# How Is Clear Cider Even Possible?



## jivesucka (10/1/11)

was at a pub and thought i'd try the monteiths crushed apple cider. it looked like lemonade, there was absolutely no cloudiness or colour to speak of. it was a clear fizzy apple drink.
i got home and had a long hard think about it and it continued to confound me. does one use a 60L fermenter and rack about 9 or 10 times to acheive such clarity?
you can also get a clear cider at hart's pub in essex st in sydney.
i know for certain the brigalow or blackrock cider kits could never produce such a product. so how can it be done?


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## Thirsty Boy (10/1/11)

Filter


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## roo_dr (10/1/11)

I managed to get a really clear (almost crystal) with the Blackrock kit with 2ry chilling, letting the bottles sit in the fridge for a few days prior to drinking, and careful pouring / handling. You'd barely notice a difference between mine and Magners when it came to clarity.


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## beerdrinkingbob (10/1/11)

We were at true south a little while back and apparently it's exposure to oxygen that causes the yellow colour, so there are ways around it.


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## waggastew (10/1/11)

My Dad brews alot of cider. He does a very dry style using champagne yeast and it comes out crystal clear and a very light colour. He uses unfiltered juice bought from a fruit market and leaves it on primary for at least 4 weeks. As Roo_dr says it is also important to let the bottles sit upright for a week or so in the fridge to let the yeast sediment well.


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## DU99 (10/1/11)

Type yeast might be an issue


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## jonocarroll (10/1/11)

I've made a bottled clear, sweet, sparkling, un-oxidised cider on wild yeast - beautiful stuff. Look around at 'keeving' methods. It does involve racking a couple of times, but no crash chilling, filtration or pasteurisation. 

However, for the rushed - as TB points out, filtering the bejeezus out of it would probably get you the 'clear' side of things just fine.


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## Thirsty Boy (10/1/11)

I wasn't recommending it - just commenting on how its probably done by monteiths/magners/bulmers etc etc


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## jonocarroll (10/1/11)

And I wasn't saying that you recommended it.

Sorry, perhaps I clearly missed the emphasis of your one word post.


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## ekul (10/1/11)

All the apple ciders i've made have been clear. I just use apple juice from the supermarket (the cheapest money can buy) and add 'wine yeast' from the lhbs. I don't even use temp control, i figure the worst that will happen is apple flavours. 

In the glass it looks like any sparkling wine, so i call it apple champagne, the girls love it.


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## Bribie G (10/1/11)

Black Rock seems to be the kit of the moment, plus supermarket apple juice and a kilo of dex - courtesy of Dave round the corner 
I don't brew cider myself and limit myself to the odd donation from Dave, as my hiatus hernia would complain - much as I love the stuff <_<


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## manticle (10/1/11)

QuantumBrewer said:


> I've made a bottled clear, sweet, sparkling, un-oxidised cider on wild yeast - beautiful stuff. Look around at 'keeving' methods. It does involve racking a couple of times, but no crash chilling, filtration or pasteurisation.



I do something a bit similar in the first stages of my cider to get the brwn cap then rack from that.

I'm very interested in your success with wild yeasts QB. You sent me alink in regards to keeving a while back and I've just been reading the Proux and Nicholls book on cider.

In that they suggest that despite very good cleaning regimes, breton/Normandy cidre houses contain the desirable yeast cultures and that the apple skins contain only very small amounts and in most cases undesirable ones.

Obviously in your case the natural yeasts were enough. Do you mind telling me what blend of apples you used and from where they were sourced? 

Someone also suggested to me recently that reculturing from a bottle of anneville cidre bouche (for example) might be a good way to go about it although how easy is that kind of yeast to revitalise?

For what it's worth to the OP - time, cold conditioning and fining all work with cider the same as beer. The first two are enough.


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## Tanga (10/1/11)

Just found something interesting while reading up on Malolactic fermentation:
http://www.brsquared.org/wine/Articles/MLF/MLF.htm
_A reduction in colour intensity can be caused by MLB directly (not because of pH increase). This is due to the metabolic activity of bacteria on phenolic compounds [Lonvaud-Funel, 1995]. MLF has been shown to change colour hue (lower 520 nm) [Riesen, 1999]._

So that'd definitely change the colour.


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## Thirsty Boy (11/1/11)

QuantumBrewer said:


> And I wasn't saying that you recommended it.
> 
> Sorry, perhaps I clearly missed the emphasis of your one word post.




i know you didn't - I was clarifying with more words because one was plainly open to an interpretation that I didn't want made.

goddamn it - see what happens when I try to be brief...... Maybe I should work on a happy middle ground??


