Fresh cider and campden tablets

Hey ya'll,

I'm a first timer at cider and hate to make repeat posts but I wanted to confirm what I keep picking up on these threads.

I just bought 4.5 gallons of fresh cider from my local's farmers market. I have no idea if it was pressed with sanitized equipment. I also picked up some campden tablets. I'm reading here, though, that the tablets are going to leave a bitter flavor that will take a while to mellow and it's better not to use them.

Should I use the campden tablets overnight and let it age or just pitch my yeast without treating the cider at all? Thanks for any help you have!

is the cider pasteurized or not? In Virginia, the only way to legally get unpasteurized is to get it from the press premises. It cant be sold in retail containers and when you do get it, it comes with a little cautionary sticky note. If you get it at a farmers market, I'm guessing it was pasteurized in some way, hopefully UV, but maybe not.

If pasteurized, you dont need to do anything, just pitch the yeast

If unpasteurized, and you dont know how it was handled, pitch half the recommended dose of campden. That is plenty for treating cider (normal recommended dose is for wine) and will fade faster. Next time, see if you can pick it up fresh from the press on pressing day and skip the campden

It says UV Treated. So that means it was pasteurized, eh? See, I told you I was new!

Yep, your good - just pitch the yeast. It will take longer to clear but will taste fine. next time you might want to ask the farmer if you can pick some up fresh from the press. Its usually a little less if you bring your carboy

Camden is just about risk. I don't believe the risk from wild yeast is very high although many people worry about it. The biggest risk is after primary, when your cider can get infections or oxidation, and this is when camden is most useful.
As for the taste, Kevin must be a lot more sensitive than most people because camden hasn't been accused by anyone else of causing bitterness, unless used in excess quantities.

Campden is about risk, but also about the price you are willing to pay to manage the risk.

At the beginning of the ferment, the risk of infection is very small unless the juice has been mishandled, and usually there are some indications in the smell and taste that this has happened.

After the ferment, the risk of oxidation is fairly high if you keep the cider for more than 6-8 months.

The price you pay is the taste. Its true, you dont see a lot of posts complaining about k-meta. What you see is a lot of posts complaining about bitter cider and why it takes so long to be drinkable. Instead of questioning the "conventional" wisdom and trying to fix the process, there is all sorts of advice on backsweetening, which IMHO is what you do to salvage a failure (which I still have to do from time to time), but doesnt belong in the recipe.

For anyone who does not believe that there is a taste penalty for using campden/k-meta, I encourage you to do a side by side comparison for yourself with two gallons of your favorite unpasteurized juice and yeast. Add k-meta to one and not the other. Taste them before and after the ferment. I can guarantee you that the one with no k-meta will taste better - you will have more apple taste, a bit more complexity of flavor from the wild yeast (although the yeast you pitch will still dominate the profile), and will be able to drink it sooner. If your goal is to stash the cider away for a year, then sure, use the k-meta, but I would still advise using it after, rather than before the ferment.

Last season I experimented a lot with k-meta. I even did 16 single gallons of the exact same juice and yeast, with varying amounts of k-meta before and after ferment, and drank a liter of each at a couple of tastings. Nearly everyone can pick out the taste of a full dose of k-meta. Most of my brewing friends could distinguish half a dose at the first tasting. At the second tasting, the k-meta was less pronouced, but the batches with zero or half a dose before the ferment still scored consistently higher than the ones with the full dose. The taste of sorbate is even more pronounced. Everyone could taste it, but not everyone found it objectionable. Some people liked it. I'm planning to drink the last 16 liters this November - after they have aged for a year. My expectation is that the ones with little or no k-meta at the beginning and half a dose or more at the end will score the best, while the ones with no k-meta will have got vinegary after a year. I hope the sorbate taste will have faded as well, but my guess is that it doesnt.

