Tannins in Cider

[BreweryD]

What do you recommend to increase tannin in your ciders? I haven't been paying much attention to tannin levels, but think I'm missing out on building the complexity of the cider.

I have a batch in primary now, and ran across handfull of (ripe) wild native persimmons. I've peeled the slimey fruits (to reduce potential for wild yeast) and kept their "meat." I'm thinking of adding it in the secondary fermenter (I'm thinking it could add a bit of interesting flavor as well). I'll keep it in a brew sock, to make bottling less challenging.

Has anyone used wild persimmons in their ciders, and if so, how much...and how were the results?

 

[Stormcrow]

What do you recommend to increase tannin in your ciders? I haven't been paying much attention to tannin levels, but think I'm missing out on building the complexity of the cider.

I have a batch in primary now, and ran across handfull of (ripe) wild native persimmons. I've peeled the slimey fruits (to reduce potential for wild yeast) and kept their "meat." I'm thinking of adding it in the secondary fermenter (I'm thinking it could add a bit of interesting flavor as well). I'll keep it in a brew sock, to make bottling less challenging.

Has anyone used wild persimmons in their ciders, and if so, how much...and how were the results?

Never done it, but have had the same idea. I was hung up on how much to use also. Would love to hear someone chime in on this. Wouldn't be surprised if @Yooper had some wisdom on this.

 

[madscientist451]

I've never used persimmons, but you probably want to use the skins. Here's a commercial cider that tried it:
https://vinoshipper.com/shop/courthouse_creek_cider/plum_persimmon_66312?list=
Another way to add tannins is to use English black tea. Note that a little goes a long way and once you have it in there you can't get it out.
My preferred method is to let the apple pulp sit in a bucket overnight, the extra time with the apple skins will extract some tannins, I also sometimes use oak barrel chips soaked in bourbon (after secondary).

 

[Maylar]

Oak. I have been oaking my ciders on Medium + American Xoakers or cubes.

 

[Beerstein]

Oak. I have been oaking my ciders on Medium + American Xoakers or cubes.

Ditto on oak. You can control how much you get by changing type of oak, surface area, exposure time, and boiling them.

 

[Chalkyt]

I have attached a useful article on adding Tannin to Cider. I don’t know where I got it, otherwise I would give you the reference. Anyhow, I have used this approach when working out how much tannin to add when trying to make an “English Style” cider.

I also have a paper by Martin, Padilla-Zacour and Gerling from Cornell University about consumers' perceptions of cider with added tannins. It seems to have been in a magazine of New York State Horticultural Society. I don't know where I got it, but probably from a forum member who replied to one of my posts. Perhaps someone might recognise it.

You might also look up the Graham’s English Cider Recipe in the recipe section at the top of the forum. This uses strong black tea to add tannin.

I have tried tannin powder and it works O.K. as does the strong tea. The following bit (in italics) is the approach that I took when zeroing in on how much tannin to add. It isn’t perfect but by using the sampling approach outlined in the article you can get somewhere in the ballpark without trashing your precious cider, since a little bit of tannin can go a long way (and once it is in, you can’t take it out).

Tannin Powder
The usual recommendation for tannin powder is 5 grams (about ¼ teaspoon) per 100 litres (0.05g per litre). This is a small quantity of powder and hard to measure for small samples of cider, after all how many of us make 100 litres (25 gallons) at a time. So, a liquid concentrate as suggested in the article, is much easier to work with when trying to figure out how much tannin to add. I work in metric units because the mental arithmetic is easy and one millilitre (ml) of liquid (like water) weighs one gram, so for this purpose grams and millilitres are more or less interchangeable.

To get the concentration of 0.05g per litre (or 5g per 100 litres), a cider “tasting” sample of 100 ml (1/10 litre or a bit less than ½ cup) needs 0.005g of tannin powder, which is almost impossible to measure. (I found that even with a digital “jeweler’s scale”, about 0.5g was hard to get right). However, 1 ml of liquid concentrate (made up of 0.5g of powder in 100 ml of water) in 100 ml of cider gives the same result, as does 40 ml of concentrate in a gallon (about 4 litres) of cider.

I found that this was about right for the tasting samples in terms of how much to add, but could have done with a bit more after the cider had matured for a couple of months. It is all a matter of personal taste, and I was being cautious and aware of the warnings about not adding too much.

Black Tea
I took a similar approach with black tea. The Graham’s English Cider recipe uses 4 teabags per gallon (about 4 litres). The tea in a teabag weighs about 2 grams so the starting point is 2 grams per litre.

