Jungle Cider II, III, IV....

[Rhu]

Morning All,

Jungle cider is 1 month old and not doing a lot other than sitting, so in order to keep myself busy I'm starting some other batches...all in the name of science you understand. Should be starting them over the next few days to give you guys a chance to tell me that I'm doing it all wrong..

Have just received a couple of packets each of Safale-04 and Belle Saison (research leads me to believe they're going to work better at higher temps. than some of the other options) and I've discovered that the SAMs Club 200miles up the road sell Tree Top Juice (not the cider, but if it's good enough for EdWort, it's good enough for me..at least for experimenting with)which will make things slightly less costly than shelling out $US20 per gallon for organic pressed juice.

So here goes, I'm only going to write 3 recipes but I'm going to make each one twice - once with each yeast..I'll be making a gallon of each using the glass jugs the last lot of pressed juice came in.

Jungle Cider II
Simple...

Tree top Apple Juice
Yeast (1g)
Nutrient
Pectinase
Piloncillo (raw cane sugar) to bring s/g to 1.55/1.06


Jungle Cider III

Tree top Apple Juice
Fresh (T-shirt) pressed Guava Juice (got 3kg, don't know how much juice I'll get)
Yeast (1g)
Nutrient
Pectinase
Piloncillo (raw cane sugar) to bring s/g to 1.55/1.06


Jungle cider IV

Tree top Apple Juice
Black Tea (4 bags in 200ml water, pressed)...and it's Yorkshire Tea..loads of Tannin.
Yeast (1g)
Nutrient
Pectinase
Piloncillo (raw cane sugar) to bring s/g to 1.55/1.06

I'm shooting for a lower s/g than the last batch so that it will hopefully mature a bit faster...I have no feasible way of keeping temps down and whilst a higher ABV will make it store longer, the high temps make storage a problem..I think having a cider that will mature faster is going to actually taste better than having it sitting around in tropical temperatures for longer. The high temp (I think) means that the yeast is going to go mental and probably take things very dry anyway.

Any and all opinions gratefully received..

EDIT: No guavas...will source some to add in secondary..I was debating whether this would be the a better way. Choice has been taken out of my hands.

 

[phug]

And this is what happens when you teach a scientist to make cider.

Good work, good luck, keep us posted on how it turns out. I'm sure I can count on you not to make any sharkfin cider.

That would be a cool name though.

 

[Rhu]

Some scientist I turned out to be...all batches at 1.070 with the exception of one that reads 1.080...

Thought I had added and mixed the same amount of sugar to each one...oh well.

Only saving grace is that there is only 3/4 of a gallon fermenting in each bottle so far..the move to secondary and subsequent topping up with a 1/4 gallon should bring down the expected ABV.

 

[Rhu]

Sharkfin was actually under consideration as a name for one of the original ciders - I currently have the cider octopus on the go....

Photo taken just after having a damn good swirl of all the bottles, they were dropping sediment like billy-o after about 18 hrs..big thick yeast layer on top of the Saison (on the right)..

Today they've reversed, the Saison bottles have given up creating a head and are fizzing away merrily without creating any foam although are cloudy as anything. Meanwhile all of the S-04 beasties have migrated to the top of the jugs and are fermenting away with a completely clear cider underneath an inch thick layer of yeasty bubbles. I'll take a photo later and stick it up here if they're still doing the same when I trek back to the casa...

Daytime high of 25˚C(77F) and nighttime about 22˚C(72F) although we're in the middle of a cold snap and temps should increase over the next few days...

 

[Rhu]

So...as promised, because I know everyone is dying to see...

Comparison between Day 1 and Day 3 S04 (on the left) and Saison (on the right)...Can clearly see that the S04 has risen and begun fermenting right at the top of the cider and the Saison, that began with a big 'ol yeasty head has dropped all it's foam and is now fermenting in suspension (well they're both fermenting in suspension, but hopefully you know what i mean).

