North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[jas39a@earthlink.net]

Most crabs contain relatively high levels of tannins.  Tannins add body and mouthfeel to cider, and counterbalance the sweetness of the juice.  Our ancestors often planted whole orchards of crabapples just for the purpose of cider-making.  On the frontier, in regions from Tennessee up to New York and Michigan, and westward, cider was the everyday drink of farmers and settlers.  In some areas, one could not legally stake a claim to a parcel of land until a cider orchard had been planted.

It is a great shame that we have lost this tradition.  Properly made cider (using apples with sufficient tannin content) is as good as fine champagne---a real treat.

Eddie Earles

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Haigh
Sent: Nov 25, 2008 7:37 AM
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [NAFEX] crabapples to improve cider

Are we talking about serious cider or "sweet" fresh cider.  I am no master of traditional cider making, meaning the hard stuff, but most varieties of crabs will add tartness.  We use Hyslop here for the purpose as well as Siberian which ripens later.  Ripeness date is something you should probably be looking at.

 

To my taste, nothing improves sweet cider more than some fresh lime or lemon juice and I've often wondered why local producers don't experiment more with blends.  Fresh black currant and apple juice is the best tasting elixir I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing so the preceding sentence was not quite accurate.