Made quince cider

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Nick Z

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Some time ago on here I inquired about using quince in cider. No one, as I recall, had fermented pure quince juice. I got a bunch of free quince from a friend so I went ahead and did it.

The process: I rubbed the fuzz off the quince, washed them, cut them up into pieces and froze the pieces. For several months. I tried getting juice out of fresh quince before. It was basically impossible.

I thawed the quince pieces, pureed them in a food processor and squeezed the juice out with muslin. It was slow, annoying work without much yield. I probably won't do it again. But the quince never got heated and the juice was raw.

I fermented it with Fresco non H2S producing cider yeast (I tried fermenting quince before and got terrible sulphur). The juice tested out with a specific gravity of 1.035. Hit it with a campden tablet and pectic enzyme before fermenting.

Once the ferment was done I let it sit for quite some time. ABV was 4.6%. Then I primed it for seven volumes of CO2 with corn sugar and packaged it in champagne bottles.

I finally tried it last night and the result is... meh. It wasn't nearly as tannic as I thought it would be. That was kind of a disappointment. Quite tart but not as tart as I had anticipated. Mostly clear but it had a little cloudiness. There's a definite but faint scent or taste of quince.

It wasn't as weird and unique as I had hoped but I had feared it would also be awful and undrinkable, which it wasn't.

Unless you can get a lot of quince for cheap and get the juice out easily I wouldn't bother making quince cider. I think it could be useful for blending if you need to add some acidity.
 
I wonder if just chopping it up or grating it, and then straining it out after primary might work. I've always thought the flavor of quinces was interesting. Maybe using it as a fruit to make wine.....
 
Some time ago on here I inquired about using quince in cider. No one, as I recall, had fermented pure quince juice. I got a bunch of free quince from a friend so I went ahead and did it.

The process: I rubbed the fuzz off the quince, washed them, cut them up into pieces and froze the pieces. For several months. I tried getting juice out of fresh quince before. It was basically impossible.

I thawed the quince pieces, pureed them in a food processor and squeezed the juice out with muslin. It was slow, annoying work without much yield. I probably won't do it again. But the quince never got heated and the juice was raw.

I fermented it with Fresco non H2S producing cider yeast (I tried fermenting quince before and got terrible sulphur). The juice tested out with a specific gravity of 1.035. Hit it with a campden tablet and pectic enzyme before fermenting.

Once the ferment was done I let it sit for quite some time. ABV was 4.6%. Then I primed it for seven volumes of CO2 with corn sugar and packaged it in champagne bottles.

I finally tried it last night and the result is... meh. It wasn't nearly as tannic as I thought it would be. That was kind of a disappointment. Quite tart but not as tart as I had anticipated. Mostly clear but it had a little cloudiness. There's a definite but faint scent or taste of quince.

It wasn't as weird and unique as I had hoped but I had feared it would also be awful and undrinkable, which it wasn't.

Unless you can get a lot of quince for cheap and get the juice out easily I wouldn't bother making quince cider. I think it could be useful for blending if you need to add some acidity.
Hello. I noticed your post and thought I'd drop a quick note. I've been working with quince for years and haven't experienced the same troubles. Given the fuzz comment and OSG at 1.035 the main problem is almost surely that the fruit wasn't ripe. Too much starch, half the normal sugar. It should be yellow, shiny and aromatic. I routinely see an OSG 1.060-1.065-1.070. Also I would confirm you were using Cydonia and not fruit from say a flowering quince or Pseudocydonia. Generally Pseudocydonia should be without fuzz however. The fruits are confused frequently if you aren't intimately familiar with them. It's probably Cydonia but you should confirm.

The ripeness will help your extraction process considerably.

Try again using ripe fruit and compare your result. Good luck.
 
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