In other news weather continues colder than expected...it's only about 27˚C (80˚F) daytime next to the fermenters...by cold I mean cold for the Saison, that the literature tells me should be going at about 30˚ (90&#730 to get spicy, peppery esthers..although it's still fermenting quite happily and hasn't decided to stick yet (tempting fate there)..

Haven't seen a Bull Shark in a while....although there was a 2m (8ft) Croc on the beach all day yesterday.

 

[Rhu]

What you can't see in the picture is that there's now about an inch of sediment in the bottom of the Saison bottles and about 3/4" in the bottom of the S-04...

 

[Rhu]

Morning..

Just over one week old (9 days I think) and all have pretty much stopped fermenting and started clearing. The Saison ciders are beautifully clear at the bottom cloudy at the surface, the S04 still a bit foggy although they also seem to be clearing from the bottom up.

Hopefully they're not all stuck at a super high s/g. It seems unlikely that all six bottles would stick on the same day at the same s/g..I'm assuming that the yeast have done their thing pretty rapidly as they are at higher temps. I don't expect them to be extremely dry though, the airlock still smells sweet and I'm not sure how far Saison or S04 can chew through 1.070 or 1.080. I'm hoping they've got to somewhere in the region of 1.010 - 1.002

Will be racking to secondary next Thurs/Fri. Two G over diced Guava, probably 1 or 2 lbs in each gallon. 2 G onto some more (stronger) tea and 2 G simply topped up with some fresh juice. (The first four bottles will also be topped up).

Will take s/g reading at racking.

If there is no sign of fermentation within 3-4 days after racking will try and warm them up slightly (without cooking them) by placing in less shade i.e. more sun, although they are sitting at a relatively consistent 26/27˚C (78/80˚F)

 

[Rhu]

Two weeks old and we've racked to secondary..

No disasters (yet) results below...

I'll start off with dry numbers and then add impressions later.

Saisons

Crude(only added sugar)
og. 1.080
sg. 0.996
topped with AJ to sg. 1.007

Tea
og. 1.070
sg. 0.996
topped with AJ and more Tea to sg. 1.006

Guava
og. 1.070
sg. 0.997
topped with AJ and 250g chopped Guava to sg. 1.006

S-04

Crude(only added sugar)
og. 1.070
sg. 1.002
topped with AJ to sg. 1.012

Tea
og. 1.070
sg. 1.002
topped with AJ and more Tea to sg. 1.010

Guava
og. 1.070
sg. 1.002
topped with AJ and 250g chopped Guava to sg. 1.008

Ok so....firstly they all taste better than the "Jungle Cider" does currently, bearing in mind that is over a month old and these are only 2 weeks old it's telling me that Ale yeasts are the way to go for cider, rather than Apple wine. This is probably not much of a surprise.

Saisons however, are disappointing. I had high hopes for these guys but currently (and yes, it is early days yet) the Saison ciders are a little bland. Whether the temps weren't quite high enough for them to do the spicy, peppery thing I don't know, but they've chewed through a lot of sugar and seemingly taken quite a lot of flavour with it. Hopefully flavours will develop over the next month.

S-04, I can understand why everybody likes it. It's not quite as dry as I would have liked it but there is a lot of flavour here. Not apple flavour, but cider flavour...hope that makes sense. Was a little worried about the high temps producing off flavours, I needn't have. Excited to see what a month of ageing will bring.

Guava addition adds a really nice nose, before fermentation. Guava for me always smells a lot nicer than it tastes. So I'm hoping the aroma remains, they also contain lots of seeds and they have some astringency so maybe some tannin addition from the skin and pips. A lower sg reading is I think false, as there will be sugars in the guava that I can't measure that will get eaten. Fingers crossed.

