# Pressing australian apples for cider-what is a good mix?



## pickatooth (6/4/15)

hello cider drinkers. I have decided that pressing is the way to go, but have read only English published books that refer to english apple species...can anyone suggest a good mix of available home grown apples here in Aus ....? Was thinking granny smith for acid, pinl lady for sugars, and some crab apple for tannin.....I have a 35 cm diam press, and want to make about 25 litres at a time, so what amount of whole apple in kgs will i need? Cheers....pickatooth


----------



## gap (7/4/15)

What are you going to use to pulp/shred the apples before you press them??
Do you have any means of measuring acidity etc?
Some crab apples will help with that mix but the best apples are proper cider apples.


----------



## Airgead (7/4/15)

My usual mix is around 20-50% granny smith with the remainder whatever is cheap and available when the grannies are ripe. Usually pink lady. Plus I throw in a few kilos of crab apples.

So pretty much what you said.

Cheers

Dave


----------



## pickatooth (7/4/15)

Shredding/pulping...I am looking at the idea of using a garden electric mulcher...Bunnings perhaps, for around $150 ...to do the pre pressing preparation....does this actually work? 
To accurately measure acidity, is there a cheap instrument for this? I believe that litmus paper and garden soil pH meters are not too good.
So, what actually constitutes a "cider" apple...as opposed to a "cider mix" of several types of dinner, cooking and crab apple?

Cheers...Pat


----------



## Airgead (7/4/15)

The only way to do a real acid measurement is to measure titratable acidity. You can buy titration kits at brew shops. They are aimes at winemakers. I don't bother.

A cider apple is neither an eater, cooker or crab. Its an apple that has the right balance of sugar, tannin and acid to make a good cider. You almost always use a blend of cider apple types as well. They divider cider apples into sharps (high in acid), bitters (high in tannin) and sweets (high ion sugar), with most apples having two of those properties (bittersweet, bittersharp, sweetsharp...).

Cheers
Dave


----------



## pickatooth (7/4/15)

Thanks Dave....do you mean that a so called "cider apple" is called just that? Do any of these types have other names as well? How do you know what to source and where to source them? Cheers, Pat.


----------



## pickatooth (7/4/15)

PS...I have a new cider press and am about to plant out a new patch of apple trees in my new "orchard"....am I in danger of being "hooked"...becoming a home brew cider junkie? Cheers, Pat


----------



## manticle (7/4/15)

Get in touch with some of the cideries like henry of harcourt, kellybrook and coldstream. Pretty sure h of h have an orchard and you can arrange to buy juice - possibly apples too (and yes they grow traditional cider apples). Kellybrook certainly sell juice at the annual cider festival.
Start your enquiries there.


----------



## manticle (8/4/15)

http://www.henrycider.com/


----------



## Yob (8/4/15)

Sorry for the OT 

manticle, you still got that press or did you get rid of it? Got a mate entering the game and something niggled at my memory about you possibly parting with it? might be off track..


----------



## Airgead (8/4/15)

pickatooth said:


> Thanks Dave....do you mean that a so called "cider apple" is called just that? Do any of these types have other names as well? How do you know what to source and where to source them? Cheers, Pat.


Many of the traditional cider varieties do have names - yarlington mill, foxwhelp, kingston black.... Many others don't though. They are just random apples that grew from seed that happen to be good for cider.


----------



## pickatooth (8/4/15)

Thanks for all the info on what is a cider apple...and where to go for supplies. Just a final question, again....how many kilos of apples are needed to get juice 30 litres?...Or is that like asking how long is a piece of string? Cheers, Pat


----------



## manticle (8/4/15)

Well different varieties and different crops will provide different amounts of juice so yes - a bit at least. Then your scratting and pressing will have a big influence.
I'm far from the most experienced cider maker but when I've used whole apples, scratted and juiced (not pressed) I've got about 1/3 juice yield by litre per kg apples.


----------



## manticle (8/4/15)

Yob said:


> Sorry for the OT
> manticle, you still got that press or did you get rid of it? Got a mate entering the game and something niggled at my memory about you possibly parting with it? might be off track..


Last press I had (pretty small) I sold last move to cm2. I recommend something bigger if you want more than a few litres. Was reasonable toy press.


----------



## Airgead (9/4/15)

I press with a (very good) domestic juicer after scratting with a metal paint stirrer attached to a drill. I get quite a high yield. Around 40l of juice from 60-70kg of fruit depending on the season.


----------



## dug (14/4/15)

the bridgetown cidery in WA uses exclusively pink lady apples and they do a some very nice brews. Personally I don't go heavy on granny smiths if I use them at all. If its a good eating apple with some bite, (some acidity), then it should make good cider.


