Cider pH

[Gordond]

Here I'd like to tap into some of your experience guys..I've read (in the few books I can find-on cider - not much out there though) that the ideal pH for a cider fermentation is from pH 3.1-3.5. I haven't seen much info if any on the forum regarding this point.

Do you cider folk just ignore pH, adjust for it or what ?

I am into my 5th or 6th batch but not getting the results I would like.

Latest Recipe (sorry about the units I'm on the other side of the pond).

4.5 lts pasteurized apple juice.
50 ml cold tea.
juice of 1 lemon.
1tsp yeat nutrient and energizer.
1tsp malic acid.

pH 3.1
OG 1048.
SG final 1004

ferments just fine taste not good. Next step control temp and pasteurize but I'm still worried its not going to improve the taste much.

I don't add sugar (gets too "hot" alcohol wise for me and the family)

Thanks for any help.

PS.I'm not gonna give up until it comes out good...took me years for beer and now I'm happy with the results I'm getting..

 

[gregbathurst]

pH and titratable acidity (TA) are both important. pH is important for the effectiveness OF SO2 (camden tablets) which work best at pH 3.4 or below. With apples the pH varies according to variety, climate and ripeness. Cooking varieties have low pH, bittersweet cider varieties have high pH, cool climates give low pH, warm climates high, and pH rises as the apples ripen so unripe apples have low pH. Good quality cider apples will have quite a high pH so are blended with low pH "sharp" apples to give balance.

Also to complicate things, pH rises with fermentation, and even more if you have a MLF. The most important thing is the quality of the apples and the juice. Also age tends to help. I add juice from crabapples to give body, so if you can source some crabapples this year it may help.

 

[oldmate]

I don't usually bother checking the pH of my ciders, but I know a lot of people like to adjust the pH when making mead. I agree with Greg, the quality of your juice is pretty important. If you're looking for better results try and find some fresh-pressed juice (no idea how common that is in Italy).

 

[wildman]

+1 on all the advice given. proper ph can be quite subjective. mine is on the high acid side and quite a few people rave about it. the only other thing i can suggest is ditch all your additions.

 

[Gordond]

Thanks all...the idea was to simulate cider apple juice rather than eating apple juice since getting my hands on a decent fresh pressed juice isn't easy over here.

And Wildman..Ok radical suggestion (thanks though - that's the beauty of HBT it keeps provoking you to think again).
I started making the additions since pasteurized apple juice on its own with a decent (S-04) yeast gave crap results. But I'll go back to that as a control to make sure it wasn't something simple that I screwed up on my first batches.

So I was right... not a lot of pH adjustment going on out there and therefore probably not worth getting obsessed with it - its something else that's amiss..

 

[wildman]

I see you were looking for more flavor. Yes that's hard to do without good apples, I rely on crabs and lots of them to get what i want. I wish I had some better advice for you. But yes I say ditch all your additions and head in a different direction, think outside the box and local if you can. Look for crabapple trees, i can't believe italy doesn't have any.

 

[frydogbrews]

i add a tablespoon of an acid blend containing malic and tartaric acid to my secondary, then let things age a few months. no problems.

 

[Gordond]

Thanks Wildman,
Its true that trying to make good cider from commercial juice is probably like trying to make a proverbial "silk purse from a sow's ear"..but availability throughout the year and cost are strong drivers. Crab apples are around but I haven't found anyone juicing them yet and I am going to have to travel a long way to get good juice (which will probably be dessert anyway). The wonderful tradition of Italian cider and beer making was stopped by Mussolini and co..before WWII and people hardly know what cider is now... Now the taste for real ale is coming back for beer, and Strongbow with its commercial might is trying to attract a new generation of cider drinkers...

I will go for the control without additives in the next few weeks and let you know what leaving them out does.

Frydogbrews
thanks for letting me know that at least someone reads the books and is trying the same sort of thing.

Cheers..

