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Cider Digest #1418
Subject: Cider Digest #1418, 5 November 2007
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #1418 5 November 2007
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
French cider apples (Scott Smith)
Re: 'Wild Yeast' (Terry Bradshaw)
Juice to cider to vinegar (Charles Mcgonegal)
Freezing Cider from #1415 (Josh Klatt)
Pears and perry fact check (Charles Mcgonegal)
RE: Wild Yeast (Shawn Carney)
Wild yeasts (Andrew Lea)
Kingston Black ("deirdreb@mindspring.com")
commercial cider/perry examples ("Gordon Strong")
Blending Apples ("Rich Anderson")
sugar refractometer ("J. Kent")
CiderDay 2007 (Claude Jolicoeur)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: French cider apples
From: Scott Smith <scott@cs.jhu.edu>
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 09:42:10 -0400
On Oct 30, 2007, at 11:12 PM, Claude wrote:
>
> In Cider Digest #1416, 25 October 2007, McGonegal, Charles P wrote:
>> And while I'm thinking of digest stuff - for the people interested in
>> Kingston Black, and who are growing their own - try Frequin
>> Tardive de
>> la Sartha. It's got the phenolic character of the KBs, a good
>> dose of
>> the 'densely fruity' character of Domaine and St. Martin, and
>> comes into
>> fruit a whole lot earlier. At least for me. Better fresh than
>> sweated.
>
> Charles,
> In that short paragraph, you mention 3 French cider variaties which
> I was
> not aware had been imported in N.America.
> I had a look in my book by Fleckinger (Pommiers a cidre, varietes de
> France) - there are many Frequin mentioned but not the Frequin
> tardive de
> la Sarthe - could it be a synonym? Do you know more about it?
> And there are 2 Domaine listed : Domaines du Calvados and Domaines de
> l'Eure. Do you know if yours is one of these two?
>
> In any case, I would be interested to learn more on how these
> varieties
> perform.
I have many French varieties here in Maryland and would also be
interested in how the French cider apples are doing elsewhere. I
have a couple fruiting this year but not enough to make any cider.
Here are a few things I have learned.
Frequin Rouge - precocious, productive, early. This apple may be too
early for me, there is not much else ripening in mid-Sept. The taste
profile seems exceptionally good with lots of flavor and a good ratio
of tannins.
Noel des Champs - A more mild apple ripening mid/late October here.
Sweet with mild tannins.
St. Martin - no densely fruity here, more nondescript and with few
tannins.
Many apples are proving to be quite un-precocious for me: the above-
mentioned Domaines, Binet Rouge, etc. Nary an apple in five years of
growing on dwarfing stocks. I also have a Frequin Tardive de la
Sarthe (from Geneva) which has not yet fruited. There is also an
apple called just "Frequin" in the Geneva collection (PI 162503)
which fruited for me this year; it did not produce too many apples
but they were bigger and more mild than my Frequin Rouge; they were
similar to Frequin Rouge in terms of looks, time of maturity, taste
profile, etc.
Hewes Crab is the only other apple up there with Frequin Rouge in
terms of having lots of flavor and a good amount of tannins. It also
comes in around the same time as Frequin Rouge so perhaps that would
be an interesting cross-continental blend? All of my English cider
apples have so far had few tannins in my climate (Porters Perfection
and Cap of Liberty at this point). I wonder if the heat here is no
good for them? I would be interested in other experiences of people
with cider apples in warmer climates. One of the reasons why I
planted more French apples was the greater heat of the French cider
apple regions compared to the British (still quite cool compared to
my climate however).
Since I have yet to actually make any cider with these apples its
hard to go too much by the taste of the apple, but I do think its
better than nothing.
Scott
------------------------------
Subject: Re: 'Wild Yeast'
From: Terry Bradshaw <terryb@lostmeadowvt.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:40:04 -0400
On the subject of 'wild yeast', I have done both cultured and wild
yeasts for years, and have moved almost exclusively to the latter. The
mill where I used to squeeze was/is run by a fellow who refuses to
sanitize anything in the all-wood building, and has three 400-gallon
vinegar vats right behind the press. Years ago I did the old yeast
trial, one batch, ten carboys, a slew of different yeasts. While there
was little difference I did find that the uncultured juice did have
better aroma. Since setting up my own mill I started with cultured
yeasts, since everything was new. As a sweet cidermaker I also sanitize
everything, but starting last year I began to 'seed' my (separate) wood
racks for yeast culture. In the ground pomace I would mix in some dry
1116 yeast ( a neutral, fairly cold-tolerant yeast for me) and squeeze
as before. The difference is that I wash but never sanitize these
racks. My earlier ciders this season perked along just fine without
yeast additions. Why am I doing this? I feel that the slower ferments
are much more prferable to a fast one, and a sturdy yeast culture just
works too hard, too fast. By starting with a lower inoculum, and
keeping the cider cool, I get a slower ferment with better aroma and
flavor character. People like my cider, so it seems to be working. And
my customers who buy cider must generally (10:1) go the 'wild' route
too. One thing I do to fend off many random critters, esp. bacteria, is
to dose each squeeze with 50 ppm sulfite, then add nothing else. I
usually find surface bubble within a couple of days and a small krausen
head within the week.
