Wild Cider

[footballbrewer]

Likely going apple picking this weekend. The farm sells some great (unpasteurized) cider that has a habbit of fermenting on it's own.

I plan to buy a gallon with the intention of letting it sit and ferment out without adding any outside yeast. I have 2 questions.

1. Would you add any yeast nutrient to the mix?
2. What would be the best way to grow / collect / save any viable yeast after it's complete?

 

[Kent88]

I'm not a pro with spontaneously fermented beverages, but here are my thoughts:

1) Yes. Most non-grape fruit wine recipes (and probably cider recipes, but I don't make much cider myself) call for yeast nutrient. And if you want to re-use your bugs, you probably want to keep them happy.

2) You have a couple of options here. You can wait to rinse the yeast after fermentation (which I think works better for beer sacch' strains), you could take a sample during active fermentation, or you could just siphon some new juice onto the lees after you transfer to secondary or package the finished cider and keep those microbes working. If it were me, I'd probably go with the third option.

 

[RPh_Guy]

1. I would not add nutrient. Ferment between 50°F and 60°F (lower is better). A cool, slow fermentation will provide the best flavor by inhibiting certain microbes and also maintaining apple aromatics. The yeast won't struggle for nutrients at that temperature. If you're lucky, maybe it'll stall, leaving it naturally sweet.

2. I would not try to save the wild yeast. A lot of the flavor comes from wild stuff that gets killed from the alcohol (e.g. Kluyveromyces).
There are plenty of ways to save yeast. One easy way is to put the cake in jars, seal, and refrigerate. When it's time to use it again, add a little bit of the cake to an apple juice starter with nutrient.
Again, saving it seems pointless since it won't reproduce the results of the first cider. Do another wild fermentation next time or use a commercial yeast.

Cheers

 

[Kent88]

I defer to RPh_Guy.

Would it be a good idea to take some of the must very early on in the fermentation and refrigerate that before the sensitive bugs die off?

 

[RPh_Guy]

Would it be a good idea to take some of the must very early on in the fermentation and refrigerate that before the sensitive bugs die off?

To save wild yeast/bacteria before they're killed? You could but the cell count would be too low to ferment a large batch ... and there's no way to increase the cell count without drastically changing the balance of organisms.
Same reason it's not recommended to make starters for commercial wild blends.

You might still be able to propagate some great yeast from the cider (or from literally any plant material or outside stuff), but it's impossible to exactly reproduce a wild fermentation.
Unique like a snowflake, but biological

 

[AkTom]

I had a friend drive from Minnesota to Alaska in a pickup. He bought a few gallons of fresh pressed aj somewhere. Put them in the back of the truck. When he got to Alaska, it was well on its way to being fermented. Man, was that good. No added anything but warm sun and a drive. I told him he should have got a 55 gallon drum.

 

[footballbrewer]

Thanks for the advice folks. If I get good results I'll probably pitch new juice or a low gravity mead must on the cake and see what the second generation brings.

 

[bernardsmith]

Acknowledging what RPh says about being able to capture the very same strains of yeast that created the cider you like what you might do is act like brewers of yesteryear did and that is at the point of the equivalent of "high krausen" (there being technically speaking no "krausen" without protein and apple juice has little protein) you skim off the foam and froth and in that froth and foam there should be a large colony of the active yeast - yeast, that is that is viable AND has not succumbed to the effects of alcohol poisoning. In other words, you have the option of selecting the yeast that you may want rather than trawling at the end of the day for a cross section of the yeast and bacteria and who knows what- not that was in the juice.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Thanks for the advice folks. If I get good results I'll probably pitch new juice or a low gravity mead must on the cake and see what the second generation brings.

Let's us know the results!
Good luck!