Off Flavor Cider

I've had two excellent batches of cider, but this last one is horrid. Sanitation was stringent. The only difference I can see is using a different yeast: Cote des Blanc. Flavor is really off with a very bitter finish. This batch has aged four months. Will this age out, or is it a waste of good apples?

What sort of bitter? Tannic bitter (bit into the brown pith inside a walnut... Makes your mouth feel dry and hairy.... Like your mouth wants to implode?) Carbonate bitter - like soda water? Bitter green apple bitter? Bitter weird beery/sauerkraut bitter?

2nd... Did your cider fall nice and clear or is it still murky?

These could be from different things....

Thanks

Have you thought of killing off the yeast and back sweetening a little with a tiny amount of apple concentrate.. I've herd that it works well.. Might need to do the same to mine in a month or so..

My experience with Cote des Blanc is its a waste of good apples. What did you use on the other two batches?

edit - I think you mentioned DV10 for one on a previous post. was that for both?

In my experience, even if the cider tastes god awful going down, if there is some apple in the finish and the aftertaste is not too bad, then there is hope that it will eventually turn around. Probably wont ever be great, but at least drinkable. OTOH, if the finish is crappy, it probably wont turn around. YMMV

I haven't used cotes de blanc for cider until this year, unfortunatley I haven't tasted those ciders yet since they were still undergoing heavy malo fermenatation.

I would think, it shouldn't be god awful. At least, I hope not because I tried it after getting fantastic results from Dandelion wine with cotes.

My first batch I used Lalvin-1118 and it finished very dry, but quite tasty especially with a little bit of fresh sweet cider added at drinking. The second batch I used DV-10 and backsweetened with Stevia in the Raw. What an excellent cider: very similar to Original Sin. The finish is like a green apple with something pungent. It is similar to the seed bitterness that I got with the first two batches from using a fitness juicer to express my juice, but that bitterness aged out of those after about three weeks.:

sorry- off topic- i am curious that you get an appleseed taste from your juicer, mine spits out the seeds more or less whole, do you get an almondy slightly cyanide-y note? that sounds like it might be nice. i have friends in the italian alps that make a liqueur from apple seeds (they call it genepi, which also refers to a herb liqueur), they save seeds for a year, steep them in 95% ethanol for a while, then dilute and sweeten, it is like amaretto but a bit... earthier? delicious. don't know how much cyanide it contains but they are still alive

I was under the impression that the toxin in appleseeds was arsenic. Strichnine is the toxin that smells like bitter almond(amaretto). My juicer ginds the seeds right up.

Strichnine in the guacamole....

Yeah - I love the natural aspect of it, but I think I would skip that drink. Bet it made you feel loopy due to mild poisoning!

Also somewhat off-topic - what is "back sweetening"?

Also, could this term apply to women...?

Viperman - basically fermenting something dry (no fermentable sugar left) and then adding a sweetening back in. That can be anything from concentrated juice, splenda, sugars, etc. Based on your goals with backsweetening you may need to use sorbate, sulphites and coldcrashing to halt refermentation.

Example would be cider:
ferment dry. Cold crash 24 hrs, rack off to bottling bucket. Add sorbate, sulphites and apple juice concentrate to taste. Put in keg and carbonate.


if you figure this out for women let me know ASAP ha

IMHO - backsweeting is what you do to salvage a batch where you fermented off too much of the natural apple sugar, leaving it too dry/sour/acetic. You can usually get it back to something that is drinkable but it wont be as good as if you stopped the ferment before the natural sugar was gone. EG. a JK Scrumpy or Etienne Dupont cider has a lot more flavor than say a Hornsby.

as with women - if you like 'em sweet, its best not to let them get too dry/sour/acetic in the first place. Damage control has its place, but if its a regular practice you are doing something wrong.

Rockape66 said:

I was under the impression that the toxin in appleseeds was arsenic. Strichnine is the toxin that smells like bitter almond(amaretto).

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i couldn't find any information to support that there is arsenic in apple seeds, or that strichnine smells like almond. i have never smelled it so i'll take your word for it. whereas (speaking from experience) some cyanide compounds do smell like almonds. if you have ever gold plated anything using gold cyanide, you will know it smells a lot like almonds, or at least whatever compounds evolve from it do. on the other hand i regularly use ferric and ferrous cyanide salts and these have no smell.
i don't know what my point was here

oh yeah- more genepi for me!

ViperMan said:

Also somewhat off-topic - what is "back sweetening"?

Also, could this term apply to women...?

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careful... it could apply to either gender....

CvilleKevin said:

IMHO - backsweeting is what you do to salvage a batch where you fermented off too much of the natural apple sugar, leaving it too dry/sour/acetic. You can usually get it back to something that is drinkable but it wont be as good as if you stopped the ferment before the natural sugar was gone. EG. a JK Scrumpy or Etienne Dupont cider has a lot more flavor than say a Hornsby.

as with women - if you like 'em sweet, its best not to let them get too dry/sour/acetic in the first place. Damage control has its place, but if its a regular practice you are doing something wrong.

