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Cider Digest #2021
Subject: Cider Digest #2021, 30 March 2016
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #2021 30 March 2016
Cider and Perry Discussion Forum
Contents:
yeast viability for bottle conditioning (Blake Yarger)
Cider in the US market considered (Dick Dunn)
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Digest Janitor: Dick Dunn
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Subject: yeast viability for bottle conditioning
From: Blake Yarger <blakeyarger@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2016 13:21:29 -0700
Greetings,
I have 60+ gallons of cider that I would like to bottle condition to about
3 bars, and I am wondering if I should add a fresh yeast culture at
bottling to ensure viable yeast will eat the priming sugar and carbonate my
bottles. A little bit about the cider... I pressed the apples in the first
week of December and fermented the juice in a used wine barrel. I did not
add yeast or sulfur, but the fermentation was very steady and clean. The
cider went dry in mid-January and finished with about 7% abv. I racked the
cider for the first time a week ago, and it is pretty clear. Since it has
been a couple months since the end of primary fermentation, should I add
yeast? Or can I just add priming sugar and trust the dormant yeast to come
back to life? From my research into sparkling winemaking and bottle
conditioning high gravity beers, it seems like adding a bayanus yeast
species is a good idea, but the purist in me likes the idea of finishing a
cider without ever adding anything to it besides the priming sugar.
Any thoughts or advice are greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Blake Yarger
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Subject: Cider in the US market considered
From: Dick Dunn <rcd@talisman.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2016 20:49:40 -0600
A couple months back, thanks to the Cider Guide Newsletter (see CD 2015,
and thanks to Eric), I came to a really thought-provoking article by Nat
West, "Craft Beer is the Lens"
http://cidercraftmag.com/craft-beer-is-the-lens/
Nat's thesis is:
"The best, most widely-consumed and successful cider brands in the
market now, and in the coming years, will be made, packaged, delivered
and handled, sold and consumed like beer--not wine."
(This refers to the US.)
Naturally a lot of craft cidermakers (myself included) fight the perception
of cider being close kin to beer. We point out that cider IS a wine in
many ways, including most of the process, and according to law. We also
don't like it because of price points for craft beer vs craft cider. I
suppose we think about perceptions a lot...and whether or not there's
snobbery in our own perceptions, we might well like to tap into a bit of
the wine-buying public's snobbery or sense of being higher-class.
But dammit I think Nat is mostly right. It makes me feel a bit like Gene
Wilder in Young Frankenstein shouting "Destiny!", to admit that I see it.
Cider isn't going to be perceived as wine just because we (some of us) want
it to be. Sayin' it don't make it so!
Packaging is an indicator, and Nat mentions this, pointing out that the
larger format 750 and 500 are a minuscule (and not growing) part of the
cider market. I can see the difficulty of the 750. Mark and I had used
750's for several years, but after taking a break we came back in 500's.
The 750's are difficult, to be sure. The 500's look a lot more like a
chunky beer bottle, so although I see a much better future for the 500 than
Nat does, I'm tacitly going along with a more beer-like package.
I can thank our slight kinship with beer for one thing: making the crown
cap socially acceptable! Crown caps cost maybe 1/20th what decent corks
cost, and they're about 100x more reliable. The US bias toward corks even
in the overwhelming majority of wines which are consumed within 3 years of
vintage or less is not just snobbery; it's eco-wasteful and foolish.
Now, a tangle of some off-the-wall thoughts and questions. Cider in the
US is very small stuff, even with the tremendous growth of the past few
years, so it's inevitable that it ends up being "like" some larger
category. Are we really worse off having good cider next to craft beer
than having it with the "wine coolers, new-age, and malternatives"?!
Is there a future for cider being "like cider" instead of either "like
wine" or "like beer"? That is, can cider grow up enough in the US to stand
on its own? No, it's not there yet, not close, really not even close
enough to prognosticate. But could we have our own category some day?
The 500 ml bottle suggests to me one way in which cider on the shelf could
have a bit of its own identity: It's the right size for cider. Let alone
UK vs US differences; a lot of UK cider is in 500's because experience
showed it was the right size, and their cider market is big enough to make
the point.
Even beyond whether craft cider in the US can come to define its own
category...suppose it can; then what do we want it to be like? How do we
want it to be perceived?
And is there a significant gap between mass-market and craft cider, enough
to have them be perceived as separate products?
Some years back, talking with a renowned UK cider maker, he explained how
he wasn't so much bothered by Strongbow and its ilk, even though they were
making something he'd barely deign to call cider. As he put it, "there's
clear water between us"...not the same territory and no collision.
But I doubt that's true in the US.
OK, this is a ramble, in part because the Digest has been so quiet lately,
but just one more: What about bag-in-box packaging? Can cider get there?
Economical, environmentally wise, convenient. Carbonation is the big
obstacle.
- --
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
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End of Cider Digest #2021
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