I was recently doing some reading on noble rot wine and got to wondering if any cidermakers played with this concept and there is any precedent for truly botrytized cider. Noble rot in grapes is caused by Botrytis cinerea, the same fungal pathogen responsible for post-harvest Botrytis rots in apples. We really struggle to control fruit rots organically in our orchard and often lose stored fruit to Botrytis rot. I'm aware of so-called "noble rot ciders" that consist of hard cider blended with noble rot wine, but I don't know of any orchardists or cidermakers trying to harness B. cinerea the way ..read more

I have used Kaolin Clay (kc?) for 5 years. As a minimalist, one spray on AM first siting-usually the first week of July. AM suppression is 85%, that is all I concern myself with. All other blemishes, insect wounds are insufficiently worth the trouble. We press a lot of cider and the residue is never washed off completely nor do we have scrubbers or washing apparatuses. Though by October the few rains have removed most of the residue-enough to pick by color. Clouding or settling out particulates in jams' and ciders has not been observed to be different. Suppression of insects now for 5 years I ..read more

We don't use Surround in our orchard as much as we'd like to, given that it is so hard for us to remove from fruit, even after only a couple early season applications. However, as we sell more and more fruit to hard cider makers, we're finding that kaolin clay residue may not be an issue the way it is for dessert fruit, since the clay may be removed efficiently via filtering and racking. Thinking about this, we got to wondering if kaolin clay residue might actually be beneficial in any way during the cidermaking process. Sure, it's a different animal from bentonite clay, used to bind with prot ..read more

A winemaker customer just turned us onto the growing trend of adding non-Saccharomyces yeast species to grapes or fresh-pressed juice to aid in post-harvest protection of the fruit or for juice pre-fermentation (particularly used to protect during shipping of juice, apparently). Pretty cool that this is apparently becoming a mainstream practice as an alternative to using sulfur. Our guy was describing myriad ways these yeasts are being used, such as, if I'm remembering correctly, making use of yeast species that naturally inhibit oxygen in containers. He thought we might be interested in this ..read more

Yup, definitely late to the graf game. Last year, CiderChat Episode 345 Co-Fermenting Cider & Beer featured a very interesting presentation from CiderDays by Drew Phillips, the owner of Four Phantoms Brewery in Massachusetts, the makers of a graf called Old Gods. There is a nice discussion of what apples and apple juice can, and cannot, bring to a beer, fermentation-wise, how naturally complementary wort and apple juice is, and the historical precedent for combining beer and cider. At the end of the chat, he breaks down the process for making the Old Gods graf and how it is evolving (addin ..read more

I'd be glad to share a photo of our air pressure setup. As I think I understand the photo uploading process for this forum, though, the only way to do it is to link to a photo with an internet address of some kind, and I'm afraid I don't have any kind of social media or photo sharing accounts. If you (or anyone else) wants to shoot an email to us at cheers@kordickfamilyfarm.com, I can reply with a photo. We have a very light, spotty crop this year, so won't be doing a ton of pressing, but we're going to keep playing around with the air pressure to try to find our sweet spot methodology and wil ..read more

Really appreciate the responses! I can't believe I didn't stumble upon grafs in my little flurry of research. It is great to know about this -- being a novice beer maker, I am going to need to really rely on brewing recipes and guidance as I experiment with this, but I initially found precious little with regards to specifics for making apple beer in its various incarnations. Now that I plug in graf, I find a lot more information. One question for Seth with regards to aging your graf -- at what temperature are you storing it? I mean, in general terms, are you wanting it warm enough to encoura ..read more

We've been doing a cider/beer hybrid (known as a Graf in the homebrew community because it is mentioned in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series) for a number of years. We don't use the pomace (though I like this idea!) but blend cider with the wort once cooled and pre-fermentation. Works best with a good acidic cider like Redfield. We've used both Porter and lighter ale worts, depending on desired profile. Aging definitely helps. Our latest Graf was fermented and then aged on sour cherries with bacteria cloned from a Flemish ale for two years. The result is a complex, fruity sour with a lot o ..read more

Hello Brittany! Thanks so much for this. I've been trying to noodle just this kind of set up since acquiring a bladder press last year. I had been looking at a water tank reservoir so we could reuse the same water and save on well and pump use. This is far superior. Any further info on your connections and experience with it would be very helpful. Even a photo of the set up. Thanks again ..read more

Hi Brittany, Thanks for keeping the portal fresh. Two quick things pop into my head. The first is that by using the pomace one more time, you're squeezing every last nickel out of it before you turn it into compost or bacon (in the form of pig feed supplement. It can still end up in either of those spots with little complaint from the microbes or swine.) The second, and possibly more important, is increasing profit margin. My dad said one time that the smartest guy in the world was the person who came up with the squeeze bottle for ketchup. Not a new idea, we'd been applying mustard that way ..read more