What is Cider, as opposed to Wine?/Quince Cider critique

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petes

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Hello,
I'm new to this sport of home wine and cider making. Had been at beer brewing for many years but trying other things now after a long lay off from that.
In my part of the world cider is accepted as being an alcoholic drink; always has been this way. From reading this and other forums it seems that what I would know as juice -that is non alcoholic - is often known as cider - the term hard (cider) being applied to determine the alcoholic variety, (lets assume apple here just for arguments sake).
I am trying to get to grips with this craft and as I explore I am trying to draw a distinction between cider and wine.
As far as I can see cider (i) has no added water (ii) has no added sugar (iii) has no added yeast; whilst wine has all of these 'additives'. Also, cider has a lower A/V then wine so would not be able to be stored for the same period without spoiling.
Now it appears acceptable that yeast may be added rather then depend on the natural yeast of the fruit. I am guessing that with using the likes of Campden in the must, the natural yeast if it exists would be killed off anyway and if the brewer is using store bought juice, yeast would simply be absent.
It also seems the some additional water could be needed to build the volume of the must; so I guess that to achieve a reasonable kick at the end, sugar must go in too.
Now, where is the distinction drawn between cider and wine? I feel I must be missing something simple ; I just can't see what? Some of the recipes I read on the forums appear, to me, to lean more toward wine yet are referred to as cider - which brings me to my next point.
When I moved to my present property in 2007, I discovered I'd inherited a quince tree amonst one-offs of other varieties of fruit trees. I didn't know quince, neither did my wife. So we fed the product to the cows grazing in the neighbours paddock. Over the ensuing year I learned somewhere that the Biblical 'golden apple' was in fact likely to have been quince. Soooo.... apple cider = quince cider. Put the fruit to good use - and I started reading.
I've seen vague references to quince cider but no recipe that I could pin down as a novice. However quince wine recipes are abundant and so far I have put two different styles down, both of which are looking (tasting) good.
I built a press to deal with the fruit for my cider attempt: here's the recipe I decided on, for critique please.-

14 lb fruit, washed and frozen
6 ozs sugar
1 teaspoon pectic enzyme/rohapect blend
1 teaspoon Tronozymol nutrient/energizer
1 pinch epsom salts
1 pinch sulphate of ammonia
1 campden tablet
1 teaspoon ascorbic acid
1/4 teaspoon citric acid
1 sachet yeast - I used a generic 'cider' yeast.

Fruit was thawed overnight then quartered, cored and sliced into bucket containing 1litre of water to which was added the campden and ascorbic acid.
(Ascorbic was intended to stop browning of fruit prior to pressing; since read that browning will not affect quality of juice, so this ingredient likely not needed. In any event 1 litre water was insufficient to cover fruit during process).
Fruit pressed until cake dry - 14 lb fruit yielded 3.4litres juice (4.12 lb/litre)
Juice into fermenter, added original 1 litre water and additives plus all other ingredients except yeast. Loose covered and left for 48 hours.
SG 1056, yeast prestarted and pitched, airlocked.
Slow airlock action, activity ceased after 4 days.
Left for one week, racked to secondary. SG 1010, airlocked and left to clear.

Cider was in fact very clear with strong fruity aroma. Colour light cream/yellow tinge. Slightly rocket fuel to taste, dry with pleasant acid tang.

At this stage am pleased with result, should improve with maturity.
Sorry about length of this post would welcome all comment though.
 
As far as I can see myself the distiction is just in the alcohol content...

Something like:

5%-10% = Cider
10%-15% = Wine

Oh and you're not the only one who gets caught out by the cider/hard cider thing it seems to be an American thing. Cider is pressed apple juice (unfiltered and therefore cloudy) and juice is filtered apple cider (clear)...

Hope this helps
 
I think it's all just a heritage of naming conventions. A distinction for the type of fruit. For instance if one says "Cider" one assumes Apples. If one says "Wine", it's grapes. Further distinctions are made by prefixing the appropriate name, i.e. "Mulberry Wine", "Elderberry Wine"...etc.

The recipe looks very good, Kudos on using the Quince. I expect you'll drop lower than 1.010.
 
Thanks for your responses people.
rmck1, your point is sound . I hadn't considered the AV angle but it makes good sense. And thanks for pointing out the cider/juice relationship.
zoebisch01, am encouraged by your view on the recipe. Have hopes too that it will drop further; has showed signs of life since racking but haven't had the time to spend keeping a close eye on it. Guess will simply have to give it some time then check SG when I go to bottle.
Have another 44lb of fruit on ice presently which should give me about 10.7 litres of juice on pressing - aiming for something in time for summer. Might even get to fit in some Edworts for summer too. That product has so much interest that I have to try it - just like the JAO mead. Have tried that as my first mead and was convinced. So now I have 34kg of honey to deal with, cheers.
 
There's lots more words that just aren't used much. For example, pear cider is perry. Honey wine is mead, unless you have fruit in it. Then it's a melomel. Except if you use apples & honey, it's a cyser.

An OG of 1.056 and little added sugar would classify your recipe as a cider. If you added sugar to 1.100 or more, I'd call it a wine. I've got a hop wine aging that used hops, raisins and sugar.
 
Hi there.
We're very new to home brewing (just racked our first batch of blackberry wine into the secondary fermentation vessel) We thought we'd like to try our hand at cider and had a a few questions for your. What size of bucket did you use for the initial fermentation and what was your final yield?
Thanks
 
To the OP, you mention cider made from raw juice with nothing added.... this would originaly be known as Scrumpy (which has expanded to cover most still ciders). But is also traditionally rocket fuel, brewed as the Old English equivalent of moonshine.
(I'm a Brit ex-pat)

I've got my first attempt at cider on the go, gets cold crashed tomorrow then racked when I have the chance (away for a few days!). Its just a gallon of store bought apple juice with some S-04. Looking great and down from 1.055 to 1.028, at the current rate I'm expecting it to be around 1.010 in 24 hours.
 
