Ice Cider

It's been way too long since my last brewday (July 31st).  I still have plenty of beer but I miss brewing.  I'm still not quite ready to brew but I have my chest freezer and fermenters so I'm definitely ready for something a bit simpler like a cider.  So that's what I'm doing.

To add a layer of complexity to the project I have decided to make it an Ice Cider.

An Ice Cider is essentially an Ice Wine with Apples.  An Ice Wine is a dessert wine that comes in with a FG of about 20 degrees plato (that's 20% sugar content).  This is quite a bit sweeter than even a port wine.  They get this sweetness by letting the fruit freeze on the plant prior to pressing.  The pressing extracts a small amount of super concentrated juice and leaves behind most of the water.  The juice then undergoes a very cold and very slow fermentation which allows the progress to be tracked and controlled.  Once the desired amount of sugar has been converted to alcohol the fermentation is halted by cold crashing - not by adding wine spirits like with Port.  This produces a wine with fairly standard levels of alcohol (~10-14%).

Ice Cider can be produced similarly by pressing frozen apples but an easier (but still sanctioned) method is to extract the juice normally and then freeze concentrate.  This is the method I'll be using.  I found this article from Wine Maker Magazine to be very helpful:  Making Ice Cider.

Per the process outlined in this article I will freeze the juice into a solid block and then allow it to slowly thaw.  The sugary solution is supposed to thaw and drain out more quickly than the water so you can collect that first and then judge when the liquid no longer contains enough sugar - sort of like sparging the mash when making a beer.  You want to end up with concentrate that is 30-40% sugar at the end of this process.

I will be using Cider from Weaver's Orchard as I did last year with my first attempt at Cider.  Last year I measured the starting gravity as 1.044 which is about 11 degrees plato.  In order to concentrate this to 30-40 degrees plato we'll have to get rid of about 75% of the water in the juice.  So, for every gal you start with you get 1 quart of product.  Based on this I decided to start with 10 gal of cider as anything less than 2.5 gal seems like too little to make the effort worth while.  Anything more would provide some challenges given the capacity of my chest freezer.

I am going to try two methods for freezing/concentrating the juice.  I will freeze 6 gal in a bottling bucket and use the faucet to drain off the sugar which seems like it should be pretty simple.  For the other 4 gal I will freeze the liquid in their original jugs.  I'll split off a bit off each into a fifth carton to avoid breakage through expansion.  I'll then drain off the juice by setting them upside down over some container.  I like the idea of using the jugs as I'll have a better view of how much juice vs is ice is left in the mixture.  I'd expect freezing the bottling bucket could take a while, and determining that it's frozen will be difficult - I'll give it at least a week to be safe.  I'll raise the temperature in the chest freezer to just above freezing to slowly extract the concentrate.  Hopefully this will allow me to stop the thaw at the right time without having to pay too much attention.  I'll use my refractometer to check the progress so I wont have to waste too much juice at this stage.  I expect this thawing could take a couple more weeks.

I am going to use a wine yeast that ferments cold and slow and that can be halted readily using Campden Tablets.  I am thinking WLP727 Steinberg Wine Yeast may be my best bet based on these descriptions:

Steinberg yeast is used for producing classical, cold fermented Riesling wines, and it is used extensively for Gewurztraminer production. When used at low fermentation temperatures, Steinberg produces a delicate, complex bouquet of fruit odors in young white wines. This yeast is very cold tolerant, and it often continues fermenting at temperatures below 40 degrees. However, this yeast is very sensitive to sulfur dioxide, and Steinberg fermentations can be retarded significantly if more than 50 milligrams per liter of sulfur dioxide are added at the crusher. Sometimes, winemakers can deliberately stop low temperature Steinberg fermentations just by adding a large dose of sulfur dioxide to the tank. This yeast is only available in 500 gram packages and in bulk. (Source)

Steinberg : A strain developed in Germany. Like Pasteur white, Steinberg is used for white wine fermentation because it yields a lengthy fermentation process. It even tolerates the cold better than Pasteur white. Johannesburg Riesling, Gewurztraminer Chenin Blanc and Muscat all use this strain. It gives off a tropical fruit aroma and is best used in stainless steel fermenting.  (Source)

I'll add some yeast nutrient when I pitch and plan on fermenting at 55 F in my temperature controlled chest freezer.  I may also add some pectic enzyme at the start of the fermentation to help it clear.

