Subject: Cider Digest #1430, 4 January 2008 Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 13:47:44 -0700 (MST) From: cider-request@talisman.com Cider Digest #1430 4 January 2008 Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor Contents: Re: High FG in French-Style cider (Claude Jolicoeur) Entries accepted starting Jan 1st for 2008 Upper Mississippi Mash-Out ("Cr...) Re: Cider Digest #1429, 31 December 2007 (Bill Rhyne) Fermentation speed (con.traas@theapplefarm.com) More Historical Downloads (Andrew Lea) Poor colour in rose cider (Andrew Lea) Send ONLY articles for the digest to cider@talisman.com. Use cider-request@talisman.com for subscribe/unsubscribe/admin requests. When subscribing, please include your name and a good address in the message body unless you're sure your mailer generates them. Archives of the Digest are available at www.talisman.com/cider ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: High FG in French-Style cider From: Claude Jolicoeur Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:49:55 -0500 In Cider Digest #1429, 31 December 2007 >Subject: High FG in French-Style cider >From: Donald Davenport >Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:33:26 -0700 >It would seem that to end with 4% ABV and a FG of 1.043, you'd have >to have a OG of somewhere around 1.070+. On a really great year, >with lots of sun, we may approach 1.060, but in the 1.070s seems >astronomically high. Is it reasonable to expect that the cider-maker >is able to get that much sugar naturally? Donald, yes it is possible. This year, I have pressed some small scabby McIntosh at a gravity of 1.080 and a mixture of Ashmead Kernel and Golden Russet at a gravity of 1.074. Honeygold, Belle de Boskoop and some cider apples also often reach 1.070. It is a question of variety, cultural practice, soil, sun, age of tree, etc... Now, on the question of if it is reasonable, I can't say. My experience is that when the gravity is high, the productivity is low, so the cost for a commercial producer increases, making it unreasonable maybe. Claude Jolicoeur ------------------------------ Subject: Entries accepted starting Jan 1st for 2008 Upper Mississippi Mash-Out From: "Crist, Jonathan" Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 17:59:28 -0600 Finally, a homebrew contest with a best-of-show award for cider makers. A coveted, custom-carved wooden chalice will be presented for the BOS cider, mead and beer at the 2008 Upper Mississippi Mash-Out, Jan. 25-26 in St. Paul, Minnesota. One of the larger homebrew contests in the country, the Mash-Out provides prizes along with every medal. Check out the infamous "Eis-Anything" category, and NEW this year there are two categories for first time entrants (1060+ OG and 1060- OG). Entries are accepted Jan. 1 - 12. The contest is sponsored by the St. Paul Homebrewers Club and the Minnesota Home Brewers Assn. Check out all the details on the Website at: http://www.mnbrewers.com/mashout Jonathan Crist ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Cider Digest #1429, 31 December 2007 From: Bill Rhyne Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:00:40 -0800 (PST) Re: Eric Bordelet ciders and Don Davenport's questions Eric Bordelet is French and he is from the cider making region of France. From the articles that I have read about him, he is serious about preserving traditional French cider making techniques. The terms "Cidre Sec" is for dry cider (all sugars have been fermented) and "Cidre Doux" is for sweet cider. From reading the cider texts, these ciders have had the yeast racked off to arrest fermentation and to retain sweetness. In Warcollier's cidermaking text, he describes many ways of making cider and racking off the yeast to arrest fermentation to achieve a sweet cider is one on them. As for the sugar levels of the original juice, maybe it was a hot summer in Normandy. Global warming may be expressing itself in France. The sugar levels vary based on the amount of sun exposure and ripeness level at the time of picking. In California, we have had apples that were very high in sugar levels and fermented to 7-8% alcohol level naturally. At a local apple growers meeting years ago, the apple researchers said that an extra two weeks on the tree can serve to convert the remaining starches in the apple to sugar, resulting in less starch haze, higher sugars which result in more sugar. Regarding the question of fermentation times, cool temperatures slow the fermentation and warm temperatures can speed the fermentation time. I think that if the farmer fertilizes the orchards with nitrogen, the presence of high levels of nitrogen might cause the fermentation to go faster. So, if one desires a nice long stable fermentation to preserve the natural apple flavors during fermentation, try to find apples or apple juice from orchards that have not been fertilized, or very