Man, Kevin, I just tried a sample from the spontaneously fermented gallon from that last haul from you. VERY weird. Yeasty, bready...tastes nothing like cider. We'll see how it does in a few months.
.planned:
•Scottish 80/- •Sweet Stout •Roggenbier .primary | bright:
98: Moss Hollow Soured '09 72: Oude Kriek 99: B-Weisse 102: Brett'd BDSA 104: Feat of Strength Helles Bock 105: Merkin Brown .on tap | kegged:
XX: Moss Hollow Springs Sparkling Water 95: Gott Mit Uns German Pils 91b: Brown Willie's Oaked Abbey Ale 103: Merkin Stout
98: Yorkshire Special 100: Maple Porter 89: Cidre Saison 101: Steffiweizen '09 (#3)
Evan - did you check the sg when you tasted it? My experience is that when sg drops below 1.020 is where it starts getting weird. Last year I tested a bottle of Scrumpy's (which is apparently fermented with wild yeast) and it was at 1.028, so they may have come to the same conclusion.
I fermented out five gallons of that same batch (Staymans and Winesaps) and bottled them on Friday. Two I sorbated and three I cold crashed. They got all the way down to 1.000 - 1.002 and taste surprisingly decent. I have no idea how that happened. I dont like these as much as the last batch but my guess is that you and the other brewers will probably like them better.
Felix - so far I have no technique on wild yeast, only luck which has been mostly poor but seems to be improving.
So far I've just done gallons, pouring out a little bit of juice to make space for foam and slap on a fermentation lock. Usually it takes about 2-3 days to start and another to really get going. One thing I have learned is to stop the fermentation around 1.020, but my last batch was an accidental exception to that rule.
The batch that everyone liked came from a cider pressing party that some friends hosted and they were really careful with prep. We washed all the apples and cut the bad spots out before pressing. That probably cut down on the chances of picking up weirdness bugs but you cant expect this level of prep from a commercial press
The odd thing about the last 5 gallons is that they fermented out before the ones I did with ale yeast. Normally I dont even bother checking the wild yeast batches before the ale yeast ones are finished because the wild yeast is a lot slower but this time the wild batches finished first - so either there was more yeast on these apples or a more aggressive strain, or maybe it was something else. I just wish I had caught them just a little earlier, like around 1.004.
I can tell you that for the two gallons with wild yeast that I sorbated, I was able to stop fermentation with half the recommended dose of k-meta and half the recommended dose of sorbate, while for the ale yeasts, it took a full dose of each to stop fermentation. I'm not sure if the wild yeast fermentation was easier to stop because of the yeast or because it was close to terminal sg already.
i've heard of people preparing wild yeast by peeling skins , put them in a small container with some juice, and let this go for a week. They would then use something like half a cup of this juice as a starter for their fermentations, happily for 2 years apparently... so my gess is that one could simply trow some peels direct in their carboys and filter them out when racking, but that doing a "mother" cider would allow for more control over what you get from wild yeasts...
edit: i hope i'm making sense, i'm quite a newbie!
Yep, I have always just let the juice go by itself. The juice will already have lots of yeast from the skins which comes off during the crushing and pressing. There may be a better way. I suppose you could culture a wild yeast but it would probably take a fair amount of work to select one that is consistently better than whatever natural yeast is on the apples.
In an earlier post you said you were going to try The Wyeast3068 with unpasteurized juice. I was wondering how much of a difference you found between that and the pasteurized juice. By the way I've really enjoyed this post. I don't think I would have ever tried the Safale S 04 without it. I love it.
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"Your HYDROMETER is the only BEST indicator of fermentation activity. Nothing else is accurate or consistent"...Revvy
i've heard of people preparing wild yeast by peeling skins , put them in a small container with some juice, and let this go for a week. They would then use something like half a cup of this juice as a starter for their fermentations, happily for 2 years apparently... so my gess is that one could simply trow some peels direct in their carboys and filter them out when racking, but that doing a "mother" cider would allow for more control over what you get from wild yeasts...
edit: i hope i'm making sense, i'm quite a newbie!
I've done quite a few batches using this method of propagating wild yeasts, and I'm waiting to post up a thread on it untill I've got the method down pat, but what I can tell you, is that the first batch using the peels will be a bit wierd if you go down below 1.020, like a earlier poster said. HOWEVER, I have found that if you let a small batch (gallon or half gallon) go all the way, then wash the yeast using the yeast washing instructions, the next batch is very clean and nice. My theory on that is that once the abv gets above 4% or so, the bugs have a harder time surviving, but the yeast does fine. I've got a bit of a wild yeast bank going from the yeast gotten off fruit grown in different areas. So far I've got two different wild apple yeasts, plum, and peach. some of the yeast is so-so, but I've got one that kicks the pants off the White Labs english cider yeast.
__________________ Primary:Russian River Redemption clone, Kelly's Melomel, Graham's English Cider 22-23 Clearing:Apple Wine Aging:Public House Dry Stout, Procrastination Porter, Mr. Brown Ale, Westvleteren 12 Clone, Mead, Duvel Clone, Graham's English Cider 6-21, Belgian Draak Strong Ale, Fig Melomel, Acerglyn, Restorative Tonic Metheglyn
i've heard of people preparing wild yeast by peeling skins , put them in a small container with some juice, and let this go for a week. They would then use something like half a cup of this juice as a starter for their fermentations, happily for 2 years apparently... so my gess is that one could simply trow some peels direct in their carboys and filter them out when racking, but that doing a "mother" cider would allow for more control over what you get from wild yeasts...
edit: i hope i'm making sense, i'm quite a newbie!
I tried this once based on a youtube video I saw. It was really good until about 1.024, then it started tasting and smelling like nail polish remover. I think that was an infection rather than an off flavor. I haven't tried it again but I probably will in the future. Here is the thread of my notes. http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/quick-sweet-cider-impatient-70318/
i find the subject of wild yeasts wildly interesting.
__________________ Secondary: Melissa's English Bitter Ale:::coopers Bitter LME + pale DME + dark molasses:::5 gallons Drinking: Cooper's Stout + white honey + buckwheat honey + raw sugar ::: 5 Gallons ...almost all gone... Next: Nut Brown Ale
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I have a keg batch of Wyeast 3068 in progress now, with unpasteurized Stayman and Winesap juice. It has been the slowest fermenting of the most recent five keg batches. I started them almost 3 weeks ago and have already cold crashed the other four at sg's ranging from 1.002 to 1.004, but the 3068 is still at 1.030. Its still chugging along, just slow. It tastes pretty good though. Really nice body. Still too sweet and not much of a tart note, but hopefully that will change in a couple more weeks.
I'd have to say though, that for as much hassle as this 3068 batch has been, it will have to be a lot better than the ale yeasts to be worth another shot. It produced a foam that wasnt very dense, but it was soapy and gummed up the airlock for days. I finally gave up trying to keep it clean and just wrapped a towel around the neck of the carboy so that it wouldnt drip all over the carboy. That worked but encouraged fruit flies. If I use it again I will definitely use a blow off tube for the first 10 days instead of an airlock. And I'm not crazy about tying up a primary for six weeks. Normally three weeks in the primary is plenty and then three more weeks in secondary so I can free up my six gallon primary jugs for more juice. Hopefully it will be worth the extra hassle in a couple of weeks.
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