Every year, I mess about with making some cider just so I have some appreciation for what winemakers go through. I’m in an apartment in NYC, so I’m limited in what I can use: I buy UV-treated sweet cider from at least two different orchards at a local farmers market and add about 10% cider that I “juice” myself from Golden Russet apples to add some tannin. Even so, this isn’t ideal, and if fermented dry the cider is quite low in alcohol (I don’t have any equipment to measure sugar or alcohol, but I’d guess 5%ish) and fiercly acidic, as you’d expect from sweet cider. I usually ferment about 2 gallons worth, bottle it into 1 liter plastic soda bottles with a bit of sugar to get some fizz, and mix it when I drink it with sweet cider to cut the acidity.
This year, I decided to try something new. After the cider fermented dry, I added about 10% of sweet cider, then freeze-concentrated it, cutting it from ~2 gallons to 1 liter (though some of that was lost to spillage) . My guesstimate is that the residual cider is at about 20% alc now.
The good is that the concentrated cider is MUCH better than the old cider used to be. It’s still fiercely acidic, but it’s got a tinge of sweetness and a slight oxidative character—added all together, and it fits the mold of Tawny Port, Sherry, or Madiera. It has a lot more apple character- the nose is almost like a young Calvados.
The downside is that about 24hrs after the last freeze concentration, it developed this horrific casse. Large floating blobs (they look like dust bunnies) float all around the bottle. If the bottle is undisturbed they do settle to the bottom, but only just- the slightest disturbance kicks them all up again.
The cider never saw metal after I bought it, but I can’t rule out a metal press at the cider mill. Any idea what I have here? How I can get rid of it? This experiment was otherwise so successful that I’d like to repeat it next year (along with a pre-fermentation freeze-concentration) but I’d like to have a more attractive product.