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## MHB (11/1/11)

When they are making clear apple juice from the cloudy pressings its just run through a centrifuge.
Going back 20 years, I saw the one at the Berry processing plant God it was huge, sounded like a 747 spinning up.
MHB


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## SuiCIDER (12/1/11)

My cider resembles a slightly golden lemonade.


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## kevin_smevin (12/1/11)

manticle said:


> I do something a bit similar in the first stages of my cider to get the brwn cap then rack from that.
> 
> I'm very interested in your success with wild yeasts QB. You sent me alink in regards to keeving a while back and I've just been reading the Proux and Nicholls book on cider.
> 
> ...




Hey Manticle.

I'm really interested in keeving etc. I've read all about it and know how it works. I gave it a shot the other year with some fresh juice from Kellybrook cider festival but had no luck, no brown cap formed. Do you use commercial juice or crush your own apples? Then do you simply add CaCl and wait until the brown cap forms?


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## jonocarroll (12/1/11)

manticle said:


> Obviously in your case the natural yeasts were enough. Do you mind telling me what blend of apples you used and from where they were sourced?


I sourced mine from the Adelaide Hills - the local club organised with a grower to have a crush day, and he rounded up his leftover stock which we purchased for ridiculously low prices. I probably got lucky with the wild yeast, but as per the keeving recommendations I sulphured off roughly half the yeast to begin with to get a nice slow ferment.



yum yum yum said:


> I'm really interested in keeving etc. _I've read all about it and know how it works_. I gave it a shot the other year with some fresh juice from Kellybrook cider festival but had no luck, no brown cap formed. Do you use commercial juice or crush your own apples? _Then do you simply add CaCl and wait until the brown cap forms?_


Bit of a contradiction there. 

For the uninitiated (or those who know how it works, and yet at the same time, don't) the keeving process involves forming a krausen-like gel on top of the juice in which nutrients get trapped and thus become unavailable to the yeast, stalling the ferment. This leads to sweet cider without back-sweetening. The top layer also protects the juice from oxygen during the slow ferment, and clears up the cider to crystal quality. The gel (chapeau-brun, or 'brown cap') is formed from the pectin in the cell walls combined with calcium chloride. In order to get the pectin to free itself up you need an enzyme - pectin methyl esterase (PME) - which occurs naturally in apples anyway (which is why cider makers will leave the crush overnight before pressing; to let this enzyme do some work breaking down pectin and releasing more juice) but can be added by hand if you can source it in a pure enough form (*any* of the wrong enantiomer will ruin the reaction). I managed to get my hands on a decent sample amount, and would be happy to pass on the info to anyone interested who PMs me.

When done properly, the ferment takes about 2-3 months, followed by another 6 in the bottle to carbonate (no priming), resulting in sweet, clear, carbonated, unoxidised, bottled cider. I added a small amount of Nelson Sauvin hop tea to my best batch and managed to impress a commercial cider maker.


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## Tim (12/1/11)

Pectin often causes haze and pitching some pectinase clears this up.

For those interested in keeving, Andrew Lea has a good explanation in his book "Craft Cider Making". I havn't tried it, but I think you need to add the calcium salts and sulphite immediately after pressing, so there is no pint if you are using a kit or bought juice.


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## kevin_smevin (13/1/11)

QuantumBrewer said:


> I sourced mine from the Adelaide Hills - the local club organised with a grower to have a crush day, and he rounded up his leftover stock which we purchased for ridiculously low prices. I probably got lucky with the wild yeast, but as per the keeving recommendations I sulphured off roughly half the yeast to begin with to get a nice slow ferment.
> 
> 
> Bit of a contradiction there.
> ...



No contradiction. Just didn't feel like explaining the whole process, there is no info in there i didn't already know. Without crushing my own apples i was simply hoping there would be enough PME in the juice to do the job. I tried to ferment it wild - i got no brown cap and very little fermentation so i ended up pitching some yeast. Where did you get your PME. I could only find a supplier in France - couldn't read the website.


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## manticle (15/1/11)

Yum yum yum: my version is very half arsed and involves no sulphite or chloride additions. I read something about it in regards to getting clear cider - I still use a pure yeast strain to ferment and end up with dry cider. It is clear at the end but what I'm doing couldn't really be called keeving.

I have crushed and juiced my own apples but never extract enough juice for a full batch so top up with store bought.

Basically I've just let the soft cider sit until it gets frothy and ugly on top (usually 48 hours) then racked into another vessel, added an active starter of wine yeast or cider yeast and fermented cool (14-15 degrees). Takes around the same time as a lager to ferment then a week or more to cold condition. Carbonation done as usual (bulk prime).

