Craft Hard Cider: Recipes, Tips, and Ideas for Making & Enjoying Hard Cider
Pectic enzymes or what are also referred to a pectinases, are enzyme compounds that cleave or breakdown the natural pectin found in both apples and pears. Generally, pears have higher levels of natural pectin. Pectic enzymes are often produced naturally during fermentation by yeast, but as is common, the amount will vary by yeast strain. … Continue reading Cider Question: Do you need to use pectic enzyme?
If your hard cider is hazy, it has colloids. Cider colloids are a mixture of small particles or compounds that are insoluble and evenly suspended within your cider. Colloids are generally compounds made up of carbohydrates, color compounds, or proteins(1). The carbohydrates and color compounds are usually derived from the fruit. The proteins are usually … Continue reading Hazy Cider: Colloids
Impact of Pectic Enzyme - Juice Application Pectolyase, pectozyme, and polygalacturonase are three types of pectic emzymes or what are often called pectinases. These are naturally occurring compounds found in plants that breakdown the polysaccharide known as pectin. Pectin gives structure and strength to the plant cells. This structure is what make jelly and jam become … Continue reading Pectic Enzyme: Juice Application
Autolysis: The decomposition of yeast cells. Why does the flavor of cider change when it ages? Part of those changes can come from bacteria or yeast. This micro flora can make malolactic fermentation (MLF) occur or a souring by Brettanomyces yeasts. However, one of the biggest impacts can come from the yeast that fermented your … Continue reading Cider Words: Autolysis
Suspended Solids: How juice clarity impacts hard cider V.K. Joshi and associates assessed the impacts of juice clarity on hard cider. They found that similarly to wine, clarifying juice by filtering and pectic enzyme treatment resulted in higher quality cider(1). Quality was defined by a panel of five trained judges assessing 14 flavor characteristics using … Continue reading Impact of Juice Clarity
As I’ve noted in an earlier article on pressing apples, there are a lot of methods and equipment you can purchase or make to press apples into juice. If you have quite a few full-sized trees in the backyard producing thousands of pounds (500+ kg) of fruit, a larger grinder and press system is probably … Continue reading Making Cider with a Juicer
Filtration is a process used to remove unwanted compounds from a hard cider. Those compounds can range from suspended solids that are relatively large to the smallest of particles like sugars and salts. Those smallest particles basically mean you will only have water remaining and would usually require an osmosis filter system. It is possible … Continue reading Filtration Basics
Key Genes Impacting Processing Characteristics Why do some hard ciders become crystal clear in a few days while others seem to always have a slight haze? Have you ever had a hard cider that formed a film on top of it? Were you aware that the yeast you use might impact whether that happens? It … Continue reading Decoding Yeast Genes: Processing Characteristics
I like to experiment, especially with food and hard cider. Research I have read indicates that clearer juice will yield hard cider that is fruitier. One of the ideas is that with less sediment and solids, you reduce the level of bacteria and natural yeast that might generate off-flavors. I wondered if this would be … Continue reading Wild Thing: A Cider Process Experiment
I hope you are finding the information you need. Please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment or contact me if you have specific questions. To make the best hard cider, should juice be crystal clear or should it be cloudy? Have you even thought about it much? If you have read some of my … Continue reading Hard Cider Tip #27: Clear or Cloudy Juice
PricklyCider.com 