Lactic acid propagation from apple juice for adjusting cider pH

[Joe Barfield]

Why not inoculate an amount of cider pressings with lactobacillus to create orchard-based acid?

I am in an area where there are no cider apples. Mostly just sweet eating apples. I am not excited about the idea of adding malic acid crystals to adjust pH. 

I used to work at Tabernash Brewing Co. in Denver, Colorado where our diploma brewmaster adhered to(wards) Reinheitsgebot. We would acidify the mash with lactic acid that we produced in our lactic acid propagator. Essentially, we would pull off some of the mash and hold it overnight in a vessel that maintained an ideal temperature for lactic acid producing organisms. The resulting fluid was varyingly sweet and acidic depending on how long it generated.

Is there any reason not to do this with cider? I bought a liter of pasteurized apple juice and tipped the whey from a few yogurt pots into it.  I squeezed the air out and resealed before warming it up and letting it sit out overnight.

I keep thinking I am going to poison myself since I am letting apple juice go bad. But then I think "duh, cider" and keep moving forward. And then I remember that I am from Texas and am genetically disposed to doing stupid things after saying "hold my cider."

So, first, is this something that is already documented? 

Second, is there a reason I shouldn't do this?

I would expect to pasteurize the lactic acid before adding it to the cider. 

It's the first cold day here, and I finally have my mill and press set up to begin pressing for this season. 

Joe Barfield

Penamacor Portugal

[Andrew Lea]

The main easily fermentable sugar in brewing mash is glucose. At the high pH of wort, you can easily encourage lactic acid bacteria to produce lactic acid from glucose. That’s what you were doing in the brewery.

I doesn’t work like that in apple juice. Why? Two main reasons - first the pH is too low for the lactic acid bacteria to proliferate using simple sugars as a carbon source, and second the main sugar in apple juice is fructose which is not so assimilable for LAB as glucose. It will be quite hard to make this work. In the normal way, yeast growth and alcoholic fermentation will speedily overtake any LAB growth and you will be on a hiding to nothing. 

However, if you start with pasteurised juice and add LAB in the form of yoghurt you might just make it work if the pH is high enough. But likely you will also generate a lot of phenolic and other off-flavours from the action of the LAB. I suggest you try it and report back. 

Good luck!

Andrew 

Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

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[Joe Barfield]

Now that you mention it, we were only aiming for a mash pH of 5.4 or so...
I have a 1L box of apple juice with whey sitting in warm water. I should have bought “apple nectar” with 50% glucose. Enter yet, I could buy any of the available commercial ciders off the shelf to inoculate. They have 65% glucose! :-)

[Andrew Lea]

No, commercial (hard) ciders don’t have 65% glucose. They may have started off that way but the glucose has been fermented to alcohol. Glucose is not used as a sweetener since it’s not very sweet.

Andrew

Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

> On 27 Oct 2018, at 19:48, Joe Barfield <j...@joebarfield.com> wrote:
>
> Now that you mention it, we were only aiming for a mash pH of 5.4 or so...
> I have a 1L box of apple juice with whey sitting in warm water. I should have bought “apple nectar” with 50% glucose. Enter yet, I could buy any of the available commercial ciders off the shelf to inoculate. They have 65% glucose! :-)
>

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