Is Cider the fastest fermenting beverage there is?

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NeverDie said:
Interesting. Is there any way to describe how the sugar fermentation flavor differs from the other two (aside from the sugar that is)?
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Or a a comparison, pour a shot of cheap white rum into 8oz of water and taste it. Then do the same thing with a scotch, bourbon, non sour mash whiskey and a decent brandy or cognac and compare.
Cheap Rum - sugar (some cheap may be corn based)
Whiskey/scotch malt based
Sour-mash malt with a unique flavor from the souring
Brandy is fruit based sugar.

Dropping a shot into a cup of still water will diffuse the flavors and let you taste some of the nuances of the spirit.
 
NeverDie said:
At least for now I'm stopping the fermentation by putting it in the refrigerator until I decide what to do next with it.
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LOL. That Red Star Premier Cuvee continues to ferment even in the refrigerator! Dang, what do I have to do, freeze it? I'd rather not nuke it with chemicals....
 
S-Met said:
You really should spend some time reading some books on fermentation and dive more into this forum. Almost any question you can have has already been asked dozens of times, if not more.
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Are there any books on fermentation that you find to be head and shoulders above the rest? I've started a short-list from an earlier forum recommendation, but those would be the ones I'd most want to read. i.e. not the wikipedia-ish version, but something immensely practical.
 
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NeverDie said:
LOL. That Red Star Premier Cuvee continues to ferment even in the refrigerator! Dang, what do I have to do, freeze it? I'd rather not nuke it with chemicals....
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First it may not be fermenting. It might just be releasing trapped CO2. 3 of my brews were bubbling away till I degassed them. then they went still.
if it is fermenting then place your carboy in a large stock pot with water at least half way up the bottle and raise the water temp to 180 or so and hold it there till you are sure the liquid in the bottle is the same temp for 10-15 min. Pasteurization!

[EDIT] Ok this isn't quite right, it was written from memory of reading this post https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/easy-stove-top-pasteurizing-with-pics.193295/
 
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NeverDie said:
Are there any books on fermentation that you find to be head and shoulders above the rest? I've started a short-list from an earlier forum recommendation, but those would be the ones I'd most want to read. i.e. not the wikipedia-ish version, but something immensely practical.
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Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation by Chris White (founder of White Labs) gets high marks. While being beer oriented, the principles apply to anything fermented.
 
I think I heard her talk about that speed Brewing book. The ideas low gravity recipes that go quick. I don't add sugar to my cider for that very reason, I figure it will be better sooner.

For a quick beer brewing check out my quick Brewing threads I have two or three of them. Also many of us are now tinkering with no boil Brewing. And I remain pretty confident that a quality beer can be made by just adding DME water Hops and yeast to a bucket. With a modest 45-minute boil and mash I get 5 gallons done in 2 and 1/2 hours and 10 gallons in 3 including clean up. I am very clear that it is physical though and I brew entirely manually without any holes in my kettle. Sadly, I'm getting older and it's hard to lift 11 gallons of wort in the 15 gallon Kettle & Tilt it into the fermenting buckets because it's so close to the top. I would have no problem in a 20 gallon pot.
 
Blacksmith1 said:
First it may not be fermenting. It might just be releasing trapped CO2. 3 of my brews were bubbling away till I degassed them. then they went still. if it is fermenting then place your carboy in a large stock pot with water at least half way up the bottle and raise the water temp to 180 or so and hold it there till you are sure the liquid in the bottle is the same temp for 10-15 min. Pasteurization!
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Funny thing: I took it out of the refrigerator and was going to dump it down the drain. Then I thought: oh heck, let's just try it one last time before I do. So I did. And guess what? Just refrigerating it for that period of time somehow improved the flavor by a lot. Go figure.
 
