Cider Fermentation Panel: Bottling & Tasting

06/24/13

Last weekend I met the guys at Leidel's orchard for a final taste and to bottle the ciders.  I'm glad we tasted these again as there are some big differences on a few batches.  We purposefully didn't look up our old tasting notes and only compared after we had re-tasted them all and made new notes.  Here are our notes from this session:

1. Brett drie (BSI)
   - some tartness, light, crisp, refreshing, although a bit thin.
2. Brett custersianus
   - sweet, tropical, pineapple/mango, nice body.
3. Brett nanus
   - barnyard and pineapple aroma, tastes strongly of pineapple juice. great flavor, but kind of intense.
4. Brett lambicus (wyeast)
   - not flavorful, watery.  slightly cheesy and tart.
5. Brett bruxellensis (wyeast)
   - very flavorful. pear, melon, citrus and a bit of alcohol.
6. Brett claussenii (WL)
   - pungent aroma, citrus, floral, and dry.  saison-like.
7. Brett fantome
   - pretty good mouthfeel.  complex, tart apple, a very soft blue-cheese like funk (good), nice funky aroma.
8. Saccharomyces paradoxus
   - watery, slight funk and citrus.
9. Brett blend
   - got a lot going on, but not very flavorful as a whole.  funky, fruity, citrus.
10. Brett blend and oenococcus
    - muted flavor as compared to #9.  The acidity was mellowed, and so I see there may be potential value in this addition, but likely only as a secondary fermentation, or partial blend.
11. Brett blend with maltodextrin addition
    - As compared to #9, a bit drier of a finish, thicker body, more robust flavor. a bit more alcohol.

We decided only Drie, Custer, Nanus, Brux, Claussenii, and Fantome were worth bottling.  The plan is to open these bottles over the summer and get a good understanding of each strain and how they may develop now that they are off the traub. For larger production this fall, we will be making a couple blends from the strains we like best.

Some interesting information comes in comparing our notes from the sampling we did a month ago.  The biggest changes were in Nanus and Claussenii.  A month ago Nanus tasted of rotting fruit and cheese.  It wasn't even drinkable, but now it was one of our favorites and had a huge pineapple flavor.  Claussenii was very stale in flavor, but now has a beautiful floral/citrus flavor.  

If you are looking to brew a brett cider, it is important to note that brettanomyces continues working even after fermentation has completed and it may take a couple months to develop the desired flavor.  For those homebrewers who don't want to wait more than a month, I would recommend Wyeast's B. bruxellensis (note: this is different than White Lab's) as it had a great flavor profile in both tasting sessions and is an easy strain to obtain.

On a side note, I also bottled up my Cider Keeve and Foraged Farmhouse the previous weekend.  More on that coming soon...

Bottled Cider Keeve.

Cider Fermentation Panel: Tasting

I met with the guys at Leidel's orchard agian last weekend to check in on the wild cider fermentation experiments.  We took gravity readings and sampled each batch.  Here are the results:

1. Brett drie (BSI) - 1.000
   - orange peal, citrus, tropical fruit, pineapple, tingling feeling on the sides of the tongue. 
2. Brett custersianus - 0.999
   - lemonade like citrus, cherry, white wine, flavor not intense, but pleasant.  slightly watery.
3. Brett nanus - 0.998
   - overripe/rotting fruit, cheesy, not pleasant. 
4. Brett lambicus (wyeast) - 0.995
   - grassy/woody, watery flavor, tingly.
5. Brett bruxellensis (wyeast) - 0.999
   - hay and floral funk with sweet nectarine. 
6. Brett claussenii (WL) - 0.998
   - light citrus, watery, yeasty.
7. Brett fantome (ECY) - 0.998
   - hay funk, green apple tartness, tingly.
8. Saccharomyces paradoxus - 0.998
   - buttery Chardonnay, candy sweetness.
9. Brett blend (drie, claussenii, fantome, ECY05) - 0.998
   - light citrus
10. Brett blend and oenococcus - 0.995
    - as compared to #9, less tart and more alcoholic.  less flavor.  watery.
11. Brett blend with maltodextrin addition - 0.996
    - as compared to #9, smooth/creamy feel and more flavorful.

We didn't bottle as this was the only gravity reading I have and don't know what the FG will be for any of these.  Normally you might think 1.000 is a safe number, but having batches at 0.995 makes me cautious.

The base cider we used was intentionally a neutral and lacking flavor.  This allowed us to more easily pick out the flavor of the yeast only.  As you can see from the Brett fantome batch, we could taste a green apple flavor and know that it wasn't from the base cider, but rather the yeast.   So while this was beneficial, I think its important to note that the base cider wasn't very flavorful and led to some batches tasting "watery".  This might be better stated "the yeast strain didn't produce a very large amount of flavor".  With a different base cider blend, these may still be viable strains for producing tasty cider.