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Ha - this is a bit of a harsh statement cvillekevin.

I would say, this is more a stylistic choice than salvaging cider. It all depends on your tastes. If you are looking to have a malolactic fermentation you have to let the cider go dry, then proceed into malo ferment then add sugar back in if you want to sweeten. You can't get a malolactic fermentation with residual sugars hanging around.

I get that you (individually) don't prefer this kind of more wine like cider, but many do. I have made some awesome cider, including my New England styled cider wine, which benefit from a malolactic fermentation.

This is a personal taste thing, not a beat up on people who do things different than your own tastes thing .

Not busting on you, just making new people aware to the choice they have for differently styled ciders.

this is more a stylistic choice than salvaging cider. It all depends on your tastes.

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True - that did come off kinda harsh. I was over generalizing and didnt mean to bust on anyone's process. I like a good dry cider every now an then and can see how you might want to backsweeten a bit post MLF

That said, I think you'd allow that the vast majority of posts on HBT about back sweetening are more along the lines of "how do I make this batch of dry apple wine taste something like a pub cider?", in which case perhaps a better response would have been - you are better off not to let it get like dry apple wine unless that is how you want to drink it. I realize that is still somewhat subjective, but thats been my experience. YMMV

Arsenic smells like almonds.

Apple seeds have a small amount of cyanide

CvilleKevin said:

True - that did come off kinda harsh. I was over generalizing and didnt mean to bust on anyone's process. I like a good dry cider every now an then and can see how you might want to backsweeten a bit post MLF

That said, I think you'd allow that the vast majority of posts on HBT about back sweetening are more along the lines of "how do I make this batch of dry apple wine taste something like a pub cider?", in which case perhaps a better response would have been - you are better off not to let it get like dry apple wine unless that is how you want to drink it. I realize that is still somewhat subjective, but thats been my experience. YMMV

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It is true, the vast majority of people are looking to recreate a woodchuck styled cider as you noted (I had to play a bit of devil's advocate ). They are using backsweetening after a cider runs dry.

I would encourage all folks to try to flex their cider muscles and attempt ciders from each styling. A good way to show you have a control over your art form... so to speak.

It would be remiss not to say, you can make very good ciders using backsweetening from dry. I make a great champagne like this (backsweetened with my half thawed fresh pressed cider).

Once you master working with dry cider, working via cold crashing is certainly a natural step. Kind of like switching from frozen AJ concentrate to fresh juice. Though I never messed with concentrate very much once....

CvilleKevin said:

That said, I think you'd allow that the vast majority of posts on HBT about back sweetening are more along the lines of "how do I make this batch of dry apple wine taste something like a pub cider?", in which case perhaps a better response would have been - you are better off not to let it get like dry apple wine unless that is how you want to drink it. I realize that is still somewhat subjective, but thats been my experience. YMMV

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Yep... I really like my bottle pasteurized slightly sweet hard cider.... It is almost 2-months in the bottle and now is tasting really good.....

Just to see how I was doing - I bought a few bottles of the various imported English hard ciders...... YUCK! Holy Vinegar Batman! The first thing that hits you is the vinegary nose.... Then, the bitter, dry, appley cider... but it's the pungent vinegar nose that ruined it for me.....

I tried back-sweetening it with table sugar to see how it would taste.... BLEAH! Vinegar nose, then sweet, sour, bitter, pungent..... It just didn't help it any....

I suppose that backsweetening an otherwise good tasting aged hard cider with a good quality apple concentrate would likely help it.... but there's a limit to what backsweetening will fix.....

Thanks

I still do contend that the backsweetening I do isn't a fix, its a choice. But this is a bit of symantecs.

I usually ferment dry and malo ferment say 80 percent of my ciders, cold crash 20 percent (cvillekevin's preference). I then go through and pick the best "wines/ciders" I have from that year (which yeast produced the best results). From there I now get to add variety of how I want to bottle it. That could be simply leaving it alone, making a champagne, making a 5 gallon keg of woodchuck for friends coming over in the summer, etc.

I have tried several foreign bottled ciders and I didn't get vinegary nose to any of them - not sure if you are talking about some home experiments gone wrong. Additionally, I don't have any ciders with vinegary noses to them either - that is a sign of poor sanitation or oxidation, usually not a style choice. All my stuff that is fermented dry is perfectly worthy of drinking (the blander ciders just have less body/appley notes).

Point being, I love the ability to create variety in my cider stash. Backsweetening is a great way to keep SWMBO happy and put a large variety of drinks out there for her (Raspberry, Granny Smith, Peach, Woodchuck, etc. flavored ciders).