Fermentation should last six to eight weeks per the article which is pretty amazing.  Should get less than 1 plato drop in gravity per day.  I plan on measuring every few days with the hydrometer.  I think I'll just make sure everything is very well sanitized and add the samples back to the fermenter to avoid too much loss in product.

Once fermentation has reached the desired level you cold crash and then hit it with 30 PPM S02 (1 Campden Tablet per gal).  This should stun the yeast and cause them to halt fermentation.  After a few days at below freezing (25 F is the suggestion) the yeast will have sunk to the bottom and then you can rack off of them.  A few more days of cold crashing at this temp and another rack should stabilize the product.  The article recommends filtering but I'm thinking I don't want to do that (the pectic enzyme should hopefully make it clear enough.

After that you can bottle (I'm going to use beer bottles) and hope that it doesn't continue fermentation.  I plan on stopping at 20 degrees plato which is 1.083 in SG so there is a lot of room for disaster if something hungry (like Brett) gets into those bottles.  At 10-15% ABV it will be a pretty hostile environment so it would need to be a pretty hardy organism to handle that - the cider should protect itself to a good extent.

Anyway, this is a pretty ambitious plan and I probably should have waited until I was more confident in my success to write up a blog post about it but I'm thinking it should be an interesting experience regardless of how successful I am.  Ice Wine is really nice and, although I've never had the opportunity to have it, I'd expect the same from Ice Cider.  This should be a lot of fun.

Recipe Details:

• Apples/Juice:
• 10 gal of Weaver's Orchard Cider
• Yeast:
• WLP727 Steinberg Wine Yeast
• Extras:
• 0.25 tsp Yeast Nutrient
• 1.5 tsp Pectic Enzyme

Recipe Details:

• Batch Size:
• 2.5 gal (Target 2.5 gal)
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 55 F
• Primary Duration:
• 6 to 8 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 1 Week

Results:

• OG:
• 40 degrees plato (Target 38 degrees plato)
• FG:
• 23 degrees plato (Target 20 degrees plato)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 43% (Target 47%)
• ABV:
• 14.55% (Target 16.72%)

Brewing Notes:

• 12/23/16 - Put 6 gal of cider into a bottling bucket and moved into the chest freezer.  Distributed the remaining 4 gal among 5 jugs.  The juice this year is measuring 1.054 (13.3 plato), which is up from 1.044 last year,  so I have a little more margin for error in getting to 38 brix.

• 12/24/16 - The jugs were mostly frozen through by the next morning.  The cider in the bottling bucket was icy.
• 12/25/16 - Jugs are frozen all the way through - the plastic maintained it's integrity.  The bottling bucket is close to freezing completely I think.  I'll give it until next weekend before I consider doing anything with it.  The ice seems to have formed a cone which is odd.

• 12/30/16 - Everything seems pretty well frozen at this point so I'm going to start the thaw.  I had been running the freezer directly plugged in.  I'm now switching over to the temperature controller.  I'll use a gal jug of water as the temperature measurement source.  I'll set the controller to keep that at 35 F.  This should hopefully allow for a very slow thaw.  I picked up some single square cinder blocks to assist in the draining.  The bottling bucket sits on one and the jugs are balanced upside down on a couple more with glasses underneath to catch the draining liquid.  Getting some syrupy drops right from the start.  I was only able to get 3 of the 5 jugs in so I'll have to swap two out at some point.  Will be interesting to see how quickly this goes.  I'll check on it every 8-12 hrs over the weekend to make sure things don't go so fast that the draining glasses overfill.

• 12/31/16
• After about 16 hrs I've collected ~1 pint of syrupy liquid off the bottling bucket.  It's producing a drop every couple of seconds.  I checked the gravity of one of the drops with my refractometer and it exceeds the maximum of 32 brix that I am capable of measuring.  I will need to dilute with equal parts water to get a measurement.  I'll give it some more time before I do that.  The ice at the top of the container is starting to get a bit whiter as the juice drains off.  The jugs have gone a bit slower - they have produced less than 1 cup each so far.

