Yeast recommendations for Red Fleshed Apple Juice

[gloria bell]

Read back on the topic of trying to retain that beautiful rose color and I thought I would ask if the yeast used makes a difference in the amount of color that is retained.

I have Wyeast 4766, cote des blancs, 71b, d47, Mangrove Jacks M02 and a few more red star (that I've never tried), some Vintner harvest yeast as well.  Also R212 (burgundy yeast) but never used it for cider, only blackberry wine.

SG 1.058

pH: 3.51

TA - TBA (out of reagent)

Some noticable tannins - rather soft in nature

Apple variety unknown 

I have not sulfited the juice.

I have 2.5 gallons

Thanks in advance!

[Matthew Vasilev]

Hi Gloria,

We have only made one red-fleshed batch, and we just pressed another... The only experience we can lend is.. wild ferment it, without sulfites.. and hopefully you can keep the temperature below 20c...

Good luck!

-Matthew

Twin Island Cider

[gloria bell]

Thanks Matthew!

Love your cider by the way!

I tend not to use sulphites and didn’t this time. I did use three different yeasts in three batches.  A wild ferment would have been nice too.  My cider room is about 16/18c this time a year so it’ll be close. I prefer fermenting in winter low and slow. 

--
--
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 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 post to this group, send email to cider-w...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Wes Cherry]

Sulfites and red cider is a tricky thing.   Too little and you risk oxidative browning ruining your color.  Too much and you strip the anthocyanin.     

I try to minimize oxygen uptake throughout pressing, racking and bottling, keeping co2 blankets in place with Redfield apples.   Despite this, this year I think I erred on the side of not enough sulfites after fermentation and at bottling as my Redfield has an orange tint to it.  There is also an ever so slight raspberry yogurt note, indicative of possible bacterial action.   This year I will use lysozyme at end of ferment as well.

In red wines monomeric anthocyanins bind with tannins and become more stable.  Paradoxically, acetaldehyde seems to aid this process.  Perhaps this is why micro-oxygenation right after fermentation completes is prescribed to aid color stability.   Just enough acetaldehyde is produced to lock in color but not enough to brown.   Andrew, do you have any thoughts on this?

Gloria, please let us know the results of your yeast trials.

-'//es Cherry

Dragon's Head Cider

Vashon Island, Wa US

www.dragonsheadcider.com

[gloria bell]

Thanks Wes.

I normally add small amounts of sulfites throughout the process (although I don't at the beginning if hand picked) and it seems to makes sense to add a little along the way to help oxidative stress for rose juice/cider.  This juice isn't overly dark red and don't expect it to equate to more than a rose hue (which I'd be quite happy with).  Interested to hear Andrew's inout as well.

Will absolutely report back.  Wish I had more gallons to experiment with.  We are growing some redfield and a handful of other reds for juice and breeding (although young)... in time I will experiment and as always keep detailed notes.

In the meantime my rose ciders will be made with blackberries (so lovely).

[Andrew Lea]

Oh dear, anthocyanin chemistry is so complex and i wish I hadn’t been asked to comment!  Especially as I’m trying to give up all this nerdy scientific stuff. But I will attempt some sort of an answer ...

Rosé cider is really difficult to make and to keep stable, if you are only using apples to do it. The apple pigment cyanidin 3 galactoside is only present at low level even in pink fleshed apples and is very labile. It is nowhere near as stable as most acylated grape anthocyanins based on malvidin for instance. Pigment loss and degradation by oxidation at all points through the process is a major problem, including coupled polyphenol oxidase oxidation of the B ring during juice making especially by the action of hydrogen peroxide which is a by-product of that reaction. The use of SO2 to inhibit oxidation also tends to discolourise the native anthocyanin as Wes mentions - so that’s a double whammy! Some people do use ascorbic acid to try to stabilise the colour but again the hydrogen peroxide which is produced by ascorbic acid breakdown can potentially act as a pro-oxidant and destroy the colour. I think Wes has given the best ‘recipe’ but I would add that ascorbic acid is also worth investigating as the antioxidant or perhaps as a partial replacement for SO2. It has no antimicrobial action though. The other point worth making is that colour expression (and anthocyanin stability) is very pH dependent so the lower you can drop the pH the greater chance you have of retaining the native pigment in a more intense form for longer. Also, keeping the cider away from the light is important because the free pigments are photosensitive. 

To answer Wes’s further point, in red wine making the action of acetaldehyde on pigments after fermentation is at least twofold. One mechanism is the formation of a new pigment class called vitisins where carbonyls such as acetaldeyhde and pyruvate form new heterocycles on the existing A ring of the anthocyanin. The pigment involving grape malvidin 3 glucoside and acetaldehyde is called vitisin B. These vitisins are brick red rather than cherry red but they are very sulphite resistant. They are important in red wine ageing processes. The second mechanism is where acetaldehyde (or other aldehydes) acts as a cross linking bridge between the anthocyanin and the colourless procyanidin tannins (this is analogous to the Bakelite reaction).  These can extend to form long coloured polymers which may eventually drop out of solution. However, the initial effect is to stabilise the anthocyanin colour and again to make it resistant to sulphite bleaching. So it is entirely possible that small amounts of acetaldehyde from micro-oxidation will help to promote these mechanisms. 

