variétés de France' on Ebay.
>I went through all the hoops and managed to order a copy of it from France.
>But I found out that they were going to HAMMER me on shipping. No mater
>what I did they wanted almost $50 for shipping to the states.
Chris,
This reminds me things...
I bought this book in 1998. Shipping was also quite expensive at the time
for Canada, so I had to have it shipped to a friend in Paris (shipping cost
was reasonable within France), then another friend went traveling in France
and brought it back to me. Took a while before I got the book...
The main drawback of the book is that very few of the varieties described
are available in N.America - this is unfortunate as it would be great to
test many of these apples in our climate (I would probably not have enough
space in my small orchard however). Overall, I do agree it is a great book.
I hope you enjoy reading it.
Claude, in Quebec.
------------------------------
Subject: Somerset Redstreak
From: "deirdreb@mindspring.com" <deirdreb@mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 17:53:03 -0500
I am looking for budwood ASAP for Somerset Redstreak. My usual source told
me Monday that he cannot provide this since he removed his tree due to
excessive fireblight.
I have about 8 rootstocks to graft, so don't need much. Bark was still
slipping as of Tuesday.
(I will be looking for scion wood of this variety in more quantities come
March for whip and tongue grafting. )
The ARS Geneva NY plant genetics resources unit does not have SR in its
collection.
I will cover costs including packaging and shipping.
Please contact me offline. Thanks!
- --Deirdre
Deirdre Birmingham,
deirdreb@mindspring.com
608-967-2362
FAX: 608-967-2496
7258 Kelly Rd.
Mineral Point, WI 53565
------------------------------
Subject: Re: What's with the apple pie?
From: "Gary Awdey" <gawdey@att.net>
Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2007 11:45:21 -0400
For those with no interest in competitions just skip ahead to the next
posting.
In Cider Digest #1407, 4 September 2007, Dick Dunn wrote:
>...I'm surprised (a)
> that Gary didn't have standard cider(s) entered, and (b) that Gary did
> a spiced cider at all. It's always seemed like a too-easy shot to me: some
> judges apparently like the spices so much, it doesn't matter what the cider
> underneath is like as long as it's not bad. I don't see how it helps the
> "cause" of cider to keep putting up cinnamon/nutmeg/clove/... (Am I being
> too idealistic here? Should "apple pie spice cider" be in a [sub]category
> of its own?)
Actually I did submit entries in every subcategory of the Standard Cider and
Perry category. These were not the preferred choices of the judges, a
passing disappointment. Like most competitors I was somewhat satisfied with
some of them and outright proud of others. Whether or not my ciders happen
to take awards the thought at the back of my mind for each is "How do I make
this better next time?" Once in a while when I see an obviously flawed
cider win an award or an excellent one panned for the wrong reason the
thought is "What specific steps can I take to help improve the judging so
this does not happen again?" As more cider foks adopt this view cider
judging will improve dramatically.
The apple pie spice specialty cider was my lone cynical entry. Sarcasm was
reflected in the name under which it was registered, "Betty Crocker's Apple
Pie Cider." At the earliest stage of figuring out what apple pie spices are
I consulted vintage copies of the Betty Crocker Cookbook and the Better
Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Unfortunately, even these two worthy tomes
differ wildly in the relative proportions of cinnamon and nutmeg specified
for apple pie. In the end I ran a designed experiment to select proportions
that seemed well balanced.
When an apple pie spice cider wins the Cidermaker of the Year award two
years in a row and judges use phrases like "apple pie in a bottle" and talk
about how it brings back happy memories of mom's apple pie cooking in the
kitchen then it strongly suggests that (a) the judges are ranking by
subjective criteria and voting their personal favorites (something they're
NOT supposed to do) and (b) this style is one of the favored ones. Add this
year's results and you have three consecutive years of apple pie spice cider
winning the gold medal in the Specialty Cider & Perry category in this
competition. Does anyone detect a pattern here? In entering an apple pie
spiced cider should I be criticized for exploiting a predictable weakness of
a static system to make a point? (By the way, Dick is a good friend,
someone I admire for uncompromising integrity and whose generous help and
push to begin developing an appreciation of English cider and perry in its
native environment I appreciate greatly. For anyone who hasn't already
figured it out, sometimes he offers loaded questions and comments of this
sort to stimulate discussion.)
