Salal cider

[Coriba]

I bottled a Salal cider today made with a base of Karmijn de Sonneville apples. I should have tasted before bottling because it is very tart. Never used this apple before. Once it is bottle conditioned, will excess acid drop out if it is cold stabilized? I know tartaric Will drop out in wine when chilled. Does this work in apples?

 

[ten80]

Acid are dissolved in solution, so they won't change with time (i.e., won't precipitate out) unless you have malolactic fermentation by bacteria, unlikely in your case. What might happen over time is that some tannins will settle out with any yeast in the bottles, so the cider may become less dry on the palate, and perhaps a little less bitter.

Your solution to excessive acidity may be to sweeten the cider in the glass by adding a little honey or simple syrup.

 

[bucketnative]

The tartaric acid itself does not drop out of wine. The precipitates are the tartrates that are formed through reaction of tartaric acid with other compounds in the must/wine. They are naturally present in the grapes, where they are more soluble than they are in the alcoholic wine. This causes them to drop out of solution when some wines are chilled.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Coriba, If the simplest solution is to balance tartness with sugar then it may make some sense (depending on how many bottles you have ) to backsweeten the entire batch and then rebottle them but that would also require that you stabilize the cider before adding any sugars to prevent the remaining yeast from refermenting in the bottle.

 

[ten80]

You can backsweeten bottles with a sorbitol simple syrup. Sorbitol is a natural sugar found in pears and other fruits and it is non-fermentable, plus it does not taste artificial.

 

[Coriba]

I have another carboy of this Dutch apple juice. I tested the acidity at 1.1% tartaric. Other than blending, how can I reduce this acidity?

 

[wasully]

First off, you'll need to find a conversion factor for however you're measuring the acidity. Apples have malic acid. You can dilute with water, blend with lower acid juice, or promote MLF. I think 71b eats a percentage of the present malic acid? Some yeasts do at least.

 

[Maylar]

I have another carboy of this Dutch apple juice. I tested the acidity at 1.1% tartaric. Other than blending, how can I reduce this acidity?

Karmijn is both the sweetest and tartest of all apples from what I've read. But 1.1% TA is outrageous, that's twice what I get in pressed cider. Did you also measure pH?
Besides sweetening, maybe adding potassium bicarbonate would help.

 

[Maylar]

And are you in the PNW? I've never heard of Salal before, and Google says it's indigenous out there. I wonder if it'd grow here in CT, region 6b.

 

[wasully]

How were the salal berries? We've tried caning them a few times but found them to prone to incest larvae to be worth it.

 

[Coriba]

Yes, salal are native in the PNW (PSW in Canada). They make a fabulous cider addition. A flavour hard to describe, kind of cream soda like. Made some last year from store juice and it was awesome. I hope this years calms down with a little age.

I can see how canning would be difficult. Harvesting is not clean, lots of extra stuff with the berries. They grow with Oregon grape which I included this year which harvests much cleaner.

 

[One Eye Ross]

Never thought of using the salal for cider. I have acres and acres of it here.

The berries are great if you pick them at the right day/hour/minute of ripeness, kind of like a pear...

Will have to go see how many I can get next summer.

 

[Nick Z]

I am mildly obsessed with the salal berry. Where did you folks find yours? Were they in forests or coastlines? What size were the berries you harvested? How juicy were they? Did you find that the plants only bore fruit when they got direct sunlight or did you see them fruiting in shade?

I discovered them this year and collected quite a bit. I am also attempting to grow some of the plants, including starting some from seed. I'm trying to discover everything I can about them to find the proper techniques to maximize fruit production and plant health. I think it's an under-appreciated fruit and I hope to someday grow large quantities for my own use.

 

[Coriba]

They are wild all along the west coast and grow mostly in shady environments in the forest along with Oregon grape for us. As One Eye Ross says, you have to time your harvest closely. We were late this year, can't believe that happened, and the berries were a little dried but still made juice. I tried pressing them in a fruit press but won't do that again. It produced a jelly that I threw in the fermenter anyway hoping the yeast will eat it up. It did for the most part.

