Step 4: Milling

All apples were milled and then transferred to 30 L plastic buckets for maceration.

Step 3: Washing

All apples were washed in cold water to remove any dirt from the orchard and storage.

Washing of the apples

Step 2: Final Maturation

The apples were stored in cold storage until use. To ensure that the apple was matured they were taken out of cold storage some days before use. Apples are climateric fruits and are therefore able to ripe after harvest. A final maturation ensures a breakdown of unfermentable starch to fermentabale sugars. The main sugars in apples are glucose, fructose and sucrose.

Before start of cider making total sugar (as brix %), pH and titratable acid was measured.

	Brix, total sugar (%)	pH	Titratable acid (%)
Ingrid Marie	15,9 (SD 3,1)	3,36 (SD 0,02)	0,59
Ildrød Pigeon	12,2 (SD 0,3)	3,25 (SD 0,03)	0,68
Dronning Louise	13,7 (SD 0,1)	3,46 (SD 0,01)	0,59
Sukkeræble fra Vaalse	11,2 (SD 0,1)	3,28 (SD 0,03)	0,58 (SD 0,0058)
Søde æbler fra Aalsrode	11,5 (SD 0,1)	4,31 (SD 0,03)	0,14
Aston Brown Jersey	13,5 (SD 0,1)	4,47 (SD 0,02)	0,10

Step 1: Harvest

Without apples there would be no cider. Apples are the one and only ingredient and the quality are therefore highly important as it is reflected in the final wine. Optimal management of the orchard ensures this. However this project focuses only on the enology part and viticulture would therefore not be discussed in details.

250 Danish apples varieties are available at Pometet (the national Danish collection of apples) were I do my studies. The harvest was done before I started my project and I was therefore not able to define on my own what apples to use. Among the harvested apples I decided to work with Ingrid Marie, Ildrød Pigeon, Dronning Louise (Queen Luoise), sukkeræble fra Vaalse (sugar apple from Vaalse) and det søde æble fra Aalsrode (the sweet apple from Aalsrode). Furthermore I added Aston Brown Jersey as a cider reference apple for my experiments. All apples would be described in more details later on.

I will therefore work with the following batches:

• Ingrid Marie, traditional approach
• Ingrid Marie, modern approach
• Ildrød Pigeon, traditional approach
• Ildrød Pigeon, modern approach
• Dronning Louise, traditional approach
• Dronning Louise, modern approach
• Sukkeræble fra Vaalse mixed with søde æbler fra Aalsrode, traditional approach
• Sukkeræble fra Vaalse mixed with søde æbler fra Aalsrode, modern approach
• Aston Brown Jersey, traditional approach
• Aston Brown Jersey, modern approach

How to Make Traditional Cider

Overview of how I will do the traditional cider.

How to Make Modern Cider

 

Overview of how I will do the modern cider.

Cold Hand Winery - a Passion for Fruit and Wine

Check out this video with Jens. It was shoot at the Danish Cider Forum meeting in October. Jens from Cold Hand Winery is talking about his passion for fruit wine and Danish cider. Read more about Jens at www.coldhandwinery.dk.

Good job Jens!

Experimental Design: How to Make Cider?

Denmark has no cultural understanding or approach to cider making so let us define on our own how to make cider.

Traditionally cider is produced by fermentation of a nutrient poor apple must. The poorness is do to the clarifying process step known as Keeving where nutrients are trapped in a pectin gel and removed from the juice. Without nutrients yeasts will to ferment and this results in a cider with a residual of sugar. This technique has been practiced for centuries in cider producing countries as France and England. So should we just stop here and implement this technique in Danish cider making as well? No. The traditional approach to winemaking is radically different from the modern wine industry: Here wines are produced under optimal conditions regarding nutrition’s, temperature, time, and so on.

There is a clash between these two techniques. So how to produce Danish cider? What is the most optimal for our varieties? During my experiments I will challenge the way to make cider and therefore do it by a modern approach and a traditional approach. The figure above illustrates the two approaches.

A Different Approach to Cider

I’m not the first to work with cider in Denmark. Great and experienced brewers as Kai Winter from Kernegaarden, Jeppe Gents from Fejø Cider and Per Kølster were there before me. What these guys do is French cider in Denmark. They have planted orchards of French and English apple varieties on their farms. To be honest – and I’m sorry – this does not make sense in a country with such a diverse and rich supply of apples. Denmark is full of apples native to this country.

I believe in a different approach: Danish cider on Danish apple varieties. So is this new? Yes and no. No because Kim Johansen from Pomona Cider and Jens Skovgaard from Cold Hand Winery already do cider on Danish varieties. Yes because no one has ever launched a single variety cider on Danish apples. Maybe it taste like something not to be sold? I don’t know. But think about it for a while: a single variety cider on known varieties as Dronning Louise, Ildrød Pigoen, Ingrid Marie and so on. I think there is a huge and untapped potential here.

So I have set out to investigate the potential in single variety Danish cider. Therefore I have designed an experiment investigating different production methods and techniques as well as apple varieties.

Stay tuned for descriptions and results.

My Lab

I have been working on this project since October 2012. All handling, processing, pressing, maceration, fermentation and bottling take place in the cellar at Pometet in Taastrup, Demark. Pometet is the national collection of Danish and international apple varieties: 750 in total and 250 of these are Danish.

Here are a few shoots from my lab/cellar.

Final maturation

Alcoholic fermentation

The Lab