Dick also wrote:
> This year's cider winner information was disappointingly terse on both
> winners: no gravities or abv%, short notes, no judges' comments...made
> more annoying by the couple inches of empty space at the bottom of the
> columns of each winning cider's description, where additional information
> - -could- have been printed. It would have been interesting (for example)
> to read why Gary used Yarlington Mill in a spiced cider.
Through an oversight I was first emailed on the day that the "recipe" was
due (to meet a publishing deadline for Zymurgy) and had to consult my notes
and throw something together fairly quickly. Quality of the recipe
published suffered from the resulting haste. The first draft was much too
long and I rewrote it three more times in rapid succession, each version
shorter than the others. A lot of detail was left out along the way. There
were a few key things I wanted to emphasize and it turned out to be
difficult to emphasize all at once. For example, this started out as a
fairly uninteresting common cider that I wanted to improve. It wasn't
flawed but was single-dimensional and a little boring. It was made with
dessert apples from a local orchard. I've had better results with fruit
from the same orchard, but occasionally end up with something that's
disappointing. From the perspective of a purist, having to add spices to
make a cider interesting is pretty much the ultimate definition of failure.
I couldn't bring myself to spice it without first making an effort to
improve the base cider through blending.
The first step was to add some Yarlington Mill (an English bittersweet
apple) for astringency and flavor. That's something I had lots of on hand
due to ongoing small batch trials. There's no way I could have fit in all
of the specifics into the recipe. For example, the Yarlington Mill used in
this particular blend was a disappointing single-variety ice cider made from
the 2006 harvest. The juice had been clarified by keeving (just explaining
a keeve could use up the entire allotment of space). Then it was
concentrated by fractional crystallization from 16.8 to approximately 20
Brix (reflecting a disappointingly warm early winter). The resulting cider
was dry, not sweet (perhaps the critical yeast nutrients were
re-concentrated) and fermentation was rapid, defeating much of the purpose
of the keeve. Unfortunately the astringency was also concentrated and it
wasn't particularly enjoyable. It was excellent in a blend however, and
this part of the blend added almost a spiritous character. The first draft
of the recipe said I could have stopped there with a fine cider. It was
truly a shame that this was edited out of the recipe.
That's the base: 75% medium sweet, ho-hum common cider, 25% dry Yarlington
Mill ice cider. The recipe focused on the mechanical details of adding the
spices via stock solutions so results of trial-and-error blending could be
applied easily to the rest of the batch. (and to show how simple it is to
find a good level of spicing without accidentally overshooting on the
addition and messing up an entire batch).
Degree of spicing was light by intent. In other competitions the same cider
drew comments that there was too much cinnamon relative to the nutmeg, too
much nutmeg relative to the cinnamon, and simply not enough spice. This
touches on one of my pet peeves. Who says a fruit or "Other" specialty
cider has to hit you over the head with overt adjunct flavors? This seems
to be especially true of fruit ciders, in which judges frequently give a
substantially lower score if the entry does not meet their arbitrary sense
of optimum balance. What is wrong with subtlety? Not enough cherry? Not
enough raspberry? Sorry, that's not what the style guidelines say about
balance. They say that the fruit adjunct must not overpower the cider base
to the point that it hardly matters that the base is cider rather than, say,
malt liquor. They do NOT say that the adjunct must have equal footing with
the base cider. It is a shortcoming of the judging (and possibly of the
wording of the style guidelines themselves) that subtlety is not given the
value it deserves.
>From a purist's point of view adding spice is not craft cidermaking, it's
flavoring. In this case maybe it's even cooking, since after the cider was
dosed with measured amounts of spice stock solutions it was subjected to a
final in-bottle pasteurization in a water bath at 150 degrees F for twenty
minutes and allowed to cool slowly. Apple pie spice cider is a unique case,
a particular class of cider that never seems to get marked down by judges
for having a cooked flavor or being oxidized.
I thought the hastily but heavily self-edited recipe would be acceptable for
publishing. I was wrong. It was rewritten by an editor, stripped to the
most basic recipe imaginable, devoid of any personality or opinion
whatsoever. This accounts for empty space on the page below my recipe. I
realize that the recipes are printed for others to use, not to give a
disgruntled entrant a soapbox. It would have been easy to reach some sort
of satisfactory agreement with the editors if there had been more time to
discuss editorial requirements or limitations or even if there had been more
time for me to consider what is truly worth conveying to the readers. It
does seem to be considered acceptable to include opinion with the recipes
(take, for instance, the questionable opinions that the "elusive Northern
Spy" is a good apple to use as the foundation of an English cider, and that
a brett infection is perfect for English cider). It seems to be a matter of
establishing which sorts of opinions are permissible to express and which
are not.
