Hard Cider experiment

[fermented-vegan]

Thanks Tim! :)

I'm glad to hear that everything seems normal in this hard cider ferment. Hopefully the end result is well worth the wait. Maybe this will give some incentive for other people to try this in small quantities like I have.

Peace & Love from a vegan :)

[fermented-vegan]

So here's an update. One of the half gallon jars had stopped producing CO2 a number of days back, and I happened to notice something funny looking on the surface. Turns out it was a thin layer of what I would guess to be white mold. So I guess I let it sit too long. I skimmed the mold off the top and refrigerated the jar. The next day later I poured some in a glass to drink.

Well... It's not hard cider like I'm familiar with. The yeasty flavor is all gone, as is the strong alcohol taste the I detected prior to racking into secondary. It actually tastes more like white wine with a hint of apple flavor, mostly dry, with a sharp bitter tang that I would assume is from the MacIntosh flavor. The first glass was quite pungent with a slight hint of what I swear tasted like vinegar. (Maybe because it was the top layer that had some exposure to air?) And I initially couldn't quite put my finger on what the flavor reminded me of as I rarely ever drink wine. The second small glass tasted much better. There was no more hint of vinegar, it didn't seem quite as pungent, and was actually mildly carbonated. So I guess I've made some sort of apple wine.

The other two jars continue to ferment and create CO2 quite vigorously. The small two cup jar still has a fairly strong sulfur overtone to it. That one should be interesting to see if it is drinkable. LOL

So now what I question is...
What should I have done differently to get a somewhat sweet hard cider, and not apple wine?

Peace & Love from a vegan :)

[Tim Hall]

Hey Vegan,

The white stuff you saw on top was most likely acetobacter infection...especially given it has a vinegary tang. This was due to too much oxygen in the later stage of fermentation. An airlock may be the way to go the next time around. Can the lids for your containers be drilled for an airlock?

Really the only way to stop the fermentation (at least temporarily) and get a sweeter cider without adding preservatives is by crash cooling. Basically stick the ferment in the fridge and let it sit for a couple-three days. But it will start fermenting again once temperatures come back up...so it's not a good solution if you plan to store any at room temp.

[fermented-vegan]

Hello Tim, :)

Thanks for the help and information. I guess once this jar stopped making CO2 I was still burping the lid and pressing the button on the cover to check for pressure now and then and it probably introduced oxygen into the container. Maybe in hindsight I should of just left the pressure in, and let the excess leak out on it's own to have avoided this oxygen contamination. I think I'll start doing that with the other two jars. I'm sure I could drill a hole in the lid for an airlock. But these jars are also my food storage containers. Besides, I think in hindsight that if I want to do this again, because of how long it takes to get the end product, I'd want to do it in much larger quantities. For the gallon and two cups I've made, this will go very quickly when shared with friends.

Really the only way to stop the fermentation (at least temporarily) and get a sweeter cider without adding preservatives is by crash cooling. Basically stick the ferment in the fridge and let it sit for a couple-three days. But it will start fermenting again once temperatures come back up...so it's not a good solution if you plan to store any at room temp.

So I guess your implying that it was the nature of the wild yeasts that produced the end result for my batch? And to otherwise alter it's course would mean crash cooling it. But then that would mean there would have to be an occasional tasting of it at some point in regular intervals to know when to stop the fermentation. I suppose this is the point of using store bought yeasts of certain varieties to get the desired and consistent results?

Mind you I'm not unhappy with the results I've gotten. Just surprised that it turned out more wine like tasting than hard cider. I've never really cultivated the taste for wine where I just love drinking it, so I'll have to be keeping my mind open to learning new tastes as I drink this batch.

Peace & Love from a vegan :)

[Tim Hall]

Yeah, you can buy yeasts that have specific kinetics...i.e. they'll tolerate a certain amount of alcohol or consume a certain percentage of sugars. But in the end, you still may not find exactly what your looking for, because the fresh cider is what it is. I mean if you only have so much sugar in the juice, you may be hard pressed to find a yeast with low enough attenuation to get you the desired end sweetness and provide the characteristically "cidery" flavor you'll get from wild yeasts.

Brewers and wine makers use all kinds of fancy processes to stop yeasts or remove them from the ferment. Pasteurization, filtering, centrifuging, sulfites, etc. Probably not options for you (or me for that matter.)

You could take a brut-force approach to getting more sweetness if you're not averse to adding sugar(s) and having a much higher alcohol content. By upping the sugar content, you'll have a higher residual sugar when the yeasts poop out. But this means getting into the 12-14% alcohol territory...more like wine. And you'll get some different flavors/aromas than a lower-alcohol ferment.

Another option would be to drink the cider before it's "finished." This is what the guy in those videos was doing. But you can't bottle and store unfinished ferments without risking exploding bottles.

[Tim Hall]

Vegan, also what you may be interpreting as "wine like" may be due to the higher acid levels from both acetobacter and LAB. If you can prevent it from starting to turn to vinegar the next time, it may very well taste significantly sweeter. In other words, you may actually have the sugar levels you're looking for, but the added sourness is offsetting that flavor too much.

[fermented-vegan]

Hello Tim, :)

Vegan, also what you may be interpreting as "wine like" may be due to the higher acid levels from both acetobacter and LAB.

I think you may be right about this. I finally opened and drank the other two jars, and they are much better. That wine like pungency and any vinegar flavor is thankfully not in the other two jars. So the other half gallon tastes to me like it sits somewhere between an apple wine and and a very light tasting hard cider. It's sweet, but not overly so. Color wise it is a very clear yellow. It's surprising how light and easy it is to drink. It sort of reminds me of drinking a light beer. Meaning there is no heavy, pungent, or difficult flavors. On the other hand though, I don't suspect it is all that strong in alcohol content. There is absolutely no hint in the flavor that there is alcohol in it. So that's a pretty nice success. Although the outcome is significantly different than I expected.

Now the small two cup jar is quite different. This is the one that has had a thick layer of sediment in it and has had a strong sulfur like overtone in it's smell all along. Surprisingly, that sulfur like smell is not in the flavor. This one is very different tasting. Much sharper in flavor, more bitter, and I can taste the alcohol in it. But still quite nice to drink in a different sort of way compared to the good half gallon jar. You wouldn't even suspect they came from the same batch! LOL So besides the smell, I like this outcome to! :D

So it appears that you can do small batches of hard cider ferments in glass ball/mason jars. You just need a bit of experience to know when to put it in the refrigerator so it doesn't start turning into vinegar. I hope this experiment of mine encourages other people to try this.

Peace & Love from a vegan :)

Now on t

[defenestrate]

Example: a 12x12x12" box holds 1,728 cubic inches. A 24x24x24" box is only twice as big in linear dimensions, but holds 13,824 cubic inches...8 times as much volume. So the larger box is (in theory)exponentially more economical to make per unit volume.

FYI box material cost would be in square dimensions rather than linear so the numbers would be 4 times as much surface area to 8 times the volume. You're still talking about 200% as much volume per unit of box material on the whole (possible slight increase in box stuff to handle greater mass of material carried) so your point is a good one. I just couldn't help wanting to make sure the numbers reflect a closer fit to real world materials costs.