cider

[Muscroj]

did you rack the cider off first before you bottled it, or did you go straight from the first fermentation bucket to bottle?
I only ask because we have a couple of buckets & last year we fermented then racked into the 2nd bucket, then bottled. If I didn't do the in between fermentation then I could use both buckets this year & go with 2 different approaches. One with & one without yeast so I would hopefully get something decent out of at least one bucket.

[MKG]

Had a look at that site you mentioned, Cheezy - looks a good one. BUT I need to correct a couple of general misconceptions (about any fermentation, so I can safely say it applies to cider) that have appeared above. A malo-lactic secondary fermentation MAY, not WILL, occur - and it's more likely not to unless you force it by special treatment. Should it happen, its effect is to soften and round off the flavour - slightly - and add a "spritz" to your wine/cider/perry. If the initial flavour is really rough, it won't be of great help.

Extraction in a juicer, being a cold and non-diluted process, will result in LESS pectin than other methods of extraction apart from pressing - so in the case of cider, I would have thought it would make no difference at all. In any case, the only effect pectin has is to make your finished product hazy. If there's no haze, you haven't got a pectin problem.

Once again, Campden tablets (i.e. sodium or potassium metabisulphite) don't kill yeast. The effect is to stun yeast. It remains inactive for a period of 24 to 48 hours (at normal dosage levels) which gives you time to get the liquid off the yeast (which falls to the bottom of the fermentation vessel). However, the enymes produced by the yeast to metabolise sugars are still in solution, so fermentation will continue for a period even though the yeast cells are stunned.

Muscroj, I think you may have hit the nail on the head - that extended period in the bucket after fermentation had finished (a few weeks!!!) almost certainly led to heavy oxidisation of your cider. That may well be the cause of the awful taste. Because it isn't just a matter of dissolved oxygen (it's the start of a long and complex chain of chemical reactions), it's irreversible. And if there was a lot of tannin in the apple juice, it gets even worse as far as taste goes (try drinking tea after you've left it for a few hours). Oxidisation flattens overall taste but does very little for either tannin or acid - so they're the tastes you're left with.

I think you need a few taste tests. Try just sugar first. A level teaspoon in a bottle, say. Taste it - has it improved? Would more sugar improve it further? If you can improve the taste by using sugar (without making it sickeningly sweet) then you have a chance of rescuing something.

Best of British!

Mike

EDIT: If you lived in the south-west you might get a good fermentation from wild yeasts, simply because there are more "ciderish" wild yeasts around there. Sheffield, not known for its cider-making tradition, probably has less (or none, as the experts call it). If I were you, I'd keep adding yeast.

[frozenthunderbolt]

One thought does occur to me - are you absolutely sure that the awful taste is really acid, rather than tannin? Is it sharp or bitter? There's a lot of tannin in apple skins. If it is tannin, your only hope is to mask the taste - Red's mulling is an ideal way to do that.

Mike

If it is tannin then i am fairly sure that fining with egg whites would help, as i understand it the protein in the egg white binds with the tannin and some at least is precipitated out.

[Muscroj]

oooh, thanks this is REALLY helpful I've learnt more in the last couple of days than I did spending hours googling for cider information over the last year!

So, if I add sugar to the bottle & it tastes better, can I leave it in the bottle for a few more weeks or does it need drinking straight away? As in should I add the sugar just before it's drunk?

I think I have enough to experiment with, so I can fill a demijohn & add eggshells & also add sugar to the bottles without feeling I'm wasting it as it's all good to know for this years batch.

And thanks for the recommendation about using yeast. I'd never even thought about how the area you live in may effect things! I saw them made apple juice on 'it's not easy being green' and it magically turned into cider in the bottle because they'd not heated it for long enough to pasteurize it, so was going to have a go at doing that this year, but by the sounds of it, it probably wouldn't be a good idea!

And one more question (sorry, I really have completely hijacked this thread now!!)
AS I left the cider for too long in the fermentation bucket, is it best to get through the process as quickly as possible?
My initial fermentation only lasted about 6 days, should I have racked it off & then left it for a few more days (it didn't go through a 2nd fermentation) and then bottled it straight away?

[MKG]

If it is tannin then i am fairly sure that fining with egg whites would help, as i understand it the protein in the egg white binds with the tannin and some at least is precipitated out.

You're right - I'd forgotten all about egg whites. Although, having just looked it up, it seems that egg whites are used only for red wines (something to do with long tannin chains) and don't work so well for white wines. Where cider would fit into that is anyone's guess. Gelatine is, apparently, the "white" alternative.

@Muscroj ... Just my opinion, but in this case (after you've determined exactly how much sugar would make a bottle "acceptable") I think I'd add sugar only at the point I wanted to drink the cider - otherwise you may start a secondary fermentation. If a fizzy cider is what you're after, then that's fine - but then you REALLY have to control the amount of added sugar and have the proper bottles to store the stuff in.

As for the length of time to leave stuff in the bucket, I'm sure that Cheezy's recommended site would tell you all about that. As a general rule, though, alcoholic drinks oxidise easily. So, at the moment that fermentation ceases, the protective carbon dioxide blanket begins to dissipate and oxygen begins to seep in.

Where's CyberPaddy? He's the beer and cider bloke, I think.

