It is pretty epic. As a rookie cider maker, I feel like I’ve learned everything I need to know that is not addressed in cider making tutorials.
If you guys are up for it, I would totally be interested in setting up some trades in 6 months or so. Sounds like some awesome ideas in the works!
Dave, how would you do a mulberry cider? Press whole berries for primary or rack a fermented cider over them in secondary?
[quote=“porkchop”]If you guys are up for it, I would totally be interested in setting up some trades in 6 months or so. Sounds like some awesome ideas in the works!
Dave, how would you do a mulberry cider? Press whole berries for primary or rack a fermented cider over them in secondary?[/quote]
I’m all for doing a trade! We really should.
For the mulberries, I’d do neither of your suggestions. I’ve already picked up a few containers of this stuff – tastes great, and way too easy to use in a cider, or maybe a mead, I haven’t decided which yet:
^^^^ That sounds tasty, either as a cider or a mead! When do you prefer to add the juice?
I’ve never tried it yet, but I’ll add it either right up front, or maybe after the first 7-10 days, depending on how vigorous the fermentation is. Probably just add it right up front, pasteurizing along with the apple juice or honey water.
Late to the party but in response to the OP question:
I use Saison yeast. Keeps a nice tartness.
I also heat pasturize but I also throw some raisins, cinnamon sticks, and whole cloves in mine to get the whole “mulled cider” thing going on. Last year’s cider had a nice tart pop up front, then plenty of natural apple-y sweetness and flavor. Then the spices come up and cook the apple and left a nice finish of fresh apple peel and warm apple pie. After about half a bottle you definitely started to get all warm inside. And despite the addition of heat my cider came out perfectly clear with no clarifiers at all.
Going to be getting my cider this weekend and making some up to be ready for the holidays.
I’ve been working on Drew Beechum’s hard cider book, and I have a few questions for you guys that have had bad experiences with the Campden. Drew makes a big deal about adjusting the pH of the juice with things like citric acid, and then based on the final adjusted pH, the dose of Campden will vary. pH should fall between 3.0 and 3.8. The closer you get to 3.0, the less Campden you have to use. He states that if the juice falls below 3.0, no sulfite is needed. Any chance the acidity would help activate and dissipate the SO2 and not leave that taste long term in the cider?
I haven't made cider in 2 years (my trees seem to have gone to a biannual cycle). When I did make cider, I pasteurized it at 165 for 20 to 30 minutes. I felt there was still plenty of apple flavor there. Drew does mention that we should wash the apples and give them a quick soak in a Star San solution before grinding and pressing. I've been debating if that's more work than just pasteurizing the juice from the unwashed apples. Besides, I don't use drops. If I don't pick it off the tree, it doesn't go in my cider. And I hope to finally have my electric brewing system up and running by this weekend when I plan to start my cider, so I'll hopefully have a much more efficient way of pasteurizing that juice. Besides, I have an IC now that I didn't have 2 years ago, so I should be able to chill down that juice fairly quickly.
Last time, I used Cote de Blanc. It fermented down to 0.095. Nice apple flavor but very dry. I was thinking of using Drew's back sweetening process of Campden and then potassium sorbate with added juice or add the above at 1.010 SG as Dave has mentioned before. Do you all feel that using only the Campden post fermentation will still create a long lasting sulfery taste? I sure don't want bottle bombs, and it would be nice to have a nice drinkable lower alcohol cider on those hot summer days.
Any of you guys tried S-04 to give the cider an English flavor? I was thinking of that until some of you stated you liked S-05. I plan on 2 batches, one with Cote de Blanc, and one with something else. I have both S-04 and S-05 in the fridge. Could go either way, so you all tell me what I should use. Thanks.Sorry, just noticed Rebuilt already touched on the pH topic. Thank you for the information.
Rebuilt, do you use potassium metabisulfite before bottling, and if so, do you wait longer than 24 to 48 hours to bottle after this addition to give it more time to dissipate? Thank you.
I have used S-04 one time in a cider. Worst sulfur bomb ever. However there are other people out there who swear it is a great yeast. I don’t know.
US-05, on the other hand, has produced consistently great results for me.
Campden does not kill yeast, it just injures them for a little while, that’s my understanding. In the past when I used Campden to halt fermentation at about 1.010, it just keeps right on going. I find that you really need to combine this with 1) racking often and 2) cold temperatures and 3) time for it to be effective. Rack the cider, add the Campden if you feel you must, then chill and wait a good 10 days or more to ensure fermentation is complete before you bottle. Otherwise you can still get a gushing champagne like cider, even with the Campden in there. It doesn’t kill the yeast no matter how much you use. It only stuns or hurts them in some way. Maybe it kills the old and the young, like a lion hunting for the wildebeest.
