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Cider from the pears last year was a washout. Ended up with alcoholic water. So to try and give it some flavour we added some cooking apples. The super sweet juice from the pears alone is delicious, but mixed with Bramleys it was really good! And becausewe'd forgotten to buy any yeast we've gone with the wild yeast approach.
The idea is to use campden tablets to kill whatever bacteria and mold they pick up whilst lying on the floor, then leave the juice in an open container with a towel on top to get some natural yeast. Supposedly, out of all the yeast species in the environment the ones best suited to the fruit will start growing in it naturally and be the best ones to ferment with.
Well, after a few days I got no froth or scum in the juice but a faint whiff of alcohol so I stuck it in a demijohn and hoped. Still nothing after a week, so I added some peelings from a pear still on the tree since apparently it grows on the skin. STILL nothing, so I stuck it in the airing cupboard for a day and it's taken off. Foaming like mad, even fizzing. Put it back in the under stairs cupboard to try and keep it from going too fast. So let's see how it goes.
Thinking we will add sugar for secondary fermentation and bubbles.
do you have a press? our apple trees are bountiful this year so I'm thinking some kind of cobbled together device to press them
Some wild/organic fruit suspended in the mixture will introduce yeast. That's how I made my sourdough starter using organic grapes in spelt flour. Can be a bit hit and miss as you don't know what type of yeast you are getting.
If you have a sourdough starter or know anyone who has it would be interesting to try some with the caveat that I know sa about yeast or its derivatives.
The wild yeast in my grape juice started to produce ethyl acetate, so it was quickly killed off with sodium metabisulphite, and is now fermenting with ordinary wine yeast.
do you have a press?
Nope. Used the molgrips patented (not really) three bucket approach with three 99p jobs from B&Q.
1) Mash about 2-3lbs of apples/pears in one bucket with a long thick piece of wood til it's the consistency of a slushie.
2) Drill a hole in a second bucket on the corner of the side and bottom. Then elevate it on a stool or something and place bucket three underneath the hole you've drilled.
3) Place a teatowel or muslin or something over the holed bucket (or in the bottom) and pour or scoop pulp into it. Then gather it up and press or wring the juice out of the teatowel being careful not to exceed the strength of the fabric. The juice then runs out of the hole and into the third bucket.
You can do without the holed bucked and wring straight into bucket three, but the holed bucket allows you to sort of knead and push on the bag of pulp if you like. It also provides a degree of protection if you drop the pulp.
Takes ages mind, and works much better on ripe fruit than slightly under ripe. Also makes a hell of a mess so do it outside. I had to do mine inside this year cos of the wasps.
If you have a sourdough starter or know anyone who has it would be interesting to try some with the caveat that I know sa about yeast or its derivatives.
You're strongly warned against using bread yeast as it will taste rank, they say.
You’re strongly warned against using bread yeast as it will taste rank, they say.
Just thinking out loud there. Given that beer is liquid bread and bread can be made using beer just wondered if there was any correlation between the different types of yeast.
HFW was making nettle beer on the telly the other night and was stood over a big plastic trug shaking yeast into it. Seem to remember a brewery somewhere using wild yeast?
There again I grew up in Somerset so know all the tales of vinegar flies and dead rats as part of cider recipes.
Let us know how the brew turns out.
Last year was my second year of making Cider. I ended up pressing 250l of apple juice and 40l of pear juice.
The cider I made from a variety of apples. The best stuff was that pressed latest in the autumn from a mix of what I believe are proper cider apples and left to ferment slowly using the 'au naturel' method - press the juice and let nature take it's course.
The pear juice I had was from a perry pear. Everything I read recommends let the scratted pear sit or 'macerate' for 24 hours before pressing to improve the flavour of the end product so I did that.
Unfortunately we really had picked the pears too soon they weren't ripe enough so not enough sugar when pressed. The juice was unlikely to ferment to anything like 5% you really need to keep cider/perry good so I added sugar. Then I added campdens then a cider yeast and nutrient a day or two later. The end product turned out just above 5% and actually was really nice. I bottled and added a little sugar to make a nice fizzy medium dry perry. This was really good back at Xmas - nice whiff of pear when you opened the bottle, as opposed to the cider which got much better into the spring / summer. By then the perry had not got bad per se, but the pear smell had gone and really not a lot going on tastewise.
Anyway I'm planning this autumn's apple scrumping and pressing. A lot more 'au naturel' to be made this year. Not sure if I'll get my hands on any pears this year...
Cheers molgrips will try the bucket approach
If you have a sourdough starter or know anyone who has it would be interesting to try some with the caveat that I know sa about yeast or its derivatives.
You’re strongly warned against using bread yeast as it will taste rank, they say.
I think that's because bread yeast is more about the CO2 than the alcohol. I'd definitely avoid sourdough starter, which is an unholy alliance of yeast and lactobacillus. Sour is probably not something you're after in your cider.
If you want to press your fruit check out the web, I know a few pubs round my way that have a press come to the pub over a weekend so you can press your stuff and have a beer in the sun and listen to music.
Yeast is not a single species but a whole range of bacteria AFAIK. They seem to behave differently, must eat slightly different stuff and produce different substances as by products.
Hngggggggggggggg - it's not bacteria, it's fungi.
Oh, yeah I think I knew that but had forgotten .. sorry 🙂
Also explains why you use clotrimazole anti fungal stuff for yeast infections.
Hah, just the biologist side of me coming out.
Leave your fruit as late as you can. To test if its ready, drop some iodine on the flesh. If it turns black there's too much starch. If it goes clear, all the starch has been converted to sugar. Because I presume no one is using cider varieties of fruit, get some Lalvin 71B yeast, add enough sulfite to knock the natural yeasts out and it'll bring the acidity down a bit.
So, non-commercial varieties go fruit make cider too acidic?
Hmm. We have conference pears, perhaps the worst variety to use, and the cider wasn't acidic at all just highly alcoholic and tasteless.
You also have to harvest conference pears as early as possible otherwise they spoil. So.. I dunno. Just guessing trial and error, because otherwise the pears have to go in the bin. Juice is the best thing for them tbh but there's only so much you can drink.
Pears themselves were tastier this year due to lots of sunshine I think. Let's see.
You've got four apple varieties (not sure if the same applies to pears): 'sharps', which are cookers such as Bramleys, 'sweets', which are dessert fruit, then bitter-sharps and bitter-sweets, which are cider fruit containing more tannins than culinary or dessert fruit. Without cider fruit you tend to get more acidic or bland flavours. Kind of like the stuff traditionally made in the south east, rather than the west country.
For a home made press you can use a car scissor jack and some chopping boards . iirc you wrap the broken up apples in muslin cloth , then sandwich in between the chopping boards . You then place in a knoocked togther frame , made out of 6 x 4 timbers and crank down the jack ( jack goes up top )
Desert apples can be used to good effect to make cider, but some cider or crab apples will add acidity and give some tang or bite.
Avoid rotten fruit obviously , also try to keep it cool . the fermentation should take weeks, not hours like beer .
Add stevia for sweetness without the risk of exploding bottles
Two doors up have a crabapple tree, with really big crabapples the size of satsumas. I can easily whack a few lbs of those in, assuming they are ready at the same time.
Ah! This years Babycham thread....