Questions about Hops and Oak in cider (or other)??

[EJM3]

OK, so at ~2:00PM today I went to add the azucar morena and when I dropped my mix-stir thingamajig and felt about the bottom of the bucket there were no more piloncillo bricks at all. So I added the azucar morena, just sprinkled it in lightly, got a little effervescence but nothing of a MEA type. Total sugar added to date is 23.22oz (all there is in the house!), that will bring my SG up and keep the yeasties happy for a couple of days until I hit the store on Friday.

So it looks like this for the recipe so far:

48 pounds of apples, juiced to provide 5 1/2 gallons of 1.053 fresh cider (All of them sweets eating apples)
3.25 pounds of sugar (Piloncillo & Azucar Morena)
2oz Med+ French oak chips (I may go to 4oz as I LOVE heavy oaking)
12oz cranberries, juiced (May need more for the tannins)
2 1/2 tsp energizer (added due to H2S smell)
K1V lees from a prior batch of cyser (made into a 1 gallon starter and just kept adding must to the bucket to get to 5 gallons)

The SG at this time is 1.020 (after adding the azucar morena today and piloncillo yesterday). K1V just keeps mowing down the sugars as fast as I can add them! Beasts I tell you, BEASTLY YEASTIE BEASTIES!!!

 

[EJM3]

OK primary is now done (SG 1.002), racked to secondary in my 5 gallon glass carboy onto 5 crushed K-Meta tabs. Added my reserved cider to top up at this point of 1/2 gallon to bring this up to ~3 inches from the bottom of my bung. Fermentation is going gangbusters again.

There is an amazing amount of refermentation happening at this time considering that I used a total of 6 campden tabs for 5 gallons of cider. K1V - Chowin down the must*!!!



*Lyrics to my take on the Talking Heads "Burning Down The House":



"Chowing Down The Must by the Chowing Yeasties"

Watch out you might not get what you're after
Cool fermenting strange things with a stranger
I'm not an ordinary mazer
Chowing down the must

Hold tight wait till the fermenting is over
Hold tight We're in for nasty leftovers
There has got to be a way
Chowing down the must

Here's your sachet fill you fermentor: time to go buy more
The transmogrification is here
Close enough but still too far, Maybe you know where you are
Fightin' yeasties with beastliness

All wet hey you ganna need a raincoat
MEA's spraying your walls in broad daylight
Zero and six-ty five de-grees
Chowing down the must

It was once upon a fermentarium that I listen to myself
Gonna come in first place
People on their way to ranching yeast what did you expect
Gonna burst into flame

My yeasties out of the ordinary
That's might want to hurt your hobby
Some things sure can mow the sugars down
Chowing down the must

No visible means of support and you have not seen nuthin' yet
Everything's flocced together
You don't know what I've made your must into yet
Chowing down the must

 

[EJM3]

I was going through the kitchen and found a few stray bricks of piloncillo, crushed them up, and fed them to the yeasties a few minutes ago. So I will have a nice amount of sugars added for an estimated starting SG of 1.085 and an ABV of 11.36% in the finished product. This is going to be a little pet project of mine for the next few weeks at the least as this seems to be more of an evolving ferment (most of mine are).

When I FINALLY get the ferment finished in the next few weeks and things start to drop out I will be adding the fuggles to the mix. Should be an interesting and one time only sort of brews. I rather like one-offs myself, the same thing over and over is boring as all get out, and I tell the same old to get out!! ;D

 

[mannye]

Loved the lyrics! I'm going to try another cider this time using some honey to get the abv up. As well as putting some wine tannin and malic acid on order. I figure as well as the acid blend, I should have a supply of just malic, citric and the other one which my brain drive is having problems accessing at the moment.


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now.
U g

 

[EJM3]

Glad you like the lyrics, my partner and I are know as "the merry punsters" round `bouts here.

I've got Malic, Citric, Tartaric and Lactic 88% (comes as a liquid only). I am guessing you could use others as well, but these seem to be the prevalent ones for our purposes. Ascorbic acid could be used as well, but I cannot really find what particular benefit it would have in a ferment besides as a vitamin supplement for humans.

 

[WVMJack]

Ascorbic is an antioxidant, I think more used at bottling? KM is so much cheaper and does more jobs. WVMJ

 

[EJM3]

I've read up on ascorbic acid a bit and found a nice little paper on it here. Basically it is an adjunct to using with K-Meta, and mostly in white and rosé to keep from browning. Excerpts below:

What Ascorbic Acid Can’t Do….
• No antimicrobial properties
• No aldehyde binding properties
• Does not denature oxidative enzymes
• Cannot act alone as a protective antioxidant

Complementary adjunct to sulfur
dioxide, not a substitute…….

AND

Benefits – Ascorbic Acid:
• Used only in white and rosé wines
• Prevents pinking, slows browning
• Converts oxidised phenols e.g. quinones to non-colored forms
• Delays oxidised aroma formation
• Delays formation of ATA characters in some, but not all, susceptible wines…

So it looks to have some good benefits, but there are not a lot of them compared to K-Meta...

 

[Medsen Fey]

Actually there are studies that show that Ascorbic Acid (vitamin C) may actually worsen browning in white wines with aging. I don't use it any longer. KMeta is your friend.

P.S. - I think the lyrics are great. There is no question that singing to your yeasties will have them make better mead.

 

[EJM3]

Well this is where we have landed so far. Took a few samples to my sisters place for the holidays (2 six packs and a 32oz). Came back with 2 empty six packs, they still have the 32 for another time... All reviews were rather complementary, only a few grumbles of surprise at the level of dryness in it.

Looking at the fermentor right now it is crystal clear (thanks Super Kleer!) except for a cap of fuggles that is slowly dissipating. I figure that by the time they have dropped out they will have flavored the 4 gallons remaining in the fermentor. Getting the bottles ready in the next couple days is going to be my next set of chores, then bottling, etc... Looking and tasting yummy without the added Fuggles, so we shall see where the Fuggles leads the flavor of this Saved Cider 2014. No apple aroma or flavor at this point, so I am hoping this will come back during the aging process, as well as the Fuggles adding their goodness to it. I did not boil the fuggles (I did NOT want the bittering effect with a .996 FG 11.06% ABV cider), just opened the packet (1oz) and added. They figured themselves out and made a cap that I'm going to break up later tonight after a 24 hour soak, or they might just end up staying there and me watching them drop out, we'll see how much energy I have to do all of this. And more as I've already got some multi-berry wine going, my niece gave me a (now don't laugh too hard) Mr. Beer with the standard beer kit and two cider kits with blackberries and raspberries for additional fruit and sugars. I started the beer to see how that goes for me (the ciders will need work as they are only 3% ABV, AND they insist that the yeast need 73ºF to 81ºF to ferment properly...)

 

[EJM3]

OK, so only a month later than expected (as Medsen is want to point out, laziness & procrastination, et al), bottled into thirty two 12 oz bottles. Unfortunately I think my hops went skunky on me as I let them sit for too long with too much light, live and learn! But once the initial fog is gone off the glass, the taste is really quite nice, dry at .996, but way more burn too so the flavors are gone for now. Looks like this will be packaged up and put into storage until Autumn or Winter sometime. After all my additions I pushed the ABV to a bit over 11% or thereabouts, good for aging, I just hope the hops aren't completely skunked, and if they are I'll just pretend it's a Heineken...