----------



## pickatooth (14/4/15)

Thanks for the advice...just picked up an electricgrape/fruit mulcher from ebay seller...looks fine to go. Have also gone to local wholesale nursey to buy 20 new apple trees for my "instant" apple orchard...got a selection of Grand Duke (cider apple) cox's orange pippin(pollenator),granny smiths, jonathons, red delicious, pink lady, sundowners, and have crab apples already close by. All cheap at present...$5 to 10 each tree.
May be too many species....more is less?
Will get onto Harcourt apple people for supplies to juice in the meantime.....any suggestion for a good yeast? Am using white wine yeast at present...Cheers


----------



## Airgead (15/4/15)

I have settled on 71B (white wine strain) as my go to for ciders. Does a great job.


----------



## Yeastfridge (16/4/15)

This is a great site if you fancy a bit of reading -www.cider.org.uk/frameset.htm


----------



## Yeastfridge (16/4/15)

Also, I've got 5x20L about halfway fermented, each fermenter with a different yeasts. I used roadside apples (about 20 trees, non-varietal) and it was pretty high acid juice. Happy to keep you posted re:favourite yeast


----------



## Yeastfridge (16/4/15)

Getting back OT, I reckon high sugar, high acid is the way to go. So crabs for sure, and leaving the apples for a fortnight or so to get more ripe. IMHO the acid in the apples brings out the apple flavour


----------



## Airgead (16/4/15)

You need some acid but not too much. Once the sweetness is all fermented out, too much acid am make it puckering.

I often add crabs but that's more for tannin than acid. You want a little tannin as well for balance. too much and its like a rough red and tastes like chewign on a paddlepop stick..


----------



## pickatooth (17/4/15)

that would be excellent...a good yeast is its own reward! Roadside apples are intriguing...any guess as to what they are and how they stand wrt sugars,acids and tannin? How many kilos to get 5 x 20L? How did you assess acidity...taste or chemical apparatus? cheers


----------



## troopa (18/4/15)

I just did 5 x 20L as well. It ended up being about 200kg of apples. Its all depending on size and type of apples and the efficiency of your press and scratter. Mines not so great but the day is really enjoyable. All up took about 4-5 hours with 4 of us pitching in.

Ive got acid and tannins on hand but ill wait till the end product before tasting and adjusting with those.


----------



## Yeastfridge (20/4/15)

pickatooth said:


> that would be excellent...a good yeast is its own reward! Roadside apples are intriguing...any guess as to what they are and how they stand wrt sugars,acids and tannin? How many kilos to get 5 x 20L? How did you assess acidity...taste or chemical apparatus? cheers


I used about 250kg of apples for 100L of juice. Pretty bad efficiency I know but I'm actually not pressing them, just running them through a garden mulcher, packing the pulp into a bin with a false bottom and letting gravity pull the juice out of the pulp over a few days. 

WRT sugars and tannins and acids, I wish I bought a wine titration kit to test the acid but the overall mix is pretty high, higher than Granny Smith for sure but that's only by taste. One tree in particular which I got about 30-50kg of apples from had some noticeable tannin but again I can't put a figure on it, not even sure how that's tested in a lab. Can feel the tannin now in the almost-finished-fermenting cider. As for sugar, cider apples are ideally 1.054-1.058. Mine were only 1.050. I read on the link I posted earlier that leaving the apples 2-4 weeks is tradition, to let them get more ripe and hence more sugar. Unfortunately I read that 6 hours after mulching my apples...


----------



## Yeastfridge (20/4/15)

Oh and as far as variety goes, I was under the impression that any apple grown from seed is essentially a new variety. One tree growing by a train station was very pink lady looking and tasting but all others didn't remind me of anything I'd ever tasted/seen


----------



## Ferg (20/4/15)

I also have 100l of juice fermenting out from roadside apples, my efficiency is usually around 60-70%. In any case it was as many apples as could fit in a small trailer. Varieties were unknown but interestingly pretty much every apple tasted delicious which isn't something I would usually associate with road side apples. 
I've split it up into 4 batches and have S04, 71B, wild yeast & keeved/wild yeast. Ph was 3.2, OG was 1055. These apples definitely could have been left for a couple of weeks to sweat and fully ripen but that didn't suit me timewise so here I am.


----------



## Ferg (20/4/15)

About that many apples will give you 100l. Give or take!


----------



## troopa (21/4/15)

I made the mistake of using wine yeast on 2 of my batches.. they are both down to 0.995 and very dry
2 of the others are on english yeast and are sitting abotu 1.001 and still have some sweetness left in them.

I really have to leave myself a reminder to stay away from wine yeasts!


----------



## gap (21/4/15)

Hello Ferg,

Be very interested in more detail with your keeved batch.

regards

Graeme


----------



## pickatooth (21/4/15)

Troopa said:


> I made the mistake of using wine yeast on 2 of my batches.. they are both down to 0.995 and very dry
> 2 of the others are on english yeast and are sitting abotu 1.001 and still have some sweetness left in them.
> 
> I really have to leave myself a reminder to stay away from wine yeasts!


