bottle conditioning with wild yeasts?

[Ben Kessler]

Hello all,

Has anybody bottle conditioned their cider with wild yeasts? I am doing a wild yeast fermentation and would like to bottle condition with the natural yeast and then disgorge. Are the wild yeast capable of this? I have 6 gallons at a pH of 3.68 so I assess 1.5 Camden tablets per gallon and some yeast nutrient as the trees were not fertalized and the apples were very small and probably had no nutrients in them.

Thank you,
Ben

[Dick Dunn]

On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 04:19:56PM -0700, Ben Kessler wrote:
> Has anybody bottle conditioned their cider with wild yeasts?...

What do you think you mean by that??
My point is that a "wild yeast" fermentation involves a progression of
yeasts.
Some of the more interesting yeasts (in terms of character contributed) die
off at low alcohol levels...so they won't be present by the time your cider
is fermented out and ready to condition. By that point you'll most likely
have a monoculture.

>...I am doing a wild yeast fermentation and would like to bottle condition with the natural yeast and then disgorge. Are the wild yeast capable of this?...

Such wild yeast as remain should be capable, yes.

--
Dick Dunn rc...@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA

[Ben Kessler]

Hello Dick,

I know that the wild apiculate yeasts die out at about 2% alcohol but the wild Saccharomyces live on and ferment to dryness. I have done wild yeast fermentation for a number of years with great success. What I am wanting to know is if these wild Saccharomyces yeasts will work with the method traditional in order to sparkle the cider. If I ferment to dryness and then add sugar and bottle, will the wild Saccharomyces be strong enough to survive the pressure and sparkle the finished cider?

Thank you,
Ben

[Jez Howat]

Hi Ben,

Yes, it is possible to use wild yeast in a traditional method cider. However, most people use a champagne yeast because it makes a much finer, more compact lee... Which is easier to disgorge (and I seem to recall makes a finer bubble).

All the best

Jez

[vince wakefield]

This is how I do my bottled sparkling cider, I don't add any yeast at any point of my cider making.

Vince

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[Ben Kessler]

Thank you for all the feedback. I can see how the yeast would make a difference in terms of ease of fiddling. I may do wild yeasts for primary ferment and once fermented to dryness rack it off, add the sugar and some champagne yeast and bottle it.

Thank you,
Ben

[Brian Weatherman]

Ben ....

You can try priming with newly pressed juice with a higher proportion of apple skin .... you just have to figure out the volume of cider you are bottling, gravity of your new juice and the correct proportion .... and give it time .... I made a mead this way years ago and found out that with upwards of 3.00 volumes of co2 the yeast would enter the solution upon cracking the bottle .... unless I got the bottle to near freezing when I opened it .... a lot of work to disgorge but it will be worth the effort .... isn't there a yeast that is encapsulated in a 'pill' so you can pick it out of the bottle upon disgorging .... read about that years ago .... it was kind of like a capsule that was porous .... anyway, good luck!

-Brian Weatherman -San Mateo, CA

> Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 06:17:30 -0700
> From: benkes...@comcast.net
> To: cider-w...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: RE: [Cider Workshop] bottle conditioning with wild yeasts?

>
> Thank you for all the feedback. I can see how the yeast would make a difference in terms of ease of fiddling. I may do wild yeasts for primary ferment and once fermented to dryness rack it off, add the sugar and some champagne yeast and bottle it.
>
> Thank you,
> Ben
>

[darlenehayes]

I tried something similar last year.  The primary experiment was so see what sort of differences I could detect in the same base juice fermented with wild yeast (A) vs wild yeast + some sulfite (55 ppm) (B).  Starting SG was 1.062.  At 6 months the SG of A was .0098 and B was 1.008.  From here I tried several things.  A was split into several batches.  One was bottled as it.  One got a little priming sugar before bottling.  And the rest was blended (50:50) with B and bottled.  The rest of B was bottled as is.  The idea was to see if I could get fizz without priming sugar by bottling before fermentation was complete (note that both batches were mostly clear).  Four months later B alone remains sweet and still, A alone completely dry and still, A plus priming sugar quite dry and very fizzy, A+B pretty fizzy with just the tiniest touch of sweetness.  (I didn't bother to disgorge any of these as I'm the only one drinking them and just avoid pouring out the last 1/2 inch or so.)  So some population of yeasts was certainly killed off by the addition of sulfite, and as it turned out those were yeasts that I needed to achieve my ultimate end of dry and fizzy.  Since I don't care for the still sweet still B my plan is to open up the bottles and add a bit of champagne yeast to see if I can get them to finish to dryness.

Darlene

[Andre Spratley]

Hi Ben, I only ferment using wild yeasts and have never had a problem.

I usually start with an OG of about 1.045 - 1.050, do primary fermentation, rack near the end, ferment to dry, re-rack and then bottle condition in a cool dark space. after the cider has cleared i do a final racking, back sweeten and then bottle immediately. After a week I open a bottle to check the progress of the carbonation. (sometimes its ready in 2 weeks, some times it takes a month or so to achieve a nice fizz.) Personally I have never bothered/tried disgorging, I just store my bottles upright and throw the last 1cm away when I pour into the glass. I have only ever made batches of 25L a year so I am no expert, but its worked every time so far.

Hope it helps :)

Andre

[Karina]

Hi Ben

As per the previous posts, yes the wild yeast can finish this fermentation, but at this alcohol level and timing you are probably down to mostly Saccharomyces strains anyway due to there higher alcohol tolerance.  

The benefit of letting a sparkling finish this way can be a belief in the nothing added philosophy and possibly a slower fermentation process, which may yield some interesting characters.

The risk of this is that you don't know how the yeast will perform, and if they will finish the ferment to the level desired and also those interesting characters may include off flavours such as sulfide, etc.

Usually, when you are choosing a yeast for sparkling fermentation in bottle you would look for the following two characteristics: 1.) a solid fermenter that you know will finish the fermentation, 2.) when the fermentation is finished, the dead yeast cells will break down quickly to give good autolytic (bready, yeasty) character.  If you use this sort of added yeast for a while they will become part of your cidery flora, and tend to finish of the wild ferments for you anyway.

The other issue with finishing the ferment in bottle with wild yeast & no sugar addition, is the accuracy of your sugar measurement.  This usually has a high enough degree of error that you get a lot of variation in pressure of the finished product.

Cheers, KD