[Sca-cooks] Stefan finally succeeds in making cider

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Craig Jones:
>I love making home made hard cider from apple juice.  It's really easy
>and a lot of fun.  I always add a good, appropriate yeast and a little
>yeast nutrient and the results I get are nearly always positive (I've
>had one go off, cause unknown, bad lactobacillus infection) and
>repeatable.  Apple juice is not cheap, my time is always invaluable
>(it's a commodity beyond value because once it's gone, it's gone for
>good) and thus I try my best not to make expensive failures that have to
>be poured down the sink.

Drakey, Drakey, Drakey... thank you! The time element is something 
many SCAdians fail to take into account. Of course it is their hobby, 
and it's supposed to be fun, and educationally process-oriented, so 
how can you blame them, but I do sometimes get weird looks when I 
tell people that filtered, clear apple juice in the gallon glass jugs 
really is sometimes better for fermenting purposes... my occasionally 
weird fixation on serving boneless meats even though they're more 
expensive (of course both the prep time, the waste, and the serving 
size is cut in half, not to mention the fact that few SCAdians carve 
really well and would spend as much time and effort sheepishly 
wondering why the darned chicken or ham won't just magically leap 
onto their plates as they would wishing their food looked more like 
period meat with real skin and bones, so making informed choices and 
tradeoffs is one of the big things this game is about). But we were 
speaking of brewing and such, and I'm not here to rant (not at the 
moment).

>My best recipe involves pasteurized apple juice, a kilo or two of honey
>boiled in a little water (just enough to make a syrup), some citric and
>malic acid to make the apple juice tarter (cider apple juice is tarter
>than normal commercial apple juice), some cassia bark (works better than
>cinnamon - a more perfumed aroma I find), the yeast and nutrient...
>
>My household demands regular kegs of the stuff...

Sounds loverly! Giulielma Penn (Mrs. William Penn) has, in her 1694 
receipt book, a recipe for apple ale which is pretty darned 
unbeatable, too. It's a pretty basic infusion-mash ale (as I recall 
it is lightly hopped), but calls for apple juice instead of water. 
The couple of times I made it, the filtered, pasteurized apple juice 
worked beautifully. I suspect one'd have to watch out for chemicals 
designed to prevent yeast growth, if such a thing were added, but 
I've been lucky every time so far.

Adamantius
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04