Cider making without sulphite

[Dean Holland]

Hi there,

I usually follow the advice of adding sulphite at pressing along with a pectic enzyme and then adding a suitable yeast culture a couple of days later.

Always looking for ways to reduce the chemicals I consume... I wanted to experiment this year with less additions. I also seem to have developed a possible sensitivity to sulphites (sneezing when drinking). I do find my inoculated ciders to be very one dimensional, light and thin when compared to those available locally. Therefore when I pressed six gallons of bittersweets last week I decided to do a wild fermentation. I added no sulphite at all and just put it under an airlock in a cool unheated outbuilding.

I have the following questions:

- A week later and there is a thick head of brown and white foam on the batch which looks and smells like a healthy fermentation. Please see enclosed two photos. Does this all look OK?

- I am confused by this activity inside the fermenter whilst the airlock is completely inactive. I would expect to see some modest but regular glugs. I have checked for air leaks and found none and a gentle squeeze of the fermenter causes glugs! Is this normal for early fermentation (no CO2?) or a sign that the activity I see is not that of yeast but something else?

- Is using no sulphite at all simply a bad idea doomed to fail? Can I leave it to continue or should I add a (half) dose now to tackle bacteria but allow the yeast to be knocked back and recover.

- Do you have any other advice or pearls of wisdom?

Thanks,

Dean.

[Claude Jolicoeur]

It all looks perfectly fine, Dean!
I assume there is some leak somewhere explaining the lack of activity in the air lock.

One comment I would do however, is you might not have chosen the better batch to make this experiment. What I mean is you mention this to be bittersweet apples, so presumably the pH is high, and such juice is more at risk than a juice with low pH. It would have been safer to make this first trial at natural fermentation with a low-pH juice.

Claude

[Thomas Fehige]

- Is using no sulphite at all simply a bad idea doomed to fail?

There's nothing about "doom" about this. What happens in the juices is so complex that what we can only observe probabilities, statistics. Someone may be able to say something like "In my cider shed, under my conditions, hygienic, weather and otherwise, x percent of the unsulphited batches and y percent of the sulphited ones have failed." You can predict with a pretty good probability that x > y, but hardly what will happen in a single case.

I guess you could, in an expensive and sophisticated laboratory situation, get a lot more insight and more reliable predictions, but who among us has that or could do that for every batch of cider they are making?

As to your sneezing: It is hard to see how that could be caused by a modest sulphite addition to the fresh juice, i.e. before fermentation. The yeasts will have turned the whole chemistry of that juice inside out by the time you'll be drinking the cider and none of the sulphites added originally will have remained. Sulphite addition at bottling is quite a different matter.

Cheers -- Thomas

[Handmade Cider]

Dean I used to religiously use SO2 and then decided to give it up. I have now started re using it but not in fermentation.

I have chatted with several other producers who do not use it and there are some well known producers who never use it.

In all my experience and chats I have never had or heard of anyone that has a problem apart from acetification although if I remember correctly there are a few threads in the archive here where people have lost batches and at least one producer who's name did not get mentioned who lost a whole years production.

I find that my cider is stable till the weather gets warm and then acetification can be a problem but this can be dealt with by keeping your drums tightly sealed as the acetobacter needs oxygen.

I have had one batch which I bottled which developed a small amount of acetobacter in each bottle although there was no impact on the flavour. This I dealt with by uncapping, removing the acetobacter with a syringe and then replacing the lost liquid with more cider dosed to give 50ppm SO2 in the bottle. This cider went on to win an accolade!

This issue I put down to the amount of oxygenation a cider gets when using a gravity feed bottle filler so now just before bottling I add 50ppm SO2. I also hope this SO2 addition will help with the film yeast but results are variable there.

In order to minimise risk I use a lot of SO2 as a steriliser in my process and put as much effort as I can into getting the fruit as clean as possible before pressing.

Denis

Denis France   www.handmadecider.co.uk   07590 264804  Company. No. 07241330

White Label – Champion Farmhouse Cider, Bath & West Show 2015.

Spring Surprise - Cider of the Festival Chippenham Camra Beer Festival 2015 & 2014

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[Martin campling]

On Wednesday, November 4, 2015 at 11:04:21 AM UTC, Handmade Cider wrote:

In all my experience and chats I have never had or heard of anyone that has a problem apart from acetification although if I remember correctly there are a few threads in the archive here where people have lost batches and at least one producer who's name did not get mentioned who lost a whole years production.

I did report a long time ago on a problem I had with malo-lactic fermentation. I know MLF is meant to be a "good thing" but the smell and taste was so strong that I couldn't sell it easily and when I did it wasn't very popular. For that reason I try to inhibit wild MLF by adding sulphite at the final racking.

   Martin 

[Nathan Shackelford]

When I have used S02 before fermentation it has revealed some of the one dimensional character of my apples. I believe the diverse microbes in the unsulfited juice are usually contributing positively to the flavor.

I only have access to higher acid dessert fruit and haven't noticed a real demand for S02, since I'm also required to use clean fruit picked directly from the tree (by the cider mill I use). Wild fermentations have gone well and retained a complex flavor profile, as do commercial yeast with an unsulfited must. I try to keep the fermenters topped up to prevent oxygen (acetobacter) and use 30-40ppm at racking if needed to prevent MLF.

I started making cider without sulfites and only started to use it at racking to prevent MLF. Sometimes MLF has hadded positive character to the cider and other times it has left diacetyl behind and I don't like the aroma. However, I have found that the diacetyl will often dissipate if given enough time. I have done about 20% of my cider this year with natural yeast and I don't think I will regret it.

[David Llewellyn]

Denis wrote “......I have had one batch which I bottled which developed a small amount of acetobacter in each bottle although there was no impact on the flavour. This I dealt with by uncapping, removing the acetobacter with a syringe and then replacing the lost liquid with more cider dosed to give 50ppm SO2 in the bottle. This cider went on to win an accolade!”

 

Sounds like what you’re talking about is not acetobacter but film yeast, which is a completely different animal, and not necessarily detrimental at all, unlike acetobacter which will give the cider a vinegary taste very easily.

 

David Llewellyn

Tel: + 353 87 2843879

www.llewellynsorchard.ie

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[Dean Holland]

What great replies and all from cider makers with so much more knowledge and experience than me! Great stuff.

Although the juice was from predominantly bittersweet apples I did add some good quality acidic dessert apple juice to bring down the pH / increase acidity. I don't have the final numbers to hand but remember them not seeming to quite tally - the pH was at the top end of the range but TA was quite high. I will check and/or retest.

I am puzzled though by the airlock. I have double checked for leaks and there are none. The slightest squeeze of the fermenter causes bubbles in the airlock but otherwise it seems completely inactive. The water level is not even pushed down. Nothing.

It is mild at the moment and so I would expect some activity. Is it possible that I am lacking in yeast and/or only a strain with very low alcohol tolerance is present?

Although I am willing to give a wild fermentation a go, if there is no fermentation happening I would be very nervous about spoilage.

I will check the gravity also.

Dean.

[Andrew Lea]

What was the OG and what is the SG now? Your original pictures and description showed a vigorous fermentation in progress with a pectin cap. My guess is that fermentation may now be over? 

Andrew 

Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

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