Maylar said:
Hard cider needs some acid bite and tannin to be well balanced, and the juice that makes the best cider would need sharp and bittersharp apples that would be "spitters" to eat.
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Where does one get that type of juice? Is it sold as a concentrate? Would juicing granny smith apples approximate it? I'm just trying to think of what I can get my hands on other than the typical apple juice, which apparently isn't "the good stuff." I have a juicer, but I don't know that I've ever seen true cider apples in the store. Not like what you're describing.
 
Blacksmith1 said:
First it may not be fermenting. It might just be releasing trapped CO2. 3 of my brews were bubbling away till I degassed them. then they went still. if it is fermenting then place your carboy in a large stock pot with water at least half way up the bottle and raise the water temp to 180 or so and hold it there till you are sure the liquid in the bottle is the same temp for 10-15 min. Pasteurization!
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Hmm.. The boiling point of alcohol is 173F (at sea level, so even lower at higher altitudes). Maybe taking it to 160F for a shorter length of time would suffice?
 
I could be wrong about the temp. there is a sticky on one of the wine.mead,cider forums here about stove top pasteurization.
 
Blacksmith1 said:
I could be wrong about the temp. there is a sticky on one of the wine.mead,cider forums here about stove top pasteurization.
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OK, I just now looked it up. According to the FDA (https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/orau/pasteurization/PAS_04_summary.htm), for apple juice 160F for 6 seconds is sufficient.

Good to know!

I suppose afterward I'd want to surround it in ice to bring the temp back down as quickly as possible, so as to minimize losses of whatever might evaporating at the higher temps.
 
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dmtaylor said:
I've tasted >150 commercial ciders. The following are several world-class ones that I've tasted more than once, in random order.

Champlain Orchards Original Vermont Hard Cider
Domaine Dupont Etienne Dupont Cidre Bouché Brut de Normandie
Island Orchard Brut Apple Cider
Original Sin (the original, with no fancy ingredients or names)
Von Stiehl Schmiling Bros. Cider
Farnum Hill Semi-Dry Cider
ACE / California Cider Apple Hard Cider (the original only, without any crap in it)
Crispin Brown's Lane (LOVE this stuff)
Seattle Semi-Sweet

Notice that Angry Orchard, etc., do NOT make the cut. I think they've brought a good one or two examples to festivals but I can't remember what they were called. But anything that is highly commercial that you find on the shelf is garbage... except for that Brown's Lane (oh, yum...).

Cheers.
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Most of the ciders available at the local stores turn out to be those made by local brewers. However, I was able to find the ACE (without any crap in it), which is dry, and the Crispin, which is also dry. I tried both. While interesting, I think it confirmed that... probably semi-sweet or semi-dry is more my thing.

Therefore, I'd like to try the Seattle Semi-Sweet, which I'm guessing (?) is the only non-dry one on your list. Is there an especially good online seller for that?

[Edit: And/or the Farnum Hill Semi-Dry Cider ]
 
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NeverDie said:
Most of the ciders available at the local stores turn out to be those made by local brewers. However, I was able to find the ACE (without any crap in it), which is dry, and the Crispin, which is also dry. I tried both. While interesting, I think it confirmed that... probably semi-sweet or semi-dry is more my thing.

Therefore, I'd like to try the Seattle Semi-Sweet, which I'm guessing (?) is the only non-dry one on your list. Is there an especially good online seller for that?
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Glad to see you're looking into these. The ACE is indeed extremely dry and tart, about as tart as they get. The Crispin Brown's Lane has an added funkiness, which is either from the English apples, or from oak, or maybe both.

The Domaine Dupont is also semi-sweet. A lot of French ciders are done that way. They purposely strip the cider of nutrients during fermentation to make the yeast quit early, the call it 'defecation' but the more politically correct term is keeving. By not adding nutrients to my own ciders, and fermenting cold about 54 F then cold crashing when close to finished, I kind of half-assedly am trying to do the same kind of thing, to preserve more sweetness in a natural way.