 

[dinnerstick]

crabs are also rare here, so i 'employed' some students (with the promise of a few bottles) on an ecology course so scour the countryside hedges and make note on a map. so far i have my eye on about 4 trees. also check botanic gardens (sneaky)

 

[gregbathurst]

If you want to get into real cider you need a mill (or scratter) and press, then you can juice your own crab apples and other apples. Some of the most popular apple mills are made in Italy so maybe you could get one 2nd hand. If you make your own juice you can let the apples ripen properly on the tree, that's how you get really tasty cider. When you get into cider "hardcore" you grow your own trees or source your apples locally, and press your own juice. It's coming up to apple time in the nth hemisphere, so time to get moving.

 

[Gordond]

Good point gragbathurst but if I get into all the hard stuff of milling and juicing the apples without understanding much about apples and how to ferment and bottle the stuff I'm heading for disaster (not to mention divorce)..plus the availability of the apples at this time of year is going to be a real problem. I'm going to end up there but I'm not sure if I'm ready yet..

Never thought I'd see the day when an Aussie would be giving me, "a Pom" (even if I'm a long way from home) great advice on cider making ! Cheers to you and thanks a lot..it keeps me going in this cider desert of Northern italy..

 

[gregbathurst]

Get hold of Andrew Lea's book on craft cider, or look at his site at http://www.cider.org.uk, it's not hard to make good hard cider, and a lot of fun. I was in Lombardy recently and I know they grow a lot of fruit there, must be a lot of apples in autumn. The hard bit is making enough cider to last the whole year.

 

[Gordond]

Ok will do, yes in the hills in the north of Lombardy and going east as well...sounds easy I won't say it is till I can do it though..hopefully soon.

 

[wildman]

Divorce or cider? Well I got a divorce. But seriously most crabs will help your cider. I used some crabs the size of a pea my first year and was amazed by the flavor. For a small batch like 5 gallons I wouldn't hesitate to use them again, but I want to hit 120+ gallons this fall and labor becomes a major issue. IMHO your best bet is to find ones that make your mouth feel "furry" and make you pucker real bad...

If you can't swing a grinder and a press this year there are other ways to extract the juice but be prepared because when you actually really like your cider its like a black hole that sucks you in and consumes you. I think about it every day and am planning my life around buying land and planting an orchard.

 

[wildman]

Hey Greg, you should link to claudes site for him. He has a great write up on acidity. I do consider 3.1 to be on the high acid side as mine ends up at around 3.4 and is still to acidic for many. I would do it myself but just lost my phone and all my links with it. IIRC rosie considers 3.6 to be perfect and she knows what she's doing. His op might be right and his cider might be too acidic for his taste. But that does not at all negate the fact that good cider starts with good juice and you just can't buy it at a store.

 

[Gordond]

Good job SWMBO doesn't read this stuff...
any links are always welcome..
By the way Greg..just did some checking and found to my amazement the production of apples in Italy is ten times that of the UK ! and we don't do cider...

Wildman at the moment the only black hole is that of despair at not getting what I want in terms of flavour. I know what you mean though things can get pretty obsessive..I'm like that for my beer now. Just think what the incentive is to be surrounded by most folks who have never even tasted a cider let alone a good one !!

My shop bought juice is around the 3.5 mark without my additions..

 

[gregbathurst]

Claude Jolicoeur's site

A very good cider resource

As I said, I saw lots of fruit growing in Lombardy, seems to be a major industry there.

 

[dinnerstick]

to go back to crabs mentioned earlier in this thread, at the risk of being a bit hijacky, i will be poaching crabs from wherever i can this year, i normally make cider from a somewhat haphazard mixture of dessert, semi-sweet eaters and some grannys. i have found a few trees of those really tiny green crabs, between the size of a pea and a cranberry, and some larger ones that go yellow and are the size of a small grape. i just tasted both, still unripe, and they are sour and puckeringly bitter. my question is: should i gather these (when ripe), get juice, and then blend into my sweet juice by taste? i can imagine that the bitterness will be masked by the sugar in my 1.060-ish juice, so how can i estimate how much to add, other than batch-by-batch (year-by-year) trial and error? which i am happy to do but just curious how others go about it, thanks