It was very interesting to feel this tingling sensation on the sides of my tongue from some batches.  I have no idea what that is and have never experienced it before.  Future batches are required to see if this is something brett does in cider.

Batches #10 and #11 are worth talking about more.  While we were experiencing some palette fatigue, it was easy to compare them against #9 and see the impact from the addition of oenococcus and maltodextrin in cider.  Quite simply, oenococcus wrecked the brett fermentation while maltodextrin enhanced it.  I was skeptical that maltodextrin would do anything as I knew the brett would eat it away, but it does seem to have helped both the mouthfeel and the flavor.

The favorite batches were drie, custersianus, bruxellensis, fantome and paradoxus.  I already feel like I want to revisit some of these strains, so I am going to hold off final judgement until I taste these a few times.  Also, I'm looking forward to tasting them once carbonated, but it will be a few weeks before I have another chance to get up there and bottle.

Cider Fermentation Panel: Yeast Pitched

Over the weekend I met with the guys at Leidel's Orchard to do our brett cider experiment.  The yeast arrived safely, the juice was ready, and they had purchased all the carboys/bungs/airlocks needed.

Wild yeast strains from East Coast Yeast

After we sanitized everything, we filled each carboy with 3 gallons of juice.  To ensure that our pitched yeast would be the source of 100% of the fermentation, the juice had been pasteurized at the pack house and then shipped to us frozen.  While we were waiting for the juice to warm up to room temperature, I dissolved 5 ounces of maltodextrin into some juice, and then added it to the juice already in carboy #11. (batch list here)

11 wild cider batches

Later that evening the yeast was added.  The only yeast strain that didn't come from East Coast Yeast was the B. Brux, which came from Wyeast.  24 hours after pitching every carboy except #5 (Brux) was in active fermentation.  #3 (Nanus), #7 (Fantome), and the brett blend batches were the most active.  Giving them a slight shake would almost blow out all the star-san solution in the airlock!

They will be left in that room, which is a steady 60 degrees, for the next month or two.  Unfortunately, the orchard is 2.5 hours from where I live, so I won't be able to check on it regularly, or take weekly gravity readings.  The goal of this experiment is primarily to see the flavor/aroma contribution of each of these strains and to find which ones we like in cider.

Cider Fermentation Panel

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've been working with Leidel's Apple Orchard on a few hard cider pilot batches.  The past experiments have been more complicated, expensive, time consuming fermentation styles.  We now want to see if we could come up with a "table cider"; something that doesn't require oak barrels nor take 9+ months to ferment and age.

After giving some thought to the different kinds of ciders out there and how we could make something new and interesting, I got the idea of doing a 100% brett fermented cider.  Surprisingly, there is very little information out there on how brett (in general and individual strains) performs in cider.  Even in the homebrew world there are only a few people who have tried 100% brett fermentation for cider.  Most commercial cider operations (and a lot of home brewers) come at cider from the wine world, which hates brett, and so they refuse to even consider it.  So, coming from the beer world, specifically the "wild" beer world, it seems I have a fresh look at the possibilities.

First, we need to get an understanding of how each individual strain of brett performs and the flavors/aromas it creates in cider.  I would also like to get an idea of how brett performs when paired with a malolactic fermentation.  Apple juice has malic acid, which is a harsher acid.  Oenococcus can be used to convert the malic acid to the softer lactic acid.  In addition, I would like to see the impact of adding maltodextrines to a 100% brett cider fermentation.  Maltodextrins are complex sugars that normal brewing yeast is not able to break down and consume, leaving the beer with a fuller body and mouthfeel.  Theoretically brett has the ability to break these complex sugars down, but some home brewers have reported a difference in using maltodextrin with brett fermentation.

We decided to do test batch for all of the individual brett strains possible.  Once again I reached out to Al Buck at East Coast Yeast, who has been so helpful in the past, to supply the yeast.  In addition to providing the brett strains, he recommended a "wild" saccharomyces strain call S. Paradoxus.  I am particularly excited about this as it has the ability to do a partial malolactic fermentation on its own.

So here is the list of the 3 gallon batches we will be starting this weekend:

1. Brett drie (BSI)
2. Brett custersianus
3. Brett nanus
4. Brett lambicus (wyeast)
5. Brett bruxellensis (wyeast)
6. Brett claussenii (WL)
7. Brett fantome (ECY)
8. Saccharomyces paradoxus
9. Brett blend (drie, claussenii, fantome, ECY05)
10. Brett blend and oenococcus
11. Brett blend with maltodextrin addition

I'm really looking forward to this experiment.  I expect it to take a month or two to finish fermentation, but I will make sure to report the results here as soon as I have them.