While I typically save the blander ciders for backsweeteing into woodchuck styled draft ciders, I also save at least 5 gallons of each of my top three demijohns to make my year's champagnes. Point being - I don't just backsweeten the bland ciders to fix them, I choose to enhance my best wines with backsweetening to make them my semidry champagnes.

Once you master working with dry cider, working via cold crashing is certainly a natural step. Kind of like switching from frozen AJ concentrate to fresh juice. Though I never messed with concentrate very much once....[/QUOTE]

Never made cider from concentrate because i have a cider mill not too far from me. I have noticed that the later in the season the cider has more of a pungent smell and rotten taste.. Maybe that could be the OP's different in batches. I now always completely dry mine out.. Everyone around here loves the applewine over the hard cider I used to do. When I used to cold crash out sometimes it wasn't exactly what I wanted so the back sweetening was a fail safe method for me..

edmanster said:

Never made cider from concentrate because i have a cider mill not too far from me. I have noticed that the later in the season the cider has more of a pungent smell and rotten taste.. Maybe that could be the OP's different in batches. I now always completely dry mine out.. Everyone around here loves the applewine over the hard cider I used to do. When I used to cold crash out sometimes it wasn't exactly what I wanted so the back sweetening was a fail safe method for me..

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I never made a cider from concentrate until I tried this year with Graff (didn't want to sacrifice my fresh cider stash on a recipe I never tried). Wasn't a fan of the graff enough to redo it (maybe try that with fresh pressed cider next year).

So I am with you. I always thought it was a waste of time to use concentrate. I press all my own cider each year - if you have the means it is the way to go. This year we press about 200 gallons and gave away about 60+ gallons to friends who helped press.

To be fair, some people don't have the access to do it from fresh pressed cider. However, personally for me cider is about doing it from the ground up. If I didn't get the apples, process and press them, it is a buzz kill...and I probably wouldn't do it.

For the record I agree with you - there is a lot to be said for applewine. Everyone thinks fermented apples should taste like draft cider. The reality is, when must ferments out, it tastes more vinous thatn appley. Kind of like how most wines don't taste like grapes. Nobody ever seems to want to acknowledge that. But the apple wines are very good.

I make sure I'm not using windfalls or poor quality apples. I use a blend of #2 apples; all hand inspected before washing. Later in the season the apples are higher in sugar, but not rotten or pungent.
I do wonder if doing a malolactic fermentation on my batch that turned out bad might turn it around. Since, it is already carbed in the bottle, I wonder how to proceed with this. Any help out there?
I have tried some English and French ciders. The English ciders I tried were all crisp and dry, with varying degrees of apple essence. The French ciders all seemed to have some kind of pungent after taste. This is just my experience. It's kind of limited in availlability here in central OH.

The malo lactic fermentation will occur naturally in most ciders if you let them ferment dry and then let them rest under airlock to bulk condition. For example, rack your cider 3-4 weeks after start of ferment and top off with mjore fresh cider. put under airlock and don't touch it for 3-4 months. In most cases with fresh pressed cider if you maintain 63-66F or so you will encourage a malolactic fermentation. Once you bottle, you don't want to encourage this because a malolactic fermentation after bottling will ruin the cider with funky fermenting flavors.

That is part of the reason that I usually don't even think about bottling until months 3-6 from start of ferment.

Seconds are the best for the commercial apples IMO. I hand inspect as we wash off and mill the apples. We have it set up as sort of a station by station run, works great.

Well, Gentlemen, after 5 mos in the bottle this cider is definately aging out better than I initially expected. Most of the off flavor has aged out, and the apple notes have definately come out. Some of the bottles have sort of a brown yeast sediment in them. If you drink some of the sediment you get a dose of the off flavor, but this is definately drinkable. If you pour carefully it is quite pleasant.
Thanks for the help and advice,
Slainte, Mack

Great to hear you are enjoying your cider!

Calder said:

Arsenic smells like almonds.

Apple seeds have a small amount of cyanide

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I found a good passage on bitter almond smell (amiygdalin) because I was interested by the subject, thought it would be good to copy a passage here

"The knowledge about hydrogen cyanide (HCN) formation in plants has its origin in antiquity. In ancient Egypt, traitorous priests in Memphis and Thebes were poisoned to death with pits of peaches (Davis, 1991). The first known detection of HCN liberated from damaged plant tissue was made in 1802 by the pharmacist Bohm in Berlin upon distillation of bitter almonds (Lechtenberg and Nahrstedt, 1999). In 1830, Robiquet and Boutron-Chalard discovered the structure of the HCN-liberating compound in bitter almonds (Lechtenberg and Nahrstedt, 1999). Because the compound was isolated from Prunus amygdalus (synonym Prunus dulcis), it was named amygdalin. Amygdalin has subsequently been found widespread in seeds of other members of the Rosaceae like in apples (Malus spp.), peaches (Prunus persica), apricots (Prunus armeniaca), black cherries (Prunus serotina), and plums (Prunus spp.)