Sour cider/apfelwein questions

My wife is into sour beers and dry cider, so I thought I'd try to make her a sour cider. Has anyone tried anything like this?

I'm planning on inoculating some apple juice with raw grain to grow up a starter of lacto. Then I'll pitch that lacto starter into part of a batch of cider, and then blend with the non-lacto portion to taste.

My other option would be to just add 88% lactic acid until I hit my desired sourness, but I'd like to try a lactic fermentation to get some more interesting flavors.

I was also thinking about adding some tea for tannins and either honey, malt extract, or some other kind of sugar to boost the alcohol a bit, up to 6-7%.

I have K1V-1116 and Red Star Cote des Blanc yeast. Would either of these work better than the other for this?

Any comments/concerns?

It's easy if you have a choice of apples to press. Choose the more acidic ones. If your making Walmart hooch use an acid to taste. Most people are trying to get the sour/tart out of there cider.

Cote de Blanc taste kind of rancid and buttery to me when used with apple juice. I tried it two times and did not like it either time. JMHO

geoxman said:

Cote de Blanc taste kind of rancid and buttery to me when used with apple juice. I tried it two times and did not like it either time. JMHO

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It's interesting you said that. I found the cider sticky with all the yeast experiments after I got back from the brew store with my yeast. The yeast experiment guy said the same exact thing.

I've used it before and was pretty happy with the results, but the only other yeast I've used was Montrachet and of the two I preferred Cote.

I haven't started the cider yet, so I might order a pack or two of ale yeast and see how that goes.

In cider Lactic acid bacteria will lower rather than raise the acidity. Instead of consuming the sugar they convert the malic acid to lactic acid, a weaker, less sour acid. Oenococcus is the bacteria species you can buy to inoculate cider, other lactic acid fermenters can cause off flavours, but won't make the cider more sour. lactobacillus is regarded as a spoilage organism.

try some Nottingham, ferment dry and back sweeten with a can of frozen lemonade. I have done this and it is tart, sweet and tasty! It goes down quick and is great for summer days. good luck

Greg - Thanks so much for sharing that. That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for.

Geoxman - That sounds pretty good. I might try that.

After looking into Oenococcus, it looks like that's used for malolactic fermentation. MLF is used to convert malic acid to lactic acid, and raise the pH, making them less sour.

I've heard of Basque and English ciders that are really sour. How do they make those? Is there some other bug I'm missing that would make the cider sour?

I've tried searching for "sour cider" but I overwhelmingly get the "how can I make my cider less sour" threads, and I can't find any info on intentionally sour ciders.

Nateo said:

After looking into Oenococcus, it looks like that's used for malolactic fermentation. MLF is used to convert malic acid to lactic acid, and raise the pH, making them less sour.

I've heard of Basque and English ciders that are really sour. How do they make those? Is there some other bug I'm missing that would make the cider sour?

I've tried searching for "sour cider" but I overwhelmingly get the "how can I make my cider less sour" threads, and I can't find any info on intentionally sour ciders.

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Oenococcus and lactobacillus are both in the group called lactic acid bacteria (LAB). They can convert sugars to lactic acid which is what happens in sourdough etc, but will also do MLF in wine and cider. They will also eat lactose, which means you have to be careful if you use lactose as a sweetener.

The Basque ciders are "acetic" which means they have some acetic acid (vinegar) and ethyl acetate. Known in the wine trade as Volatile Acidity (VA). Some people like this but generally it is regarded as a taint. The Basques do a natural fermentation and their indigenous yeasts produce high levels of acetic acid. Otherwise it is just a matter of too much air getting to the cider. It is very tricky if you actually want this acetic cider, because the difference between a pleasant vinegary sourness and completely ruined is very small. perhaps you could experiment with adding small amounts of pasteurised vinegar to samples of your cider.

I had a batch of cider go acetic this year through leaving the primary uncovered too long. I tried blending to see if I could make it drinkable and at a certain level I can see that people would enjoy that sourness, however I found the vinegar aroma tends to linger in the mouth which I just don't like so I am going to make cider vinegar when the weather gets warmer.

After a standard fermentation, I added 5oz of lactic acid at bottling, lowering the pH to 3.0. It tastes good, but not as sour as I had initially wanted. More of a tartness than a sourness.

Overall, for the time required and ease of this approach, I'm happy with the product. Next time I'll use more lactic acid.