'sea sponge' in secondary

Hi folks,

new member here and thank you for your advice. i have found this forum to be very useful. i am relatively new to cider making, and have a few batches in secondaries now. one of them is a 3 gal batch of local unpasteurizeded good quality cider that had an initial sg of 1.05. using salfale 50 with a nutrient for yeast. bumped it with a lb of average store bought honey and a lb of brown sugar to an sg of 1.065. also added 2 sticks of cinnamon soaked in vodka (kill the bugs), in the primary. I have removed the Cinnamon when racked to secondary and now, 3 weeks later the cider is crystal clear amber brown with 2 'sea sponge' looking masses in the carboy. it is bubbling like i have never seen anything before. the other 3 batches now- 5 gallons with some ginger, 1 gallon all natural and 3 gallons sparkling are all doing great, but the only one with Cinnamon added has these sea sponges and is already clear and cooking away.

can anyone tell me why the solids organize themselves into these gassy seas sponges? looks great and I cant wait to taste. thanks in advance.

Pictures please?

Ok, cool sounding I have to say. Having used ground cinnamon in my last batch, I think its the cinnamon. I got some unusual clumps, but nothing quite like that!

folks-thanks for your relies to the post. here is an image of the 'sponge'. anybody know whats the root cause of this? cider looks great and i suspect the top sponge will drop when done bubbling but so much bubbles are coming off the bottom one as well.

Lol, holy sediment Batman! Yup, if fermentation seems to still be occuring, then you have some yeast and apple particles @ the top and some @ the bottom. The top ones are suspended by the CO2 gassing off.

I use plastic buckets for my primary ferment, so the sediment I see is only in secondary, and usually not quite that much! Did you use pectic enzyme?

That's almost like an art exhibit right there!

Looks like the pectins in the juice forming a gel, lifted by CO2 bubbles. This is called a keeve and forms an unmistakeable brain in a jar look.

LeBreton said:

Looks like the pectins in the juice forming a gel, lifted by CO2 bubbles. This is called a keeve and forms an unmistakeable brain in a jar look.

Click to expand...

You know, I've heard that term mentioned before, but never seen it in action. How did he achive this? Obviously not his intention! (as cool as it looks!) I was under the impression that you needed to leave the skins in and let them sit like a Red wine maceration?

I looked back at the OP and saw "unpasturized cider". Did this perhaps begin before the cider even came into his posession?

I agree that it looks like a pectin gel. It looks similar to the picture on this site under the section titled "Keeving - what's that?"

LandoAllen beat me to posting the link, but you are correct that keeving is assisted by letting the ground pommace sit a bit before pressing. I've seen occasional reports of spontaneous keeving from fresh juice on the forum and based upon my experience with the technique have developed a theory as to why.

Chances are slim that a apple processor would let the pommace sit long before pressing, it's unnecessary and adds risk to the product through exposure. Fresh juice is most often pumped into tanks and not bottled straight from the press. If the juice is left sitting, the pectins will settle at the bottom of the tank and may not be mixed up before bottling (especially if no preservatives are added) resulting in some jugs of cider to have significantly higher concentrations of pectins/solids, sometimes even enough to cause a keeve.

folks, thanks for your input and feedback. keeving is a new term for me. a little more history on the sponge.

this was a pretty fresh cider from local orchard that was 'cold pasteurized' using uv lights but no chemicals and stored chilled. this was their last run of the year, the week before Christmas, when i got it, when they close for the year so that cider could have been sitting in their storage for maybe 6 weeks from last harvest. or it could have been pressed more recentley with apples stored in the round-dont know for sure but will ask. i have used their cider for early season batch's and haven't seen the keeving. i have 15 gallons of this batch cider brewing now- all in secondaries- 2 of the 4 carboys are done fermenting and now settling, the sponge and another 5 gallons are bubbling- the other looks normal like a turbid slow fermenter. so what i am saying is the sponge is very different from all the rest and all of these were mixed in primaries so odds are the seperate 1 galloon jugs were well homogenized in the primary buckets. the only difference between the sponge and the other reamining fermenting cider is the sponge had 2 cinnamon sticks, soaked in vodka to kill any yeast/bugs, and 1 lb of average quality honey added. also added 2 lb of brown sugar. all this was added at primary fermentation and no pectin in any cider was used. the only thing really different about the sponges was the cinnamon sticks and 1 lb of honey. lets see how it tastes and i will experiment soon enough with the recipe again to see if i can grow other sponges as long as it taste good. maybe the honey and brown sugar jacked it to a level that was crazy but i read only a sg of 1.065 after additives. cant wait to try it . thanks again

From what I understand about keeving, higher density juice will have more of a chance of success, so that may be part of the explanation. Were there any other ingredients in the honey? Some folks use calcium chloride salt (CaCl) to aid in keeving, maybe there was something similar in the honey.

