Sorbate in

[Ridenour64]

Hey guys! its been about a year since ive made any wine at all, or even visited this site so im a little rusty.

My question is that we have a nice farm here in ohio called Pattersons. idk if anyone is familiar? anyways, i love their cider so i decided to pick up a gallon and attempt to make a cider with it. only thing is, when i got home it said it contains a small amount like .01 or something of sorbate. would i be able to get passed this with a good yeast starter? i just wanna do a very basic cider. no added suger. just yeast and the cider. any idea how fast this would be drinkable if it did work?

thanks in advance!

 

[JimRausch]

Welcome back Ridenour!
I asked a very similar Q yesterday under 'sorbate-laced cider'. I did a thread search prior and found out that the sorbate has an inhibitory effect on yeast. It doesn't kill them, but does prevent them from multiplying. So, to counteract that you have to pitch an enormous amount of yeast(ie. make a massive starter) so that the yeast don't have to multiply much. I wanted to know if you could dilute down the amount of sorbate so it wouldn't stop the yeast, but the answer from Yooper was that it probably wouldn't work. I haven't seen anything written about effective amounts of sorbate, so that Q is still open. Since I'm making a Graf, my solution is to start fermenting my wort 2 days before adding the cider to essentially create that massive starter. I guess I'll see if it works. But that won't be the solution for you. Another thought I had that might work for you since you are going with a 1G batch of straight cider would be to massively overpitch with dry yeast- thinking 2 packets of US-05 or something like that. If you decide to try it, keep everyone informed. Good Luck!

 

[Ridenour64]

i am going to attempt something either tomorrow or saturday. soo i will update you all as soon as i have some info. thanks for the input!!

 

[Bent-Brewer]

Good luck with that! I've always enjoyed their cider- great taste and clarity. Both Patterson's and Eddy's use potassium sorbate, but if you drive a little north to Sage's Apples, you can get flash-pasteurized cider without any preservatives. It tastes similar, but is noticeably darker and has a lot of sediment.

I have a 5 gallon batch going now and it fermented a bit cloudy and yeasty (that one may be my fault). Poured it into separate 1 gallon containers for cold crashing in the hopes of cutting the yeasty taste and improving clarity. Hopefully I'm doing this picture thing correctly (linking to my drive was easier): Sage's Cider, Pre/Post

 

[invino]

Hey guys! its been about a year since ive made any wine at all, or even visited this site so im a little rusty.

My question is that we have a nice farm here in ohio called Pattersons. idk if anyone is familiar?

If you're talking about Patterson's in Chesterland, they get their cider pressed and bottled at Hays, which coincidentally also provides the cider for nearly all the NE Ohio orchards. You can skip the middleman and buy it directly from Costco for $4/gal. The Costco pressing is flash-pasteurized with no preservatives. My SG is about 1.05.

AFAIK, there are only two cidering orchards in the area: Woolf and Hays, both located south of Youngstown in Columbiana County. I surmise that most of the orchards in Geauga only grow varietals good for picking and eating.