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Cider Digest #1641
Subject: Cider Digest #1641, 4 July 2011
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #1641 4 July 2011
Cider and Perry Discussion Forum
Contents:
Mobile cider mill question (Alan Yelvington)
Re: sulphites (Bill)
Sulfite, acid, and high pH cider (lotic@juno.com)
Re: follow-on to "sulfites as sanitizers" (Claude Jolicoeur)
Pumps (WhetstoneCiderWorks)
NOTE: Digest appears whenever there is enough material to send one.
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Digest Janitor: Dick Dunn
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Subject: Mobile cider mill question
From: Alan Yelvington <alany@semparpac.org>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:30:37 -0400
I'm looking for any shared wisdom on
operating a mobile cider mill.
I have a Zambelli grinder and a 17" rack &
cloth press. This fall I'll be mounting them
on a small trailer and making them available
for folks that want to press their own
fruit. I plan to take a generator (220V),
sanitizer, a fruit wash tub, buckets for the
hauling from the grinder to the press, and
stickers to mark containers as containing
non-pasteurized juice. I do not plan to
provide juice containers.
I already own the equipment, and I really
want/need to generate some revenue until my
planting comes into bearing.
Any experience to share?
Al Yelvington
Happy Dog Farm, LLC
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Subject: Re: sulphites
From: Bill <squeeze@mars.ark.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:06:50 -0700
A few thoughts on the sulphite discussion.
- - Sulphite is a sanitizer, acting to create conditions that discourage
microbial activity, not eliminate it [also considered a preservative].
- - Sterilizing is completely eliminating any biotic material, sulphites
don't do that.
- - "Cleansers" deal with dirt and stains.
Commercially, citric acid is sometimes recommended/used to potentiate
the effect of sulphites in a product, but the main effect desired is the
antioxident effect rather than antimicrobial action, and that
antioxident action is a lot of what's useful in fermenting products.
One reaction that home users seldom consider is the reaction between
sulphites and chlorine [an oxident], found in your city tap water. A
certain amount of the sulphite [maybe most] will be neutralized by the
chloramine that results from interaction of chlorine and organics in the
water, eliminating the chloramine, not any microbes present - it's used
specifically for that by some water treatment plants. The chloramine can
be neutralized by adding ascorbic acid to the water [1000mg to 40
gallons], as done in neonatal care. Which is probably the answer to Dick
Dunns sulphite-plus-acid question for equipment sanitizing water.
Bottom line IMO, use sulphites in the must or cider for the antioxident
effect and later preservation if you think it's needed, but don't expect
to eliminate any contamination problems [like film yeast] unless you use
excessive quantities. Clean your equipment to sterility with *very hot*
potable water [bleach first if in doubt and to remove stains,] and dry
it immediately. Keep dry until use. Do not count on sulphite to
sterilize anything any time.
Bill [the ex-squeeze]
------------------------------
Subject: Sulfite, acid, and high pH cider
From: lotic@juno.com
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:13:22 -0400
All,
I use potassium metabisulfite (~175g/L) to sterilize bottles and
equipment. I also use sulfites to kill off wild yeast (prior to addition
of the yeast I want), and prior to bottling.
The proper amount of sulfite addition to cider (to kill of wild yeast) IS
pH dependant. Base cider (sweet cider) should be between 3-4 pH. If the
pH in your base cider is above 4-5, then the addition of sulfite is
essentially pointless. The sulfite will be instantly bound, and no
free-sulfite will be available to kill yeast and act as an anti-oxidant.
If your base cider is above pH 4-5, then your apples were probably rotten
(OK, "over-ripe" is kinder). Use good, sound apples to make your cider! I
suppose that it is possible to drop the pH (using acid) and then add
sulfites, but that's what sulfites do anyway.
The active part of Potassium (or Sodium) Metabisulfite is SO2.
Add that to water (H2O) and you get H2SO3 (sweet cider is mostly water).
This molecule takes an oxygen from the liquid and makes H2SO4 (Sulfuric
Acid). This is what kills off the bacteria and wild yeast.
There's a chart (somewhere out there) that shows how much Sulfite
to add to your base cider based on the initial pH of your base cider. All
my base cider is between 3-4. If I had base cider of any higher pH, I'd
toss it. (Silk Purse / Sow's Ear).
