Too many apples...

[Chalkyt]

It isn't as dramatic as it sounds... I simply have too many apples of the wrong type. This year the apples have gone gang-busters and I have an abundance of Red Delicious. Friends are running scared, even the horses have had enough. I also have Pomme de Neige, Granny Smith, Cox's Orange Pippin and an unknown large tart "cooking apple". I will use these for my "big batch" in a few weeks, but the question is what to do with the Red Delicious.

Way back in the "olden days" I made a cider from the Red Delicious, but fully fermented it was awful... tart and tasteless.

So has anyone been successful making a reasonable cider with eating apples? Any thoughts on what could be added to make something decent? I finished grinding 20 litres (4-5 gallons) worth of pommace this afternoon and will give it an overnight rest before pressing tomorrow. Basically I see it as an opportunity to experiment without getting too upset if something goes pear shaped (no, I don't want to add pears!)

At this stage my thoughts are running to a small batch naturally fermented from whatever yeast is in the apples, a batch using SO4 with campden, pectinase, etc, etc, and one with something added. I have even considered stopping fermentation at around 1.015 in order to have some sort of "low alcohol" (around 4%) sweet outcome, but don't really know if this would work.

All contributions gratefully considered.

 

[madscientist451]

The best thing would be to get some more apples to go with them, here are some other ideas:
If you have freezer space, freeze some of the juice before fermenting then let it partially thaw, and drain the thick, concentrated juice. Blend that back into your regular juice, you'll have to experiment with how much to add. A commercial cidery does that with Honey Crisp apples and claims they sell all they make, but not sure how good it actually is. I think they do the blending pre-fermentation.
You could also experiment with the Red delicious Juice by using it in a beer, either extract or all grain, or boil it down and make apple molasses and make an apple molasses/barley wine.

 

[Aaron C. Rider]

Hello ChalkyT

When you say olden days, I'm sorta curious how long ago, because Red Delicious actually used to be a better apple. According to my 3rd and 4th cousins, who are Pennsylvania fruit farmers, much of the remaining taste was bred out of it over the course of the late 20th century. I assume the same sort of mediocre Red adaptation made its way to Australia as well. I do believe there may be some Red Delicious apples around, somewhere, that are better.

However, I don't think Red's were ever great for cider (hard OR fresh). So I cosign the madscientist above. Unless you can find a whole bunch of Staymans or something like that (I have no idea what kind of tarter apples you have in the Oz), Red Delicious concentrate would be an excellent source to have on hand.

P.S. I've loved every "wild" yeast cider I've ever made so any idea involving that gets my endorsement.

 

[Chalkyt]

Thanks for the replies. Adding concentrated juice sounds promising, I hadn't thought of that. I actually produced some concentrate a few years ago with some other juice that I used to bump up the SG when bottling for carbonation (being a somewhat of a purist back then when I started making cider, I wanted to do something different to adding sugar... duh!). Just letting the concentration leach out of ice blocks worked quite well as my old notes suggest that it had a SG of 1.110!

The flavour of the red delicious is quite good, they are juicy and flavoursome. The various apple trees were here 20 years ago when we bought the place which was built in the late 1980's so they could well be approaching 30 years old and may be "proper" apples. We have added the cox's orange pippins since then. Probably the tartest apples are Granny Smith and our "Mystery" cooking apples which I have used as the base apple for cider before.

I do have several kilograms of frozen pitted cherries which I have used for apple/cherry cider so blending some in might might be an option.

Tomorrow will be interesting.

 

[Kees]

These guys make single variety cider with Cox's Orange Pippin: Simple Cider Cox's Orange Pippin - Real Cider Reviews
There is also single variety Granny Smith cider: Granny Smith | Woodchuck Cider

My guess is that any apple that can be used to make a decent single variety cider can be mixed with any similar apple to produce a decent cider. Different ratios can be tried like 50%-50%, 25%-75% etc.

 

[dmtaylor]

I would blend a good flavorful apple with the Red Delicious, anywhere around 50/50 or 60/40 would turn out fine. By good flavorful apple, I mean Cox, McIntosh, Braeburn, Fuji.... I'm not sure what else you have in Australia. Anything where you eat an apple and say WOW should work well in a cider. I use Honeycrisp in the same way as you are using Red Delicious... it is juicy and sweet, but on the bland side.

Or maybe even better, if you can get your hands on ANY crabapples, a small amount of those, just like 10%, can add a LOT of acidity and tannin and flavor to any cider. A little goes a long way with crabapples, and I suppose it has something to do with the relatively high content of skins and seeds which add extra flavors of their own.

If you don't have all the ingredients right away, it's okay to make separate batches of cider with each and then blend them later on near end of fermentation.

Good luck!

 

[Chalkyt]

Thanks for all the replies. It has been interesting trying to use the Red Delicious, because my first attempt several years ago just yielded a flavourless insipid cider (but I must admit it fully fermented dry and I didn't understand that their lovely eating flavour sugars simply get chewed up).

The first surprise was that the Red Delicious SG is 1.050 (O.K. given how sweet they are, but I was expecting a bit more), the second surprise is that the pH is 4.1. So, I have added Malic Acid to bring up the acidity of the "natural ferment" batch in order to minimise the chances of it "going off". I have another batch of the same juice with all the usual stuff (campden, pectinase, nutrient, and yeast, to see if there ends up being much difference, assuming of course that the "natural" batch does ferment.

The third batch is exactly what you have suggested. Red Delicious plus our "unknowns" (quite large "cooking"apples weighing around 240g/0.5lb each which yield over 50% juice with a pH of 3.6), although first taste suggests that this blended with the Red Delicious might also need a bit of malic acid). I haven't looked at TA at this stage.

I do have Crimson Knight crabapples and AJ concentrate to play with, as well as a tree of Granny Smiths (but I have to fight SWMBO for these as she is eyeing them off for apple jelly).

The fun continues. Red Delicious are the most abundant in our little orchard, and it would be good to be able to use them all. After all, how many apples can you eat.!