I don't buy my ciders online, so I can't help you there. Honestly, I'm not even sure where I bought any of these. I buy very few ciders locally here. But I travel a lot all over the US, and what I like to do is whenever I go to a big city like Boston or Minneapolis or San Diego or whatever, I look up a liquor store with good reviews and pay a visit, and usually walk out with $50-$100 worth of various cider and beer. That's where I get most of these. If you don't travel at all... maybe you should! ;)

I actually do prefer a semi-sweet to semi-dry cider; however, very good tasty versions are also very rare because cider is naturally quite dry, and the ciders that taste the best aren't meddled with or backsweetened significantly. When ciders are backsweetened, they taste more artificial like they were forced to be sweet. Sweeter versions also tend to have sorbate and sulfites. While I don't think my palate is sensitive to those chemicals, you've shown me today that almost all my favorite ciders are actually quite dry, and I never knew that about myself and always thought I preferred semi-sweet to semi-dry, just like you. But maybe I don't!? I don't really love bone-dry ciders. But I do love me a semi-dry. I'll bet a lot of my examples actually qualify more as semi-dry than bone-dry. But yeah.... when I taste any cider that is quite tart and quite dry, perhaps my subconscious is telling me: "THIS, THIS RIGHT HERE, is what a REAL cider REALLY is." Because it's true, really!

A few more good ones you can try that are a bit sweeter:

Citizen Unified Press Cider (semi-dry)
Magner's Original Irish (quite sweet but with a little tasty Irish funk)
Sprecher Cidre de Pomme (French style semi-sweet, probably only in Wisconsin)
Stillmank Eastcider (semi-dry, probably only in Wisconsin)
 
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NeverDie said:
Where does one get that type of juice? Is it sold as a concentrate? Would juicing granny smith apples approximate it? I'm just trying to think of what I can get my hands on other than the typical apple juice, which apparently isn't "the good stuff." I have a juicer, but I don't know that I've ever seen true cider apples in the store. Not like what you're describing.
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Where do you live? Are you in apple land? I get my juice from a local orchard cider mill that presses a special blend for hard cider one day a year. There are mills like that in most apple growing regions.

That said, you can make good cider from most anything once you learn how to make adjustments at the end. Pappy's Pub Cider uses Mott's apple juice and he's won medals with it.

We're blessed here in that this community has folks from all walks of life. Some press juice from whatever apples are growing on their trees. Some use local orchard cider. Some use frozen concentrate. Some use grocery store juice. It all works, even if "world class" cider is out of reach. Using a proper protocol and selecting the right yeast will give you the best possible outcome from whatever juice is available to you.
 
I ordered six gallons of Vermont juice from my local HBS; it was late in arriving because the weather had been bad. I decided to ferment it with Wyeast Sweet cider and mead yeast (husband likes a sweet cider). LOTS of sediment, as I expected. I had also added some k-meta (I don't know if it was the k-meta or the juice) several hours before adding the juice. The primary fermentation was very sulfurous; after it stopped I racked it into a 3-gal carboy, a 1-gal jug, and a wine bottle (the rest was sediment) and topped them off with apple juice concentrate. I'm getting a very vigorous secondary fermentation (It's been at least a couple of weeks now) and more sediment (it took a while for it to sink to the bottom); no sulfur smell. I'm looking forward to that first taste!
 
Maylar said:
Where do you live?
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Austin, Texas, so kind of a desert. The climate is drought interrupted mainly by flash floods. Not really sure what the apple situation is here and about. There is a town called Fredericksburg about 90 minutes west that grows a lot of wine grapes (the local version of Nappa valley, I guess) and a lot of peaches. In fact there's a vinyard practically everywhere you can point and a wine tasting room about every 100 feet. Seems like it must be insanely competitive, but you wouldn't know it from their prices. Locally, there do seem to be a lot of micro-breweries around, but I suppose the same can be said for just about everywhere else (well, maybe not Utah).
 