little, and then find a stable cool room to ferment (45-50 degrees). Unfortunately, we never had climate controlled locations and the Gravenstein which are harvested the heat of August in California would ferment in 8 days because our location was warm. The late harvest apples in November would take 3 months to ferment because it was cool by that time in our location. Bill Rhyne ------------------------------ Subject: Fermentation speed From: con.traas@theapplefarm.com Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 05:03:02 -0800 (PST) Hello Claude; you said: "I have a question for those who have more knowledge on fermentation chemistry. I have noticed a strong correlation between the date of pressing and the fermentation speed. Taking the same variety, and even from the same tree, if I make a pressing soon after harvest, the resulting cider will have tendency do ferment relatively quickly. But if I wait until the apples become very ripe or slightly overripe, the resulting cider will be much slowlier." You then suggested that changing N levels in the fruit might be a factor. While I am reluctant to ascribe any change in fermentation speed to factors other than temperature and yeast load, I can at least confirm that in tests that I conducted over 36 weeks storage of apples, that the Nitrogen levels in fruits changed only as a result of water loss from the fruit, and therefore increased marginally over the period. I am afraid that you need to look elsewhere for an explanation. Con Traas The Apple Farm, Cahir, Co. Tipperary, Ireland. ------------------------------ Subject: More Historical Downloads From: Andrew Lea Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:20:27 +0000 I recently discovered a number of public domain scanned books of interest to orchardists and cidermakers on the Google Books website. Most significant of these is Knight's "Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and Pear and On the Manufacture of Cider and Perry" (2nd edition 1801). This is an idiosyncratic classic - now, with the benefit of hindsight, some of it is just plain wrong but somebody had to set the ball rolling for the 19th century and Knight did it! You will find this at http://books.google.com/books?id=n5MBAAAAYAAJ You can read it online or download it as a PDF. Unfortunately the scanning is not perfect and at least 3 pages are missing and others are hard to read. But it's much cheaper than buying one on the antiquarian book market which would otherwise set you back several hundred pounds or dollars! Using 'cider' or 'cyder' as a search term in Google Books reveals quite a number of 18th / 19th century treatises and manuals which contain details (usually buried deep within much other stuff) of how cider was being made on both sides of the Atlantic (also in France and Spain) a couple of centuries ago. In those days there was a fair bit of copying and plagiarism from one volume to another but quite often the original sources are honestly attributed. Well worth a winter evening's browsing for those with a broadband connection. (My website also gives links to other historical cider downloads which were previously almost impossible to come by). Andrew Lea, nr Oxford, UK. - -- Wittenham Hill Cider Page http://www.cider.org.uk ------------------------------ Subject: Poor colour in rose cider From: Andrew Lea Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:04:38 +0000 Just to give a chemist's perspective on this, the problem is that the anthocyanin pigment in red fleshed apple or apple skin (cyanidin 3-galactoside) is in very low concentration and is not stable anyway. It is decolorised by sulphite, attacked by ascorbate, and combines during fermentation with acetaldehyde and epicatechin to form new complexes, some of which will tend to fall out of solution with the yeast. Hence the colour diminishes. Although to some extent the same is of course true in red wines, the concentration of anthocyanins there is much higher to begin with so the fixed losses do not have the same marked effect. And at least some grape anthocyanins (the acylated ones) are inherently more stable than those in apple in any case. All this is just to say that making a rose cider from regular weakly flushed apples is inherently an uphill task. Well done to those who can achieve it! Commercially, by far the easiest way is to make a regular cider and colour it with a red fruit extract afterwards. Many years ago at Long Ashton I made a 'teinturier' cider from a deep red-fleshed crab (Cowichan, I think) and used this at a 10 or 20% blend into a regular pale cider to make it pink. There are ciders here in the UK now coloured with red berry concentrates which is the easy commercial fix to achieve the same thing. Andrew Lea - -- Wittenham Hill Cider Page http://www.cider.org.uk ------------------------------ End of Cider Digest #1430 *************************