Tea..there wasn't a great deal of tannin flavour from the tea so I added a further brew. 10 bags boiled for 20mins in .75ltr of water then left to steep for 3 hours. Bags removed and squeezed then water reduced by boiling to 375ml (Basically I broke every tea making rule on this one). 175ml added to each gallon. This brew was something special. The tea actually went thick, like a thin syrup (but no sugar). 1 drop caused instant mouth pucker and it lasted...oh boy did it last... adding to the ciders, mixing and then tasting the sg sample was actually very nice. It did taste slightly of tea, but it didn't overpower the initial cider flavour. This actually worked better with the Saison cider than the S04..I have high hopes for this one....

Only slight worry with these is that fermentation has not restarted yet (18hrs later) they all appear as flat as your proverbial..We'll see over the next few days and then I might try and bring the temps up.

cheers all

 

[oljimmy]

OK, I'm loving that tea idea... reducing tea to a tannic syrup then adding. You could make that in bulk and store it in a sealed, sanitized container. Nice work! glad you like these more. And I am 110% in agreement about ale yeasts... the fact of the matter is that we homebrewers don't have all the equipment and time that the champagne-yeast-using cideries have, and when you need a decent cider in 2-4 months that still tastes of apples, S-04 or nottingham can do that for you. Congrats!

 

[Rhu]

We'll see how the tea thing turns out, I may have overdone it..the 'syrup' was a 'caramelly' brown and the cider now looks like mud...I very much doubt there will be clarity in these testers...

Also, in the tradition of getting ahead of myself I was wondering; if they do decide to ferment some more in the future and finish around the 0.998/1.002 mark, would it be a good idea to pasteurise as a matter of course? How likely are they to spontaneously begin fermenting again in the bottles if the sg has been static for, lets say, a week..

cheers

 

[oljimmy]

At 1.000 you aren't close to a bottle-bomb risk, you need more than 4 gravity points to drop off for that to happen, which isn't too likely after careful racking. From what I understand, people who bottle-bomb tend to be (sorry everyone, but this is just a fact about our market...) sugar-happy Americans who want to stop their cider at 1.021 (or some utter nonsense like that ) in order to make something that tastes like one of the fizzy-pop glucose wines that have the word "cider" on the label in this country.

Cyvillekevin says that a cold crash is successful if you've watched them for a week and there's no activity. However, fermentation can obviously still happen, and it depends on so many unknown variables. For example, one variable is the amount of nitrogen still remaining in your cider, which is partly a function of how much was there at the start, and who the hell knows *that* number?

 

[Rhu]

ok, good to know, cheers.

Maybe that can be the next experiment...calculating amount of Nitrogen in starting juice..anybody done much titration recently?

In other news...I got super paranoid that I'd managed to kill off all my yeast during racking somehow until both bottles with Guava additions started fizzing gently about 48hrs following addition. I put this down to yeasts in the Guava (although I did sanitise the fruit).

The other four bottles sat completely silent until this morning when the two remaining S04 ciders started very gently fizzing.

Saisons are still showing no signs of life, other than the Guava.

Both 'Tea' bottles have thrown a big crop of yeast strangely, but remain extremely muddy...I think I may have overdone it slightly. Very funny looking...

I'm going to give the Saisons another couple of days and then maybe re-pitch a very small amount of yeast. They were very clear when I racked so, although I know there must still have been yeast in suspension, they may be struggling slightly.

cheers

 

[oljimmy]

Hey again Rhu, just a couple of things:

Claude jolicoeur always does what he calls a "first racking" during fermentation. This, he says, dramatically improves a cider by nearly halting fermentation around 1.020 and letting it finish of reaal slow (he gets his stuff to go for 3 months after this!). There are, he says, often no visible signs of fermentation at this phase but it is happening. So you may actually be doing it right with those saisons. Something to keep in mind!

And the only test for this (renewed fermentation) is a little patience and a hydrometer.

 

[Rhu]

ok, then I won't re pitch, I'll just leave them completely alone for at least a month and take an sg.

cheers

R

 

[Rhu]

Ok, so the Saison plus tea started with pin prick bubbles about two days ago and is now going at a steady rate. nothing like the others but can see bubbles rising. The Saison crude hasn't budged, a very small white something on the surface that looks like it could be CO2 bubbles, but nothing overly interesting happening, this is how the Saison tea started however, so maybe in a few days there will be some action.