Why did I enter an apple pie spice cider? Certainly I hoped that it would
NOT win because I like to think that adjuncts are not needed to produce an
excellent cider. If it did, though, I imagined the award would put me in a
unique position of being able to say what I think about spiced cider with
some credibilty and without sounding like a sore loser. It turns out that
it is quite challenging to be critical as a winner without sounding
ungracious.
"Crafting a cider to taste like apple pie" is a phrase loaded with
exaggeration. It's really not difficult at all. In making an apple pie the
tedious part is peeling the apples and the technically challenging part is
making a light, flaky crust, not adding the spices. In making an apple pie
spice cider the technically challenging part is making a good base cider,
not adding the spices. If you like to compete in homebrew competitions you
might make such a cider for the chance to win extra awards. If you're a
commercial producer there might be a sound marketing reason for producing a
product that strikes a resonant chord in some people by connecting with fond
memories (like Trek's new model of cruiser-style bicycle and the crop of
automobiles that are based on classic, nostalgic styling from several
decades ago). From my own personal perspective the question is: Why would
you want to do the most trite, unimaginative thing possible to your cider
and do the least you can possibly do to expand people's preconceived notions
of the appropriate use of apples? If one absolutely must add adjuncts why
not try something unexpected? If you've already tried a cherry cider to
satisfy your curiosity why not add serviceberries instead (a closer relative
to the apple) or some locally available obscure wild fruit and see what you
get?
The reason for the lack of starting and finishing gravities in my own recipe
lies with me. Aside from the difficulty of explaining gravities for
different components of the blend concisely (including one that was
concentrated by freezing) I wanted to portray addition of adjuncts as
something separate from cidermaking, something done easily with a
post-production adjustment. I wanted to demonstrate that there's no
mystical skill to adding the spices. If you want "apple pie in a bottle"
(particularly if you are going to spice the stuff heavily to cover up the
flavor of the cider) why bother about any of the cidermaking details? Just
get a bottle of the mass-produced stuff from the store, throw in some spices
and cook the crap out of it. You can't do that for a competition (there are
rules against using entries that are prepared in a commercial establishment)
but you can do it for the holidays if no one at your family gathering feels
like peeling apples to make a pie.
There's sarcasm behind that view, probably far too much. If there had been
more time to think this through and rewrite from a more positive view I'd
probably have emphasized this point: To be worthy of the name "craft cider"
the beverage must first and foremost be recognizable as an excellent cider.
It must have some character or qualities worthy of merit without adjuncts
(making allowance for obvious factors such level of acidity when the adjunct
is used to balance it). There is not enough focus of attention on selection
of the apple varieties that could be used to produce superb cider reliably.
Instead there is an excess of focus on ways to add non-apple adjuncts to
render poorly chosen blends of surplus dessert apples into something more
tolerable and gimmicky. Insufficient emphasis on the fruit going into the
cider deprives many present and future cidermakers of the awareness needed
to seize opportunity to obtain and use some of the truly great cider apples.
They deserve to see that making cider with this fruit is every bit as fun
and exciting as anything they could do with adjuncts.
How are apples and pears to be given the full attention they deserve? The
idea of a major North American Pro-Am competition that is limited to
standard categories of cider and perry without adjuncts (and open to
international entries) is becoming increasingly appealing. I'm confident it
will happen eventually and I hope to hear of others' interest in such a
competition, particularly those who would make themselves available to
judge. Meanwhile there is ample room for improvement in cider judging in
the US. At this stage the competitions worthy of respect are those like
GLOWS that recognize the shortcomings of judges, work actively and
vigorously toward improvement, and can attract an effectivecombination of
experienced cider folks and judges with a good level of commitment toward
continuous improvement. Overall, a good starting point for further
improvement of existing and new competitions would be (a) greater
involvement of people with experience with cider so they can share their
knowledge and experience, and (b) greater exposure of acting judges to good
commercial examples. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be something that can
be improved substantially overnight. Geographically speaking, there's a lot
of ground to be covered. Homebrew competitions that include cider and perry
occur all over the US. That is both their weakness and their strength, the
challenge and opportunity. Despite the existence of these challenges
significant improvement is within reach. It's just going to take some
serious and sustained cooperative effort.
Gary Awdey
Eden, New York
------------------------------
End of Cider Digest #1408
*************************
