Blending questions????

[Klickitat]

I have been making ciders for about six years now. It started out with unpasteurized gallon jugs and concentrates from the local grocery store. However as things moved on, I started making cider from picked apples.

With tasting of dozens of ciders and styles from craft cider industry, I have developed a taste for well rounded ciders and even though I have many old farmsteads with apples I do not recognize they all seem to end up in a cider but none give me what I am looking for.

The problem I am having is that I can not seem to get a well rounded cider that I am happy with and I know that I need to blend different types of apples. I started doing some of that, but blending different apples into the juice before fermentation seems like playing the lottery. That or it is going to take decades to come up with a recipe that I like and with the way fruit changes year to year, it still seems like luck.

So I can only assume that blending takes place after fermentation?

If that is a correct assumption, then how many categories of taste does one keep for blending? How long can you keep cider in storage for blending? Will it quit changing with age at some point if kept on glass or stainless? Do you have to take it off of the yeast cake and then it will stop? How long will it continue change if you leave it on the lees? What about kegging blending samples? Should each apple variety be pressed and fermented and then stored separately? Could or should you just juice and ferment categories together? Then to get really complicated, do you also blend according to yeast used with each verity?

I know this is a lot, but this topic is the reason joined this group. I decided to take my hobby seriously and move to the next level. Thanks for as much or as little help as you can provide.

 

[Maylar]

I'll start by saying that if you really are serious, you need to buy Claude Jolicoeur's book "The New Cider Maker's Handbook". It's pretty much the current reference work for craft ciders, and he has an entire chapter dedicated to blending.

It can get complicated. There's a difference between early, mid, and late season apples. One way to blend is to ferment varieties from each sub-season and blend them at the end.

This is above my level since I don't have access to a cider press, so I'm at the mercy of what the local cider mills can provide. Blending for a single pressing means collecting apples with the mix of acid, sugar and tannin that makes the character you're looking for.

Again though, do yourself a favor and pick up Jolicoeur's book.

 

[Klickitat]

Thanks, book will be here Monday.

 

[madscientist451]

You mention well rounded cider. What flavor characteristics are you trying to round off? Dessert apples are generally going to have higher acid than is optimal for hard cider. You'll need a low acid sweet apple and some tannic apples to balance that acidity.
So before embarking on blending, you'll have to get the right apples and/or juice to make a cider to blend with.
I know some commercial cideries make single variety cider and then blend, while others blend at the press and then then blend later.

 

[Klickitat]

I am looking at trying to set up a small cidery for myself that allows me to blend to what I want is all. I realize that I will need different types but was asking questions to try and figure things out. I ordered the book recommended above and will start there.