All other bottles bubbling like I just pitched.

Expecting Secondary to finish in about 3 weeks or so, probably bottling in 3 weeks to a month..no idea about carbing etc. yet. Looking forward to sampling/tasting though..

 

[oljimmy]

"very small white something on the surface"

Rhu: there are infections that appear as a white film. Best way to get rid of them is to spray a sulfite solution directly on the film. Worst case, you've just added some preservative to the cider, best case you've gotten rid of a serious infection. If you're feeling paranoid, I say do this.

 

[Rhu]

doesn't look like like a film..simply a small white speck, difficult to see because I filled the jugs over the gallon mark, into the neck, to get as much cider as possible!

Has a couple of small pin prick bubbles around the edge now as well, I'm pretty sure it's just a couple of tiny, tiny CO2 bubbles sitting on the surface. If it starts to look sick I'll spray some Na Meta on the top.

Otherwise it's all very promising.

New Jungle Ciders IX and X looking good. Have wrapped the Saison (#X) in several blankets and the temp is hovering around 29/30˚C about 3˚above ambient. So hopefully will see a bit more Saison flavour out of those. Should even out temp. Fluctuations at night (not that I think it will make much difference when the lowest they get is 24....)

I may wrap up the Saisons that are currently in 2ndary/2nd Primary right now as well..just for the fun of it.

 

[oljimmy]

Ah, sorry, thought it was a film. I'm starting to get hypersensitive about OTHER people's ciders now... I think it might be time to seek help...

 

[Rhu]

The S04 crude bubbled it's first bubble (again) last night..I'm so proud of it....

I guess that means that I'll be leaving everything a lot longer before I think about bottling.

 

[Rhu]

In other news, The 5g of Saison that I just started (2 weeks ago) smells incredible, really spicy/peppery...fingers crossed it tastes as good as it smells...

 

[phug]

The S04 crude bubbled it's first bubble (again) last night..I'm so proud of it....

I guess that means that I'll be leaving everything a lot longer before I think about bottling.

Have you managed to get a hydrometer or refractometer to verify if the SG is changing? you don't need to know what it is, just if it's changing. the bubble might possibly have been from co2 coming out of suspension, or from temperature swings in the day.

 

[Rhu]

I haven't checked it, I could have but I have an aversion to opening the bottles here...irrational probably.

I've wrapped all three Saisons together in a sleeping bag and a fleece blancket to keep their temps up around 30C...I don't really want to unwrap them and make them cold again either. This also makes me think that it's unlikely to be temp. swings, although it could be. I'm going toleave it another couple of weeks anyway for the others, it will either keep bubbling or stop. Either way I'll check the gravity when I bottle the other two.

EDIT: it's now a couple of days later and it's bubbling fairly regularly, may not be the right kind of fermentation, but at this point I think it's unlikely to be temperature related

 

[Rhu]

still bubbling...well, Guava's seem to have stopped but all the others are still going, not much but they're still going for sure. Especially the Saisons, I want the Saisons to finish bubbling so I can cool them a little, been looking at swamp cooler construction..

Little concerned that the S04 sg is going to be waaaayy down, but just want to let them do their thing, not going to cold crash or campden or anything. Interested how it will end up, but impatient for it to get there! Not got far enough with the swamp cooler plans to attack the S04's with it.

Yes, I know patience makes a cider....am going away for 12 days, hopefully they'll have stopped when I get back...

 

[Rhu]

Still have bubbling in the Tea and plain cider. A thin, perfectly straight line of bubbles climbing the side of each one....still cloudy as well...when will they finish.....

 

[phug]

Still have bubbling in the Tea and plain cider. A thin, perfectly straight line of bubbles climbing the side of each one....still cloudy as well...when will they finish.....

