Loquat Cider

[Pataka]

Hi all

I live in New Zealand, and this summer my Loquat tree went absolutely manic. Between spending a few nights away from home right while it was fruiting, and ignoring the fruit the birds beat me to, I picked around 17kg of processed (de-seeded) fruit from it. I used about 2.5kg to make my first batch of wine, which is having its final racking at the moment and due to bottle at the end of the month, depending on how clear it is.

Given there's probably enough for another 5-6 batches of wine in the freezer, and the current batch will have been brewing for at least 3 months, it's going to take a long time for me to use them all up. So I'm thinking I may have a go at some cider instead.

Does anyone know how much loquat fruit I would need to get a gallon of juice? Is there any reason I can't use fruit pulp with pectic enzyme as a starting must? The wine recipe I used calls for sulphites and pectic enzyme in the must, then leaving it to sit for 24 hours before pitching the yeast. I figure that could form a good starting point for cider.

I can't imagine the work that would be involved in juicing enough fruit to yield 1 gallon of juice, and it seems to me that if I aimed for perhaps 10% more juice than the carboy could fit, I could siphon the juice out of primary once the pulp has risen to the top, without worrying too much about getting much pulp into the carboy.

It's difficult to find much about brewing with loquats, apart from wine recipes. Perhaps their juice is no good for making cider? I'm not sure. Any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks
Richard

 

[csimmons21]

You could always add some fruit and top off with enough apple cider to make a gallon, then blend the fruit and juice and use that as you're starting must....the pulp will settle out and you can rack off of it and then top off with more apple juice or loquat juice to make it a gallon again..I do this all the time with strawberries, mangoes, raspberries etc..


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[csimmons21]

Like this, I will rack off that stuff on the bottom and add mango nectar to top off


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[Pataka]

Hmm, I hadn't thought about that. Wouldn't it affect the taste? You'd end up with a blend, which in itself may not be entirely undesirable, but you'd just want to be certain that the two flavours did actually mix well I guess.

I have a bag of about 1.5 kg worth of fruit I labelled 'B grade', mostly because it was fruit that was picked slightly before it should have been and didn't have a chance to fully develop flavour on the tree. I picked it and bagged it, but separated it out as I wasn't sure how much use it would be. 1.5kg won't yield nearly enough juice to make a batch of anything with, but will make a good experiment to see a) how much juice I get from a given amount of fruit, b) how practical it is to separate the juice from the fruit, and c) what kind of flavour I can expect.

If need be, I could freeze that juice then extract the concentrate as it thaws and see how that tastes - I might even be able to use it for topping up.

I like your idea, though. How strong does the juice need to taste in order to be useful in making hard cider? I ask because Loquats have a lot of water in them, and I don't always find their juice as flavoursome as orange juice, for instance - hence why I've gone down the concentrate path before.

 

[Pataka]

I've just finished juicing the B-grade loquats, and must have been a little off with my measurements. At any rate, I can confirm I got pretty well bang on a litre of usable juice from roughly 2kg of fruit, and even though they were the fruit I thought were rubbish, the juice tastes somewhere between good and very good, although not overly sweet (this was expected with the batch of fruit in question). I juiced them by thawing them in a pot over a medium heat, stirring the whole time so none actually began to cook, then mashed with a potato masher. Filtering the juice was easy to begin with as I just used a colander, but filtering that through my makeshift muslin filter took a bit. In both cases, there was plenty of juice still in the fruit pulp, but not enough to make it worth expending effort getting it.

I've now still got my 14kg of fruit in the freezer, which should yield up to 7 litres of juice - plenty for what I need... plus the 1 litre of B grade juice which is still probably ok. I guess now I need to figure out whether my primary fermenter will be large enough to hold around 8 kg of fruit pulp.

 

[Pataka]

Revitalising this thread, my brew supplies arrived yesterday so I decided tonight to make a start at my first batch. Since my last post, I made an experimental batch of 1L of apple cider, to prove the concept of 'ultra-small batch brewing'. While the results weren't great (as expected, since I used bakers yeast) it proved the viability of the idea.

My starting must is a mixture of Loquat juice, loquat juice concentrate (made through freeze/thaw concentration), and water. I used the concentrate to up the SG. Starting SG was around 1.056, which should yield approx 6% ABV. It's sitting overnight with pectic enzyme before I pitch the yeast tomorrow. I'll be using EC-1118, since that's what seems to be recommended in a lot of places as a reasonable Cider yeast.

I enjoyed playing with the concentrates. For the heck of it, I measured the SG and it came out at around 1.100. Makes me wonder what you'd get if you managed to produce enough of that and threw some yeast at it. Wine, obviously, but with a very strong flavour?

Cider brew begins tomorrow.

 

[Pataka]

Primary is well and truly underway. It took about 24 hours after pitching the yeast for me to notice any real activity, and the following day I brought it inside (it was out in the garage) to give it a little more warmth. Later that day, it was bubbling and frothing away happily.

I got my calculations wrong, as I used the first Hydrometer that arrived with the very top missing (damaged in transit) so didn't weigh as much and was reading higher than the actual SG. It was 1.045, but interestingly, I needed to add some concentrate to boost it up. I juiced some more fruit last night, and found that raw juice is exactly that SG. Perhaps the batch I am fermenting just didn't have as much sugar in it?