My $0.02,
Terry Bradshaw
------------------------------
Subject: Juice to cider to vinegar
From: Charles Mcgonegal <cpm@appletrue.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:15:10 -0500
In the thread on wild yeast, Steve Wood notes that you always have to
go through an alcoholic intermediate to get to vinegar.
I may have misspoken - my little test ferments -aged- to vinegar. They
did stop at cider first.
The experiments were done on 1L hdpe jars. I think there was
significant O2 penetration. But only the wild samples went to vinegar.
Charles McGonegal
AEppelTreow Winery
Elegant Hard Cider and Orchard Wines
>>Sent from my iPhone<<
------------------------------
Subject: Freezing Cider from #1415
From: Josh Klatt <josh@joshklatt.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:25:50 -0400
Hey-- Did anyone respond to Brad's question about freezing cider to
use for topping off? I didn't see a response and it's something I'm
considering if it's viable...
Thanks!
Josh
------------------------------
Subject: Pears and perry fact check
From: Charles Mcgonegal <cpm@appletrue.com>
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 07:22:54 -0500
Sorry to have to correct you Dick, but most of the perry I make is
'common'.
I haven't found some mysterious western source of perry pears - just
Comice. I'd use more MI pears, but the local distributor doesn't carry
them, and I haven't made the footwork to get them direct (yet).
We'll see how my perry orchard recovers from this years horrid
fireblight season.
Charles McGonegal
AEppelTreow Winery
Elegant Hard Cider and Orchard Wines
>>Sent from my iPhone<<
------------------------------
Subject: RE: Wild Yeast
From: Shawn Carney <shawn@blossomwoodcidery.com>
Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:22:18 -0400
When it comes to yeast, I think we know whether the chicken came before
the egg; every commercial yeast is an isolated strain of wild yeast so
if you seed your orchard with D254 I suppose you would be seeding with
someone else's ?wild yeast? and your "wild yeast" would be D254 plus
whatever else you may get from your orchard. If there are a handful of
more dominate yeasts in your orchard the D254 may not have too much effect.
It may be possible that 200 years ago when a good barrel of cider was made
the lees were spread back into the orchard with the intent of making that
strain more available, but I don't know? Where do you dump your crappy
cider that didn't turn out? In the neighbors orchard?
I suppose it is also possible the population of wild yeast could have
developed in an orchard over the years from fruit rotting on the ground
beneath the trees. Earlier this year I remember reading about fermenting
with wild yeast in one of the historical downloads Andrew posted (maybe
one of the ones in digest 1372?). The author (a N. American, making cider
in N. America) with regard to yeast said something along the lines of :
it's important to let the fruit sit on the floor of the orchard for a
while before pressing the cider. Maybe that is something to try?
In July of 2006 I sampled around one hundred ciders in England straight
from the barrel. All were made from wild yeast, most of them I didn't have
enough information to say one way or another if any differences in flavor
could be attributed to the yeast, except at one place where we tasted cider
from every barrel (about 20) which were made from the same blend of apples
and pressed either on the same day or close to the same day. Some of the
cider tasted similar and others tasted quite a bit different from barrel
to barrel. Out of the 20 or so barrels I remember 2 that probably needed
to be tossed out. This was all the cider from a particular batch, up
until this point nothing had been tossed. So here we have a cider maker
in Europe with a supposed established population of yeast, and there are
inconsistencies in the flavor of his cider from barrel to barrel?
I don't see why it would make the yeast in your orchard any less wild if
you sprayed your orchard with W15, DV10, and RHST. If you harvest the
fruit, pressed it, and fermented the juice with out directly adding a
yeast culture to it you would be fermenting with wild yeast(s). If you
want to see if any of the above yeast actually made it into your cider you
would have to pull down the microscope. If you pitch a cultured yeast
I suppose you would be fermenting with one strain of wild yeast that is
known to perform well on it's own. This sure beats arguing about pear cider!
Shawn Carney
Cedaredge, CO
------------------------------
Subject: Wild yeasts
From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:03:26 +0000
Just a few more thoughts on this topic (from the wild yeast bore!)...