How does this apply to cider? Probably not at all. The main reason is that the anthocyanin in apples is cyanidin based, and cyanidin has a dihydroxy B ring which as I explained earlier is very susceptible to oxidation as are most di-phenols. Hence B ring oxidation becomes the major degradation pathway in pink ciders. By contrast, in red wines the principal pigment is malvidin which has a mono-hydroxy B ring which is further stabilised by the adjacent methoxy groups. This means in practice that red grape anthocyanins are far less subject to degradation via B ring oxidation. Hence they can take part in more exotic A ring chemistry during and after fermentation, leading to the formation of vitisins and other complex stable coloured polymers as described. This is less likely to happen in ciders because of their primary pigment instability. 

I am not clear that different yeasts will have any effect on this. The mechanisms I describe  are yeast independent (except insofar as pyruvate and acetaldehyde are formed by yeast).  It is true that some yeasts are marketed for their efficacy at enhancing red wine pigmentation but as far as i know this is about grape cell wall degradation to allow more pigment to escape into the juice and nothing to do with their effect on anthocyanin chemistry. However, i am prepared to be told otherwise. 

I hope this helps. The science is what it is and i can’t make it simpler. Basically to make a natural rosé cider is something of an uphill battle and it isn’t the same as making a red or rosé wine. That’s why most pink ciders on the market have a more stable pigment added to them. 

Andrew

Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

[Miguel Pereda]

In ice ciders by cryoextraction the red colour remains for a long time probably due to the low pH. In the photo, Raxao single-variety ice cider with more than a year in the bottle.

Miguel A. Pereda

[Wes Cherry]

Andrew,

Thank you so much for taking the time to come out of retirement from your retirement to post this.   :)   There’s a lot to chew on and research from the details in your post.

In the meantime I will stick to endogenous apple anthocyanins.   

-'//es Cherry

Dragon's Head Cider

Vashon Island, Wa US

www.dragonsheadcider.com

[Wes Cherry]

Beautiful.   Any other tricks you used during processing to keep the color?   Do you know the apple varieties?

Btw, there’s a red fleshed apple breeding program underway in eastern Washington by a few actors.   Look forward to redfleshed apples with black cherry flavors and the crunch of honeycrisp.   I’m hoping they make good cider...

-'//es Cherry

Dragon's Head Cider

Vashon Island, Wa US

www.dragonsheadcider.com

On Aug 28, 2018, at 10:13 AM, Miguel Pereda <map...@gmail.com> wrote:

In ice ciders by cryoextraction the red colour remains for a long time probably due to the low pH. In the photo, Raxao single-variety ice cider with more than a year in the bottle.

<20180828_182949.jpg>

<20180828_183516.jpg>

Miguel A. Pereda

--
--
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 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 post to this group, send email to cider-w...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

<20180828_182949.jpg>

<20180828_183516.jpg>

[jitd...@aol.com]

I know this is not strictly on the subject, but I understand in certain parts of Britain it used to be custom and practice to slip a few damsons into the cider press to colour the thing up a bit.  I understand the wonderful Westmorland Damson was favourite.  I suppose this would now be anathematised as "fruit cider" but I believe it has a respectable pedigree in tradition. 
Slivovitz anyone? 

[gloria bell]

as a side note, I'm also doing some red fleshed and general apple breeding (on a small scale - a good ten year project) and have some wild red fleshed (likely red fleshed as they have red heart wood and cambium) open pollinated seedlings.  They should fruit in the next couple season.  Perhaps I should start a thread....

[Gloria Bell]

I ended up using three yeasts and in three gallons and the color retention was about equal.  It's been almost a year and the cider is very unique, tannic and although it looks beautifully red in the carboy - it's sadly orange in the the glass.

I've noticed while on a suppliers site that there's a few products out there for red stabilization and may not work for the reasons that Andrew has stated.  I'm curious if anyone has used them?   

Opti-red:

https://scottlab.com/opti-red-optired

Lallzyme:

https://scottlab.com/lallzyme-ex-lzymex

[islandexpressi...@gmail.com]

In 2019 I used opti-white in one batch and opti-red in another.  The opti red didn't do anything for color retention nor did it do anything for ciders flavour.  Its tannic structure feels more like it belongs to a red wine (and it's for reds) and it's not overly complimentary.

I also posted about Opti-mum white being a possible good addition for red fleshed apples.  Andrew commented and I just can't find the thread now.  I haven't tried it this year but will shortly. https://scottlabsltd.com/en-us/optimum-white-2-5-kg-35--15079

This also helps with browning but not sure what it willl do for red flesh.  https://laffort.com/en/products/fresharom/

[Wayne Bush]

Resurrecting this thread because I accidentally received some nice red fleshed apples mixed in with what i had ordered from a local orchard.  i believe they are the ones originating in eastern Washington that Wes nentioned above--specifically Howell TC3, which are a cross of Arlie Red Flesh and Honeycrisp.  As they were unexpected and mixed in with other apples, I just separated them out, pressed them and put the juice aside to ferment and pitched a cultured yeast (71b).  Any new knowledge/experience since this old threatd on how to retain beautiful pink color?  I have racked it once and the color has oxidized somewhat but still present.