Which yeast won?

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EdgeBrew

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Hello all,

This is my first post, and first brew.

Executive Summary: I don’t know if my fermentation is as a result of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast or wild yeast.

We are making an apple cider with bought Red Delicious apples. We juiced these in about an hour and therefore did not add campden tablets. The OG I measured was 1.05, so I did not add any sugar. We added pectonase to break down the foam inside the fermenter from juicing. We then added Lalvin EC-1118 yeast to a measure of water at 42 deg C (or, 107 deg F, as per packet instructions), then added it to the fermenter.

After 72 hours the airlock was still not bubbling. I went back to the brew shop. They told me that the above temperature would have killed the yeast and to sprinkle another packet into the fermenter. After work I got home and the fermenter was bubbling away so I did not add the extra yeast.

My question is this. With the airlock now bubbling away after around 80 hours, did the packet or wild yeast win?

I had planned to ferment till dry then back sweeten. If the winning yeast is wild yeast, should I then try to cold crash the process before it bottoms out? Should also get the cider out of the fermenter as soon as the SG bottoms out?

Thanks.
:mug:

Edited: Added that I did not add the extra yeast.
 
when you added that packet you added so much more yeast then there ever could have been with just wild yeast . . . I'd say you have a 90% chance the Lalvin overpowered any wild yeast but ya probably still got a slight mix

let it go and you'll be fine. last year I accidentally left a jug of juice out and didnt add anything (only thing I did was crack the cap and then forgot to use it), found it 6 months later and it had fermented on me but was great :)
 
Thanks Pumbaa. I will let it go.

It's bubbling like a mad man at the moment. Bubbling at about a bubble every two seconds.
 
this is not very scientific but i wouldn't try to cold crash wild yeast. if the wild yeast got going you will have a mixture of different organisms, some may be highly cold tolerant, others not, and they don't behave like the polite cultured yeasts. i have had them ferment away in the fridge leading to supreme bottle gushing. but that said, i agree with the above that your pitched yeast probably won out. 42 deg shouldn't kill them, and anyways the airlock isn't a reliable method of monitoring fermentation, and ciders take longer to get going then beers. i've never used that yeast but have read on here that it's a beast.
i wouldn't worry about rushing to get the cider out of the fermenter. i like to leave it and forget about it until it's well and truly finished. that's what i do but others cold crash and rack at a certain gravity.
a couple other comments, you might want to try adding some apples with a bit of acid, red delicious are all sugar and very little malic acid, and i could imagine them making a bland cider, but you can let me know if i'm wrong. if so you can supplement with granny smiths for example, and adding a few crab apples will give it tannins and the perception of body, if that's what you're after. and they juice really well.
i love making juicer cider. the foam after juicing isn't a pectin-based thing, it's more general particulate matter as far as i can tell. you can skim it off before fermenting or just leave it, but if you leave it you will have a lot of stubborn crud to contend with (that crud can stick in the neck of the fermenter and grow mold), and the flavor will be the same (in my experience anyways). i add pectic enzyme generally but have made many juicer ciders without it and they have always fallen clear in time, foam or no foam. good luck
 
If that temp were to kill the pack you added, I'd be willing to bet it would have killed the wild yeasties also. My bet is that the Lalvin won out.
 
dinnerstick, thank for the info. You have given me a lot of info I was looking for. It’s hard to find reliable and non-contradicting info on the internet. (excluding these forums :p )
I agree with your comments about my red delicious apples. I guess I can use this bland cider as a reference for future refinements.
I didn’t really know what to do with the foam. I started with about 15lt of juice and another half that of foam!!! (see photo) I did not remove any of it and has now settled down to about an inch of foam and 22lt of juice, perfect.

Pickled_Pepper, the temp I was talking about was the 50ml of water used to activate the yeast. I then poured that into the fermenter which was about 19 degrees (C). In the fermenter the wild yeast did not experience that high temperature.

It is fun making the cider, it was not without sacrifice and casualty though. While rushing to core a bathtub of apples, my wife accidently put the knife a centimetre into her hand.

photo.JPG
 
It is fun making the cider, it was not without sacrifice and casualty though. While rushing to core a bathtub of apples, my wife accidently put the knife a centimetre into her hand.

Never heard of using blood as a flavor additive in cider.......could be interesting i suppose.
 
Semi-related question. What do you guys juice the apples with?

What is an approximate volume yield per mass (I can handle L/kg dinnerstick) of apple? (I know it depends on the variety)
 
Semi-related question. What do you guys juice the apples with?

