Advice on Cider from "store bought" juice

[Chalkyt]

For the first time, this year I don't have any of my own apples. The drought, bushfires, very hot weather and wind this summer all took their toll, even up here in the foothills of the mountains. We just watched small apples fall off the trees. The only survivors were a few crab apples. The nearest local apple growing and cider area (Batlow) was absolutely trashed by the bushfires so there aren't many apples for sale over there as they need all they have just to survive.

So, I have preservative free Granny Smith and Pink Lady juice coming from Summer Snow orchard in Victoria. (The name comes from an early summer cold spell that trashed their orchard some years ago).

After scratting and pressing my own apples I normally go through a few days of Campden tablets and Pectinase before adding the yeast. Is there any point in doing this with bought juice from the orchard? Or, do I just add the yeast (WLP775) and let it go?

I tried some supermarket "preservative free" juice a few months ago using SO4 (because I had it). The result was sort of O.K. but a bit insipid despite doing the lime and black tea trick. It tastes as though it might benefit from dry hopping or something like that.

I am hoping that a blend (don't know what proportions yet) of Pink Lady and Granny Smith with the few crabs that I have might be a bit more like the tasty blend I get from my own assorted apples.

All advice is welcome.

 

[doublejef]

So, I have preservative free Granny Smith and Pink Lady juice coming from Summer Snow orchard in Victoria. (The name comes from an early summer cold spell that trashed their orchard some years ago).

After scratting and pressing my own apples I normally go through a few days of Campden tablets and Pectinase before adding the yeast. Is there any point in doing this with bought juice from the orchard? Or, do I just add the yeast (WLP775) and let it go?

I guess if it's preservative free, it is also pasteurized so there is no need to add any kind of sulfite like campden. You can add pectinase if you want a clear cider. As it doesn't work good in alcool presence, I use to add it in the same time with yeast so it has enough time to do the job before alcool is coming. Works good for me. So, just pour the juice in a clean and sanitized bucket and add your yeast and pectinase if you want to.

 

[bmd2k1]

...just add the yeast and let it go!

I use store bought all the time + FAJC and make some darn tasty stuff...ranging from faux ice cider in the ABV 14%'s to regular ciders in the 6-8% range. I typically will add 100% fruit juice concentrates post fermentation to the lower ABV varieties to produce a rainbow of flavors (www.brownwoodacres.com) -- and have also really embraced the Brewer's Best Watermelon natural flavoring -- and have a few others to try.

Cheers & good luck.

 

[bernardsmith]

Certainly in NY apples used for apple juice and non alcoholic "cider" (to me that is an oxymoron, but that is another story) are far less acidic and far flavor-rich than apples grown for hard cider. It's very similar to using table grapes to make a wine... and that is like trying to race in the Traverse on Clydesdale here in Saratoga. The issue is not simply the lack of tannin. Historically, cider apples wouldn't be eaten as a fruit. So I don't know how anyone can make a good cider using eating apples. But if that's all that there are then I would suggest looking for the best blend of apples you can find.

 

[Chalkyt]

Thanks for the replies. The juice turned up yesterday and without tasting I made the "executive decision" to get Pink Lady and Granny Smith. Pink Lady is used a lot here in Oz as a base juice to which more traditional cider apple are added. Granny Smith is somewhat tart and seemed to be the best of the rest as all the other juices available are real drinking juices (Fuji, Golden Delicious, etc). I actually made a Granny Smith batch from my tree some years ago. It wasn't all that flash initially but improved a lot over 12 months. So... I've got what I've got plus a small number of my own Crimson Knight Crabs.

I am still waiting for the WLP775. I ordered it a week ago and it is supposed to be sent in a cool pack but with Covid 19 closing the place down, everyone is ordering stuff on-line so the suppliers are struggling to keep up and Australia Post is being trashed with deliveries taking much longer than usual. It is late Autumn (Fall) here so I hope that the transit temperatures have been cool enough for the yeast to survive the journey.

 

[pants404]

Thanks for the replies. The juice turned up yesterday and without tasting I made the "executive decision" to get Pink Lady and Granny Smith. Pink Lady is used a lot here in Oz as a base juice to which more traditional cider apple are added. Granny Smith is somewhat tart and seemed to be the best of the rest as all the other juices available are real drinking juices (Fuji, Golden Delicious, etc). I actually made a Granny Smith batch from my tree some years ago. It wasn't all that flash initially but improved a lot over 12 months. So... I've got what I've got plus a small number of my own Crimson Knight Crabs.