Remember: it is the FREE SO2 that does the work. Bound SO2 does
nothing but mess up the flavor.
- -Peter Mitchell
(no, the OTHER Peter Mitchell) ;)
------------------------------
Subject: Re: follow-on to "sulfites as sanitizers"
From: Claude Jolicoeur <cjoli@gmc.ulaval.ca>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:19:51 -0400
In Cider Digest #1640, 27 June 2011
>Subject: follow-on to "sulfites as sanitizers"
>From: Dick Dunn <rcd@talisman.com>
>more re my note in the previous digest that *-metabisulfite in water, by
>itself, won't have much-if-any antimicrobial action...
This is an interesting topic, about which I have questioned myself recently.
Let us first consider the following preliminaries:
In the old days, antiseptic properties were obtained by burning a sulfur
candle, and it is the fumes that had the antiseptic effect. This had
nothing to do with anything related to acidity.
For over 20 years I have used a 0.5% SO2 solution in water for rinsing my
equipment prior to use with cider, this means dipping my hydrometer in this
solution, or putting some in a carboy and shaking, or pushing some through
my racking tubes. I have never experienced any contamination issues.
After some reading last winter, I have started to prepare my cleaning
solution with 0.5% SO2 and 0.5% citric acid, with the belief it would be
more efficient. But I am not entirely convinced... When I pour 250 ml of
SO2 solution in a carboy, shake, close the carboy and let stand for about
15 minutes, what is most efficient? the liquid or the vapors? I think it is
the vapors that do most of the job, acting like the fumes of the candle in
the old days, but I might be wrong. If in effect it is the vapors, I don't
think the acidity would change anything. In any case, if I imagine myself
inside a huge closed tank with some sulfite inside, the toxicity of the
atmosphere would be what would kill me...
We also have to consider a concentration of 0.5% is 5000 ppm, about 50 to
100 times more than the concentration we use for a sulfited juice. Given
this sort of concentration, do we think the added efficiency given by the
acidity is really significative?
And as a last point of thought, all modern equipment is glass or stainless
steel, both materials being very easy to clean compared to wooden vats of
the old days. Sometimes I wonder if it is really necessary to use a strong
solution like sulfite for sanitizing - maybe plain water and soap would be
enough?
Claude
------------------------------
Subject: Pumps
From: WhetstoneCiderWorks <whetstoneciderworks@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 06:19:52 -0400
I went through the headaches of searching for a pump a year ago, and
finally settled on a small diaphragm pump, a Flojet 4300-043.
The pump works beautifully. While it only pumps around 5
gallons/minute, I have not found this to be onerously slow at my scale,
around 500 gallons/year. I try to move cider as few times as possible,
and a back of the napkin calculation tells me I might have spent 8 hours
pumping cider around in the last year. With all the inefficiencies in
my system this doesn't even begin to count as a bottleneck.
The pump is self-priming and can run dry, both of which are very
convenient. In addition, it has a high-pressure cut off switch, so it
can be turned on and off by an inline valve on the outflow side. This
means that when filling tanks and barrels I can control the flow using
the valve while looking into the tank, topping up with as little as
necessary. In addition, this valve works with the float valve in the
bottler I use, so while bottling I just ignore the pump and it comes on
when necessary.
I would love to move my cider entirely with gravity or gas, but since I
cannot some sort of pump is necessary. Is my little pump hard on the
juice? Absent a side by side comparison of the same cider moved with
different pumps this is difficult to know. Conventional wisdom in the
wine world seems to be that the larger diaphragm pumps, which are very
different beasts I admit, are actually gentle on wine. (see for example
http://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/?go=getArticle&dataId=20184) My
intuition is that being thrashed around by an impeller would be just as
hard on cider as being pushed through a check valve by a diaphragm. I
am pleased with the cider I have made using the pump, but don't know
what it would taste like being moved some other way.
I am not advocating for this style of pump but have found it to be very
practical, especially for under $200.
Jason MacArthur
Whetstone CiderWorks
PO Box 512
1073 MacArthur Road
Marlboro, VT 05344
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End of Cider Digest #1641
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