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OK. You're not in an area where apples thrive, and not likely to find the varietals that make perfect cider. Pay attention to the posts about frozen concentrate, that's probably your best choice. Adjuncts like acid, tannin and oaking can turn a meh cider into something very nice.
 
Maylar said:
OK. You're not in an area where apples thrive, and not likely to find the varietals that make perfect cider. Pay attention to the posts about frozen concentrate, that's probably your best choice. Adjuncts like acid, tannin and oaking can turn a meh cider into something very nice.
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Maybe juicing store bought apples is an option as well. CvilleKevin wrote: " Everything made with the above yeasts has come out good. The first seven keg batches this season were with Jonathan juice which is good and tart, and so far the S04 and Nottingham taste the best of those. The five batches in secondary were made with Stayman, Granny smith and Golden delicious, and the US05 and S04 cyser are the most promising so far. " ( https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/results-from-juice-yeast-and-sugar-experiments.83060/) Not sure about overseas, but those types of apples would be available to virtually anyone at grocery stores in the US.
 
applescrap said:
pps-what does fermented grape juice, pineapple juice, black cherry, cranberry juice, etc...taste like. I have been wondering?
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i'm sorry i only made it to the bottom of the first page, but had to give a LOL...You don't know what fermented grape juice tastes like? have you been living under a rock? :tank:
 
dmtaylor said:
Well gosh, Austin Eastciders makes a decent cider. Also Argus, that's from someplace in Texas. I haven't drank a lot of those but they seemed pretty decent when I tasted them.
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I just now tried an Austin Eastcider, and although I would prefer it over beer, I happen to think that my own noob cider, made with pastreurized AJ and cans of FAJC packs a lot more flavor after S-04 fermenting than the EastCiders does. I'm going to try making it again tomorrow, but this time using D47 yeast, which allegedly preserves even more of the source apple flavor.
 
bmd2k1 said:
Curious what ur typical Cotes protocol is - OG, FG, batch size, ferm temp & time, cold crash? Lees? etc
[emoji111]
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OG ~1.050, FG ~1.005 (IF possible), batch size varies from 1-3 gallons, pitch and ferment at 54-60 F for ~4 months, racking to secondary in the second week and then to tertiary after about 1 month. Cold crash when it hits gravity of 1.005-1.010. At the tail end when I feel it's stable enough to bottle (~4 months-ish), add gelatin if needed to clear, let that sit for a week or so, then bottle.

Zero nutrients, zero pectinase, zero sulfites or sorbates, zero additives besides gelatin unless OG is <1.045 then I'll add an ounce or three of sugar but that's all. Keep it simple.

For me it's a very slow lazy process. I actually have to smack myself once in a while to see how things are going, as sometimes I'll totally forget about the cider for a month or two before I even look at it again. This doesn't hurt anything except it might come out more dry than I prefer. I like an FG of 1.005 for the right semi-dryness, but if it goes more dry than that, I don't worry, I just add xylitol.

Cheers.
 
dmtaylor said:
OG ~1.050, FG ~1.005 (IF possible), batch size varies from 1-3 gallons, pitch and ferment at 54-60 F for ~4 months, racking to secondary in the second week and then to tertiary after about 1 month. Cold crash when it hits gravity of 1.005-1.010. At the tail end when I feel it's stable enough to bottle (~4 months-ish), add gelatin if needed to clear, let that sit for a week or so, then bottle.

Zero nutrients, zero pectinase, zero sulfites or sorbates, zero additives besides gelatin unless OG is <1.045 then I'll add an ounce or three of sugar but that's all. Keep it simple.

For me it's a very slow lazy process. I actually have to smack myself once in a while to see how things are going, as sometimes I'll totally forget about the cider for a month or two before I even look at it again. This doesn't hurt anything except it might come out more dry than I prefer. I like an FG of 1.005 for the right semi-dryness, but if it goes more dry than that, I don't worry, I just add xylitol.

Cheers.
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Thanks for sharing DM!