It's possible that it may just be off gassing. I would double check that with a hydrometer over a few days. I had one the looked like a very slow ferment but in fact has finished



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[MindenMan]

Rhu, I have been following your journey through your cider experiments, and you have my utmost respect, especially due to your limited resources. I have some cider I bottled last May, and it is so much nicer and apple flavored than it was at bottling. Have you ever thought about making a solar still? If the flavor isn't what you want at that time, use a solar still to separate some of the alcohol from everything else, and letting it age might be very nice when you are ready. I have stashed away some freeze concentrated Apple Jack I made last year, and I didn't ferment to dry. It seems the very dry juice just doesn't have the flavor the less dry does. I bottled it in September, which means it was at least a month old before they went into the freezer. My wife and I sampled a small bit of it last month, and we were really surprised how smooth it was. It is in a dark cool closet, and if I can keep my wife out of it, "Didn't you make it to drink it?" is the usual question. Not having enough batches under my belt to be completely objective, but honestly I don't think the sugar is fermenting, but there is a definite change in mouth feel. Sorry for going off topic. Good luck.

 

[oljimmy]

It's possible that it may just be off gassing. I would double check that with a hydrometer over a few days. I had one the looked like a very slow ferment but in fact has finished



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Seconded. When I started cold crashing I made the mistake of thinking that bubbles meant fermentation, and that my cold crashes had failed. It turns out that they had probably succeeded and that it was just CO2 naturally forming bubbles in the cider.

 

[phug]

all the more confusing if you're shooting for a dry cider, and it goes very slowly AND finishes higher than you were expecting. I was not expecting 1.004, but that's where it finished.

and don't get me started on the perry that finished at 1.008 with EC1118

 

[Rhu]

A solar still is a possibility I was looking at making one a couple of weeks ago..but, if I got caught with it I'd definitely get fired, spirits are very banned...

Off gassing sounds like it could be a winner..I'm just a little confused about why the bubbles are all coming from a single point...a single line of tiny bubbles rather than from all over...I guess there could be a seeding point somewhere in there but who knows where...it's not clearing worth a damn either..the Guava ones have all cleared beautifully and the tea I don't really expect to clear given the look of the tea syrup that went into it but I had expected the plain juice + sugar cider to have started clearing by now.

Ah well I'm giving it another 3 weeks then it's into the bottles, maybe two if I get impatient. It will be 3 months old by then. The first ciders I made are hitting 3 months old and the flavour is really starting to improve (or I'm just getting used to it) and the ones that were intended to be clear are clearing beautifully in the bottles, can see through them now.

I'll let you know how the bottling goes.

Cheers all
PS 1.008 with EC118!! Craziness...hopefully these ones are hovering around the 1.002 mark, the S04 at least, the Saison may have drifted a trifle lower...

 

[Rhu]

Hola Peeps!

Soooo..Jungle ciders II, III, IV....etc. have all been bottled and taste tested.

Without fail, and unsurprisingly, all tasted very 'green' they are all over 10% though so it is to be expected without a bit more age on them I guess.

For the Saison's the 'crude' came out on top. Whilst all were sour, the one with no additions tasted the most cidery. The Tea and Guava addition ciders had no discernable flavour other than wait for it..sour.

The S-04 team weighed in with yet more sourness/acidity although they seemed to have held on to a lot more CO2 that the Saison's did which could account for some of it. The winner here was the Guava addition which seems to have pumped in some Tannins and also be giving an aroma that, if it develops the way I've seen my previous two ciders develop should be really nice.

Anyway, they're all laid down now in as shady, cool place as I can find and I'll leave them for at least a fortnight, possibly a month and see what happens.

As it stands though, even for the best of the bunch the order of play is sour and sour and more sour.

cheers

 

[Rhu]

Oh, I should have said that the Saison's have all attenuated down to about 0.996 and the S-04's aren't so far behind on 0.997 or thereabouts.