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cider yeast starter - which malt or nutrient?
I just ordered some White Labs WLP 775 English Cider Yeast for my next cider and I see that they suggest in the FAQ that I make a starter with a mix of juice and malt or yeast nutrient.
Q. Do I use apple juice (freshly pressed) as a base for culturing and if yes how much juice do I need with one vial of yeast?
A. You can use either juice supplemented with nutrients or a malt-based medium to culture the cider yeast (as you would do with yeast for a beer starter). I would recommend making a mixture of half juice and half malt in order to acclimate the yeast to the cider environment, while still getting a good deal of nutrient and food from the malt. You can make a 2 liter starter with one vial of yeast.
So, what should I look for in selecting a malt to feed the yeast in the starter? Or will it be too small a volume to make any noticeable flavor difference?
My first guess is that any light malt would do.
I also have Fermax on hand. Any benefit to using it instead of malt?
Kevin
Yes any LME will do. I use dry malt extract for its ease of use. I personally would let the starter ferment to completion, chill it and then decant off most of the liquid leaving the yeast cake and add that to your cider. Let us know how that yeast does.
i'm getting ready to make a cyser and am interested in trying out different strains this time around.
Not really familiar with Fermax...the short amount of time that I spent googling it mentioned it being a yeast nutrient, so in that case you wouldn't use it in place of LDME but rather with it to provide additional nutrients. Not sure if this is what you're refering to or not.
andrew jensen wrote:
I personally would let the starter ferment to completion, chill it and then decant off most of the liquid leaving the yeast cake and add that to your cider. Let us know how that yeast does.
That is what I was thinking, thanks for confirming my novice thought process.
I will report back on the yeast but it will be a while. My last batch with an ale yeast didn't really mature until the 6 month mark.
I am gong to make two batches this time for comparison. One with White Labs English Cider Liquid Yeast (WLP775) and another with WLP720 Sweet Mead/Wine. Should be a fun taste test.
Not really familiar with Fermax...the short amount of time that I spent googling it mentioned it being a yeast nutrient, so in that case you wouldn't use it in place of LDME but rather with it to provide additional nutrients. Not sure if this is what you're refering to or not.
My first thought was to use both together but since White Labs suggested a malt OR a nutrient I wanted to hear if anyone thought there was any reason to avoid the malt and use just a nutrient. Both together should give the yeast a well rounded diet to get started and decanting would remove most of the flavors added to the starter from the malt.
I've done starters for mead yeasts with just honey and nutrients that worked fine so I imagine it would work as well.
I've done a couple of baches of cider now and would recommend using apple juice for the starter. What I do is start out with the 5 gallons of juice I am going to use, pitch in some campden tablets to kill off any wild yeast, add some pectin enzyme, and some yeast nutrient and then wait 24-48 hours for the campden to do it's job. Then I use about a liter of this mixture for my starter. I personally use a wine yeast and let the starter go for about 24 hours. You really want to make sure you have a lively yeast starter before you pitch it. Once you do, just aerate the juice some and then pitch the whole starter in. You should see some action within a day or so.
The Brewing Network Recently revisited cider on the Jamil Show and I must say it was extremely helpful. A much better approach than most recipes you will find online.
http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/474
Also check out the The Wittenham Hill Cider Portal.
http://www.cider.org.uk/
Their process is what I based mine on
I'm of the opinion that you should skip the malt too and go with just juice and nutrient. You probably want to keep the sugar profile of the starter close to that of the juice that your cider will be made from. Adding DME or LME could mess that up a bit. I don't think it'll hurt things too much, but if you have the option of adding nutrient to the juice and not using any malt extract, I'd think that'd be the way that I'd go. Malt extract would add some nutrients that the yeast need that the juice doesn't have on it's own, but again if you can add the nutrient, it might be to your benefit to do that instead of adding malt extract.
As far as adding campden tabs go, that's fine if your using unpasturized juice, but if the juice is pasturized then I don't think it's needed. There shouldn't be any wild yeast present in pasturized cider. You can add it if it makes you feel better, I'm sure it won't hurt anything.