“Strong tea” is a bit subjective. My version used 5 teabags in 250ml (about a cup) of boiling water which gave 0.04 grams per millilitre of “tea tannin concentrate".

Following the same logic as with the tannin powder concentrate, 5 ml of “tea tannin concentrate” in a sample of 100ml of cider is the same as 50ml or 2g in a litre (i.e. the Graham's concentration). So 200ml (a bit less than a cup) of concentrate is needed for a gallon.

One side benefit of using concentrate is that it is a useful top-up for the volume lost when racking from primary to secondary and leaving settled pulp etc behind.

I hope some of this helps.

Cheers!

 

[Chalkyt]

FYI, I have stumbled across a way to find the Cornell University article mentioned above...

Search (i.e. Google) Tannin, Cider, and one of the authors' names e.g. "Tannin, Cider, Martin,"

 

[BreweryD]

I've never used persimmons, but you probably want to use the skins. Here's a commercial cider that tried it:
https://vinoshipper.com/shop/courthouse_creek_cider/plum_persimmon_66312?list=
Another way to add tannins is to use English black tea. Note that a little goes a long way and once you have it in there you can't get it out.
My preferred method is to let the apple pulp sit in a bucket overnight, the extra time with the apple skins will extract some tannins, I also sometimes use oak barrel chips soaked in bourbon (after secondary).

Madsci -Thanks, I had no idea that a commercial brewer is doing this. I've learned that there are two general types of persimmons - one is a commercially viable version, the other is native to America. The native version (what I have) is significantly more difficult to work with - a narrow window of ripeness - the commercially viable version is more forgiving in flavor, and apparently with the skins too.

 

[BreweryD]

I have attached a useful article on adding Tannin to Cider. I don’t know where I got it, otherwise I would give you the reference. Anyhow, I have used this approach when working out how much tannin to add when trying to make an “English Style” cider.

I also have a paper by Martin, Padilla-Zacour and Gerling from Cornell University about consumers' perceptions of cider with added tannins. It seems to have been in a magazine of New York State Horticultural Society. I don't know where I got it, but probably from a forum member who replied to one of my posts. Perhaps someone might recognise it.

You might also look up the Graham’s English Cider Recipe in the recipe section at the top of the forum. This uses strong black tea to add tannin.

I have tried tannin powder and it works O.K. as does the strong tea. The following bit (in italics) is the approach that I took when zeroing in on how much tannin to add. It isn’t perfect but by using the sampling approach outlined in the article you can get somewhere in the ballpark without trashing your precious cider, since a little bit of tannin can go a long way (and once it is in, you can’t take it out).

Tannin Powder
The usual recommendation for tannin powder is 5 grams (about ¼ teaspoon) per 100 litres (0.05g per litre). This is a small quantity of powder and hard to measure for small samples of cider, after all how many of us make 100 litres (25 gallons) at a time. So, a liquid concentrate as suggested in the article, is much easier to work with when trying to figure out how much tannin to add. I work in metric units because the mental arithmetic is easy and one millilitre (ml) of liquid (like water) weighs one gram, so for this purpose grams and millilitres are more or less interchangeable.

To get the concentration of 0.05g per litre (or 5g per 100 litres), a cider “tasting” sample of 100 ml (1/10 litre or a bit less than ½ cup) needs 0.005g of tannin powder, which is almost impossible to measure. (I found that even with a digital “jeweler’s scale”, about 0.5g was hard to get right). However, 1 ml of liquid concentrate (made up of 0.5g of powder in 100 ml of water) in 100 ml of cider gives the same result, as does 40 ml of concentrate in a gallon (about 4 litres) of cider.

I found that this was about right for the tasting samples in terms of how much to add, but could have done with a bit more after the cider had matured for a couple of months. It is all a matter of personal taste, and I was being cautious and aware of the warnings about not adding too much.

Black Tea
I took a similar approach with black tea. The Graham’s English Cider recipe uses 4 teabags per gallon (about 4 litres). The tea in a teabag weighs about 2 grams so the starting point is 2 grams per litre.

“Strong tea” is a bit subjective. My version used 5 teabags in 250ml (about a cup) of boiling water which gave 0.04 grams per millilitre of “tea tannin concentrate".

Following the same logic as with the tannin powder concentrate, 5 ml of “tea tannin concentrate” in a sample of 100ml of cider is the same as 50ml or 2g in a litre (i.e. the Graham's concentration). So 200ml (a bit less than a cup) of concentrate is needed for a gallon.

One side benefit of using concentrate is that it is a useful top-up for the volume lost when racking from primary to secondary and leaving settled pulp etc behind.

I hope some of this helps.

Cheers!

Thanks, much appreciated.