A tale of six (and a bit) ciders...

[TimT]

Cider brews for this year - it's been a long list:

1) Cyser, made from early ripening apples collected around January. When milled and crushed they produced a very low gravity must (about 1.020), but we added honey to this to get the gravity up to around 1.080. Fermented on wine yeast, this brew is coming in to its own - a mead with both wine qualities and appley fragrance.

2) Cyser, made from leftover must from brew 1). I fermented this on some wild yeast I had collected through happy accident earlier this year. The yeast chewed through all the sugar, with the FG being one point lower than the FG of 1). The two brews tasted similar, though this wild yeast cyser had more esters and fusels and whatnot, and will clearly benefit from a longer ageing.

3) Trentham cider - a month or so ago we collected a bunch of wild apples from around the Trentham/Mt Macedon area. All of them were quite sweet, so I suspect this cider might be quite low in tannins. I fermented this one on White Labs cider yeast. I'm tempted to throw some hops on this one for a week before racking to experiment with the hopped cider concept, and make up for the possible lack of tannins. Or possibly some other spice? A few cloves? (Collecting these apples, I lost my wedding ring under the first tree we stopped at, but at least I got a crappy joke out of it - 'With this ring, I tree wed').

4) Bright cider 1 - we collected a whole bunch of apples from around Bright, as we do every year, and got about 9 litres of cider must, which we introduced to some White Labs cider yeast. The unfermented must tasted quite rich, sweet and tart and tanniny, so I think this will mature into a very nice drink. I fermented this one in a flimsy 10 L plastic container that used to be used for water, whacking a condom on top as an airlock! Fermenting is slacking now, so I'm thinking I should rack it in a small 10 L oak barrel I got for my birthday. (The barrel still has to be screwed together). Just uncertain of the right time to do this.... I don't want substantial fermentation to warp the barrel or anything like that.

5) Bright cider 2 - still had apples left over, and with some added wild pear juice - we got these pears from a park in Preston, and they had a very dry tanniny flesh (though very sweet juice) - I got almost 9 more litres. 4.5 of these went on some more White Labs yeast, and other 4 litres went on....

6) Wild Bright Cider - I had my doubts the wild yeasts would catch in time but I needn't have worried. After blobbing around the bottom for a day or so, the sediment suddenly and dramatically rose to the surface of the brew just before I was due to go out to the shops. When I came back it was fermenting slowly.... the day after fermentation picked up pace quite a bit, and for a while it was beating the White Labs yeast in terms of carbonation. This is the cider I'm most excited about - one and a half years ago I caught an extremely strong and useful yeast from the peel of just one of my apples. This cider is just *full* of yeasts. And they're all competing with one another to get to the available resources first. Once they're done I'm sure there'll be a lacto-bacilli fermentation moving in as well. The cider smells delicious at the moment, and doesn't seem to have gone through the disgusting 'smells like farts' stage that my other ciders have done - I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, but certainly at the moment it's smelling very powerful and and fruity and alcoholic. Not sure whether this cider can be sugar-primed to get a sparkling drink at the end - might the lacto-bacilli interfere with a secondary fermentation?

Interested especially in advice on 4) and 6).

 

[EastClintwood]

I'd be very interested in number 6 of your brews. That sounds like an interesting concept. Please keep us informed on how it turns out

 

[TimT]

Yeah. About that. It's clarified nicely, no noticeable fermentation at the moment (though plenty of clouds around the top still). I want to give it time to go through a malo-lactic fermentation, to let the lacto-bacilli clean up after the yeast, as it wear, smooth out some of the malic acid. Not going to even sample it yet. I want to give it a nice long time to sort itself out.

I suspect it may be a tad sweeter than my other ciders which tend to ferment out dry; may have a few more rough tastes because of the wild yeasts at work. Don't really know though.

 

[Lincoln2]

I hoped you used a flavoured condom so as not to compromise the taste in any way.

 

[Ferg]

I've done a few wild yeast fermentations at this stage and have been really happy with the results.
From what I have read during a fermentation you get a succession of wild yeasts which will all contribute. I tend to sulphite the batch at half the recommended dose - the theory being that the sulphite knocks out the really bad yeasts and bacteria which will be present right at the start of your fermentation but allows the good ones to come through after a few days once the s02 is all fully bound. It's worked pretty well so far for me.
As for MLF, did you measure the ph or TA of the cider at the start? It may be difficult to know for certain whether it has happened or not if you are just relying on your taste buds as the taste of the cider will be changing for the next 6 months regardless of MLF or not. Once it has finished you should still be able to carbonate the cider by priming it with sugar/juice as normal. Its probably worth testing one in a plastic bottle to check that its working. If not you can either add a tiny bit of cultured yeast + sugar or force carb...

 

[TimT]

Nah I didn't measure the pH. From what I've read though a wild yeast cider will tend to go through an observable malo-lactic fermentation at some stage - a gentle bubbling? I'm not sure if I want to carbonate it really because mostly when I do ciders and wines I just leave them still; I think the carbonation can interfere with the flavours. Thanks for the advice though!

Pretty excited about how the wild yeast cider is going to turn out. All my other ciders have had a 'smells like farts' stage - the yeast producing a lot of sulfur. This one hasn't. Not sure if this is a sign of a weak yeast - I'm not overly concerned about it; maybe the sulfur making stage was just too short for me to notice.

Interesting how the yeast seem to cooperate in these wild brews - it's possible the colder weather is knocking them out a bit now.

 

[Ferg]

I've found that temperature has a massive effect on things actually. The only time I've really had the fart smells is when its been fermenting at too high a temperature, this tends to strain the yeast apparently.
Wild yeasts will still work at much lower temperatures than cultured yeasts (maybe lager yeasts are the exception) but will just ferment a lot slower which is only a good thing.
This year I have actually used some cultured MLF bacteria on one of my batches. I've read it makes in really winey (vinous?) but thought I will give it a crack anyway. I have about 100l of cider from roadside apples this year split into four baches, my thoughts were that carrying out a mlf on one will allow me to at least blend it back in with the others and reduce the overall acidity.

 

[TimT]

All really fascinating. Do you observe stuff like Brettanomyces pellicles on the wild yeast ciders? I haven't seen any on this one so far, but I guess they must be there amongst the other yeasts. I don't think they'd be knocked out by sulphites; they're probably more tough and adaptable than normal brewing yeast.