One big difference between a wild yeast fermentation and the addition of
a culture is the notion of ecological succession. A cultured yeast
fermentation is carried out by one dominant organism chosen to be a
specific strain of S cerevisae or bayanus. But a wild yeast ferment left
to its own devices starts off with the weakly fermenting yeasts
(Kloeckera apiculata etc) which are present on skins or inside the flesh
of the apple. These are normal orchard microflora but only have weak
fermenting power and die out after a couple percent alcohol is reached.
But that establishes the conditions for the Saccharomyces spp to then
flourish and to take the fermentation on to dryness up to say 8%
alcohol. So there is a succession of at least 2 organisms and likely
many more. This is the way the French cider industry worked and as I
understand it still works for the most part. Of course many attempts
have been made to control and regulate this succession by successive
inoculation but so far as I know they have not got outside of the lab.
One important controlling factor for wild yeast ferments is the use of
SO2. This was done for centuries by burning sulphur candles in the
barrels. It is empirically the case that many wild yeast, bacteria and
moulds capable of giving off-flavours in wines and ciders are
suppressed by SO2. So that is a powerful selection tool. With the advent
of a true scientific understanding of sulphite action in the 60's and
70's, it became possible to lay down specific pH-dependent levels for
the amount of sulphite needed to kill typical non-Saccharomyces yeasts
and to allow the natural Saccharomyces yeasts to multiply and flourish.
Those dose levels in effect selected a "wild monoculture" in the days
before good wine yeast strains were readily available. It took a couple
of weeks or so for them to multiply up, but it worked. What I personally
currently do is to use about half that recommended sulphite level,
skating a little on thin ice, to allow maybe some of the Kloeckera etc
to flourish before the Saccharomyces take over, to get a slightly more
multimdimensional flavour.
The origin of the wild Saccharomyces in the succession is a bit of a
mystery. They do not seem to be common in nature, only through
man-induced selection pressure. They do not generally show up in all the
surveys of orchard fruit, leaves, bark and general litter. The general
belief is that they must be present but at levels far too low for normal
survey techniques to demonstrate. However, the selection pressure of
increasing alcohol and CO2 levels means that they become the dominant
organism by the end of fermentation. In subsequent seasons, and in an
old established cider operation, surveys have shown that the mills,
presses, cloths, walls, floors etc are where the Saccharomyces reside
from one season to the next. They are not in the orchard but in the
ciderhouse. As soon as the conditions are right for them to take over
the next batch of juice every autumn they will do so, as Steve and
Claude described.
It would be naive to suppose that wild yeast fermentation is not without
its drawbacks. Lack of consistency, and the genuinely-founded worry of
horrendous off-flavours, is a real concern. Much of it is a matter of
luck, i think. If you get a good yeast ecology in your place it will
probably stay that way, the more so with judicious use of sulphite. But
a commercial operation that cannot afford to write off a year's
production will not want to take that risk.
My final thought is on the nature of the juice sugar. Most fermenting
yeasts metabolize the glucose first and the remaining fructose only with
difficulty. In cider juice, unlike grape juice, fructose predominates.
Steve pointed out that not all wild yeasts go to dryness. In some cases
(eg if you're French) that could be an advantage. Certainly many
Champagne (bayanus) strains do ferment ciders out very dry indeed.
Presumably they can take out all the fructose. I have a suspicion that
the wild Saccharomyces are more likely to stick with remaining fructose,
hence the cider remains sweeter, than with the cultured strains. I've
never seen any data on this nor, surprisingly, any relative sugar
profiles (glucose / fructose ratios) taken during the course of cider
fermentations. But I do suspect this may be strain specific and (apart
from any nutrient considerations) maybe that's why wild yeast cider
fermentations tend to finish less dry than their cultured counterparts.
And that may or may not be an advantage depending on where you're coming
from.
The bore is signing off now.....!!
Andrew Lea
nr Oxford, UK
- --
Wittenham Hill Cider Page
http://www.cider.org.uk
------------------------------
Subject: Kingston Black
From: "deirdreb@mindspring.com" <deirdreb@mindspring.com>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 10:41:51 -0500
I noted Charles mention of Kingston Black as follows:
"for the people interested in
Kingston Black, and who are growing their own - try Frequin Tardive de
la Sartha. It's got the phenolic character of the KBs, a good dose of
the 'densely fruity' character of Domaine and St. Martin, and comes into
fruit a whole lot earlier. At least for me. Better fresh than sweated."