My KISS protocol has been working great using S04 (lower & mid ABV ciders) & D47(for high ABV ice ciders). I don't use any chemicals either -- only FAJC upfront to adjust SG. I don't do multiple rackings -- only back into 1gal containers after cold crashing (...and hopefully soon into corny keys). I'm wondering outloud how well Cotes cold crashes at SG's in the 1.01 - 1.025 range...as I prefer semi-sweet & sweet ciders...hmmm. Guess I will need to fire up a batch and test it myself. As I mentioned in another post somewhere here - got to chatting up the Cider-Master at Tandem Ciders in Northern Michigan...and they use Cotes exclusively at this point...for all their ciders. I didn't get the opportunity to pick his brain about how they reach FG - their offerings had a variety of RS %s.

Cheers!
 
bmd2k1 said:
I'm wondering outloud how well Cotes cold crashes at SG's in the 1.01 - 1.025 range...as I prefer semi-sweet & sweet ciders...hmmm. Guess I will need to fire up a batch and test it myself. As I mentioned in another post somewhere here - got to chatting up the Cider-Master at Tandem Ciders in Northern Michigan...and they use Cotes exclusively at this point...for all their ciders. I didn't get the opportunity to pick his brain about how they reach FG - their offerings had a variety of RS %s.
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In my experience, CdB will continue to chug slowly even at cold temps 32-40 F. That's part of the reason I use gelatin and keep cold for an extended period, to remove most of the yeast and to allow the cells that remain to finish the job as much as they want before declaring the fermentation complete. Ferm isn't necessarily complete when we want it to be, it's when THEY want it to be. And every batch is slightly different, some need more time than others.

Meanwhile my perry with CdB was all done fermenting with zero further activity after only like one month. I intend to blend the perry with some of my cider, but won't do that until they're all done with the cider. Then I'll do about 2/3 perry and 1/3 cider, and bottle it as a "pider".
 
Solid dm. Its nice knowing how someone aspiring excellence in this craft goes about things. So the cider is bottled dry, if I got that right. And carbonated? Sounds delicious. I need to try some dry ciders.

I see where methods collide and diverge and misunderstandings happen. How do you do that is a question I dont ask enough. Heres my next batch, as you can see neverdie its cloudy and will take some time. Haha, left the carriers on for easy travel. Sprayed down the bottles with starsan and used premier blanc(just what I started with off amazon). 1/2 tsp nutrient per gallon, no sulfur smell. I still cant find a good reason to remove the juice from its sterile environment. I will drink it when the keg kicks. Camden and sorbate and backsweetened with some of the most expensive blackcherry juice I can find.
Screenshot_2019-01-17-20-22-13.jpeg
 
applescrap said:
I still cant find a good reason to remove the juice from its sterile environment. View attachment 607775
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How about this? Very often flexible plastics, like those bottles in your photo, are made with BPA. One might then ask whether the alcohol that develops during fermentation might leech out BPA from the plastic into your beverage. Glass would not have that issue, so if you can buy your AJ in glass containers, you might want to. Then you could leave the sterile juice in the container, just as you do now, without BPA worries.
 
Yes, theres that, dammit. Great idea on the glass. That sounds much better. I dont like plastics, but I fermenters are too. That plastic is labeled I am sure. Do you know what number is safe?
 
applescrap said:
Yes, theres that, dammit. Great idea on the glass. That sounds much better. I dont like plastics, but I fermenters are too. That plastic is labeled I am sure. Do you know what number is safe?
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Not sure. I think there may be more to it than just that, relating to the quality and/or purity of the resin. You want something that's rated as "food safe" and maybe NSF rated and "BPA free" for good measure. There's so much stuff that's counterfeit from China these days though that it's hard to ever really be sure anymore, even if it appears to be a recognized non-Chinese brand. The knock-offs are everywhere, and you can be sure that the last thing those guys doing those knockoffs care about is your safety.
 

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