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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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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!   *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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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...



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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.


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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





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