Perry making

[michael]

This year I have rather a lot of perry pears,and relatively few cider apples,following last years bumper harvest.

My perry making in the past has been average,with some excellent perries and some very poor.

I have been making my perry along similar lines to my cider making-minimal sulphite to try and encourage wild yeast fermentation.

However,this does lead to the addition of rather a lot of sodium metabisulphite,especially if one follows the recommendations on this

group for the same pH dependent sulphite as for cider plus another 50-75ppm.There was also the suggestion that perhaps one should 

abandon the reduced pH dependent amounts for cider,and put in the full pH dependent amount plus 50-75ppm.Since a number of perry

pears have pH's around 4.0,then this is a lot of sulphite and with some of the perry pears having a large amount of citric acid (e.g. Thorn)

then even this amount of sulphite could do more harm than good(according to the article on perry making in ''Perry Pears' by Luckwill 

and Pollard.

So I contacted Tom Oliver who is one of or perhaps the leading perry maker in the UK,and asked him to let me know his approach.

Surprisingly he does not use sulphite at all for the fermentation.He said that he uses good clean ripe fruit,stores for a little 

while,macerates to a small extent,presses,puts the juice into his fermentation tanks and leaves until the spring-no looking,no fiddling

-the only time he intervenes is to throw in some yeast if the fermentation has not started after two weeks.He prefers wild fermentation

to do the work.

So despite my conversion to sulphite for cider apples by Andrew ,I think that I will follow Tom this year.

Could it just be that large producers had to use sulphite or sulphur candles when the pears were collect from several orchards such that

their condition would be affected by the transport to the factory.I think Tom has his own orchards so can use the fruit in 'good clean ripe

condition'.

Michael

[Claude Jolicoeur]

Yes!!! Deciding for the use of sulfite can be a complex decision!
There are questions of risk and probabilities involved, and of assessing the quality of the fruit.

For example you could ask yourself how bad it would be for you if your batch spoiled. If it wouldn't be dramatic and wouldn't cause a financial loss, then there is less reasons to use sulfite. But you have to evaluate this for yourself!

Also, with clean and sound fruit, without rots, sulfite is not required as much and can be reduced. Remember the sulfite dosages were evaluated for commercial English cider fruit, that is fruit collected on the ground, often muddy, not necessarily handled the way a hobbyist would handle his fruit, and often with some rot.

Claude

Le vendredi 1 août 2014 05:28:04 UTC-4, michael a écrit :

This year I have rather a lot of perry pears,and relatively few cider apples,following last years bumper harvest.

My perry making in the past has been average,with some excellent perries and some very poor.

I have been making my perry along similar lines to my cider making-minimal sulphite to try and encourage wild yeast fermentation. [snip the rest]

[t...@functionalmedia.com]

I have made unsulfited perry for 4 years now.

I am going the opposite direction as you , this year I will be adding sulfite.

I think the source of my contamination must have been in bottling and I suspect the corks actually. Or rather my failure to adequately sanitize the corks.

I would say my success rate was always over 60% in terms of finished bottles so I never lost a whole batch. I just suffered from inconsistent results.

I rarely had troubles with contamination before bottling, either aggressive fermentation, or good practices got me at least that far. Out of the 40 or so carboys of perry I have fermented I have lost two that never made it to bottling before they spoiled.

Main contamination seems to have been acetification. Some folks really liked the slightly acetic perry, they must be asturian or something.

So from my very limited experience, I am a few orders of magnitude smaller than Tom Oliver, but acetification and contamination during bottling seems to be my main issue , and even then it has not been catastrophic.

--
Tom Hanlon
Ohio USA

[Handmade Cider]

Tom said "... but acetification and contamination during bottling seems to be my main issue"

In my experience acetobacter is all around and it will be in your cider. It is one thing having acetobacter present, it is another giving it the conditions it needs; warm temperatures and access to plenty of oxygen.

This year I have given up using SO2 in my ciders (not made perry as no pears available till this year) and I have found that the turn from cider to vinegar is faster if given a chance. My experience is based on containers with dregs coming back in from events...

If I were you I would be looking at the conditions that you are storing the perry in; is it too warm? Are the seals on your drums adequete? Do you keep stuff under airlock once fermentation is finished? (Given the day night temp differential containers 'breathe' through the airlock if no co2 is being generated) Do you move your cider by pump too ofter? Do you constantly open containers to check on the contents? How good is the quality of your corks?

Also cleanliness of process and soundness of fruit used. Grade and wash all fruit before milling and even if you dont use SO2 in your product, sterilise all tanks etc with it before use.

There is a large farm producers in the U.K. who does not use SO2 anywhere and has a dirty process who suffers from vineagar but in my opinion it is all down to the way it is produced, stored and level of oxygenation as above. His cider is fine straight from the barrel but once it has travelled and got warm or been stood in a half full barrel it is only fit for putting onions in. This happens in his cider overnight but he has some rampant acetobacter colonies in the casks he serves the cider from which he only cleans once a year using steam. This is an extreme case though and a shame as his cider when good is glorious!

