Basic Keeving query

[Ray Blockley]

Hi all. 

I fully understand Keeving & have understood (rightly or wrongly) that it is very difficult to achieve with dessert & culinary fruit, which the majority of our ciders are made from.
The bittersharps & bittersweets we do grow, we put into blends with dessert & culinary apples. 

My query is to ask if anyone has had success in Keeving juice from mixed dessert & culinary apples & if they have had success, would they be willing to share any tips / advice? 

Thanks in advance. 

Ray 
Nottingham UK

 

[Andrew Lea]

Ray,

If you are prepared to use added calcium chloride (or chalk and salt) and fungal PME, you can nowadays keeve from dessert and culinary apples quite successfully.

But if you want to stay entirely within what nature provides, it’s very difficult.  The main reason is that only bittersweets are likely to have the required amount of native PME and a pH high enough for it to be active. And, depending where they grow, they may or may not have enough native calcium to form a gel.  

That’s my six penn’orth.

Andrew

Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

On 1 Aug 2021, at 12:43, Ray Blockley <raymond...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Ray Blockley]

Thanks, Andrew. 

It's something I've been looking at for this season along with researching "Keeving Kits" - but was unsure if there was any chance of success with the majority of the locally grown apples I have access to. 

Looks like I'll just have to do the experiment...! 

Ray. 

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[Neil Clapperton]

Hi Ray, I have only made small batches and still an inexperienced amateur, but a significant percentage (40%) of my blends spontaneously keeved in 2020.  Some with 20% wilding apples, crabs and bittersweets, with culinary, dessert, or dual purpose apples making up the bulk.  Ironically the one blend where I used a Vigo keeving kit didn't work.  That may have been due to my failure to catch it in time.  The apples were low nutrient, high pectin and the weather cold, so maybe that's the key.

Neil

Social Juice

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[Andrew Lea]

I think the only keeving kits in the UK are the French KlerCidre kits which are sold by Vigo and Vigopresses.  I don’t know any others. (Barry Topp used to buy his direct from France, and so have I in the past, but that may be more difficult now after you-know-what :-( )

One thing probably in your favour is that many of your apples are grown in gardens not commercial orchards, hence they may be low nutrient and slow fermenting so you get the chance of multiple rackings to slow things down. 

If you are looking for “tips” I would say try to increase the pectin level as much as you can by storing the apples as long as you dare before pressing. This way the pectin levels will naturally increase by the normal process of migration from cell walls to juice. You could also try macerating the pulp overnight before pressing, for the same reason. It is important to have as much soluble pectin as possible in order to provide a nice thick “chapeau” to trap the nutrients. 

Andrew

Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

On 1 Aug 2021, at 13:23, Ray Blockley <raymond...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Claude Jolicoeur]

My early keeved batches were mostly from commercial apple varieties, in particular Cortland. These are old unfertilised standard trees. And it worked fine with the kit.

Now that I can harvest good quantities of bittersweet varieties, I make blends.

I think the most important is to have well ripened late apples (but not overripe), and low in natural nutriments. Also you need cool temperature otherwise the must may start its natural fermentation too quickly.

[Mark Warnett]

Hi Ray

My two pence worth… we usually keeve with dabinett from low nutrient (but quite young) orchard using Vigo kit and it always works. Not had a spontaneous keeve yet unfortunately.

We made a 220li blend with Vigo kit few yrs ago which at a guess was 40% dab and 60% gala from commercial orchard. It tried to form a chapeau brun but wasn’t solid enough and ended up a bit of a sloppy mess.

Last year we added some Bramley to the dab for balance …the batch with highest concentration (maybe 10%) formed chapeau brun perfectly but fermentation speed raced ahead of the others and needed lots of racks to slow down.

My very shaky conclusion is it can work but the higher the proportion of non tannic apples the more accurate you need to be and perhaps the more lucky

Cheers

Sent from my iPhone

On 1 Aug 2021, at 14:07, Andrew Lea <ci...@cider.org.uk> wrote:

I think the only keeving kits in the UK are the French KlerCidre kits which are sold by Vigo and Vigopresses.  I don’t know any others. (Barry Topp used to buy his direct from France, and so have I in the past, but that may be more difficult now after you-know-what :-( )

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[Ed Varga]

Hi Ray, I tried the Vigo keeving kit last year with the mix of culinary and cooking apples I have available (mix of james grieve, golden delicious and bramley seedling apples) and it seemed to work OK for me with the chapeau brun forming, although may have been beginners luck!

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[Ray Blockley]

Hello & thanks to everyone for your replies & advice. 

Much appreciated.
It's given me much to think on & much more confidence in giving Keeving a go using a kit.
Have had spontaneous natural Keeves in the past, which may have been from storing milled apples overnight (ie maceratiing) before pressing due to running out of time.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I guess. 

Thanks again.
Ray. 




 

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[tom.t...@gmail.com]

>>Andrew wrote:

>>I think the only keeving kits in the UK are the French KlerCidre kits which are sold by Vigo and Vigopresses.  I don’t know any others. (Barry Topp used to buy his direct from France, and so have I in the past, but that may be more difficult now after you-know-what :-( )

I can confirm that if you buy the kits directly from France they now require that the invoice total exceeds €150 in order to be able to ship it to the UK.

To give you some idea: they are quoting €109,77 +VAT + shipping for a 100hl Klercidre KIT (good for 100 - 140 hl).

They specifically mentioned Brexit (and not covid, dead cats, HGV drivers or any other reason) as the reason for this change.

Tom

[Ray Blockley]

Have just ordered the Vigo Kit for our first foray into this dark art... 

Will see where it takes us. 

Ray. 

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