Found this while Googling for "quince cider". I see the orginal thread dates from 2008, so I'm not really expecting a reply from petes, but perhaps someone else can advise: all these extra ingredients - pectic enzyme, nutrient, Epsom salts - would they be normal in your cider making? I just crush the juice out of apples, add yeast, and leave it to ferment. I'm trying a champagne yeast this year, on the shopkeeper's recommendation. You don't seem to see anything billed as a cider yeast. I guess some purists would say you should just use the natural yeasts in the apples.
I did put a few quinces in with my apples this year, just to see what happened, but there are a lot left and we've made more quince jelly than we can expect to eat so I was inclined to try some pure quince cider, and wondered if such a thing existed.
Petes mentions freezing the fruit. Is that normal practice? For (apple) cider, I take the apples straight from the ground or tree, wash, chop, and press.
Brodsys, I use a 5-gallon (Imperial) bucket, but I've known people use plastic bins of perhaps 30 gal, or 60-gal barrels. Of course something that size stays firmly put, so you need a dedicated brewhouse/cider cellar.
 
There's lots more words that just aren't used much. For example, pear cider is perry. Honey wine is mead, unless you have fruit in it. Then it's a melomel. Except if you use apples & honey, it's a cyser.

:off:

My favorite chapter in Schramm's mead book is the "Defining styles"

sack mead = stong, sweet mead
melamel = fruit mead
cyser = apple mead
pyment = grape mead
hippocras = spiced pyment
metheglin = herbed or spiced mead
braggot = mead with malted barley
molassocassioconiferamel = mead with molasses, cassia (cinnamon), and pine-bough shoots :D
 
While Prohibition is now only a part of American history, there are still signs and traces of the period in our culture today. For example, you cannot buy alcohol before noon on Sunday in the south.* How silly, when you can buy it at 8 am on Monday and Saturday!

During Prohibition, people did what they could to substitute alcoholic drinks for legal, non-alcoholic ones. The main difference for ciders is that they simply were not subjected to fermentation. Cider came to refer to unclarified pressed juice. Because the Prohibition was limited to the US, the term cider everywhere else continued to refer to a lightly fermented juice (lightly as compared to wine or liquor). Thus, Americans coin the term 'hard cider', which really just means, well ... cider!

*As per Ravenhead's correction
 
Petes mentions freezing the fruit. Is that normal practice? For (apple) cider, I take the apples straight from the ground or tree, wash, chop, and press.

I think that due to the severe decline in use and knowledge of quince fruit in the general US population, there isn't much 'normal practice' to be had. Thus said, quince is a hard fruit and I can imagine it would be fairly difficult to press in it's raw state.

Freezing causes the water to crystalize, expanding to break the cell walls of the fruit. When thawed, the fruits would be significantly softer, and thus easier to press all of the liquid out of. You may even try this with apples and see what difference it makes.

Whether freezing is completely necessary for quince fruit is a reasonable question to ask, but one I'm afraid I can't help with. I haven't got a quince tree (yet).
 
While Prohibition is now only a part of American history, there are still signs and traces of the period in our culture today. For example, you cannot buy hard liquor before noon on Sunday. How silly, when you can buy it at 8 am on Monday and Saturday!

During Prohibition, people did what they could to substitute alcoholic drinks for legal, non-alcoholic ones. The main difference for ciders is that they simply were not subjected to fermentation. Cider came to refer to unclarified pressed juice. Because the Prohibition was limited to the US, the term cider everywhere else continued to refer to a lightly fermented juice (lightly as compared to wine or liquor). Thus, Americans coin the term 'hard cider', which really just means, well ... cider!

Slight correction:
The no-liquor-before-noon-on Sunday thing is a Texas law not a federal one. Other states don't have that restriction. It traces more to the "blue-laws" of the various bible belt states. It used to be that you couldn't buy much of anything on Sundays other than groceries.

Also, you can't buy any liquor on Sundays except in a bar. It's beer and wine sales that restricted before noon.
 
Sorry about being a stickeler on that but federal vs. state law is kind of important for non-brewing reasons. That and it's a pet peeve of mine.:)
 
I see this thread's had a new lease of life, so I thought I'd report back on my quince cider experience. I made one gallon with three parts quince juice to one of apple juice (as well as several gallons of straight apple). It has a pleasant and aromatic flavour, but too astringent an aftertaste, making it quite hard to get through a pint. For this year, I'll try a batch at 50:50 and see if I can still get the flavour without the shrivelled mouth effect.
This could be a long-term project, with only one harvest per year, as I slowly zoom in on the perfect ratio!

I've also planted a Black Dabinett cider apple tree this year, which should fruit next year and improve the apple cider. Up until now, I've used a random assortment of cookers and eaters, and I don't even know the varieties of some of the more heavily cropping trees.
 
I kinda group it diffrently
Main fermentable is sugar and its wine main fermentable is fruit makes cider
Eksept grapes that only makes wine
Mead maplewine and birchwine is another category by itself(its not fruit so its not wine)
But im not sure what exactly that is
 
After doing some research, I found one interesting observation. All fruits are called fruit wine except for one category: the pome fruit. This includes apples, pears, quince, ect. These all have their own specific names. I don't know if this has to do with region of origin or their unique qualities that are not in other fruits (surely their texture is different than any other type). Also, I agree that a functional definition primarily has to do with alc content.
 
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