I have used sulphites before but never will again - they taste wrong, give me a headace and I firmly believe require much more maturation time than sulphite free.

@QB - thanks for the info.


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## speedie (15/1/11)

a cider maker from england suggested to me to rack off the yeast towards the end of the ferment 
his explaination was that it stressed the yeast which resulted in under attenuated ferment thus leaving some residual sweetness
havent tried it my self but makes sense though
still get clear cider
speedster


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## jonocarroll (15/1/11)

Hell, speedie - did you just post something that made sense? What a world. </jibe>

Racking many times is indeed one way to get a sweet, clear cider - the thinking goes that each time you crash chill and rack, you remove some yeast and trub, eventually leading to a ferment stall that won't recover. Doing this until there is just enough strength to carbonate a bottle works, but you need to be sure that the yeast isn't just having a nap - bottling sweet cider and having the yeast get a second wind = b00m!


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## hopjunkie (7/2/11)

So I am thinking of putting down a cider for a party I have coming up.
It is going to served from a keg instead of from bottles, my question is:
If i use a basic black rock kit with some extra juice from the supermarket, then when filling the keg pour in a litre of Bulmers will that skew the taste to provide a more "Bulmer(ish)" taste to the final product?
Thanks for any advice!


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## Bribie G (7/2/11)

My k n k mate round the back from here makes the killer Black Rock that I posted a piccie of earlier, and apart from the supermarket juice and a shedload of dex he doesn't do anything else to it. I reckon Bulmers would just get lost in the taste anyway as it's very commercial tasting as-is. Just me, but if you wanted a 'fuller' flavour maybe sub some of the dex and pour in a couple of bottles of cheap Liquorland spewmante.


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## DanRayner (7/2/11)

hopjunkie said:


> So I am thinking of putting down a cider for a party I have coming up.
> It is going to served from a keg instead of from bottles, my question is:
> If i use a basic black rock kit with some extra juice from the supermarket, then when filling the keg pour in a litre of Bulmers will that skew the taste to provide a more "Bulmer(ish)" taste to the final product?
> Thanks for any advice!



Woolies still has 2 x 2.4L Berri apple juice for $6

19.2L of cider for $24... 

#justsayin



I would probably consider back-sweetening it with juice after ferment (if you're kegging and are able to keep the temperature of the keg nice and low after sweetening it)


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## Lord Raja Goomba I (7/2/11)

DanRayner said:


> Woolies still has 2 x 2.4L Berri apple juice for $6
> 
> 19.2L of cider for $24...
> 
> ...



ALDI - $1.89 for 2L. Coles $2.89 for 3L bottles.

I'm going to spec my next cider with spec juice (there is a place here that sells varietal apple juice from Stanthorpe).

Last time was apple juice from supermarket on top of brigalow (it was $4 for a tin, I couldn't pass it up) and fermented with champagne yeast. SWMBO and mum liked it lots, but I found that it had an artificial sweetener taste, and, whilst drinkable, wasn't something I liked that much. It had a sour taste too. And undercarbed.

So it'll be 10g (I have champagne bottles, corks, cages) per bottle and I'll ditch the brigalow for pure juice, with something nice to give it a broader flavour.

I liked the idea of using NS (maybe citra for me) hops at the end.

How does it affect the taste?


Goomba


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## Phoney (7/2/11)

I buy fresh pressed juice straight from the orchard for $1.20/L. Turn up with 25L cubes and get them filled to the brim with 50/50 granny smith/pink lady.

Come home, pour them into fermenters, add 300g of LDME & 2 sticks of cinnamon per batch, 4766. 2 weeks @ 17C then rack, 2 weeks @ 2C. Bottle or keg and it comes out crystal clear & delicious.


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## Phoney (7/2/11)

Case in point:







I could read a newspaper through it if I really wanted to.


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## brettprevans (7/2/11)

QuantumBrewer said:


> I sourced mine from the Adelaide Hills - the local club organised with a grower to have a crush day, and he rounded up his leftover stock which we purchased for ridiculously low prices. I probably got lucky with the wild yeast, but as per the keeving recommendations I sulphured off roughly half the yeast to begin with to get a nice slow ferment.
> 
> 
> Bit of a contradiction there.
> ...


Awsome post. I'm very interested in that info. Just found out the mother in law has loads of weird granny smith looking crab apple kind of apples as well as nashi type fruit. The missus would prefer sweet cider rather than dry like me but I don't want to use sulfates etc to stop fermentation.

Edit: in re to OP - it's called extended lagering. My last batch was crystal clear after about 6 months lagering


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## jonocarroll (7/2/11)

citymorgue2 said:


> I'm very interested in that info.


PM coming your way.


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