How does JK Scrumpy's do it?

They say they use no sorbate, no sulphite and no commercial yeast. They use only raw juice, not pasteurized and it comes out perfect?

How do they do it? No back sweetening, no fermenting it dry and cutting it with water, just the old fashioned way.

Think I can do this? Can you do it?

I'm certainly going to try making something similar, using cider year and local cider.

Do they say they don't filter it? That is essentially an alternative to the sorbate: just crash cool and filter when at the right gravity. The not using "commercial yeast" is interesting. Do they let it naturally ferment? Or do they mean they have perhaps isolate their own yeast and use that? From a QA perspective, letting it spontaneously ferment is a huge risk.

It's not a secret or anything, they're very forthcoming about how they make their product. You can re-create their practices but the end result will be different. It starts with their own orchard, where they grow old, non/low-fertilized trees. Mix a big blend of many different apples and the resulting juice is very low in nitrogen, phosphorous etc and therefor lacking in natural yeast nutrients. Ferment at a low temp over many months and bottle when ready.

The 'no commercial yeast' just means they're not pitching a starter or anything. They do have a relatively stable colony of yeast in their orchard, on their processing equipment and in their production area which essentially inoculates any juice it comes into contact with, mitigating much of the risk an amateur would face with a wild ferment.

From a technical standpoint it sounds like a very French way of making cider.

They have an MPR blog on their website explaining a lot of this.

I emailed the brewery to find out. First, they do not use a commercial starter. They said that a long time ago, they used wild yeasts and champagne yeast to ferment but that was giving crappy results. So now they just use the yeast cake that they have and repitch batch to batch.

This ferments for many months and then they bottle. I didn't ask about back sweetening, but given the cloying finish I can only assume they backsweeten it. The beers are bottled and pasteurized to kill the yeast.

I presume there is something wild and funky in the yeast since it has some brett type flavors and smells. It has a very funky flavor. The stuff made me sick to my stomach. My wife the same. It was tasty and funky, but I didn't feel to good after splitting a bottle.

Just email them and ask. They were pretty open about describing the process. Not like some industry trade secret since you'd not be able to make their cider anyway even if you had a clone of the recipe.

no backsweetening. the yeast naturally die out because of the specific apples they use have a low nitrogen content. This is acutally stated in another post i believe.

they wild yeast will ferment down to a specific gravity and cant survive and die out thus making it ORGANIC. No sulfites.