Thanks for the heads up re the yeast...I was going to use standard wine yeast, but would rather get a more suitable variety if possible....where to get English yeast supplies? Is there an online shop to access? Cheers.


----------



## pickatooth (21/4/15)

Ferg said:


> About that many apples will give you 100l. Give or take!


Is the green chair a* seater* or *cider*? ( joke) Thanks for the image...ball park figure is now embedded. ...will also wait several weeks for apples to fully ripen.
(Paid about $1.80/ kg for second grade apples from local fruiterer and am building up to 50 kg or so before pressing.)...cheers


----------



## Airgead (22/4/15)

pickatooth said:


> Thanks for the heads up re the yeast...I was going to use standard wine yeast, but would rather get a more suitable variety if possible....where to get English yeast supplies? Is there an online shop to access? Cheers.


I wouldn't worry too much about the yeast. Its not like beer. Pretty much any yeast will fully dry out a cider as the mix of sugars is different. Even a low attenuating beer yeast will dry out a cider. Also, the various yeast strains will give different flavour compounds in a cider than they do in a beer due to the differences in precursor chemicals.

I use 71B which is a wine strain in my ciders, mostly because it can partially digest malic acid which takes the edge off the acid bite and increases the perceived sweetness of the finished cider.

Cheers
Dave


----------



## Ferg (22/4/15)

gap said:


> Hello Ferg,
> 
> Be very interested in more detail with your keeved batch.
> 
> ...


Well it might be easier for me to tell you all the things that I did wrong!
It was my first attempt and didn't quite go to plan for various reasons but I think it is working in part.. It is fermenting much slower than the wild test batch alongside it (sg 1040 vs 1024).


First off, I overdosed with sulphite because I forgot my ph meter and guessed the ph, I guessed 3.3 and it was 3.2 so fairly respectable. My electronic scales were useless at the weights I was trying to weigh (7g from memory) so I was reduced to going with half a teaspoon. This overdose meant that the fermentation would not get going at the temps I had it at and therefore would not have raised any chapeau brun to the top. It finally got going at 18 deg but it went straight into a turbulent fermentation.
I had to put all my juice into cubes so I could transport it back to Melbourne in my small boot (I press in sth gippsland) which I then transferred into my fermenter a day later. When I was transferring it over there was a more noticeable thick layer at the bottom of the keeved batch. I reckon this was probably the start of my keeve.
The apples were probably not ripe enough
The ph was probably too low at 3.2
The ambient temperatures were probably too high on the day of pressing and the next day of transportation
I didn't get the pme into the juice straight away
The sloshing around in the back of my car probably didn't help
That probably covers it. It sounds a lot worse than it was in reality but I learnt I have to be a lot more prepared when I try it again which I will. My aim is to remove at least half of that list next time! Like I said the keeved batch is lagging the test batch significantly so perhaps when I transferred out of the cube all I did was an early rack, we shall see.


----------



## pickatooth (8/6/15)

Sorry for the delay in getting back to this forum....however I have been busy with the cider pressing and fermentation.

I used a range of apples in the pressing...60 % sweet, 30% acid plus I added some random pears I had been given for sweetening.

All together it was about 55 kgs of fruit...pressing gave me about 19 litres of juice only ( not very efficient...may need to pulp the apples into smaller pieces first). I used a masher that has an electric motor attached and put the pulp thru twice...then into my press.

The apples were a mix of granny smith, fuji, pink lady, golden del.

On placing the juice into a 30 litre fermenter, I added more sucrose in water to get the volume to 12 litres and SG to a level that would deliver about 8-9% alcohol.

pH was about 4.3- 4.4 so I added maliolic acid to get it down to 3.8 according to my pH tester (once it was calibrated properly).
A pinch of Tannin was added and I tasted a sample...not bad!

I then added a cider yeast sold to me from Aussie brewers...set the thermostat to 18deg C and waited 3 weeks.

On racking, a siphon was used to get the juice into 2 x 12 litre demijohns, with addition of 4 litres of 500g solution of brown sugar-(before this addition, SG was down to 0.995 and pH was sitting at 3.8 or so., )

Most of the yeast at the bottom of the original fermenter remained behind . ..easy to clean out
then and there.
This sugar solution was added to get the demijohns topped up to the top of the bottles to eliminate air space, and bottles recapped to allow CO2 to escape under water seal as before
I will leave the cider another 2 weeks before bottling ( carbonation drops at that time and grolsch bottles).
Will see how it turns out then.

Issues....how to get better conversion rate from kgs apples to litres of juice, how to ensure vol of juice is suitable for raking off bottles to allow for further fermentation without possible air spoilage, guessing how much acid to add to get pH down to 3.5 to 3.8 range...

So far, so good.
Cheers


----------



## pickatooth (8/6/15)

sorry ..read 21 litres not 12 litres in the fermenter.


----------



## gap (9/6/15)

Hello Ferg,

just saw your post. any updates on the keeved fermentation?

Regards

Graeme


----------

