Back sweeten with following year's juice?

[thepgr...@gmail.com]

I've got 4 gallons of 2021 Heirloom blend (Kingston black, Michelin, Chisel Jersey, Dabinett) that I've just kegged. It has an amazing nose, and wonderful taste aside from the fact that it is a bit too acidic and dry for my liking. It fermented to completion with no residual sugar.

I have two small trees in the yard (Michelin and Finkenwurder Herbst Prince) that look like they have enough apples for 1 gallon of juice. I'm thinking I would likely only need about half a gallon of fresh juice to sweeten the blend to my liking. 

BUT, I'm wondering about how I need to prepare that juice?

Before I add it, I figure I need to :

1. sulfite it

2. add pectinaise to clear it.

3. keep it cold

Sulfite should kill any wild yeast, but once I add to the keg, do I need to worry about old yeast eating up the new sugar? Or will the cold temperature in my kegerator keep any fermentation from happening? I also wondered about boiling the juice instead of sulfiteing, but I've read about "cooked" flavors, and don't think I want that.

I appreciate any thoughts, experiences or other ways of doing this.

[Andrew Lea]

I’m afraid that no amount of sulphiting and kegerating is likely to hold your juice for more than a few weeks at best. Your fresh juice will contain a high load of wild yeast which will eventually ferment its own sugar even in the presence of cider, let alone any residual yeast from the cider itself. (Sulphite does not kill fermenting yeasts except at unusably high levels).

One course of action would be to blend the juice and cider and then  pasteurise the finished product to 65 degrees C. Otherwise pasteurise the juice you plan to add (to 75 C) and then add it to the cider after cooling.  If you add 50 ppm SO2 to the juice or cider before pasteurising this will minimise the development of cooked flavours by inhibiting the Maillard reaction. 

Andrew

Wittenham Hill Cider Page

www.cider.org.uk

On 1 Sep 2023, at 17:30, thepgr...@gmail.com <thepgr...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've got 4 gallons of 2021 Heirloom blend (Kingston black, Michelin, Chisel Jersey, Dabinett) that I've just kegged. It has an amazing nose, and wonderful taste aside from the fact that it is a bit too acidic and dry for my liking. It fermented to completion with no residual sugar.

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[Denise Flynn]

Anyone have any thoughts whether adding 0.22 ppm of sorbate to prevent the yeast from causing more fermentation here?

Denise Flynn

corberriecidercompany.ca

On Sep 2, 2023, at 5:30 AM, Andrew Lea <ci...@cider.org.uk> wrote:



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[LL]

Thanks for sharing that SO2 can inhibit the Maillard reaction! To what extent is the inhibition dosage dependent?

Kind regards 

Love

[gareth chapman]

@Denise Flynn Depends how long you want to keep it. In my experience a sulphited and sorbated cider will eventually ferment it's just a matter of time.

[Denise Flynn]

Fortunately I sell out fairly quickly so it has not happened. 

Denise Flynn

corberriecidercompany.ca

On Sep 3, 2023, at 12:22 PM, gareth chapman <chappe...@gmail.com> wrote:

@Denise Flynn Depends how long you want to keep it. In my experience a sulphited and sorbated cider will eventually ferment it's just a matter of time.

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[Andrew Lea]

On 3 Sep 2023, at 02:44, LL <love....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for sharing that SO2 can inhibit the Maillard reaction! To what extent is the inhibition dosage dependent?

I cannot give you any sort of stoichiometry because the Maillard reaction is so complex and with so many stages and products to it. But fundamentally the reaction between sugars and amino acids proceeds by generation of a set of carbonyl-containing intermediates, and it is these carbonyls that can be turned into sulphonates in the presence of sulphite. This typically blocks any further reaction or at least slows it considerably depending on the strength of binding between sulphite and carbonyl.  The overall effect is that sulphite inhibits ultimate Maillard colour and flavour formation.  So the typical generation of cooked / caramel flavours (which are complex heterocycles such as furaneol and cyclotene) is much reduced. 

The caveat is that free SO2 has to be present just before the heat treatment, so that the intermediate carbonyls are blocked as they are formed.  You cannot “cook” a cider and then later add sulphite and hope that the caramel flavour will disappear - it won’t.

In terms of practical application, my experience is that 25 - 50 ppm sulphite added before pasteurisation has a noticeably beneficial effect in minimising cooked flavours.

Andrew

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[love.client]

Thank you Andrew! That's a wonderdully precise answer. 

Is it safe to assume that these sulphonates that are formed will not give rise to any off flavours in themselves?

Best

Love 

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[Andrew Lea]

No the sulphite addition products are quite polar and pretty much non-volatile. So they don’t add anything adverse to the flavour. But of course you don’t want excess free sulphite to be detectable in the finished cider so keep it to quite low levels.10 - 25 ppm may be sufficient. If you are doing the pasteurising yourself (not by a contractor) you can test this.

Maybe worth saying that this technique of sulphite addition to inhibit the Maillard reaction has been used for many years in the food industry especially for dried fruit eg apricots in order to keep a light colour when dried. 

Andrew

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Wittenham Hill Cider Page

www.cider.org.uk

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