Well, that's just my $0.02.
I concur.
Mortician607 wrote:
As far as adding campden tabs go, that's fine if your using unpasturized juice, but if the juice is pasturized then I don't think it's needed. There shouldn't be any wild yeast present in pasturized cider. You can add it if it makes you feel better, I'm sure it won't hurt anything.
I am making a freshpress cider at the moment. I used campden tabs and then just rehydrated dry Leviens 1118 and pitched it. But a pre-test i did was 2-1/2 gallons of Simpley Apple(tm) apple juice from walmart juice section has a gravity of 1.052. And will ferment well with no problem or additives. I pitched 1118 with some yeast nutrients on top of just the juice and BAM it was off like a rocket 24 hours and i was poping off every second or so. But just to warn you a five gallon batch of cider will smell up a big room like a dirty diper for 3 days or so during peak ferment. It throws off a lot of gas so (no your cider is not bad though it smells that way). And if you want a clear cider use Benanite a wine clarifying agent. Its natrual clay that works great along side pectic enzyme. My cider is crystal clear now.
reynolds5520 wrote:
I will report back on the yeast but it will be a while. My last batch with an ale yeast didn't really mature until the 6 month mark.
I am gong to make two batches this time for comparison. One with White Labs English Cider Liquid Yeast (WLP775) and another with WLP720 Sweet Mead/Wine. Should be a fun taste test.
Here we are a bit more than a year later and I figured it is about time I post about the taste tests.
First the background, I made the starters with a mix of light DME and frozen apple juice concentrate from Walmart. It grew yeast well for a few days and when it was done I decanted the liquid and used the yeast cakes for my ciders. (Just for grins I also added another gallon or so of juice to the liquid from each starter and let them ferment to see what a malted cider would taste like.)
I made four batches of 5 gallons each starting with 17 gallons of fresh local cider and adding apple juice from frozen concentrate to bring the volume up to 20 gallons. The cider was treated with camden tabs and set aside while the starters grew.
The cider/juice had an original gravity of 1.052 to which I added a pound of brown sugar per gallon. I forgot to take another gravity reading after adding the sugar.
All four batches took off quickly after the yeast was pitched and the glubbing sound of four airlocks in the corner of the kitchen drove my wife crazy. Three weeks later, in early December 2009, they had all slowed significantly and were racked from primary to secondary.
Eight more weeks of slow activity and two of the four (one of each yeast) have completed in late January. These two batches are bottled with dextrose for conditioning. My notes don't say but I have to assume that I also bottled the two malt/cider starters on this day as well. A small taste from everything showed the most promise in the English Cider Yeast, but nothing that was particularly objectionable from the other. Final gravity was .098.
The first bottles were opened in mid March. From my notes:
reynolds5520 in his notes wrote:
English Cider is slightly sweet and has definite apple taste
Sweet Mead is dry and acidic
Both improved with age as I sampled one periodically over the summer. The Sweet Mead yeast in particular improved with a mellowing of the acidic finish. My notes don't mention the malt/cider tasting. My recollection is that while a little different they were very similar to the plain cider.
Meanwhile, the other two batches were still slowly bubbling away in the secondaries. My only guess for why they are so different in completion time is that they may have been a little colder (closer to the outside wall) during primary. Finally in late August they have completed. Fearing that I have buckets of expensive vinegar, I leave them alone to continue aging until a more convenient time for bottling. Late November 2010 I pull a sample and find that they are good, this time I bottle with juice from the frozen concentrate as conditioning sugar and pitched a fresh packet of dry yeast since they have been sitting for so long. Taste tests on these two slow batches found them to be like the first batches after aging and final gravities were also .098.
The first batches have now all been consumed except for one bottle I saved for a side by side comparison with the later batch. I have shared with family and friends and asked all for their opinions. The sweet mead yeast made a perfectly drinkable cider, but the English Cider Yeast was universally preferred for the slight sweetness and apple notes that remained.
I am hoping to start another 15 gallons this week with the English Cider Yeast. It is too late to buy fresh cider here now so I will be using all juice from frozen concentrate.
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