• The melt rate increased throughout the day.  I ended up overflowing one of the glasses and spilled maybe a cup of melt.  My temperature control method isn't working very well.  I turned the chest freezer back on uncontrolled to freeze the juice again over night.  I have about 4 pints of liquid collected so far.  I took a gravity sample using some of the spilled concentrate by mixing "equal" parts water and juice.  Measured 22 brix with this method which would be about 44 brix for the concentrate.  It's a good sanity check.  The jugs have continued to melt more slowly than the bottling buckets - so far the bottling bucket seems like the better way to accomplish this task - we'll see how I feel as we progress.
• 1/1/17 - Froze over night and then unplugged the freezer this morning.  It took most of the day to melt enough to start draining again.  I'll let it continue to thaw over night but will turn off the valve on the bottling bucket to avoid overfilling my cup
• 1/3/17 - As of this morning I've collected 8 glasses (so ~8 pints) of run off.  2 of those are from the jugs and the other 6 are from the bottling bucket.  The liquid coming out of the bottling bucket is still above 32 brix.  The first glass out of one of the jugs was 30 brix so the bottling bucket seems to be doing a more efficient job.
• 1/5/17 - I've collected about 10 glasses of concentrate.  I decided to transfer these into cider jugs to re-freeze until I'm ready to start fermentation.  I measured the concentration of all of them and all except one was 32 brix and above.  The one below was a half glass from one of the jugs at 26 brix - I decided to add that one as well.  With all these I have about 1.25 gal of concentrate.  I am stopping the drain for the jug that produce the 26 brix liquid.  It has gotten really white so you can tell that a lot of the juice has drained off.  The top layer of the bottling bucket is also very white like normal ice.  It is producing concentrate above 32 still though.  I have added the last two jugs to the chest freezer to drain out. 

• 1/8/17 - I've collected just about 2 gal of 30 brix and greater concentrate.  The bottling bucket is now putting out 27 brix liquid and the jugs down to 18 brix.  I've taken the lower concentration liquid and put it into a third jug.  I'm going to re-freeze all my remaining juice and double concentrate it a couple times to get a bit more liquid in the 30-40 brix range.  I'll spend the next week doing this.
• 1/15/17 - I let the bottling bucket thaw all week.  Didn't start doing the re-concentrating as I'd planned as it was still putting out a lot of fairly high strength liquid.  It was putting out juice at less than 10 brix by this morning.  I'm going to call it done.  So, I now how 5 mostly full jugs at various levels of concentration.  I measured the following concentrations using my refractometer:  40, 36, 22, 19, and 9 brix.  For the two most concentrated ones I had to dilute the sample with equal parts water and juice which could have introduced a bit of inaccuracy.  While taking the samples I noticed that it made a lot of difference if the juice had been allowed to settle.  The sample on the top was a lot less sugary in this case.  As you'd expect, the more sugary liquid sinks to the bottom.  I am going to try to further concentrate the 22, 19, and 9 brix samples.  I will refreeze these bottles and drain most concentrated liquid off these.  I need to eliminate half the water on the first two and 75% of the water on the third to get close to my target of 38 brix with these.  I should end up pretty close to the 2.5 gal target after this round.  I'm going to freeze these upside down to see if that helps the draining at all.  Hopefully I wont have any significant leakage around the lidI ordered the yeast online and it still hasn't arrived so this extra week of concentrating isn't hurting my schedule so far.

Refreezing 3 bottles for further concentration upside down

• 1/17/17 - The juice was frozen solid this morning.  I turned off the chest freezer and put glasses underneath to drain.  By that afternoon the cups under the two most concentrated jugs were on the verge of overflowing.  Poured this into another jug and drained a bit more.  They drained off another half a glass each after an hr or so.  Ended up with about half a gal of concentrate from these.  The last concentrated batch got me about a cup of high concentrate liquid which I also added.  I think this half gal is about 40 brix.  Moved these into the fridge to keep until the yeast arrives.
• 1/20/17 - The yeast arrived while I was out of town.
• 1/24/17 - Transferred the juice to a bucket.  Collected 2.5 gal of concentrate.  It is 40 degrees plato.  Added 1.5 tsp of Pectic Enzyme.  The juice was about 40 degrees.  I decided to let it sit over night to warm up a bit.  Put the yeast packet into the chest freezer to get close to the pitching temp.
• 1/25/17 - The juice warmed to about 50 F by the morning.  I decided to pitch the yeast.  Setting the temperature control to 55 F.
• 1/29/17 - Starting to see some light bubbling on the surface of the cider four days after pitching.  Realized I forgot to add yeast nutrient.  Sprinkled 0.25 a tsp of that on the surface and then swirled the juice to mix it in.
• 2/5/17 - There is a very tame fermentation going on but it is definitely fermenting.  Some bubbles and small chunks of krausen on the surface.  Smells fruity.  I have so little liquid that I'm hesitant to check the gravity just yet.  I'll give it a couple more weeks before I check for the first time.  Hopefully it will have fermented enough at that point to be within the range of my hydrometer (1.60 max SG)

• 2/12/17 - I decided to take a sample for gravity.  The cider has developed a bit more krausen since last week - looks clean so far (no mold or pellicle).  I thoroughly sanitized my wine thief, hydrometer, and measuring tube as I'll be adding the sample back in.  Measured the gravity as just about 40 brix.  So, there has been little to no drop in sugar in 2 weeks.  I'm fermenting at the low range of this yeasts capabilities which may have something to do with this.  I'm going to let it raise a couple degrees (to 57 F) and check back in a few more weeks.

