cider yeasts

[vassili]

Afternoon all,

I have begged, scrumped and been given roughly a quarter of a tonne of mixed apples.
They are all nice and ripe, my patio smells gorgeous in the morning and evening.
So, this weekend I'm hiring the necessary industrial equipment to process them.
I've got some 45 gal barrels, and various other size fv,s to accommodate.
Now this is where I'm in a quandary, do I not wash the fruit and take a chance on a natural ferment and possibly ruin a huge amount of juice, or do I steralise and add wine yeast, beer yeast?
If I go for the latter where can you buy large quantities of yeast for such big vessels?
Any thoughts, suggestions hugely welcome.
Cheers, J.

 

[freester]

Right. I'm no expert. This is my first autumn attempting to make cider.

I was chatting to one of the old fellas in my village. He was telling me he makes cider 'au naturelle'. Puts the apple juice in into a fermenting bucket. Just puts a tea towel over to keep the flies off, and tops it up with more juice as it bubbles ferments and reduces.

Sounds risky to me. But if I was in your situation I think I'd try a fermenting bucket or two using this method but ferment the majority with yeast. Again not from experience but other friends / colleagues recommend Champagne yeast for cider. I'd had conflicting advice about adding Campdens 24/48 hrs before adding the yeast. Some advised do. But the place where I took my apples to for scratting / pressing advised against Campdens and said sterilising the FVs before adding the juice was enough - they prefer to let both the natural and added yeast work together.

 

[freester]

As for the yeast I bought some from one of the online retailers (not sure about the forum rules about linking to sellers so I won't). It was a 70g tub of Champagne yeast - which the retailer claimed was good for 250l of cider. I am sure a couple of those would be enough for the sort of volume you're processing.

 

[romunda]

Last fall I ground up approximately 10 bushels of apples and ended up with about 20 gallons of straight juice I added 35-40 pounds of sugar an 7 pkts of yeast (Montrachet). After 7 months it stalled so I added another pkt of yeast and an additional 10 pound of sugar I'm within 2 inches of the top of my 35 gallon barrel. It's still goin to town

Sent from my RCT6272W23 using Tapatalk

 

[pomme homme]

Generally I sterilise and use commercial yeast. But in 2014, as an experiment I left one barrel of apple juice untouched and kept my fingers crossed that the natural yeasts on the apple skins would do the business. They did, but it was a rather unpalatable cider - certainly compared to the barrels which had contained sterilised apple juice and commercial yeast. However it made a first rate cider vinegar - for which there proved to be a bigger demand than for my cider in 2015. It's a funny old world!

 

[vassili]

Hi folks,
Thanks for the replies, um struggling to find a supplier of tubs of champagne yeast at present. I've found 70g sachets of beer yeast, but that needs around 21 degrees to be effective.
I've sourced some crab apples today to throw in the mix as it's mainly eaters, a few cookers and some wildings.
Need to get the yeast sourced now though as I'm hoping to process end of next week.

 

[freester]

http://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/cider-yeast-70g/

Hope this helps. Mods if not appropriate please delete I'm not associated with this website.

 

[freester]

Oh, and probably want to add some nutrient at the same time. That website sells tubs of nutrient too!

 

[vassili]

Thank you freester, most helpful.
I've now booked the equipment for Sun/Mon
Picked up another fifty pounds of Apple's today, can't help myself.

 

[pomme homme]

When I lived in the UK, I was unaware of anywhere that hired out cider making equipment. There were two places, both about thirty minutes drive away from me, to which I could take my apples and pay to have them crushed and pressed. But beyond that, I had to buy all the equipment that I needed. If one can now hire equipment by the day, things must have changed since! Out of interest, vassili, what are you hiring and what are the hire charges?

 

[Pete Oakley]

I wash my apples. cut them up, yeah, it's boring, and put them through my garden shredder (which was bought for this job). I put the pulp into bins and try to keep air out. I then press the pulp and put the juice into bins / plastic barrels under an airlock after adding either wine or cider yeast to the juice. Yeast is a plant, given the right conditions it multiplies all on it's own. You don't need industrial amounts of the stuff.

 

[vassili]

When I lived in the UK, I was unaware of anywhere that hired out cider making equipment. There were two places, both about thirty minutes drive away from me, to which I could take my apples and pay to have them crushed and pressed. But beyond that, I had to buy all the equipment that I needed. If one can now hire equipment by the day, things must have changed since! Out of interest, vassili, what are you hiring and what are the hire charges?

I'm hiring through a local orchard group, you have to become a life member which costs £1
The scratter is the German spiedel one which costs about £800, the press is a pneumatic jobby (not Vigo) when I went to their apple day they processed eight full feed sacks in about three quarters of an hour, which produced 24 gallons.
The hire charge is £50 it's supposed to be by the day but they've said if it takes three days don't worry about it, I thought that was extremely good of them.

 

[freester]

The place I took my apples also had one of those Spiedels. Great bit of kit. We came away with much more juice than expected. I'm sure it's because it's an excellent scratter that produces a pulp that gives you the maximium amount of juice. Be prepared and take plenty of containers!!!

My local place has a large Vigo Cross Beam type press but also a traditional press with a stone base. They use the traditional one when people / villages bring truck loads of apples but for smaller volumes stich with the Vigo.

They supervised us and charged 12UKP an hour for the privilege. We got 140l of juice in just over an hour. Bargain! Can't see any reason to buy a press / scratter at that cost?!

Attached photo shows the Spiedel, Press, and traditional press and also a lot of older presses kept there for display purposes!

 

[pomme homme]

Very interesting posts, vassili and freester. I wonder how widespread are these organisations that offer such 'pay to press' facilities?

There is a similar operation not to far from where I now am, but it's geared up for the production of apple juice rather than cider - which, unfortunately, means that one can't opt out of any stage of the 'production line' and one has to accept sterilised, bottled apple juice - which is rather expensive and not very useful if one's aim is to ferment the juice to produce cider.

I shall think of you with envy when you're crushing your apples with the Spiedel kit and pressing the pomace with a pneumatic press - particularly whilst I'm using a petrol engined garden shredder to produce my pomace and a 170 litre manual press to produce my juice. I suspect that my yield will fall significantly short of that which you'll achieve with the equipment that you two will be using!

 

[vassili]

Well, in 4 hours, just the good lady and myself scratted and pressed all the apples and produced 630 pints of exceptional juice.
Goes to show that with the right equipment anything is possible.
I have if you'll excuse the pun "bottled out"! And only left 200 lts au naturel, the rest has had the campden tablet treatment, my rational being that I'm going to do the rest in 5 gal fv,s with cider , champagne and ale yeasts to see what happens.
Only thing I have not done is test og, but it will be done first thing in the morning, we are both knackered and there is rib eye stakes, chips peas and mushrooms in the offing, washed down with a selection of sheppys Ciders.
Cheers.