I am interested to find others' experiences in growing Kingston Black in
the States, particularly in Zone 4. We are just back from a trip to
England where we visited cider makers, orchards, and Peter Mitchell. From
what I heard and saw, I came away thinking that I may not add more Kingston
Black trees to our new and growing orchard. After watching KB apples slow
down the milling and pressing at a cidery, we went with their orchard man
to see him machine harvest more KB, and he really disliked growing them.
Wished the apple was not wanted by the cidermakers. Grows more wood than
fruit. Tough to prune. Scab prone. Also a number of cidermakers thought
it was overrated. Had more good to say about Dabinet and Tremlett's Bitter
(in terms of varietals) than Kingston Black. (Tremlett's is scab prone as
well, but not Dabinet there.) Since Americans are not expecting a Kingston
Black cider, like they are in the UK, why bother with it?
Perhaps Charles can add more info on the growing and management
characteristics of the suggested French variety above. And is this one that
you imported from France, or is it available from Geneva, NY?
- --Deirdre
Deirdre Birmingham,
deirdreb@mindspring.com
Mineral Point, WI
------------------------------
Subject: commercial cider/perry examples
From: "Gordon Strong" <strongg@speakeasy.net>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 20:32:28 -0400
The BJCP is revising the style guidelines for beer, mead and cider, and
would like to include a more extensive list of commercial examples for
ciders and perries. I asked my usual go-to cider experts (Dick, Gary, Drew,
Charles) and they gave me a few recommendations. However, I realize that
these styles can be very regional and not widely distributed. To better
allow those who wish to try good examples a chance to find them, I'm hoping
we can expand the list. I'm asking those of you who have knowledge of good
examples to recommend them to me. More is better than less, as long as the
examples generally follow the current guidelines
(http://www.bjcp.org/styles04/).
If you are a producer, it's OK to recommend your own products. I
specifically asked Charles and Drew to do so. US and non-US examples are
fine. We would like to identify the state where it was produced, so please
provide that along with the full name as you would like it to appear in the
guidelines. I'll be asking my cider experts to help me with the
categorization and selection process.
I know it's the busy season for many of you, but I'd appreciate the help.
I'm trying to finish this project by Thanksgiving so these guidelines can be
in effect for the next judging season.
Thanks,
Gordon Strong
BJCP
------------------------------
Subject: Blending Apples
From: "Rich Anderson" <rhanderson@centurytel.net>
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 19:06:38 -0700
Jack, there are number of good cider apple resources available in Washington
State. On the west side, there are several established commercial cider
apple orchards and several more being planted. The WSU Research Station at
Mt. Vernon has a large collection of cider cultivars and has been making a
number of test ciders over the past 4 years. The contact there would be Gary
Moultin.
For a cider blend, you want Bittersweet and Bittersharp apples for tannin.
"Bitter" is the tannin which gives traditional ciders their mouth feel. I
note you have a mix of both. First, how do the varieties you have work in
your climate? There is some conjecture on the West Side that "bitter"
cultivars may not produce a lot of tannin in dry hot climates and there is
some antidotal evidence to support this.
I would not fuss with the Kingston Black, I have about a hundred of them,
they are poor producers and very prone to canker. Regarding your Fox Whelp,
I would not keep it unless it true to type. Most of the Fox Whelp on on the
west coast seems to be one of the Fox Whelp derivatives. Our's are a large
fleshy apple, ripens early, drops and does not keep well. However if you
have a true to type Fox Whelp, I would like to get some scion wood from you
as I am top grafting over the ones I have.
For a bittersweet apple, I like the Yarlington Mill which you have, Dabinett
and Brown Snout, all are annual producers and are easy to maintain. I also
grow a number Brown's Apple and Porters for acidity. Depending on what you
plan to blend with you may not need much acidity. Regarding growing
practices, I use no nitrogen and do a mimimum of thinning to keep the fruit
size in the 50-60 cm range.
------------------------------
Subject: sugar refractometer
From: "J. Kent" <Sheep@kent9999.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 18:43:06 -0000
Do any of you use a suger Refractometer to obtain the sugar content of
the apple/mash rather than taking a gravity of the juice to obtain the
sugar content.
If you do, do you find the refractometer useful??
Thanks
Jeremy Kent
Herefordshire UK
------------------------------
Subject: CiderDay 2007
From: Claude Jolicoeur <cjoli@gmc.ulaval.ca>
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:24:40 -0500
I am just back from CiderDay weekend and I had a great time.
I took a few pictures - you can all have a look at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cjoliprsf/CiderDay2007
I would also like to thank and congratulate all the organizers and
participants. This is a great event, permitting us to actually meet all
these folks that we only know by their name in the Cider Digest ...
Great job all,
Claude Jolicoeur
------------------------------
End of Cider Digest #1418
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