It is a wonderful berry and it will be a regular addition to my cider.

 

[Nick Z]

How much did you include in the your cider, if I may ask? And did it color the cider? It is has a very potent pigment. Native peoples used to use it as a dye and I can see why. It is, indeed, a wonderful berry.

Oregon grape would be an interesting addition too.

 

[Coriba]

I used about 3 pounds in a five gallon batch. Added pressed juice and jelly to fermentor and he pulp in a mesh bag. Deeply coloured and flavoured. One of my favourite ciders.

 

[Coriba]

I didn't have any pectic enzyme at the time, I think that would have broken up the jelly like pressing.

 

[Nick Z]

You inspired me to try this myself. I am making two batches of wild berry cider/wine. One is mostly Oregon grape (which is not a grape at all and is in the barberry family), evergreen huckleberry, and a little Himalayan blackberry. With some water and sugar added. I already put in the campden and pectic enzyme and am about to pitch a red wine yeast. I will take hydrometer readings first even though I don't actually know how to the read the darn thing.

And I am going to unfreeze some of my salal pulp and ferment that as well, with some water and sugar added. I think I'll try for a 3/4 of a gallon batch. I don't know yeast to use to not strip out the berry flavor of salal. Which is like a blueberry but not quite.

Update: I just pitched the yeast for the Oregon grape batch. Using Red Star Montrachet yeast.

As far as I can tell the hydrometer has three scales that are color coded: black, red, blue. The Black one said 1.00 at the top and then the hydrometer read 70 below that. The red scale read 10. The blue one read 18. I used about half the packet. Dry pitched some and rehydrated some in water that been boiled and then cooled to about 90 degrees F. Added 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient and ½ a teaspoon of yeast energizer. Just put on the airlock after shaking. Now we wait...

 

[Nick Z]

Update:

I pulled out the salal and stuck it in a paint strainer. I stuck it in a two gallon fermenter and added enough water and sugar to bring it to about 15% potential alcohol. About one gallon of water. I put in two crushed campden tablets and have been letting it sit. Just threw in pectic enzyme and I will pitch the yeast later. The bucket isn't completely full. I am hesitant to add more water because I am concerned the ratio of fruit to water is too low as it is. Once I yank out the fruit I will rack it into a one gallon jug for secondary fermentation. The Keller recipe I read says to leave the fruit bag in for several days. I don't know if that means until primary fermentation has ceased or earlier.

I would think it would be "safer" to do it while the yeast are still going hard. That way they will create a carbon dioxide blanket in the empty space which will open up when the fruit bag is taken out.

The Oregon grape wine was being weird. It fermented for about three days and then... stopped. I figured something had to be wrong. There's no way it finished that quickly. I took a hydrometer reading today and it was 1.00. No fermentable sugars left. A tasting indicated the alcohol level was very weak. So I tossed in about another cup of sugar with some yeast nutrient and energizer and put the airlock back on. I'm hoping the yeast restart and ferment the added sugar to bring up the ABV to something more "wine like."

 

[Nick Z]

Another (quick) update:

Yeast was pitched for the salal wine. I used EC-1118 because it has a high alcohol tolerance and, according to what I've read, can handle tricky fermentations. Just leaving a towel over it for now. Once I yeast activity I will airlock it. I pitched both dry yeast and rehydrated yeast according to the manufacturer's directions. To hedge my bets. Now we wait. I did find my pH test strips and they indicated a pH of about 4.5.

After adding sugar to the Oregon grape wine the fermentation restarted, as I had hoped. Once the yeast are done I'll take another gravity reading.

If the salal wine finishes at as high an alcohol percentage as I think it will this stuff will definitely have to age for a while.

 

[Nick Z]

Another update:

The salal wine finished fermenting. The specific gravity is 1.00 so all the fermentable sugars have been consumed. It's tart as hell. I wonder if I should have added the acid blend after all (I was running off of Jack Keller's recipe).

I stabilized it with sulfite and sorbate after racking and will let it age for a while. Then probably sweeten it. I probably shouldn't have stabilized it and allowed whatever residual yeast were in there to clean up any ick.