Seeking Advice on First time Keeving Attempt

[Jonathan Miner]

Hello all,

I am trying keeving for the first time this year and looking for input on early results as I'm not sure whether I'm seeing early stages of success or some sort of failure/infection happening. 

Pertinent details of the juice/wort/timeline:

• 200 lbs of Dabinettes milled on October 22nd
• After milling I let the pomace sit prior to pressing for between 4-8 hours.
• Pressing yielded 18 gallons of nice juice
• SG of 1.060
• PH of 4.5
• I split this into a 4 gallon container that I'm fermenting my normal way (all the way dry with commercial SafCider TF-6 yeast) and 14 gallons in a large fermenter to attempt to keeve. 
• Added normal sulfite dose to the 4 gallon bucket and 1/2 of a normal sulfite dose to the 14 gallons. 
• I have read that ideal PH for keeving is around the 3.5-3.8 range, so I added malic acid to bring the cider wort for keeving down from PH of 4.5 to 3.7. 
• 24 hours after pressing I added recommended dose of PME sourced from a nice little kit from La Fabrique du Vin in Quebec. 
• 3 days after that on October 26th I added recommended calcium chloride dose from the kit. 
• My fermentation buckets for both of the above are outside. I'm in the Seattle area.  Average temp of the cider wort has been about 50 degrees F since pressing.
• It appeared that no fermentation was happening in my keeving bucket after a full week, so I added an extremely small amount of commercial SafCider TF-6 yeast (about 20 grains reconstituted). I haven't taken SG reading again, but based on the airlock activity fermentation is just barely going right now.
• I also extracted a liter of the wort for keeving into a large clear mason jar with a pickling lid so I could put on an airlock. This small sample is my control for inspecting whether the keeving cap is forming as my large fermenter is opaque plastic. 

I am now about 2 weeks out from adding the calcium chloride and my test jar is showing some activity at the cap, but it doesn't look like pictures i've seen of a "brown cap" so I wanted to share the photos and see if this looks normal for an early keeving process or if something else is happening. 

Thanks in advance for any feedback you might have on my pictures and/or my process.  

---
Jonathan Miner | jonathan...@gmail.com | 360.710.3356

--

---
Jonathan Miner | jonathan...@gmail.com | 360.710.3356

[Jonathan Miner]

The pictures from my prior email attached sideways (thanks google), so trying again with the pictures embedded in the email. 

[Claude Jolicoeur]

Jonathan,

Did we meet when I was in Tacoma last spring? I know I talked about the Fabrique du vin kits to a number of people, but I don't remember all their names!

A few comments:

- Why wait 3 days before adding the  calcium? I normally add it 12 to maximun 24 hours after PME. I have had trouble with some batches when I waited too long.

- It may take more time, especially when sulfite is added. This year I had a batch sulfited to 55ppm SO2, and it took over a month before the chapeau formed and rised.

- Your small container may not be a good monitor. I did that once in order to be able to see what was happening and take some pictures. The chapeau never formed in the small glass container while I had a very nice one in the main tank! I think we need a certain height of juice for this to work.

- Not sure it was a good idea to add yeast so early...

[Jonathan Miner]

Hi Claude, 

I have not had the pleasure of meeting you in person. I found the Fabrique du Vin kits through another helpful thread on this forum. 

I waited to add the calcium because the instructions on the Fabrique du Vin kit indicated you should wait 24-48 hours after PME is added and then do a small flocculation test. I did that test at 24 and 48 hours and didn't observe flocculation. At that point I started looking around for other instructions/guidance on when to add the calcium and found (I think in your book or maybe on this forum) some other guidance that indicated that the time for adding the calcium doesn't matter that much so long as you don't directly mix the PME and calcium chloride together before adding to the juice.

Thanks for your guidance on how long it took this year for the chapeau to form on your cider. I will remain patient and hopeful and won't rely on my small container, as it may not have sufficient juice height. 

I added the very small amount of yeast to the juice as I hadn't noticed any fermentation starting from wild yeast and had also read that some fermentation action is needed in order for the chapeau to consolidate and rise up. It sounds like I may have made a beginner mistake with that though! The grower I got these apples from is in eastern Washington, and in talking with him he indicated that when he tried wild ferment with his apples in prior years the fermentation never took off, so I figured I might need to help it in order to get a little C02 to push up the chapeau. 

Anyway, this is all about learning and fun and I'll be patient this fall and report back on where things go from here. 

Thank you,

Jonathan  

[Jonathan Miner]

As of this afternoon it looks like the cap is forming in my large fermenter. There had been a mass sitting on the bottom for about a week, but it’s now floated up and consolidating. See attached pictures. 

Any advice from the group on when I know the cap is done forming and I should do the first racking? 

This is super fun and so nice to have a resource group to turn to for advice. This is my first Keeving attempt.    

Thanks!

Jonathan

--
--
Visit our website: http://www.ciderworkshop.com
 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Cider Workshop" Google Group.
By joining the Cider Workshop, you agree to abide by our principles. Please see http://www.ciderworkshop.com/resources_principles.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Cider Workshop" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/cider-workshop/3LY1XfulJ4w/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to cider-worksho...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cider-workshop/3c30dc5d-e17b-4fa9-be18-ebe13c52fb4cn%40googlegroups.com.

[Andrew Lea]

It’s always a matter of judgement and quite challenging for the first time before you build up experience.

Do you have a translucent container so you can shine a light through and see how consolidated the cap is?  Otherwise I’d say you were pretty close.  It looks to me as if the fermentation is beginning to break through the cap (chapeau blanc) which in my judgement means you should rack now. I’d be a bit concerned that this is an effect of the added yeast which will be so much more vigorous than the wild apiculate yeast. 

However, only you can make this call!  

Andrew

------------------

Wittenham Hill Cider Page

www.cider.org.uk

On 9 Nov 2023, at 01:25, Jonathan Miner <jonathan...@gmail.com> wrote:

As of this afternoon it looks like the cap is forming in my large fermenter. There had been a mass sitting on the bottom for about a week, but it’s now floated up and consolidating. See attached pictures. 

Any advice from the group on when I know the cap is done forming and I should do the first racking? 

This is super fun and so nice to have a resource group to turn to for advice. This is my first Keeving attempt.    

<image_67510785.JPG>

<image_67190785.JPG>

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cider Workshop" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cider-worksho...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cider-workshop/CAJRJun8N%2B6xMiN4QyBiqVqToBuK70dHX-_crNPEESLFUAXFd5A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jonathan Miner]

Andrew, Thanks. I will rack it today. It was 40 degrees here overnight, so it seems a good morning for doing it and the cap looks very consolidated this morning. The fermenter is opaque, but I will rack into several clear demijohns to continue the process from here and I can monitor those better going forward.  

---
Jonathan Miner | jonathan...@gmail.com | 360.710.3356

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cider-workshop/516D0DEC-2CAE-4649-9D77-7139F26193A6%40cider.org.uk.