oljimmy
Well-Known Member
Hey everyone,
Been cracking open the bottles from an awesome, tasty, and popular batch of cider and I thought I'd share what I've learned over a 4-year process of experimentation, learning, and talking to craft producers large and small. Many of you know this stuff already but I just wanted to record it for the interested, and I understand that you may disagree with me.
1. Orchard juice.... we all know this is ideal. But for $15 you can get a kit that will help you test the malic acid content before you buy it. Any juice above 6.5 g/l is just not worth the risk, IMHO. That level of acid will very likely dominate the end flavor, no matter what you do. Malo-Lactic Fermentation is unpredictable and not a reliable method of acidity-reduction unless you know your system/environment delivers it.
2. With all due respect to the great sticky on this forum, yeast might not be as important as you think it is. I've varied yeasts, from Nottingham to Montrachet D47 to 71b, and to be honest the differences are (in my opinion) very minor compared to the things I'm listing here. Apple sugars are fully fermentable, so choosing an ale yeast usually doesn't really give you much of a sweeter final product, and "flocculation" is irrelevant since you'll be doing a long, clarifying secondary anyway (#5). If I had to put numbers on this, I'd say that with cider, 70% of the quality is in the initial juice, 25% is in your process, 5% is in the yeast. Choose a proven cider-yeast, but don't stress about it. [Edit: OK, maybe 10%, I might be persuaded that yeast selection can make a difference in attenuation.]
3. Forget yeast nutrients. Cider-makers all over the world highly prize orchards which deliver low-nutrient juice, because it is much easier to 'naturally' produce a cider in the 1.002-1.008 range: the yeast just run out of nitrogen, starve, and stop eating sugar. Adding DAP/fermaid just ensures that your cider will almost certainly run bone dry. Put another way: if your cider has stopped fermenting at 1.008, it is not "stuck", it's "great cider"!
4. Slow fermentation as you move through the 1.020-1.000 range. The best way to ensure this is to cold-crash and rack to secondary at 1.020, keeping temps in the 50-60F range if possible. This requires that you keep an eye on fermentation: when the real vigorous activity has died down, you're probably in the 1.020s or low 30s, and you should begin regular gravity-testing.
5. Four months in secondary, minimum, preferably 6-8, 10 if you're patient. There's a reason zero craft producers skip this step. Deciding to forego a long secondary is just deciding to make lower-quality cider.
6. If (as is very likely) your cider finishes below your target sweetness, home cider makers should backsweeten with Orchard-juice, not AJ concentrate or Stevia, then either (a) stove-top pasteurize or (b) get all the cider into a fridge to halt the fermentation. For moderate carbonation, add a little extra juice and wait 'till it's carbonated before pasteurizing/refrigerating. Adding K-Meta/Sorbate to neutralize the yeast here doesn't always work and has (in one of my test batches) produced serious off-flavors. Stove-top pasteurization does not, according to a blind-test I did with three tasters, perceptibly alter the flavor.
Add pectinase to the orchard juice before sweetening to eliminate unwanted haze/cloudiness. Juice concentrate is vastly inferior as a sweetener, real juice is just awesome by comparison. I wasted a couple of batches before I realized that AJC was producing the off-flavors.
If you manage to do these things, I'm 98% sure you'll end up with a smooth, full-bodied, apple-y cider that stacks up to what most craft producers are making.
Been cracking open the bottles from an awesome, tasty, and popular batch of cider and I thought I'd share what I've learned over a 4-year process of experimentation, learning, and talking to craft producers large and small. Many of you know this stuff already but I just wanted to record it for the interested, and I understand that you may disagree with me.
1. Orchard juice.... we all know this is ideal. But for $15 you can get a kit that will help you test the malic acid content before you buy it. Any juice above 6.5 g/l is just not worth the risk, IMHO. That level of acid will very likely dominate the end flavor, no matter what you do. Malo-Lactic Fermentation is unpredictable and not a reliable method of acidity-reduction unless you know your system/environment delivers it.
2. With all due respect to the great sticky on this forum, yeast might not be as important as you think it is. I've varied yeasts, from Nottingham to Montrachet D47 to 71b, and to be honest the differences are (in my opinion) very minor compared to the things I'm listing here. Apple sugars are fully fermentable, so choosing an ale yeast usually doesn't really give you much of a sweeter final product, and "flocculation" is irrelevant since you'll be doing a long, clarifying secondary anyway (#5). If I had to put numbers on this, I'd say that with cider, 70% of the quality is in the initial juice, 25% is in your process, 5% is in the yeast. Choose a proven cider-yeast, but don't stress about it. [Edit: OK, maybe 10%, I might be persuaded that yeast selection can make a difference in attenuation.]
3. Forget yeast nutrients. Cider-makers all over the world highly prize orchards which deliver low-nutrient juice, because it is much easier to 'naturally' produce a cider in the 1.002-1.008 range: the yeast just run out of nitrogen, starve, and stop eating sugar. Adding DAP/fermaid just ensures that your cider will almost certainly run bone dry. Put another way: if your cider has stopped fermenting at 1.008, it is not "stuck", it's "great cider"!
4. Slow fermentation as you move through the 1.020-1.000 range. The best way to ensure this is to cold-crash and rack to secondary at 1.020, keeping temps in the 50-60F range if possible. This requires that you keep an eye on fermentation: when the real vigorous activity has died down, you're probably in the 1.020s or low 30s, and you should begin regular gravity-testing.
5. Four months in secondary, minimum, preferably 6-8, 10 if you're patient. There's a reason zero craft producers skip this step. Deciding to forego a long secondary is just deciding to make lower-quality cider.
6. If (as is very likely) your cider finishes below your target sweetness, home cider makers should backsweeten with Orchard-juice, not AJ concentrate or Stevia, then either (a) stove-top pasteurize or (b) get all the cider into a fridge to halt the fermentation. For moderate carbonation, add a little extra juice and wait 'till it's carbonated before pasteurizing/refrigerating. Adding K-Meta/Sorbate to neutralize the yeast here doesn't always work and has (in one of my test batches) produced serious off-flavors. Stove-top pasteurization does not, according to a blind-test I did with three tasters, perceptibly alter the flavor.
Add pectinase to the orchard juice before sweetening to eliminate unwanted haze/cloudiness. Juice concentrate is vastly inferior as a sweetener, real juice is just awesome by comparison. I wasted a couple of batches before I realized that AJC was producing the off-flavors.
If you manage to do these things, I'm 98% sure you'll end up with a smooth, full-bodied, apple-y cider that stacks up to what most craft producers are making.