Denis

Spring Surprise - Cider of the Festival Chippenham Camra Beer Festival 2014

“Spring Surprise has outsold every cider in the history of Chippenham Camra Beer Festival” Gareth MacDonald, S.W. Wilts Camra Regional Director 

“Spring Surprise sold out the first you'll be pleased to hear. Great work- a delicious cider and perfectly suited to the rare blue skies we had yesterday.” Dan Heath, The Cider Box.

White Label – Joint Cider of the Festival,Chippenham camra Beer Festival 2013

Crazy Diamond – Third Prize Chippenham Camra Beer Festival 2013

 

Denis France
www.handmadecider.co.uk
07590 264 804

Company. No. 07241330

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[Andrew Lea]

For those who are not aware of the long standing science, I would just like to explain why perries can be more subject to acetification than ciders, other things being equal. 

The reason is that many pears contain citric acid in addition to malic acid. This does not happen in apples. The citric acid can be subject to attack by lactic acid bacteria to form acetic acid directly. It does not need oxygen and acetobacter are not involved. Nor does it need especially high temperatures. 

This generally happens during perry storage. That is why many perry makers, even if they don't add SO2 prior to fermentation, do use it for bulk store and prior to bottling because it inhibits the lactic acid bacteria which cause acetification. 

It is one of those cases where cider and perry chemistry does differ. 

Andrew

Sent from my iPhone

[greg l.]

Another factor which often gets ignored on this forum is stable temperatures. If your cider or perry is subject to temperature changes eg stored in an uninsulated shed this encourages spoilage because different temperatures favour different micro-organisms. If the temperature cools down then heats up again you may get different species activating, leading to spoilage. So2 can control this but it isn't a good idea to go without sulfite unless you at least have an insulated shed to store your perry.

Greg

[WV Mountaineer Jack]

You should give Tom a call and get a gallon from his ferment to innoculate yours so you start off with a good wild yeast and hope yours is going to be a good yeast. WVMJ

[Handmade Cider]

Andrew said "For those who are not aware of the long standing science..."
Cheers for that Andrew,

I obviously need to read up on perry making before this season... ;)

Denis

Spring Surprise - Cider of the Festival Chippenham Camra Beer Festival 2014

“Spring Surprise has outsold every cider in the history of Chippenham Camra Beer Festival” Gareth MacDonald, S.W. Wilts Camra Regional Director 

“Spring Surprise sold out the first you'll be pleased to hear. Great work- a delicious cider and perfectly suited to the rare blue skies we had yesterday.” Dan Heath, The Cider Box.

White Label – Joint Cider of the Festival,Chippenham camra Beer Festival 2013

Crazy Diamond – Third Prize Chippenham Camra Beer Festival 2013

 

Denis France
www.handmadecider.co.uk
07590 264 804

Company. No. 07241330

On Fri, Aug 1, 2014 at 10:15 PM, WV Mountaineer Jack <wvm...@gmail.com> wrote:

You should give Tom a call and get a gallon from his ferment to innoculate yours so you start off with a good wild yeast and hope yours is going to be a good yeast. WVMJ

[Andrew Lea]

On 02/08/2014 13:44, Handmade Cider wrote:
> Andrew said "For those who are not aware of the long standing science..."
> Cheers for that Andrew,

Conversion of citrate to acetate by lactic acid bacteria was
first described by Muller-Thurgau (yes the same Muller-Thurgau after
whom the grape is named) in 1913. So quite long-standing, yes!

> I obviously need to read up on perry making before this season... ;)

Unfortunately there are very very few places where you can read up on
perry-making. Perhaps one day Tom Oliver will write the book ;-)

Andrew


--
near Oxford, UK
Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

[michael]

Thanks for all of your comments.One thing that I did not add.Tom Oliver does not use sulphite for the fermentation process,but does use a vessel dependent (oak,IBC plastic,bottle)amount of sulphite for his storage to avoid undesirable changes.

I have suggested to him that he is the best qualified person in the UK to write a book,but he has not yet replied.

Michael

[nomisnomad]

I've just pressed a load of pears that weren't in the best of condition, mainly bruised/cut not really any manky rot. I'd prefer to sulphite it to cover myself. Do I follow the cider table?

Many thanks

Simon

[Andrew Lea]

On 30/10/2014 18:04, nomisnomad wrote:
> I've just pressed a load of pears that weren't in the best of condition,
> mainly bruised/cut not really any manky rot. I'd prefer to sulphite it
> to cover myself. Do I follow the cider table?

See this thread

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/cider-workshop/perry$20sulphite$20long$20ashton/cider-workshop/fSDX-9HXHwo