[Sca-cooks] FW: [Regia-NA] Scrumpy the Dog

[Jeanne]

EEww!

Soffya 
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Argent, a patriarchal cross between three crescent gules on a chief sable three fleur-de-lys Or

-----Original Message-----
From: list-regia-na-admin at lig.net [mailto:list-regia-na-admin at lig.net]On
Behalf Of Tracie Brown
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 2:19 PM
To: list-regia-na at lig.net
Subject: [Regia-NA] Scrumpy the Dog


About that scrumpy cider, with rumors of dead dogs floating 
in it -- turns out those dead dogs are functional!  Reading 
through Making the Best Apple Cider by Annie Proulx (better 
known in this university town as the Pulitzer Prize winning 
author of The Shipping News), I came across this ancient 
practice [my comments in brackets]:

"Somewhere along the line word has gotten out that hard cider 
needs a big juicy beefsteak [or dead dog, apparently] tossed 
into it to 'ripen it up.'  What happens most often when this 
is done is putrefaction, not fermentation, resulting in a 
foul liquid that not even the devil could drink [but 
apparently drinkable by certain members of this list].  In 
the old days, a fermenting cider sometimes stopped bubbling 
in the midst of the process (known as ‘stuck fermentation') 
and the desperate cider maker, not realizing that the problem 
was a lack of nitrogen in the juice, know only that adding a 
piece of meat to the barrel would start the fermentation 
process up again.  The decomposing meat added enough nitrogen 
to the cider to boost the fermentation.  The people who drank 
this cider, with its rank off-flavor, called it ‘scrumpy.'  
Today, ‘nutrient tablets' sold by wine supply houses will 
restart a stuck fermentation without recourse to the meat 
counter [or roadkill]."

Cheers!

– Tracie  
                   "k ڙx%e´ "k  Xw i   z j)fj b?+-