Step 5: Maceration

Maceration of pulp at 15 C

The milling process break down the apple into small pieces and enhance the surface area. The interior of fruity flesh is now exposed to the real world consisting of potent reactants as oxygen and light. Enzymatic reactions as browning and other oxidative processes will now take place – and this happens fast. The process where apple pulp is left over time in contact with oxygen is called maceration.

I asked my good old friend Kai what he does in his production at Kernegaarden. Kai mill the apples and leave them for a couple of hours before pressing. According to my good old book “The Principles and Practice of Cider-Making” the maceration should last for 24 hours. So what to do?

I guess the maceration process is about extraction of aroma compounds and pectin. Pectin is important in the traditional cider making process as this, in the presence of calcium ions, form a jellylike network (the brown hat) wherein important nutrients are entrapped. As nutrients are removed from the must yeast are not able to metabolize all the sugar and this result in a cider with a natural sugar content.

For my experiments I decided to macerate for 24 hours. To the modern ciders I added pectinolytic enzymes (polygalacturonases and pectine methyl esterases). This enhances the extraction of juice and nutrients as well as breaking down the pectin. Do to this the modern ciders are not able to form a hat and the must will therefore ferment to dryness.

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.

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.