Backyard Chickens & Bees

Fresh, sweet cider coming out of the press.

Round two of cider-making took place this past weekend. I learned a lot about buying apples in bulk and what NOT to do! Also, I made use of my new apple grinder from OESCO to replace the garbage disposal one that I had built last year. That was easily one of the best investments I have ever made! Wow. To really make the point, I’ll just start by estimating the person-hours used in batch one and two: for batch one, there were around 6 people working for about 9 hours for roughly 54 person-hours; for batch two, I did just about everything (others were present, but I was able to easily work both grinder and press alone) in 1.5 hours. So that’s a 36:1 advantage with the new grinder! As I anticipated in the previous post for 2011 ciders, the speed of the new grinder means that the pressing is now limited by the press itself, and not the amount of time it takes to cut and mill the apples. Anyway…

Buying apples for this batch was a pain in the ass. I was hoping to get a full bin of mixed McIntosh, Liberty, and crab apples from the orchard I normally source from, but that was not meant to be! I had previously e-mailed the owner, who gave me a generic price for a bin at their fruit stand. Well, I found out that it’s not as easy as just showing up and grabbing a bin at the fruit stand! I should have expected as much, but didn’t really take the time to call and talk with the people who actually work the stand to get all the details before heading out. Anyway, turns out they want one week notification for a mixed bin of fruit, which, of course, makes perfect sense, as they have to prepare the bin and fill it, etc! As such—and since we (my wife and I) were on a tight schedule that morning—we ended up just buying by the box. A bit pricier than I would’ve liked, but the fruit is great and we got what we needed.

And clearly what we needed was a mix of McIntosh, Newtown Pippen, and Golden Delicious apples (the mix was 53%, 34%, and 12% for each). (The Liberties and Manchurian crabs were out, so I changed to a back-up plan.) I ended up using 510 lbs of the fruit to produce 37.5 gallons with a specific gravity of 1.045. This works out to an efficiency of 64% with the new grinder (compared to 62% with the garbage disposal). Titratable acidity came in at approximately 7.6 g/l malic, and pH was lower than previous batches at 3.2. With that pH, I was able to reduce the amount of SO₂ needed, so only added 60 ppm (as KMS). I also made sure to put in 1/2 cup of pectinase to minimize the foaming during fermentation. (Don’t you love reading articles that use both Imperial and SI units at random? Argh.)

After about 18 hours for the sulfites to do their thing, I pitched 46 grams of the AWRI 1503 yeast (the same yeast I used with the previous batch), and 60 grams of yeast nutrient. Both the 30 gallon barrel and the carboy with the overflow cider were fitted with blow-off tubes and are waiting for fermentation to begin. The temperature in my basement is a bit cooler now, so they should hold steady at 58-60 °F/14-15 °C, which is exactly where I want it! Once the gravity drops a bit (5 points or so), I’ll chaptalize the fermenting juice to bring it closer to an SG of 1.050 for long-term stability during maturation. 1.045 is right at the low end of what is desirable for alcohol production (1.045 corresponds to a potential ABV of 5.8%, where as 1.050 should yield 6.5% ABV), and a higher ABV will help keep the cider from spoiling while it ages. Roughly speaking, that would require 4.4 lbs of plain white sugar (note to self: 3.75 and 0.6 lbs to the barrel and carboy, respectively). I imagine that the gravity would have been slightly higher if I had let the fruit ‘sweat’ for a week to convert the starches a bit more, but as it is, this will do the job! And no, I did not do an iodine test on the apples.

Comparison of 2011 batch one and two.

I guess the take-home message from this week’s work is that the right equipment is KEY to making the process go quickly and smoothly! The table to the left shows a comparison of the first and second cider batches, with a slight improvement in efficiency seen with the new grinder (in addition to the rather significant improvement in processing time). The next batch will (if I have my way!) have some late-season apples (e.g., Ashmead’s Kernel and Winesap, if they’re available), and that’ll probably be the extent of what I make this year. There’s also the possibility that my neighbors will end up with a heap of pears (again, depending on whether they’re available, since the year was so crappy for fruit here in Oregon), so there’s always the possibility of a fourth batch. If I do that, maybe I’ll go with the wild fermentation again and see how that plays out for a larger batch like this. Speaking of… the last wild fermentation batch was amazing! I should probably write up a bit on that, the other 2010 ciders, the cider-making class, and all the other bits and pieces of our little farm soon.

Related posts:

1. Hard cider for 2011, part 1a. Two Sundays ago (or so, it was on 9/11) was...
2. Hard cider for 2011, part 1b. This is part two of the first chapter in the...

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