Mousiness Taste

[Jonas Hammerschmidt]

Hey all,

I'm dealing with a subtle "mousiness" taste in my cider, and I'm hoping to get your experienced insights. The flavor is most noticeable right after I open a bottle or pour a glass, but it fades after about a minute. I've read up on this, mainly from a winemaking perspective, but I'd love to hear your personal experiences and advice.

Here's my process: I use fresh-pressed apple juice and ferment it in a bucket (with lid and airlock) for 3-4 days with plenty of headspace. Once the specific gravity drops by about 65% (I start with about 1.050-55, first rack at about 1.018-20), I rack the cider into a PET carboy with a narrow neck and about 1 cm of headspace. I let it sit there for 2-3 months. It usually reaches a final gravity of 1.000 after 1-1.5 months, but I keep it in the carboy longer to improve the taste.

I suspect the mousiness might be linked to:

• Leaving the cider on the lees for too long. There's about 1-2 mm of lees at the bottom of the PET carboy in the final product
• Oxidation. After 1-1.5 months, the fermentation has stopped, meaning there's no more CO2 being produced to protect the cider from oxygen.

What are your thoughts on this? How can I age my cider to get a better flavor without developing this off-taste?

Thanks, Jonas

[Ray Blockley]

Quick question: do you add any sulphur dioxide (SO2) based on the pH of the fresh pressed juice? 

Ray 

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[Faca Nos Dentes]

Hi.

Same issue here. I have it for at least 4 years now. It really sucks because is not perceived in fermentation or bottling. The only solution for it is to keep your free sulphur above 20ppm all the time.

Even though it can appear in some batches. Mousiness tends to dissipate with time but it can last for many years until it disappears. Which I would know the trick to get rid of it once and for all from my cellar.

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[Andrew Lea]

This is what I wrote about “mouse” in my book "Craft Cidermaking”:

"Mousiness is unmistakable and deeply unpleasant to those who can recognize it, although individual sensitivity varies widely from person to person. The flavour is best likened to the smell of a mouse-cage, although some people think it is closer to bread or freshly-baked biscuits or crackers. 

Oddly enough the chemicals responsible for these flavours (acetyl pyrrolines and tetrahydropyridines) are all the same. They exist in cider in a combined (salt) form and are only slowly liberated when the cider is tasted, depending on the pH of the taster’s mouth. Since this varies from one individual to another, different people respond differently and in any case the flavour takes several seconds to develop as the free compound is liberated. 

You cannot smell mousiness, only taste it, unless you make the cider alkaline to liberate it into the headspace – you can do this by adding a pinch of sodium bicarbonate to a small glass of the cider and then sniffing it. This defect arises from the metabolism of the amino acid lysine by unwanted species of lactic acid bacteria or by the spoilage yeast Brettanomyces. It also requires some oxygen for its formation. 

Preventative measures therefore include the correct use of sulphur dioxide at all times, and cider storage in the absence of air. Unfortunately there are no ways of removing mousiness once formed. The cider cannot be blended off, because of its strong taint potential even at high dilution. It must be thrown away and all vessels which contained the cider must be sterilized to eliminate the contaminating micro-organisms.”

There are reports of mousiness being lost over time in some cases, but it can also re-appear and the mechanisms of such effects are unknown.

Andrew

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