• 3/12/17 - I can't believe it has been a month since I last sampled this.  Still has a think layer of foam on the top and there is some yeast ester aroma mixed with the cider smell.  Measured the gravity as 30.1 brix which is 6.48% alcohol - still a long way to go.  Added the sample back to the fermenter.  Tasted a few drops which were still very sweet.  I'll keep the fermentation at 58 F.

• 4/15/17 - It's been a bit over a month since I last checked on this cider.  It has been fermenting for almost three months.  No signs of bubbling on the surface any more.  Measured the gravity as 26 Brix.  Getting close to the target of 20 Brix.  It's currently around 9% ABV - I'm going to raise the fermentation chamber temp to 60 F to try to help it finish out.  Will check again in a couple weeks.  Poured most of the sample back in but tasted a small bit - still very sweet but it now has a pretty good amount of alcohol mixed in.
  

• 4/30/17 - It has been about 2 weeks since my last sample.  No visible signs of fermentation on the surface still (I'd raised the fermentation temperature to 60 F last time).  Measured the gravity as 25 brix.  So, it's down 1 degree.  I'm going to raise the fermentation temperature to 62 F to coax it along.  The cider has cleared considerably.  It has a nice amber color.  Poured most of the sample back in but tasted a bit.  Has a nice alcohol presence to go along with the intense apple flavor - starting to taste very much like an ice wine.

• 5/21/17 - Gravity is 23.5 brix (down 1.5 points in the last 3 weeks).  I'm going to hold it at 62 F and allow it to continue.
• 6/11/17 - Gravity is still 23.5 brix after 3 more weeks.  I'm going to raise the fermentation temperature up to 65 F to see if I can get a couple more points out of it
• 7/1/17 - Gravity is down to about 22.5 brix.  I've decided to halt fermentation at this point.  Chilled down to 35 F and added 2 crushed Campden tablets.

• 7/10/17 - Added gelatin to fine the cider
• 7/11/17 - Transferred off the yeast cake to a 3 gal better bottle - have about 2.5 gal of cider.  Moved this back to the fermentation chamber set to 25 F to drop the yeast again.
• 7/15/17 - Bottled the cider today.  A large amount of particulate had settled out from the juice after it's time at 25 F.  Not sure what it is - pectin maybe.  I racked off of this carefully.  Ended up with 2 gal of cider which got me 20 12 oz bottles.  Cider ended up at 23 brix at bottling.  It is very clear with the solids dropping out and has a really lovely flavor.  I'm going to have to drink these slowly given how few I got.  Will do a tasting in a  month or so.

• 1/11/18 - Tasting Notes - This is really an amazingly intense beverage.  It tastes exactly like you would expect a 4x concentrated cider would taste like - intense apple and incredible sweetness.  What is nice is that it doesn't taste how a 14.5% ABV beverage might be expected to.  I really like how the bit of sharpness in the finish sort of counters the sweetness - it makes taking the next sip much more enjoyable than I think it would be if it were purely sweet.  Even so, this is a beverage to sip in small quantities.  I've found that 4 oz at a time is more than enough.  I've been taking a week or so to get through a bottle - keeps well in the fridge fortunately

Lessons Learned:

1. Concentrating the juice with the bottling bucket was quite a bit easier than in the jugs.  Next time I'll have two bottling buckets going at a time.  I think thawing at basement temps would have been okay.  I think I'd try taking care of that outside the fermentation chamber next time.
2. I wish I'd started with 20 gal of juice rather than 10 to give myself more final product given how much time and effort was required for this project - juice wasn't that expensive really.  Next time I'll do that.
3. My handling of the fermentation was a bit conservative.  I started out at the bottom of the range which kept fermentation slow and controllable.  I think I would have been okay if the fermentation was allowed to proceed at a slightly warmer temperature initially (maybe 60 F).  Would be nice to have it finish up in 2 months rather than the 5 months this batch has been going.
4. Chilling to 25 F dropped a lot of solids out of suspension that didn't drop chilling at 35 F