Well Kevin, I still think you must be extra sensitive to camden. I myself try to avoid using it because I like my cider to be as natural as possible. (I never spray my apple trees).I did 2 similar batches this year, one with and one without (in primary) and really didn't notice a difference. It is used so widely I think I would have heard more if it had a big affect on taste, and I wouldn't like to scare people away from it if it makes them feel safer. It is pretty important in winemaking.
I have never used sorbate, and don't plan to, it does seem to affect taste.
One thing I would suggest to you is you really should rehydrate your yeast with warm water, it does give a more even, healthy ferment. I know dry pitching works but rehydrating is "best practise" and so easy there is no excuse not to do it.

I've never tasted k-meta in my wines, meads or ciders, but I will no longer use sorbate because I can definitely taste that. It is a good thing that I like all of my beverages dry!

I keep all of my wines, meads and ciders for a LONG time, so that's why I like using k-meta. I also pick wild fruit for most of my wines. I have wines in my cellar that are nearly four years old that are finally becoming wonderful wines. Bigger reds are an example- ok at a young age, but wonderful in a few years. I've noticed that anything that I've stabilized with sorbate to backsweeten has an aftertaste that I dislike.

YooperBrew said:

I've never tasted k-meta in my wines, meads or ciders, but I will no longer use sorbate because I can definitely taste that.
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I've noticed that anything that I've stabilized with sorbate to backsweeten has an aftertaste that I dislike.

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Wish I read this post around two weeks before I stabilized a batch of cider with camden tablets and sorbate. O well, I'll see how it taste.

Its possible that not everyone is sensitive to the taste of k-meta, but I know its not just me. I started cutting back on using k-meta on the advise of a friend who used to work as a microbiologist at a California winery. Since then I have met half a dozen winemakers from local vineyards who have said the same thing. Most importantly, the batches I have made since cutting back k-meta have tasted consistently better and been drinkable earlier.

Last fall I made 16 batches with the same juice and yeast, but varying amounts of k-meta and sorbate. I drank a liter each at two tastings, one in January and one in June. Both times there were about 20 people, about a dozen of whom filled out rating sheets. Both times, the batches with no k-meta at the beginning of the ferment scored consistently higher than those with the k-meta.

I didnt keep the rating sheets for the first round, but I put the June round ratings in a spreadsheet which I still have. On average, the cold crashed batches scored a little more than a point higher than the sorbated ones - although some people did like the taste of the sorbate. Of the cold crashed batches, the ones with no k-meta before the ferment scored a half point higher on average than the ones with k-meta. Keep in mind, this is six months later - the taste was a lot more prominent right after the ferment.

Looking at the individual scores - yes, there seem to be a few people who did not score the k-meta batches lower - but most people did. Enough that the average was half a point lower (on scale of 1-10). That's partly why I do tastings - so I'm not just relying on my own taste.

When we drink the last 16 liters from the experiment, my guess is that there will be less of a gap in scores between the ciders with and without k-meta, because the k-meta mellows over time. Plus some of the ones without k-meta will have probably got vinegary. So if you are planning to age them, I agree that k-meta is helpful.

I'm not trying to scare people from using k-meta. I'm just saying that if you are careful with your juice you dont need it and most people will notice the improvement.

Kahuna - a number of people actually scored the sorbated batches *higher*, so hopefully you are one of those who likes the taste (although I feel confident to say that the majority of people dont). If you put a little bit of the dry stuff on your tongue, that is pretty much what it will taste like in your cider. Is sort of a vanilla/cinnamon taste that might work in a spiced cider. In sorbate's favor, its a lot easier than cold crashing and it gets the cider nice and clear. Also, I know some folks who are professional vinegar makers, who tell me that sorbated wine is nearly impossible to get to turn to vinegar, but sulfite is not a problem for them.

Another thing that occurred to me about being able to taste k-meta or not... It could be the juice. I usually make sure that there are some good tart apples in the mix - jonathans, yorks, granny smith, etc. and when the mix already has a tart finish, the k-meta is really noticeable - the lower the pH, the less you need to get free SO2.

Last year I got some juice at a cider pressing party that was fairly sweet - the tartest apple in the mix was jonagold, along with fuji, empire and a lot of red and yellow delicious, all of which are fairly sweet. That juice did not taste bad with the k-meta, it might have even improved it because there wasnt much tartness to start with.