My plan is to ferment in primary until the SG reaches a certain point. I haven't decided exactly where that is yet. I'm expecting at least 2 weeks.

 

[Pataka]

Day 5 today of primary, and I made a spur of the moment decision to rack it into secondary. The reason being, I took the airlock off (I'm using an almost-closed lid as an airlock for this brew) and smelt it, and while the cider smelt fine, I could detect a hint of something else funky from around the very top. I suspect that, when it was particularly foamy, a small amount leaked out and had gotten contaminated. As I only have one fermentation vessel free, I decided to rack the cider into a temporary container so I could clean and sanitise the original. I did just that, and then racked it back into the main vessel once it was clean again.

I did an SG reading while I was at it, and it's at 1.015 (down from OG 1.045). Tasted a small amount, and it's very very nice already. Not bad for a proof of concept brew. So it's in secondary now, with the fermentation a little slower. Hopefully it should pick up again within the next day or so. That was certainly the case with my wine anyway.

 

[Pataka]

It will be 3 weeks since I began the fermentation of my PoC loquat cider on thursday. I've had some interesting Sulphur smells during secondary, but they seem to have faded over time. Fermentation has now completed and it's clearing very nicely. I have two 600mL soft drink bottles which I'm going to bottle it in, and try carbonating it. Just waiting for it to reach the stage I can read a newspaper through it. before I even think about it. Going by the rate at which it has been clearing so far, I'd estimate it's probably another week away.

Good to know Loquat juice clears so well if using pectic enzyme. I've still got a lot of them stored in my freezer, so if this is a big enough success, I'll have a shot at a full size batch. My sole carboy still has my Loquat wine in it, but that has been stabilised last week and now I'm waiting to be sure fermentation won't restart before I bottle it.

Assuming a) the wine is bottled and b) the Cider is halfway decent, I'll probably see about making a gallon batch next.

 

[Pataka]

I've been discussing this in another thread, but felt I should update this one. I am updating this thread because there seems to be a real lack of much online relating to people making cider from Loquats. Hopefully, this can eventually serve as a reference for others.

My first PoC batch of Loquat cider is about to be dumped. Not because of any failure (in the sense of unwanted bacteria, contamination, mould etc) but because it's not really drinkable. Subsequent queries and responses have put this down to the fact I used ec1118, which is a powerful yeast and apparently tends to eat away at the flavour. That's certainly true for this. I was left with a cider that was incredibly dry, lacking in any body, and quite tart.

So I'm onto preparing batch two. I bought some Nottingham Ale yeast yesterday, as several have recommended I try that. I've also run a side experiment to see if wild yeast survives being frozen, and it does. What I'm thinking of doing is splitting the batch into two - one made with wild yeast, one made with Nottingham. Both will be small batches (1L or less). I'll also probably start with juice that has been freeze concentrated, so boost the potential flavour and gravity.

I have hope that Loquats can make decent cider. At the same time as I was making Loquat cider, I also had a batch of Apple cider fermenting. I stopped them both at the same time, and the loquat was more flavoursome than the apple was. I figure that shows that, if I choose the right yeast, it should be quite drinkable.

 

[Pataka]

Trial run #2 is underway, this time with two separate batches. One is a very small batch (just a jam jar full) using wild yeast, and the other is a little under 1L, using Nottingham. The wild yeast will get a head start over the Nottingham, as that one is waiting the standard 24 hours after having sulphites added. Tomorrow, I'll pitch the yeast.

Both are at 1.060. I had to dilute the wild yeast batch with water slightly. Both batches were made up with concentrated juice, and I didn't quite get the proportions right on the wild batch, so had to balance it.

Hoping that tomorrow I see bubbles return to the wild yeast batch.

 

[Pataka]

My batch of Loquat cider has more or less finished fermenting, and due to the high amount of lees that it has been sitting on for a while, I decided I should rack it last night. As I did, I tasted it. The verdict: tart, bland, and uninspiring.

So, that's 6 different batches of Cider I have attempted that have all either failed, or come out as rubbish. The batches:

1) Store bought Apple Juice, using bakers yeast. (What did I expect, other than for this to taste like rubbish?)
2) Store bought Apple Juice (same brand as previous) but using EC1118. Tasted like watery water, with a hint of tartness.
3) Loquat juice, using EC1118. Tasted like slightly less watery water than the previous, but still completely undrinkable.
4) Store bought Apple juice using Nottingham yeast - spent days and days trying to get the ferment to start, eventually I gave up. A later trial with EC1118 proved that the juice wasn't treated with preservatives.
5) Loquat juice using wild yeast - it started well, but eventually developed that telltale 'acidic' smell that suggested I was well on the way toward making vinegar.
6) Loquat juice using Nottingham - the miracle batch that somehow started fermenting, despite numerous failed attempts with the store bought apple juice. Except it tasted a bit so so. Probably drinkable if you just wanted alcohol, but that's not what I brew for.


The verdict I came to a few weeks back is, I'm wasting my time trying to make good cider. My first ever batch of wine came out superb; I'm yet to make a batch of cider that ends in anything other than disappointment. You could argue I've made bad choices of yeast for at least three of them, but I've also read stories from people who have successfully made good cider with EC1118 and bakers yeast.

So I think I'll focus on wine for a while.

 

[kiai]

For anyone looking to make loquat cider, I've made it successfully. See here: re-loquat-cider-has-anyone-tried-making-it.436052/