Then later, what I found, is that you can skip the Campden altogether and get great results. All that’s needed is extra time. Chill and leave the cider in cold storage for a couple of months. By then, there’s no more fermentation going on. And if you rack about once a week like I recommend, you’re removing like 95% of your yeast, so they slow way way down and maybe never get down below 1.005 or so anyway, thus retaining the natural sweetness of the apples instead of having to backsweeten. However, both US-05 and Cote des Blancs still have a tendency to taste pretty dang tart and dry after all this. But the flavors they give are unmatched by any other yeasts I have tried.
More experiments are warranted. I’ve only tried maybe 6 or 7 yeasts over the years. And not everyone is as lazy I mean patient as I am. What I can tell you is that with cider, patience truly is a virtue.
[quote=“brewdvm”]I’ve been working on Drew Beechum’s hard cider book, and I have a few questions for you guys that have had bad experiences with the Campden. Drew makes a big deal about adjusting the pH of the juice with things like citric acid, and then based on the final adjusted pH, the dose of Campden will vary. pH should fall between 3.0 and 3.8. The closer you get to 3.0, the less Campden you have to use. He states that if the juice falls below 3.0, no sulfite is needed. Any chance the acidity would help activate and dissipate the SO2 and not leave that taste long term in the cider?
I haven't made cider in 2 years (my trees seem to have gone to a biannual cycle). When I did make cider, I pasteurized it at 165 for 20 to 30 minutes. I felt there was still plenty of apple flavor there. Drew does mention that we should wash the apples and give them a quick soak in a Star San solution before grinding and pressing. I've been debating if that's more work than just pasteurizing the juice from the unwashed apples. Besides, I don't use drops. If I don't pick it off the tree, it doesn't go in my cider. And I hope to finally have my electric brewing system up and running by this weekend when I plan to start my cider, so I'll hopefully have a much more efficient way of pasteurizing that juice. Besides, I have an IC now that I didn't have 2 years ago, so I should be able to chill down that juice fairly quickly.
Last time, I used Cote de Blanc. It fermented down to 0.095. Nice apple flavor but very dry. I was thinking of using Drew's back sweetening process of Campden and then potassium sorbate with added juice or add the above at 1.010 SG as Dave has mentioned before. Do you all feel that using only the Campden post fermentation will still create a long lasting sulfery taste? I sure don't want bottle bombs, and it would be nice to have a nice drinkable lower alcohol cider on those hot summer days.
Any of you guys tried S-04 to give the cider an English flavor? I was thinking of that until some of you stated you liked S-05. I plan on 2 batches, one with Cote de Blanc, and one with something else. I have both S-04 and S-05 in the fridge. Could go either way, so you all tell me what I should use. Thanks.[/quote]
First time I ever made cider I used an English Ale yeast (something from White Labs, don’t remember exactly which one) and it came out great. A few years ago I tried S-04 and didn’t like the results, but it could have just been the apples. I’m dependent on charity to get my apples these days. Each year I hope someone will give me a bunch, and if I get them I just have to hope they are good.
The book you are reading is on-target for sulfite needs as a function of pH. Winemaker has an online calculator that can be used for this:
https://winemakermag.com/1301-sulfite-calculatorBut I wouldn’t add acid to get below a pH of 3.1 - the yeast start to struggle if you do that, and you will need to pick a strain that is optimized for low pH performance as opposed to flavor profile. In fact, I’d be careful about adding acid to a cider at all, as you don’t want to ruin the flavor. And if you did add acid, use malic (the naturally dominant acid in apples) as opposed to citric.
I’ve used S-04 once and liked it. Cleared faster than any other yeast I’ve tried. It had a little bit “cleaner” flavor than US-05, but that could have been the yeast dropping out quickly. I’d use it again, maybe even give it the edge over US-05.
I would not use campden with it, though. Just don’t think ale yeasts can handle the extra sulfite as well as wine yeasts.
I REALLY like the suggestion of using a saison yeast, as Lytnin mentions. Fast, complete attenuation, suited for low-pH… haven’t tried it, but now I want to give it a shot! 3711 would probably be fantastic.
I use potassium metabisulfite in combination with potassium sorbate before back sweetening, typically waiting 24 to 48 hours before adding the sugar.
As dmtaylo2 noted, sulfite doesn’t kill the yeast, it just stuns them. Without the sorbate, they can still bud to produce healthy cells which will be able to restart the fermentation. The sorbate doesn’t hurt the yeast at all, except to stop them from being able to bud. Thus, it won’t stop the cells already present from fermenting. But together, they’ll stop the process dead. The down side to doing things this way is that if you want sparkling cider, kegging is about the only way to get it.
