HOMEBREW Digest #5724 Mon 30 August 2010


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  Re: Cider (Alan Semok)
  Re: Cider (David Lewinnek)
  Change is inevitable... ("Pat Babcock")

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Beer is our obsession and we're late for therapy! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * NOTE: With the economy as it is, the HBD is struggling to meet its meager operating expenses of approximately $3500 per year. If less than half of those currently directly subscribed to the HBD sent in a mere $5.00, the HBD would be able to easily meet its annual expenses, with room to spare for next year. Please consider it. Financial Projection As of 13 Jun 2010 Projected 2010 Budget $3305.65 Expended against projection $2280.59 Projected Excess/(Shortfall) $ 346.85 As always, donors and donations are publicly acknowledged and accounted for on the HBD web page. Thank you Send articles for __publication_only__ to post@hbd.org If your e-mail account is being deleted, please unsubscribe first!! To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE send an e-mail message with the word "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" to request@hbd.org FROM THE E-MAIL ACCOUNT YOU WISH TO HAVE SUBSCRIBED OR UNSUBSCRIBED!!!** IF YOU HAVE SPAM-PROOFED your e-mail address, you cannot subscribe to the digest as we cannot reach you. We will not correct your address for the automation - that's your job. HAVING TROUBLE posting, subscribing or unsusubscribing? See the HBD FAQ at http://hbd.org. LOOKING TO BUY OR SELL USED EQUIPMENT? Please do not post about it here. Go instead to http://homebrewfleamarket.com and post a free ad there. The HBD is a copyrighted document. The compilation is copyright HBD.ORG. Individual postings are copyright by their authors. ASK before reproducing and you'll rarely have trouble. Digest content cannot be reproduced by any means for sale or profit. More information is available by sending the word "info" to req@hbd.org or read the HBD FAQ at http://hbd.org. JANITORs on duty: Pat Babcock (pbabcock at hbd dot org), Jason Henning, and Spencer Thomas
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:46:41 -0400 From: Alan Semok <asemok at mac.com> Subject: Re: Cider On Sat, 28 Aug 2010 15:02:02 -0700, Tim Bray <tbray at wildblue.net>wrote: > ... so you want to start with a juice that is > cloyingly sweet - it should have virtually no perceptible tartness. WOW...do I ever disagree with that statement!!!! In my experience (and according to hundreds of years of tradition as well), I think the exact opposite is true. When I make cider I go out of my way to make sure I get 'tart blend' fresh cider to start with. I find hard cider made from predominately sweet varieties of apples to be a pretty bland drink. In fact, traditionally, cider makers have blended in the juice of tart 'crabapple' varieties to achieve a good result for hard cider. Luckily there are still plenty of orchards left here in NJ that grow some older varieties of apples with the requisite tartness. A few will even press cider blended to specifications, and luckily most either sell the juice unpasteurized or use "UV cold pasteurization". In the end of course it boils down to one's personal taste. My taste runs with the long established tradition of using _plenty_ of tart apples in the cider blend. Doing otherwise results, frankly, in a pretty lackluster cider. Just my .02... your mileage may vary... :-) Best way to decide is to make a batch each way and see which is better for your own taste buds. cheers... Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:06:40 -0400 From: David Lewinnek <davelew at gmail.com> Subject: Re: Cider Tim Bray talks about being unable to find a yeast with a low enough alcohol tolerance to make a sweet cider: > > Or, should I assume that the cider yeast will stop working at a > > relatively pleasant alcohol level and that the addition > > of late sugars will only add sweetness? > > If you find such a yeast, send it to me! Or get one of the yeast labs > to propagate it - North American cidermakers would be delighted to have > such an option. Alas, all Saccharomyces strains metabolize fruit > sugars quite readily and therefore produce a dry cider. This is why > many of us persist in gambling on spontaneous fermentations: some wild > yeasts have very low alcohol tolerance, and you can end up with a > finished cider with residual sweetness. That's kind of the Grail for > cidermakers, but it's a risky endeavour, There is a technique used by cider makers in the Normandy region of France that might be helpful here. The trick is to copy what so many new homebrewers do to get a stuck fermentation: damage the yeast in such a way that you lower their alcohol tolerance. This is possible because it's relatively easy to remove certain nutrients (I believe this is fixed nitrogen, but I'm not sure) from apple juice. Basically, before pitching, add some pectinase enzyme (most homebrew stores sell pectinase for clearing wines and ciders) to the fruit juice. All of the pectin will drop out of solution and form something that looks like trub on the bottom of your fermenter. Then rack the juice off this trub into a new fermenter, and pitch a packet of dry yeast. Without the stuff that drops out, the yeast will be unable to synthesize certain compounds, and will end up with thin cell walls, and very low alcohol tolerance. Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:15:32 -0400 (EDT) From: "Pat Babcock" <pbabcock at hbd.org> Subject: Change is inevitable... Greetings, Beerlings! Take me to your lager... To all those returning to the HBD from the AHA's TechTalk, and to all who are coming to our virtual shores for the first time: welcome home. There are a couple of "slowly simmering" changes for the HBD that, with the termination of Tech Talk, have been placed on full boil. I shortly expect to be eliminating the line length limit block and the HTML block from the Digest, replacing them with filters that strip the HTML and automagically adjust the line lengths to fit in the 80 character wide space the Digest has supported for these long many years. What this means to most is that the top two impediments to posting to the HBD will be relieved. The third project on the burner is to remap non-standard character sets back into Western ASCII. This one will take a bit longer; however, that project will eliminate the third of the top four impediments. Number four was alleviated earlier last month when I finally got the correct reverse DNS mapping in place with our ISP (sometimes it's just a matter of getting the right technician on the line. Too bad it took over a year to get that one...). To those who have been faithfully following the HBD, I hope there are no unintended consequences. Please keep your eyes open to any "strangeness" during the next several months and let me know - not everything will be apparent to me in testing and implementation. I will put a blurb into the Digest whenever I go live with something new, so use that as an indicator should something untoward occur. Thanks. - -- See ya! Pat Babcock in SE Michigan Chief of HBD Janitorial Services http://hbd.org pbabcock at hbd.org Return to table of contents
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