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Cider Digest #1439
Subject: Cider Digest #1439, 25 February 2008
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #1439 25 February 2008
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Backsweetening ("Howard, John")
RE: Cider Digest #1438, 17 February 2008 ("Rich Anderson")
growing regions? ("Ben Bachelor")
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Subject: Backsweetening
From: "Howard, John" <jhoward@beckerfrondorf.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 10:03:03 -0500
Charles, How do the risks of infection and the added expense of using
concentrate to backsweeten outweigh the option of simply adding clean
cheap refined sugar? I know you well enough to know this is not a
purely philosophical decision. ;O)
John
------------------------------
Subject: RE: Cider Digest #1438, 17 February 2008
From: "Rich Anderson" <rhanderson@centurytel.net>
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:54:37 -0800
Dick, we were using about 100-150 ppm in the pressed juice, adding 50 ppm
when the cider was racked and another 50 ppm when the cider was filtered and
bottled. Lab analysis would reflect a fairly high total SO2, but most of it
was bound and did little to protect the cider from in-bottle fermentation.
When we bottled at 75 ppm the in-bottle fermentation problem stopped but the
total SO2 was higher yet. Expert sensory analysis could detect the SO2. My
take on this is that pad filtration was not doing the job and I did not like
the SO2 levels.
We looked at membrane filters to do the job on the advice of the Millipore
Rep. Membrane filters are expensive and require a strict maintenance cycle
to insure sterility plus we are not on a public water system and felt that
water purity could be a problem.
When I designed our pasteurization system, I experimented a bit with how
volumes of hot water heat, my observation, using the boiler on the pressure
washer was that the temperatures in the water bath and in the bottles used
to monitor that the temperature rise and distribution was fairly uniform at
any give point in the process. The unit I build for about $500 excluding the
boiler works fairly well, I pasteurize about 100-110 bottles per batch in
35-40 min.
OK, my keg pasteurization idea is a bit off-the-wall. I was thinking a cut
down steel barrel and a gas flame under it. However, for home production,
heat the cider slowly to 60C and pour it in to a clean and sanitized keg
would probably work.
------------------------------
Subject: growing regions?
From: "Ben Bachelor" <ben.bachelor@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:58:24 -0800
I was considering planting a few cider apple trees in my back yard, but I'm
not sure what all the good cider apple trees are, nor am I familiar with
what grows in my region - I live in San Diego. I'm sure there are plenty of
people on this list who can tell me exactly what I want to know, but I'm
also generally curious as to what grows and how well across the
country/continent/planet. Is there an easy place on the web, or a good book
I can look this sort of thing up in?
- -Ben Bachelor