Mike

[mrsmiggins]

Hi everyone, I've learnt a lot from this thread! I'm going to give the recipe on the main website a go... just curious, why does it say I can't use metal?

[MKG]

It's because the fruit acids react with the metal and taint your juice. However, it's a bit of a hangover from the early days - modern stainless steel shouldn't be a problem. On the other hand, I've never made cider. I've made apple wine, though, and stainless steel knives did the job perfectly well for that.

Mike

[Cheezy]

Had a look at that site you mentioned, Cheezy - looks a good one. BUT I need to correct a couple of general misconceptions (about any fermentation, so I can safely say it applies to cider) that have appeared above. A malo-lactic secondary fermentation MAY, not WILL, occur - and it's more likely not to unless you force it by special treatment. Should it happen, its effect is to soften and round off the flavour - slightly - and add a "spritz" to your wine/cider/perry. If the initial flavour is really rough, it won't be of great help.


Muscroj, I think you may have hit the nail on the head - that extended period in the bucket after fermentation had finished (a few weeks!!!) almost certainly led to heavy oxidisation of your cider. That may well be the cause of the awful taste. Because it isn't just a matter of dissolved oxygen (it's the start of a long and complex chain of chemical reactions), it's irreversible. And if there was a lot of tannin in the apple juice, it gets even worse as far as taste goes (try drinking tea after you've left it for a few hours). Oxidisation flattens overall taste but does very little for either tannin or acid - so they're the tastes you're left with.

I think you need a few taste tests. Try just sugar first. A level teaspoon in a bottle, say. Taste it - has it improved? Would more sugar improve it further? If you can improve the taste by using sugar (without making it sickeningly sweet) then you have a chance of rescuing something.
one, as the experts call it). If I were you, I'd keep adding yeast.

Howdy,

Had a few days off laying paving, much respect to professional pavers, by god it's hard work.

Finally got Andrew Lea's book "Craft Cider Making", pub The Good Life Press. It's excellent, however not too much in it that is not on the website I mentioned., but nice to have as a handy book. Good section on working out your alcohol content , which is not on the web, plus some good advice about planting the right apple trees etc.

OK MKG, on malo-lactic conversion your right it's not a certainty, however if you produce cider "traditionally " ie in a barn/garage like me the cold winter followed by Spring temperature increases does help the process, you need around 17'C to kick start it. However if the problem is acidity, (as I think it is), you are unlikely to get MLF (malo-lactic fermentation), which is a shame, as it will if full conversion happened halve the acidity. It is possible to buy a MLF culture which will work down to a pH of 3.1. However all you are doing is trying to correct the basic problem, acidic apples in, acid cider out!. Bramley apples have the lowest sugar content , highest malic acid content (pH 3, recommended lowest juice pH is 3.2) and lowest tannin content. So since the problem from Muscroj comes from juice made with 50% cookers, I suspect tannin is not the problem. It's the acidity. This as MKG rightly says can be masked by sweetness. I would not try to use calcium or potassium carbonates as they will effect the taste. Try adding sugar, or if you can stomach it sugar substitutes.

As to storage, I'm amazed fermentation only took 6 days. I'm guessing you fermented inside your house. Traditionally farm house cider is made in sheds, in November. Fermentation is therefore slow, no bad thing as fast fermentation can lead to the yeast producing methanol rather than ethanol (bad head's ensue). I make mine in the garage and it takes around 4 weeks (I use 25L vessel with airlock). As per A. Lea's site I measure the SG of the cider every week, to ensure it does not get "stuck" (time to add nutrients to help the yeast). The drop in SG (ie sugar to alcohol conversion) is amazingly linear, and you can predict when you need to rack off the cider ( recommended at SG 1005), so you can plan your weekend around it.
Once you've racked it I then leave the cider in an airlock fitted vessel, until the weather warms up, usually around March, this helps clarity. I then use camden tabs then bottle with a teaspoon of sugar per bottle. At this stage it is important not to remove the airlock until your ready to bottle/drink, as the remaining yeast will in all likely hood take the SG to 995 or so, and you need to leave a blanket of carbon dioxide over the cider

On tannin, it's the forgotten third element to proper cider, the wonderful edge on the teeth. If you are using dessert and cookers only, it will be low on tannin.
I would recommend using a crab apple/wild apple along with dessert and cookers. (I would try to reduce your cookers down to 20% max). If you get a good balance from the start, you will not get finished cider problems.
Yes you can reduce tannin by using egg white (or fresh blood as they used to use!), it'll help clarity, however again I do not think the problem here is tannin.
From A . Lea's book, advice is not to use isinglass , as it's not suitable for high acid cider. Use proper brewing gelatine, but you may "over fine" and cause a gelatine haze, so he recommends using bentonite to compensate.

[Muscroj]

fab!! once again thats really helpful advice & I'm learning loads for this years batch. I DID ferment in the house but fermenting in the shed will be much better this year as we have no room to store it.

I think the problem is that it's overly acidic, extremely so. This year we won't be getting many cookers as I gave the tree a hard prune & it's not produced many fruits, but the eaters have done really well. I'll have to keep a look out for crab apples although I'm not sure where they have them round here, i can remember our local dentist having a tree, but not sure if it's still there.