There are some issues with sorbate if you plan to use it. It needs to be fresh; prolonged exposure to O2 will destroy it’s ability to be effective. It can change the flavor if you add too much (somewhere between double and triple the recommended dosage crosses the detection threshold), and if added to anything that underwent malolactic fermentation, it will add a truly disgusting geranium flavor. But that is a red wine issue, not a cider one. Hard to imagine a cider undergoing malolactic fermentation and still being worth drinking even without the geranium.
[quote=“rebuiltcellars”]
There are some issues with sorbate if you plan to use it. It needs to be fresh; prolonged exposure to O2 will destroy it’s ability to be effective. It can change the flavor if you add too much (somewhere between double and triple the recommended dosage crosses the detection threshold), and if added to anything that underwent malolactic fermentation, it will add a truly disgusting geranium flavor. But that is a red wine issue, not a cider one. Hard to imagine a cider undergoing malolactic fermentation and still being worth drinking even without the geranium.[/quote]
I’ve had a few of my long-aged ciders go through a natural malolactic fermentation - it’s not all that uncommon if you don’t pasteurize or otherwise kill the natural yeast. Butter and apples are good together, but not in a cider. This is actually why I started using brett in ciders - gives some rustic funk, but does a great job of cleaning up diacetyl. And some strains can undergo malolactic fermentation themselves, which is nice if you have a lot of older, tart apples in your mix or lots of crabapples.
Didn’t know about sorbate, though, causing off flavors with MLF - do you know what causes the geranium flavor? This is really interesting!
FYI – my no-chemical ciders last year all eventually got carbonated. It just took about 6 months in the bottles to get there! Of course I only have like one bottle left now. 
If I had used chemicals, might not have had carbonation, who knows, although in my younger years I managed to get well carbonated ciders even with sorbate and sulfite.
I can’t say I ever experienced the geranium thing – yes I’ve heard of that, but I’ve always been under the impression that it comes from overuse of it, like maybe 3-5 times the recommended amounts or something like that. But I could be wrong.
I find that sorbate has a less offensive flavor impact than sulfite. Fortunately, if you’re going to use them, the two chemicals seems to balance each other out with respect to flavor. Sorbate seems to enhance sweetness while sulfite tastes more minerally. Together though, they aren’t too bad.
But I still don’t use them anymore. Won’t anymore. Haven’t seen any need. Patience. 
Were they heat pasteurized? Did the yeast eventually become active and naturally carbonate, or something sneak in from the apples?
[quote=“porkchop”][quote=“rebuiltcellars”]
There are some issues with sorbate if you plan to use it. It needs to be fresh; prolonged exposure to O2 will destroy it’s ability to be effective. It can change the flavor if you add too much (somewhere between double and triple the recommended dosage crosses the detection threshold), and if added to anything that underwent malolactic fermentation, it will add a truly disgusting geranium flavor. But that is a red wine issue, not a cider one. Hard to imagine a cider undergoing malolactic fermentation and still being worth drinking even without the geranium.[/quote]
I’ve had a few of my long-aged ciders go through a natural malolactic fermentation - it’s not all that uncommon if you don’t pasteurize or otherwise kill the natural yeast. Butter and apples are good together, but not in a cider. This is actually why I started using brett in ciders - gives some rustic funk, but does a great job of cleaning up diacetyl. And some strains can undergo malolactic fermentation themselves, which is nice if you have a lot of older, tart apples in your mix or lots of crabapples.
Didn’t know about sorbate, though, causing off flavors with MLF - do you know what causes the geranium flavor? This is really interesting![/quote]
Sorry, don’t know what causes the geranium, just know how to avoid it. Malolactic-causing bacteria are very delicate bugs, and simply a moderate level of free sulfite (anything over 25 ppm is enough) will prevent them from acting. It’s actually a problem with red wines that you are trying to encourage with MLF - the sulfite that gets generated as part of the yeast metabolism can sometimes be enough to inhibit it if other factors are also unoptimal.
Yes, all heat pasteurized. There’s just barely a few yeast cells by the time I bottle, where if you prime the bottles and give them enough age, eventually they might carbonate. It worked for me last year. A potentially significant variable is the exact timing of when I actually bottle. If I wait too long, probably will never get any carbonation. If I bottled earlier, it would probably turn out to be gushers. I usually bottle around 4-5 months into it. Then another 5 or 6 months passes, and sometimes like this past year, I’ll find carbonation. It’s a nice little surprise when I pop a bottle and it’s gorgeously carbonated. I don’t really expect it but sometimes I get lucky I guess, due to my laziness.
You say you’re lazy, but you manage to rack a cider weekly? You need to work on your laziness… :mrgreen:
I usually forget about my ciders for around a year. They never carbonate unless I re-yeast at bottling time. It really works surprisingly well, but you either need to ferment it dry, or back-sweeten with something non-fermentable.
Last year I brewed a coconut cider with Muntons yeast that turned out real good and this year I did a farmhouse cider using S-34/70 at 52f that also turned out great.
