Batonnage for improving cider????

[Chalkyt]

I was recently reading about some high-quality ciders (that sell for $$) produced using batonnage, literally stirring with a stick.

There has been a bit of traffic on the forum lately about improving flavour so I thought it might be worth throwing batonnage into the mix. It is a bit of a variation on sur lie fermenting and a quick search shows that it does get mentioned here from time to time, but not recently.

Batonnage is sometimes used when making chardonay. The wine in the barrel is stirred with a “stick” (well actually a stainless-steel paddle) in order to keep the lees suspended. This enables the fermentation to develop more flavour, texture and aroma.

The idea with cider is to rack off the primary coarse lees but take the fine lees into secondary, and keep them in suspension until nearly ready to bottle, then let the cider clear. This is supposed to be reasonably easy to do with a gallon carboy because giving it a bit of a shake will stir the lees. This avoids removing the air-lock and exposing the maturing cider to potential oxidation.

I haven’t done it myself, but plan to experiment a bit with a cider that I am happy to let mature for 6 – 12 months. Apparently, it takes that long to get a real benefit.

Anyhow, I thought batonnage worth mentioning and, of course Dr Google has plenty of information on it.

Has anyone gone down this path?

 

[bernardsmith]

Not gone down the path of batonnage, but pitching 71B and allowing the cider to sit for a year changes what you normally drink as a caterpillar into a butterfly. Much or the malic is transformed into a softer,smoother lactic acid and the transformation is like night and day. You might also try MLF (malo-lactic fermentation) by adding the bacteria that will transform 100 % of the malic into lactic. (71B will change about 40%).

 

[madscientist451]

The professional cider makers using the batonnage technique are likely using pretty good apples and I would guess the cider really isn’t that much “better” but that it IS different. So if you start with inferior fruit I would guess the cider still won’t be all that great, but it is worth trying.

 

[doublejef]

I did use batonnage a few year ago on one of my barrel aged cider.
Unfortynatly I didn't have enough barrel bck then to do batonnage on one and just keep the other one untouched and then compare both results but I can tell you the finall result was pretty good.
I read also as much theory I found but, for cider, there is very few sources avalaible.
I can give you 2 tips btw :
- It seems that if you do it with wild yeast, it will bring a funky side in the cider. I get advices saying that this technique goes better with cultured yeast
- One year seems to be a minimum and 18 month are classic. If you want to reduce it till 8-9 month, you can deep freeze the yeast slury. The cells will explode and the result will arrive quicker.

I really would like to dig more into it but the infos are hard to find and it takes a year for each attempt so it's also hard to learn by practice. Moreover, I'm now making only natural femrntation which seems not really compatible because I like my cider as clean as possible.