 

[wildman]

Dinnerstick I'm still in the trial and error stage myself, my gameplan consisted of putting a bunch of different varieties of crabs in and hoping for the best which has worked well for me so far. Now after doing this for a couple years I'm starting figure out which crabs will easily give me lots of high gravity juice since labor is such an issue with crabs. I just went by recommended percentages and hoped for the best. the first year used about 10% and 19% the second. this fall I'm gonna try an push 30%. you guys kinda. make me feel lucky, although I feel I don't have any good cider apples I have what seems like and endless supply of varieties and trees to. work with for my crab fix.

 

[gregbathurst]

Your crabs won't be ripe yet, leave them till at least late september/october, unless the birds start to get them first. 30% sounds a bit high to me, depending how bitter they are I would stay around 10-15%, but there are no hard and fast rules here. I used crabs a lot this year and it really gave a boost to my cider, especially the extra body and complexity. If like most people you don't have access to bittersweet cider apples it is definitely the way to go.

I posted my thoughts here

Greg

 

[dinnerstick]

thanks for the very useful info. .. . ....... now waiting for apple season!! i'll try a few different blends and this time next year be back to comment

 

[dinnerstick]

crabapple season, to follow up from the previous posts while hijacking this thread a bit... made my first crabapple-enhanced cider yesterday, small test batch. i was casing a gorgeous yellow-gold crab tree in the <name withheld> botanic garden, refractometer said 1.063!! fruit the size of a large cherry, pinched a couple handfuls yesterday. my first attempt to get the juice out of them proved err fruitful? stuck them in the juicer. didn't expect great results but i was pleasantly surprised, the waste out the back was really pretty dry and i got a good few hundred mls from what i had. regular apples juice ok in that thing as long as the flesh is firm, but the efficiency is pretty low, the waste is wet (but can be pressed further), but with the hard crabs the efficiency seems way higher. the juice was bitter and sweet and felt like someone was paper-toweling the back of my tongue. blended in with some elstars (desserts) for sugar, about 1/5 granny smiths, and the bulk of it randoms from a friend, fairly acidic. ~5 L total, the blend tasted great, tangy, the tannin is evident but not overwhelming, and it is now bubbling away

 

[andrewedmondson]

I've just tested two types of apple. One is sweet, the other more sharp.

Neither produces a colour that can be compared on the test strip.

See the attached photo.

Any ideas?

 

[frydogbrews]

get new test strips.

i can't even imagine that a the juice from sweet apples would be above 4. they are usually chock full of acid and mine tend to go more to 3.2 i could see tart apples being up around 4, which is why they get blended with sweet apples. above 4.8 though, something is wrong somewhere.

 

[Gordond]

I have had (and many others -looking around on the internet) the same problem with exactly these strips...there is some issue with the light used...seems they are designed for daylight use and some artificial lighting gives a shift in the colours visible different form the dyes shown, try different lights or preferably daylight and things improve.
Let me know how you get on.
All the best
Gordon

 

[andrewedmondson]

Thanks for the replies.

I've looked at the test strips in different lights. The test area is a shade of green but there is no green in the comparisons.

I've written to the people I bought it from (homebrewcentre.co.uk) and will let you know what they say.

I wanted to start brewing this weekend.

I have a hydrometer but wanted to be more scientific this time. The whole lot got infected last time.

 

[frydogbrews]

looks kind of close to the 3.4 to me. which makes good sense.
in my earlier post i didn't see which area to view and i thought those arrows were computer generated pointed to around 4.8.

 

[gregbathurst]

Yes, both look around 3.4, the top one a bit higher than the bottom one.
You need to use good natural light, they aren't going to come up so well with a photo.
One hint to make your strips go further is to cut them in half longways (even quarters) you don't need such wide strips once you get used to interpreting the colours.

Dinnerstick, good to hear someone experimenting with crabs. That "felt like someone was paper-toweling the back of my tongue" feeling is what you'r after. That's the tannins reacting with your salive.