"fresh" apple juice cider not doing much after 5 days

[manticle]

Wine, champagne or funnily enough - cider yeast.

 

[Tahoose]

The new saf cider tastes good on first use.

Going to give it another try as thirsy people in my house meant I barely got to try it.

 

[wareemba]

i retract my posts for this thread.

The morning after pitching the air lock was solid activity, i cam home 2 days later and thought it was finished as the airlock was inactive. I left it for another 24hrs and then checked the gravity.....wtf it had only dropped 2 points to 1038. I gave it a swirl and 2 days later it was still inactive, i pitched another packet of 05 and today its still not fermenting.

FM! :unsure:

The sorbate from the 202 preservative must be stopping this fermenting. Im going to crank up the temp to 21c and if it doesnt get started by tomorrow its going on the lawn.

my batch of East Coast Beverages is sitting at 1.038 after a liitle bit of fermenting...

i gave it another big shake to stir it up, but its been two weeks now...

doh, I should not have got 20L of it should have tried a demijohn fists...

 

[wareemba]

Not sure why you are using an ale yeast for a cider.

what do you think of M02? or 71B?

 

[Dan Pratt]

my batch of East Coast Beverages is sitting at 1.038 after a liitle bit of fermenting...

i gave it another big shake to stir it up, but its been two weeks now...

doh, I should not have got 20L of it should have tried a demijohn fists...

Which yeast did you use?

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

what do you think of M02? or 71B?

M02 I don't know, unless you mean M2, in which case avoid it unless you like intractable sulphides.

71B is not a yeast I've used, to my knowledge it's primarily used to soften high (malic) acid whites without putting them through malo. This could be an interesting yeast if you find the cider made with other yeasts is too tart.

Edit: just worked out that M02 is a mangrove Jack's Yeast, I've never used it.

 

[boonchu]

Unfortunately most "cider" yeasts are a variation of a champagne yeast. S04 works well as does wlp775. No yeast will work well with juice that has preservatives. Best to find a local orchard where you can get fresh juice for under$1.50 a litre

 

[wareemba]

Which yeast did you use?

Mangrove Jacks M02 cider yeast

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

No yeast will work well with juice that has preservatives.

That's not really the case. Sorbates are always a problem as their metabolism can lead to off flavours* but most wine yeasts will shrug off SO2 at levels up to 100ppm** and in any case it can easily be reduced below this level by adding peroxide as previously detailed.

*Notably geranium taint if there are LABs present but it can also cause a VDK like taint.

** An ex colleague of mine ferments some of his sauvignon in barrel at 100 PPM free SO2. He developed this after a few vintages in Bordeaux, he reckons it adds to the texture. Since he sells the resultant wine for about $50 a bottle, he's probably right.

 

[boonchu]

Fair enough, but unless you are looking to do an English or french cider I would stay away from wine yeasts. Imo for a bog standard cider it is best to keep clear of preservatives.

 

[manticle]

French cider tends towards spontaneous fermentation/wild yeast, non?

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

unless you are looking to do an English or french cider I would stay away from wine yeasts.

Why?

 

[boonchu]

French cider tends towards spontaneous fermentation/wild yeast, non?

Indeed, but the wild yeast is usually very close to a normal wine yeast due to whats around the area.

 

[boonchu]

Why?

They usually end very dry with have a high ester profile making it more winelike than cider. Especially if you are looking for a sweet cider

 

[wareemba]

in any case it can easily be reduced below this level by adding peroxide as previously detailed.

hey Lyrebird_Cycles, i cant find much elsewhere (anything) about using peroxide, but a fair bit on using hydrogen peroxide...

are you talking about H2O2?

I'm guessing it is far too late to save this batch?

anyways, I'm not going to use 202 tainted "fresh" juice again...

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Peroxide won't fix high sorbate.

 

[wareemba]

Peroxide won't fix high sorbate.

well now I am thoroughly confused...

 

[manticle]

Indeed, but the wild yeast is usually very close to a normal wine yeast due to whats around the area.

For my palate, most English and French ciders stand head and shoulders above things like pipsqueak or mercury so my preference would be in that area.

As for sweetness - french can be anything from sweet to semi to dry.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

well now I am thoroughly confused...

Actually I was wrong, it turns out that peroxide will oxidise sorbate. Unlike the SO2 / peroxide reaction however I don't have any personal experience with it.

We can assume a 1:1 stoichiometry, so to take out 250 ppm of sorbate you'd need to add about 75 ppm of peroxide, that's about 250ppm of a 30% solution eg 5ml in your 20 litres of juice.

 

[Blind Dog]

For my palate, most English and French ciders stand head and shoulders above things like pipsqueak or mercury so my preference would be in that area.
As for sweetness - french can be anything from sweet to semi to dry.

have to agree, although I'd be thinking its a fair bit more than just head and shoulders; they're streets ahead. (I'm ignoring the industrial scale bastardisations)

The subtle complexities of a well made English or French cider is largely down to the blending of varieties and long maturation. For example, Thatchers grow over 400 varieties of apples and mature for up to 2 years in massive oak vats. The apples they grow are really only any good for cider.

Daylesford cider use cider apples for their cider (not sure it's 100%) and, to me anyway, the difference in flavour to a standard Aussie cider made from dessert apples is staggering