I am a renter but would like to start my journey down the fermentation with smiles road. I am looking to make hard cider from the lovely Criterion juice that you can buy locally (I'm in Eastern Washington) by the pasturized gallon. I'd like to start with a cider and maybe try a single variety mead and a cyser later down the road. Onto my questions:
Criterion juice is very sweet so what would you folks recommend to tannin it up a bit to make maybe a semi-sweet with some character?
Is there a good resource you folks would recommend for recipes for the yeasts, nutrients, stabilizers, etc. (I have made a nut brown ale and a pilsener in the past)?
Are there any exceptional books on the subject? I am of fairly limited resources, so I can't really afford a library.
Thanks in advance,
Pete
There are really only 4 books out there.
Cider: Hard and Sweet by Ben Watson. He does talk about North American Trees.
Craft Cider Making by Andrew Lea. He is a British cider hobbiest, but really easy to get a hold of and talk to. See his website at [url:aocd8eo4]http://www.cider.org.uk/[/url:aocd8eo4]
Cider: Making, Using, Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider vy Annie Proulx & Lew Nichols. Again, it has stuff on our trees.
Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale by Michael Pooley & John Lomax. Nothing about trees.
You didn't say where you are at, because there are cideries on the east side. Go to http://www.oldtimecider.com to find out where.
Sign up for NW Cider Society.
Get on the Cider Workshop. Yes, it is based out of the UK, but there are North American farmers on there, and they will help you pick out trees to get an ideal blend.
I am also in the process of starting up a cidery, but I think I'm at least two years out.
Heather
The best cider apples are generally not the best fresh eating ones. you will want to experiment with the ratios and take notes, since we differ on taste preferences, but you will want a few bitters, a few tart/ acids, and the rest sweet and aromatic apples. A lot of feral apples are very bitter, and for cider, this is good, like Hops in Beer.
Golden Delicious apples are very high in surgar and work for hard ciders.
I'd contact someone in the area and hopefully if they keep notes, you will get a 'feel' for what blend you will like best.
My take on cider making is -so far anyway- it is easier than beer, and just as delicious. I am a big fan of mead too for the same reasons, though the downside of mead is you have to wait *forever* (or so it seems) for it to age. That said, the older it is, the better it usually is. We recently had a 25 year old mead brewed by some old boy in FL in 1984 that had been capped with a recycled soda bottle cap, and it was possibly the best thing I ever drank. So, in his honor I brewed up a cyser and a melomel (mead plus non apple fruit juice- I used blackberry from the bushes in the alley) last year and the Cyser is great, and gets better with age. The honey/champagne yeast makes it a little drier and more complex, cutting the sweet ( I used commercial apple juice because I couldn't find any cider last Feb). I think a judicious addition of hops would be good too. I would also add I have switched to making a gallon at a time instead of using the 5 gallon carboy, gives me more chance to experiment, the investment is low if it doesn't work out, and bottling time doesn't seem like a total burden.
Have fun, keep us posted on what you discover!
I once made a gallon of apple wine, amping up the alcohol using table sugar.
Yep, it was very alky stuff, but zero taste. One glass of that was more than enough! I tossed the rest.
My theory is that all the bubbly fermentation carried out most or all of the volatile aroma compounds, depriving it of any taste.
Apple wine is overrated.
Blackberry wine is a whole nother story!
plumfun, I kind of feel like adding sugar mellows out the taste of the apple, or hides it. I don't know if that is true or not, it is just how I feel. My apple wine tastes very much like a buttery chardonnay, but my cider has a bit of apple still to it.
I recently stumbled across a book from Multnomah library called The Secrets of Making Wine from Fruits and Berries by Lelie G Slater, published out of Lilliwaup, WA in 1965. He says he makes a lot of dry apple wine for blending because the apple is mellow. Have a wine that is too sweet? Tone it down by blending it with the dry apple wine. Want to stretch that blackberry wine that was so difficult to get all the blackberries for? Add some dry apple wine.
So yes, apple wine can be tasteless, but you can use that to your advantage.
[quote="candlepdx":1t8t5uid]My apple wine tastes very much like a buttery chardonnay, but my cider has a bit of apple still to it.[/quote:1t8t5uid]
Crap! Now you tell me! Next time I will be thinking "buttery chardonnay"! And see if that helps!
Maybe it is the chardonnay of the NW?
I was hoping for something nice and apple-y.
Thanks!
Idyllwild
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
John S
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