Hi all,
This year I only managed to get enough apples to press 5 gallons of juice and fermented it with whatever wild yeast was on the apples and added a sachet of Safale US-05.
I held back one gallon which I put into a demijohn with a scoop of a beer I currently have fermenting with White Labs 655 Belgian Sour Mix 1.
From what I've read, the saccharomyces is going to ferment the cider so dry that it leaves next to nothing for the brett, lacto and pedio to chew on and impart their character to the cider.
I'm thinking that it would be ideal to rack the cider onto some kind of adjunct for secondary fermentation but can anyone recommend an adjunct that will give the critters something to work with but that isn't going to be eaten up by the saccharomyces? Ideally I want something that's not going to overpower the apple flavour.
How long have you had the beer fermenting with 655. Depending on how long the Sacc could be dead and it might just be the other microbes you are pitching.
Also the microbes and ferment pretty low as well hence why sours tend do be so dry
http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/11/sour-cider.html?m=1
Not sure if you have come across this but worth a read. I'm not a fan of cider but reading this I am tempted to try
It was a big beer with OG of 1100 and had only been fermenting about a week and a half, I immediately got a vigourous primary fermentation so I'm happy enough that I had plenty of Sacch.
Yeah, saw that post a few weeks back and that's what gave me the idea to try it! I'm not a huge cider fan either but I hate to see the apples go to waste so try to knock up a few gallons when I can.