brewing salts to inprove crispness?

[emyers]

I would imagine having a proper chloride to sulfate ratio would affect cider as much as beer. What would i want for a crisp finishing cider? Gypsum just like a pale ale?

 

[madscientist451]

The chloride/sulfite ratio is important in beer because water is the #1 ingredient in beer.
The water profile in beer can have an impact on "percieved bitterness"
and many other flavor components.
With cider, you don't use any water at all. only apple juice.
You change the flavor profile in cider by using different combinations of apples, the selection of yeast, fermentation temperature and several other factors.
I believe you can use various chemical compounds to get a desired result in cider or other beverages that use juice, such as wine.
The juice will vary in its chemical makeup from season to season and even from orchard to orchard. Add to that all the possible apple variety combinations, and you have a very different set of variables compared to adjusting a water profile for beer.

 

[bernardsmith]

Yeah, what Madscientist says. Why would you dilute apple juice with water to make cider? I guess if you are using (gulp!) concentrated apple juice you would add water but typically the problem with most apple juice is that is not sufficiently acidic for cider. Eating apples have been cultivated to have less malic acid than good cider wants and much home made cider is made from eating apples...

If your apple juice is not sufficiently acidic, you can add acid blend which comes I believe with standardized proportions of different acids - or you can make your own blend of acids (malic, tartaric, citric). You can add tannins (your LHBS will have tannin powder - but you can add oak chips or black tea). You can also add varieties of apples which are high in tannins crab apples for example, -

 

[z-bob]

What would i want for a crisp finishing cider?

The short answer: sour apples. (like crabapples)

I just finished a bottle of the apple wine (it's too strong to call it cider) made with frozen apple juice with crabapple jelly added. The jelly was made from sour crabapples. The sample I tasted when I bottled it a couple of weeks ago was pretty nasty -- very sour. It has mellowed *very* nicely in the bottles already. I wish I had a keg of this stuff.

 

[MindenMan]

Yooper is from the UP, and also has a fondness for crab apples as I remember. Please keep us posted on the progress of your crabby wine, I would like to know what the flavor is like in a couple of months.

 

[mabrungard]

Hmm? I've never heard of dosing juices with minerals such as gypsum. As mentioned, tannins and acidity are typically the components used to alter the taste and mouthfeel in ciders and wines. But its not a crazy notion. The good thing is that you should be able to get an idea if it is a good addition or not by adding a little bit of mineral to the glass and tasting. Just remember that we might be adding several grams of a mineral to a 5 gal batch of beer and you need to proportion that addition down to the glass volume. I guarantee that if you overdose with any typical brewing salts, it will taste bad.

 

[Yooper]

Hmm? I've never heard of dosing juices with minerals such as gypsum. As mentioned, tannins and acidity are typically the components used to alter the taste and mouthfeel in ciders and wines. But its not a crazy notion. The good thing is that you should be able to get an idea if it is a good addition or not by adding a little bit of mineral to the glass and tasting. Just remember that we might be adding several grams of a mineral to a 5 gal batch of beer and you need to proportion that addition down to the glass volume. I guarantee that if you overdose with any typical brewing salts, it will taste bad.

I've never heard of it either. I make a lot of wine and some cider and mead.

With cider and wines, there is a balance of tannins and acidity like Mabrungard said, and sometimes some acid titration is needed to get it right. A good mix of apples is important- using the right mix of bittersweet, sharp (tart), and sweet apples to get the right balance. I sometimes do add a pinch of wine tannin, or sometimes some acid blend, and (rarely) do MLF on a cider that needs it. Some folks routinely do MLF on ciders.

It's worth a try to see what adding some gypsum or calcium chloride does to the cider in a glass, but I would expect it to do very little unless you were looking for a more "mineral" flavor. This is this wonderful "minerally" character in white wines, particularly the dry riesling, in upstate New York. I assume it's from the soil, but it makes a wonderful dry wine. I'm not sure it could be emulated with brewing salts.