What is an approximate volume yield per mass (I can handle L/kg dinnerstick) of apple? (I know it depends on the variety)

I use a tabletop juicer like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003R28HWQ/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Can be slow going (6-8 gallons/hr) but the yeald is good (average 75% by weight). Most 'eating' apples are probably closer to 80% water while 'bitter' apples are typically more like 60%.
 
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I had red delicious apples, so yes not the best cider apply by far. I had 45kg of apple product about 21-22 Lt of juice.

Maybe get a few samples and test it, then you know how many you need.

Oh and I juiced with a Breville juice fountain plus. It took about an hour of going flat out.
 
i use a regular juicer like the two linked above, i think i get around 700 ml per 1 kg apples, maybe a bit less, i always forget to weigh the apples. if i juice them once i get an amazing crystal clear juice with a thick foam that is easy to skim off, but the waste is still wet. if i send the waste through a second time, i get quite a bit more juice, but this stuff is mucky and cloudy. and i think the seeds start to get involved. (i never core my apples! after the first pass through the juicer and the seeds are largely intact) this still ferments fine and will clear but it's real foamy and leaves a ton of sludgy sediment that really takes a while to settle. not sure if it's worth it. of course if i didn't like in a city apartment, ie if i had a yard, shed, garage or whatever, i would build a little press, but it's not an option for me now
 
if you can work in pounds and ounces, or feet and inches, or gallons buckets and whatever a quart is, and still do subtraction and division in that system, you aren't slow, you are a measurement whiz cuz that's some fierce math. metric is for wimps who aren't up for the challenge and just want something easy that makes sense every time!
 
I’ll add an imperial conversion to all my posts in the future.
Inefficient measuring units aside (Dinnerstick ;) ) The bubbling has slow right down so I decided to measure the gravity. With an OG of 1.05 the SG now is 1.00. There was so much sediment and crud that I had to put it through a sieve to measure the gravity. Will this crud settle? Should I sieve the cider when I bottle?

I'll still wait for a week after no change in SG.

Thanks again.
 
Don't buckle EdgeBrew. Although lazy and simplistic, metric is efficient. That frees your brain up so you can drink a few more brews...

What if you just squeezed the wet pulp through cheesecloth dinnerstick? Would you avoid the seed/cloudy bit?
 
smh- i've tried that actually, tough to get any more juice out of it. i have done a few 5L batches grating the apples on a cheese grater and then wringing out the juice by hand in 3 layers of cheesecloth, that's possible but a hell of a lot of work i'll tell ya that for free, but the pulp out the back of the juicer is really mucky and just squidges out through the pores in the cheesecloth. if anyone knows of a way to further extract liquid from apple goo i'd be interested but until then i'm just chucking it and hoping some day to build a little scatter and press
edge- sounds like it's mostly particulate matter? how fine is the crud, can you post a picture? is it coming from the foam on top, or is it loose sediment from the bottom that siphons up? in my experience pretty much everything will settle out but soft mushy particulates sometimes don't compact well and sort of hover by the bottom, trying to get up the siphon hose
 
Have you tried just leaving the pulp in the must? The yeast will try and get at all of the sugars in the Apple solids as well and break them down a little bit.

Press the pulp after you're done fermenting to extract a little more juice. This worked wonders with my peach wine. I know a peach isnt nearly as rough and tough in character as an Apple but from 8 peaches I was able to squeeze all bit about a fistfull of juice from them after fermentation.
 
Dinnerstick, my juicer has the opposite problem. The front (juice) side has too much solid coming out while the back end is pretty dry. All juice is further strained through a fine nylon bag like this one:

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/home...nt/nylon-straining-bag-10-x-23-fine-mesh.html

Not sure what consistency you're getting out the back, but simply hand squeezing gets me extra usable juice for sure. Also, have you considers mixing pectic emzyme with the solids overnight and re-juicing them?
 
the stuff that comes out the back is pretty mucky (ahem). i would consider adding a splash of water and pectic enzyme, leaving it a day, and hanging to strain in a mesh bag, it would be like the traditional english second runnings to make a small cider, maybe. i won't re-juice it though, that just mashes the seeds and makes dirty juice in my machine. i'll give it a go, get back to you in november!
 
Thanks for all the info. I have bottled all the cider now. Instead of racking off into another container, I siphoned it out straight into bottles using some clear food grade plastic tube that fit my bottle filling valve.

I'll see how it goes.
 
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