I am still waiting for the WLP775. I ordered it a week ago and it is supposed to be sent in a cool pack but with Covid 19 closing the place down, everyone is ordering stuff on-line so the suppliers are struggling to keep up and Australia Post is being trashed with deliveries taking much longer than usual. It is late Autumn (Fall) here so I hope that the transit temperatures have been cool enough for the yeast to survive the journey.

Damn man, I in a very similar situation right now and am considering purchasing the same juice you mentioned, but 775 is out of stock so I'm going to go with s04.
I need to know what happened. How was the blend?

 

[Chalkyt]

Long answer to a simple question, but bear with me. It might help.

The blend back in 2020 worked O.K. and is a good fallback. This year, once again I had an apple shortage due to a heavy frost just as the fruit was forming in Spring. All part of the fun living high in the mountains... when Mother Nature strikes at the wrong time, you just have to live with it or fall back to bought juice.

The climate down in town near the lake is somewhat milder so I unexpectedly got hold of a load of "Golden" Delicious, or at least we think they are, from a friend whose tree was being attacked by Cockatoos (parrots). As well, for some reason my Granny Smiths survived the frost as did large "mystery" apples from a very old tree on my property. So, I will make a cider blending them when the Granny Smiths are fully ripe. The "mystery" apple tastes a lot like a Pink Lady, which it isn't, but that brings me to actually answering your question.

Because earlier on, I was concerned about not having many apples this year, I had ordered more single variety juice from the Summer Snow people. This time 50% Pink Lady, 30% Royal Gala, and 20% Golden Delicious. This was inspired by some cider that I tasted when visiting Willie Smith Cider in Tasmania. They use a similar blend plus unknown "cider apples", which of course I don't have. Just for fun, over summer I also made a straight Pink Lady cider using "Presafruit" juice, a new kid on the block that distributes cold pressed juice via the local supermarket. The straight Pink Lady was quite good as its TA is in the 4.5 to 6.0 g/L range, although pH can be a bit high at 3.8 - 4.0.

In each case the cider has been very good, but with the following interventions... Total Acidity was adjusted to 5.5g/L using Malic Acid (this also pulled pH down to below 3.8), and tannin powder was added at 0.05g/L (50ppm). As "insurance" against stalling (S04 is a high nutrient dependent yeast), I add about 1/8 tsp of DAP or Fermaid per 5 litres when SG from fermentation was down around 1.020.

There are two batches of the "Summer Snow" in progress. One with my usual go-to S04, and one with D47. I have been using dry yeasts since WLP775 is almost impossible to get here in Oz. The D47 completely fermented in 14 days, rested for a while and is now bottled and carbonated, but the S04 took a bit longer and isn't quite ready yet. There isn't a lot of difference between the two, but I am impressed with the D47.

The reason for trying the D47 is that SWMBO thinks the S04 cider is a bit "beery" for her tastes (understandable since it is an ale yeast, and the D47 isn't), even though I think it is great. BTW one of my older Summer Snow blends with S04 won the local Rural (Cooma) Show with 45/50 on the BJCP score sheet, so it wasn't too bad at all.

I generally bottle around 1.010 and hot waterbath pasteurise when the sealed bottle pressure from in-bottle carbonation reaches 2 bar/30psi at 20C. This pressure is reached at about SG 1.005 and results from the CO2 generated during fermenting down from 1.010 to 1.005. So, the bottles are carbonated to 2.5 volumes of CO2 (0.8 volumes of residual from the primary/secondary fermentation and 1.7 volumes from in-bottle fermentation down from1.010 to 1.005). The remaining unfermented 1.005 has 10g/L of residual sugar. This results in a lightly carbonated cider with a touch of sweetness, a bit like 1/2 teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee.

Of course, the bottling SG and the balance between carbonation and sweetness is entirely optional depending on the style of cider you are after.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

 

[DaveDiamond]

Just on apples in Australia, have you tried Bravo Apples? They way I describe their flavour is "like eating apple cider". So perhaps they might make a good cider.

 

[Chalkyt]

Thanks Dave. I hadn't heard of Bravo Apples, but I see that they should be readily available in Coles and Wollies. They seem to have a bit of a history like Pink Lady (Crisps Pink as a parent). I have used Pink Lady from Bellevue Orchards in Victoria as a base for some of my ciders this year (my apples trashed by frost yet again!) I will keep a look out to see if I can get hold of some at a sensible price, I certainly have found that a single variety Pink Lady from Presafruit makes quite a good cider.
Cheers!