Wild Cider

[MarcGuay]

Hi folks,

I followed Sandor Katz' simple instructions for wild cider in his book "the Art of Fermentation" and after a few days have nothing but little white specs on top of my juice (likely mold) with a small trace of bubbles around the edge - no vigourous fermentation as promised. Any ideas?

The steps were basically:
1) Source some unpasteurized apple juice
2) Put it in a carboy, lightly covered and leave at room temp
3) It will foam like crazy (no such luck here)
4) When it chills out put an airlock in it and let sit 1-2 months
5) Rack to secondary, let sit another 1-2 months
6) Bottle

 

[TandemTails]

can you post a photo of the white specs? From my experience the skin of apples have enough natural yeast on them that you can skip the 'leave lightly covered' part and just attach an airlock (if you're using fresh pressed / unpasteurized juice). By leaving it lightly uncovered you might have let other bacteria get in there.

 

[dmtaylor]

Sounds like a great recipe for.... vinegar, not cider. Sandor Katz is cool, but I think he missed the mark here.

 

[2trout]

I don't think a few days is long enough to expect a vigorous fermentation from wild yeasts. What is the temp of the area you are fermenting in?

 

[madscientist451]

I make wild cider every year from my own pressed apples. It always kicks off, but not in a few days. Let it sit and check on it in about a month.
A slow fermentation is better with cider.
If you're worried, siphon off 3 quarts to a 1 gallon jug and ferment that wild and add some cider yeast to the rest.

 

[MarcGuay]

Thanks everyone. I followed his instructions for pasteurized juice yesterday: moved the juice to a wide-mouthed vessel, added a chopped apple and stirred regularly. It started bubbling fairly quickly. The few white specks just got mixed in with everything, hoping they were yeast rafts and not mold. I don't see any sign of them now because of the regular stirring. I had initially raised the temperature to 21-22c thinking that would help fermentation but read somewhere that cider prefers a lower temp slow ferment so I've dropped it as low as it can go for now (having a warm spell here), which is around 20c.

Update: I removed the apple chunks this morning and gave it another stir. It's sitting in the closet at 20c in a widemouth jar with plastic wrap over the lid and looking very fizzy/foamy. Any suggestions on what steps I should follow from this point? I have a carboy and airlock in which the juice doesn't quite go up to the neck, so I think I would have to add something to fill it properly.

Another update: After reading some more recipes I transferred it to the carboy with lots of headspace and airlocked it. The airlock is bubbling now and there's a healthy looking foam on the surface. It seems like the idea, at least one of the millions, is that after a week or two you top it up to the narrow part of the neck with apple juice and let it ride some more after that....