LeBreton,

i didn't notice anything in the honey, at least on the label. as i get further into this i am paying much closer attention to the labeling of ingredients. bought 5 gallons of cider in Maine last fall- said all natural-cold pasteurized and dumped into primary, hit them with the SO2 to kill the natural yeast and then pitched it 36 hour later and waited a week. no action. retrieved the jugs from the trash and then noticed , on the back label, that they had indeed added all kinds of chemicals so a lesson learned. only deal with known local orchards now. thanks

Folks, my son and I bottled the Keeve last night. It finally settled down and stopped fermenting last week and I couldn’t take the anticipation any longer, so we bottled. The sponge stayed whole and was well behaved the entire bottling session.
Let me tell you..it is delicious and has an almost cognac/brandy kind of character. Can’t really taste the cinnamon at all, but it has a seriousness to it. Looks like bourbon in its color and clarity, and the 3 gal carboy yielded a clean 28- 12 oz bottles. Given the initial sugar of 1.065 that should yield about a 12% alcohol, but it tasted a bit stronger. (Don’t have a scale in front of me). It also, although looking quite still, bottled with an aggressive amount of bubbles and head as bottles were filled.
This is a very distinctive cider and it really stands out. I am going to try this again with either asking for the ‘bottom of the barrel’ from the orchard, or by adding pectin, or by keeping the crushed pomace overnight before final pressing.
Just had a quick taste last night, and going to sit back with a good amount tonight, and give it my personal ‘ full taste and evaluation” . Thanks for your help

I assume when you say cognac/brandy character you mean kind of a spirit-ey heat. That's really common in sugar-added home cider, especially using farm cider as your base. It ages out, particularly after bottling- But while it's not common in commercial ciders, I don't find it wholly unpleasant. If you decide you don't want it, shove a few bottles to the back of the fridge and wait a month or so .

If you want cinnamon, you can also get cinnamon essence at a candy shop and add it at bottling. When I started I was against concentrates and extracts for flavor, but a drop of vanilla in my cider has become standard for me now. Used in moderation the flavors blend nicely.

You also mentioned preservatives wrecking your plans earlier, so here are some juices that should be available everywhere that work:
-Whole Foods apple juice. It's gold like apple juice but full of apple sediment like cider, and tends to produce hot funky ciders that take sweetening well. As an added bonus it comes in reusable 1 gallon jugs that can become mini carboys!
-Old Orchard apple juice concentrate. Their bottled stuff has preservatives, but the concentrate doesn't need them so it does not. The store brand concentrate from Kroger/Scott's also works, I can vouch for that . If you reconstitute it vs just brewing from concentrate (which btw will get you keeve real fast) remember to use distilled spring water or similar.
-Surprisingly supermarket cider. There's a grocer near me who stocks local preservative-free cider in the organic section. Some ciders do have additives though, and "organic" is no guarantee of preservative-free.
-I've heard that Sam's Club juice ferments. I have never tried it.
-Ocean Spray juices contain a lot of food-derived additives, but none of the ones in my house contain anything that should stop yeast. Knudsen juice should also work.

Kashue, thanks for the advice. I will try the flavors after fermentation on next batches. I did 4 different batches; Cinnamon/BS/honey and got the keeve but no radical Cinnamon flavor just as described earlier and very nice, one all natural and it came out actually sweeter than all the rest, one with ginger//BS and honey- no appreciable ginger taste but nice and smooth and full flavored and then one with champagne yeast and then primed, also tasted smooth and mellow prior to bottling. so the learning continues! thanks

Regardless of all the science...THAT IS COOL. Brain-in-a-Jar Cider? I'd make labels with that pic. Oh, and congrats on it coming out alright and showing spectacular notes and character. I love it when a plan comes together..