Lobo Royale Cder Recipe?

[mattcarty]

Hey guys

sorry if this has been posted before, did a search but could not find anything

I am not a cider drinker, i actually dislike every cider I have tried except this one!

http://www.loboapple.com/LOBO_Royale_cider.html

so im pretty keen to do a clone or work out what is so different about this cider from stuff like pipsqueek bulmers etc so i can track down a recipe that would suit my tastes.

any cider drinkers/brewers able to help me out?

thanks
carty

 

[Greg.L]

According to the website this is a real cider made from fresh pressed juice of proper cider cultivars. Assuming that is true, you need to start planting now. You won't be able to make this sort of thing from juice you buy at coles, or a cider kit from your LHBS. Real cider is like good wine, its not a factory drink so you can't just clone it with some kit in a few weeks/

 

[drsmurto]

A bit late now but next season try and get your hands on some freshly pressed juice from english/french cider apples.

There are a few growers in the Adelaide Hills that grow these varieties and since Lobo cider is made in the Adelaide Hills that's where i would start looking.

In reality though you can do somehting similar using commercial apples and a juicer. You need a blend of apples to replicate the tannic bitterness. I;d use a combination of sweet eating apples such as golden delicious, someting more tart but still for eating like pink lady and then something sour and harsh like a granny smith.

Play around with combinations of them.

Juice them (an apple press would be better but it depends on how authentic you want to get) and leave them in a fermenter for a few days for the keeving to occur.

I haven't had this cider but going from the ABV I'd guess its a sweet-ish cider. So you need to find a way to stop the fermentation somehow and that is something i have never achieved without the use of SO2. Some people are sensitive to this, I am not so have no troubles throwing 60+ ppm of SO2 to kill off the yeast and stop ferment. Carbonate in the keg and then counter pressure bottle or leave on tap.

 

[jasonharley]

A bit late now but next season try and get your hands on some freshly pressed juice from english/french cider apples.

There are a few growers in the Adelaide Hills that grow these varieties and since Lobo cider is made in the Adelaide Hills that's where i would start looking.

In reality though you can do somehting similar using commercial apples and a juicer. You need a blend of apples to replicate the tannic bitterness. I;d use a combination of sweet eating apples such as golden delicious, someting more tart but still for eating like pink lady and then something sour and harsh like a granny smith.

Play around with combinations of them.

Juice them (an apple press would be better but it depends on how authentic you want to get) and leave them in a fermenter for a few days for the keeving to occur.

I haven't had this cider but going from the ABV I'd guess its a sweet-ish cider. So you need to find a way to stop the fermentation somehow and that is something i have never achieved without the use of SO2. Some people are sensitive to this, I am not so have no troubles throwing 60+ ppm of SO2 to kill off the yeast and stop ferment. Carbonate in the keg and then counter pressure bottle or leave on tap.

The simplest way to retain some sweetness is to crash-cool the fermenting brew to 2 degrees when the OG hits around 1020-1018, hold it for 4 days, then keg and gas it up and start drinking quickly.... the unattentuated component gives the sweetness you need........ this does not work for all brews because some brews need to sit on the cake and let the yeast clean up at the end of attenuation but it generally seems to work for simple light brews.

5 eyes

 

[Greg.L]

The website contains all the marketing BS that is normal in the industry. Not that I blame them, its a hard world to get a business going and they have to use every tool they can, including getting a post on this forum. The claim about keeving is particularly interesting, I wonder what temperature they were fermenting at, without so2. When you do the maths the first crop from a small orchard isn't going to fill many bottles, so inevitably there will be a lot of ordinary fruit from the market in there, which they admit. As pointed out, the abv is very low so they are stopping the ferment somehow, then carbing. Diluting is quite illegal so they can't be doing that.
Good luck to them anyway.

 

[MHB]

Keeving can lead to some interesting changes in the cider. From what I can work out to have it occur naturally you would really need to be working with some of the traditional cider apples that have enough of a strange little enzyme PME, have just the right amount of Calcium and I suspect natural tannins from cider varieties. Probably need to have the breeze blowing from the north east for 3 successive days and only walk around the vats to widdershins.
You can of course fake it; I mean set up the conditions for it to happen, there is lots of good information out there.
Here is a quick overview of the process and the basics of the chemistry involved Cider.org.uk
Im looking for some PME if anyone knows where to get it in Australia, please share otherwise it is available from some specialised dealers in the UK and USA.
Couple of years ago I did a 100% Fuji Apple cider and would like to have another go at it with keeving.
Mark

 

[Greg.L]

As I understand it you need very low temps, under 10C to do a keeve, so you would need refrigeration. You also need low nitrogen fruit, ordinary apples won't keeve. You need a very slow bubbling to raise the gel cap so you can rack the low nutrient cider from under it. Even in the UK they have trouble getting hold of the PME enzyme, the French are difficult *******s who see no need to sell such things to foreigners. Basically very difficult to do a keeve in Oz.