The two “Black” apples are completely different. Kingston is an old English bittersweet apple specifically kept for the purpose of English style cider, whereas I believe Arkansas is, of course, from Arkansas with totally different lineage and I’m guessing is probably good for pies and long-term storage, but who knows what it’ll do for cider.
Baratone, if you got your hands on some Kingston Black cider, if you could respond or PM me the information of where I could get some (especially if they’d be willing to ship it to Wisconsin), I promise I would only buy a couple gallons and I promise I won’t tell another living soul on Earth where we got it from. I mean, that stuff’s pretty darn hard to get, ain’t it? I know the tree doesn’t grow for crap so it’s hard enough getting enough apples to make a gallon or two. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m more than willing to pay a premium price for a premium apple cider.
Yeah, the Ark Blk is much more firm, darker in color, and can be eaten raw or put into desserts.
Dave, I get it every year and I’ll see what he’ll do. I’ll drop you a PM in a few days.
Thank you! And if there’s ever anything I can do for you…
[hijack continued]
This evening I was wondering if it was time to rack or add Brettanomyces or something. The answer is no. SG=1.034 for both the Cote des Blancs and the S-04 batches. I just tasted those two, and they’re both very different but both very good. The Cote (with my own pressed apples) is very tart and wild tasting, reminding me of a tart English cider, complete with just a hint of barnyard funk maybe?!?, whereas the S-04 batch with pure commercially pressed cider is very sweet and has a honeyish flavor. I think I prefer the Cote batch, but we’ll see what happens later. I guess I might want to rack both tomorrow or the next day. If the first turns out too dry and tart, and the other too sweet, I might end up blending these later, at least partially, to try to balance them out. How intriguing an experiment! This is a lot of fun.
Meanwhile, the US-05 batches have been fermenting away as well, although they’re probably lagging behind a little since I didn’t pitch that yeast until the Notty was confirmed dead at P+36 hours. So I might wait to taste those for a couple days yet.
All four batches smell stinky, but even so, the first two batches taste fine, which is a good sign that the sulfur dioxide is just all going to bubble out and not stay in the cider.
Dave, I’m relieved that those batches are seeming O.K.–it sounded a little sketchy from your earlier description of horribibble smells…I brewed a Belgian wheat with “Forbidden Fruit” last summer and it was a major rotten egg for a week or so during high fermentation…the beer turned out fine, without a whiff of sulfur by the time it had bottle conditioned, but it was pretty scary for a while.
John
In my experience, sulfur ALWAYS disappears with age. I was more concerned because the krauesen also looked very odd, as if it might have had something wild growing in it, and I guess I didn’t report that. And I never smelled sulfur so strong in my life on any beer. But, the krausen has since fallen back in and looks normal, and the sulfur is largely gone. No worries anymore – and tastes great.
Today I racked the cider I described in my first post. It finished at 1.000 and is quite tart. Has a hint of spice to it, and is quite tart. I think I might make a batch with the sweet late-season apples and blend.
Sounds like a plan, Lennie. My ciders with homepressed apples are about done fermenting now and are likewise VERY tart and will need either some blending or backsweetening later. The Cote des Blancs batches have the fruitiest aroma, and are not only very tart but very dry as well, with the Bretted version at 0.999 and the non-Bretted at 1.004, with both still wanting to ferment even further. Some of the dryness is no doubt from the crabapples. [continuing random thoughts…] I’m letting the Brett go to crazy dryness without further treatments, as I need to cultivate the funk, while I’ve sorbated and cold crashed the non-Bretted half in the hopes of stopping it dead at about 1.003 or something like that. I racked and split a couple of the other batches last night with SGs in the 1.015 range, plus or minus, and sorbated those as well but didn’t cold crash, so we’ll soon find out if addition of sorbate was worthwhile or what. The commercial cider with the US-05 is still cranking along at SG=1.025 and tastes quite sweet with a honeyish flavor. The S-04 batch has no krausen at all anymore and tastes pretty good, with a certain funk that I hope sticks around, as it is a good sort of funk – maybe it’s the whole English sort of character? So, my plethora of little batches are beginning to grow more interesting and diverse, and hard to keep track of, but I’m taking good notes, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in order to learn as much as I can out of all this. I don’t think I’ll be doing this in future years, as it does take quite a bit of work. Hopefully it will all be worth it in the end.
Dave, I agree that these experiments have a way of taking on a life of their own…when I go down to my mudroom, it’s “cider, cider everywhere, nor any drop to drink…”–there is a gallon of nice dry perry fermented with D-47, 3 gallons of the first batch I pressed the weekend before Tropical storm Irene which to my taste, is a bit thin and insipid–I didn’t think the storm would leave me with any apples, so I hurriedly gathered several bushels for that batch–they needed more time on the tree, I think. That batch was fermented with champagne yeast. There is 5 gallons of much better tasting stuff made of the blend of yellow transparent and wild reds, also fermented with D-47, and the last batch of the season with what I think is Northern Spy bubbling away with WLP champagne yeast…when that batch clears, I think it will be time to start tasting, blending and bottling…
John
I’ve been purposely avoiding champagne yeasts because they dry out the cider SO much that you need to add just a ton of backsweetening to get it back up to drinkable status, IMHO. I’m growing to love drier ciders, but it’s nice I think to have just a little residual sugar in there to balance. Champagne yeast seems to take things down to zero residuals, if you don’t kill it with sulfite and sorbate earlier.
I am inclined to agree with you about the serious dryness of champagne fermented cider–the batch fermented with d-47 is much nicer that way, with some residual sweetness and a good, almost silky mouthfeel…I am hopeful that some judicious blending when everything has finished out will give me some nice winter sipping…I will probably leave it dry, and bottle condition it to about 3-3.5 volumes of CO2 in champagne bottles with corks and wires.
John
In addition to dryness, I don’t like the yeasty character champagne yeast adds to the cider.
