Steam Juicer and Acid

[cellular]

Hi All,

I've made a few variations on Damson wine now (they are a small british stone fruit traditionally used for cooking and jam making). Overall these little fruit seem to have everything I need in them but it's just a matter of balancing it all out.

Stoning them is a pain so after some recommendations I got a steam juicer and started using that. Unfortunately I found that while the steam jucer makes short work of getting the liquid out it also pulls a lot of acid so the result needs to be diluted significantly then chaptalized before fermentation, this is no bad thing as the liquid alone is almost a concentrate. The only issues is that not being able to ferment on the pulp (in particular the skins) really reduced the colour and flavour of the resulting wine. But it does make it drinkable much sooner, clear better and much lighter and easy-drinking but it can lack the big tannins and body that the skins can give it.

Have others found the same with the steam juicer? Perhaps If I tried the first few pints of liquid out the juicer then put the used skins and pulp from the juicer on this with some water and sugar it would reduce the acid levels so allow me to use less water. Otherwise a double salt deacidification pre ferment may sort it but it would need to be quite a bit of change and it seems heavy handed. A final option would be to do some mega brew of the steam juicer leftovers with just enough water and blend that back in as necessary? The steam juicer leftovers taste quite watery if eaten which normally hints low acidity.

Just musing on the idea as these little sukas do seem to have what I want in there, just need to not loose too much body to water when trying to reduce the acidity. Obviously banana gravy/grape concentrate/glycerine are the other potential solutions but I want just damsons if possible.

Thoughts?

 

[Ohio Bob]

I’m wondering if steam juicing is doing what you hope it is. If it’s a good process why do wineries still crush and soak grapes? As you may have convinced yourself, the pulp and skins do not get fermented as you’ve separated them. This may be disadvantageous to extracting flavor and color.

My only advice is to compare to my wild blackberry wine. I’m not advanced to the point I even measure pH or acidity, but I can taste it. I add malt during primary and Hershey’s chocolate powder during secondary to soften the high acid tartness. I typically add enough for the flavor to be discernible, knowing that I’ll be topping off each racking with grape wine. Even at bottling if it’s got too much chocolate I’ll just add a few bottles of wine to dial it in. I like to think of it as retro wine making.

 

[Rice_Guy]

* the quantity of acid in a kilo of fruit will not significantly change based on if the fruit is steeped in a primary or if it is steam/ heat extracted. I am going to guess that you are extracting an astringent (tannin?) flavor. Astringent is the flavor of alum (chemical) or green skins from banana.
* damson is in the plum family. I would expect that there is significant pectin extracted with a process above 165F. ,,, curious what species/ where you are picking them?
* astringent which is from tannin should be possible to remove with a fining agent as egg white or gelatin. I would test some of the fruit juice to see if fining agents remove the objectionable flavor. Astringent from tannin will decrease with years of aging.

 

[cellular]

I’m wondering if steam juicing is doing what you hope it is. If it’s a good process why do wineries still crush and soak grapes? As you may have convinced yourself, the pulp and skins do not get fermented as you’ve separated them. This may be disadvantageous to extracting flavour and colour.

My only advice is to compare to my wild blackberry wine. I’m not advanced to the point I even measure pH or acidity, but I can taste it. I add malt during primary and Hershey’s chocolate powder during secondary to soften the high acid tartness. I typically add enough for the flavour to be discernible, knowing that I’ll be topping off each racking with grape wine. Even at bottling if it’s got too much chocolate I’ll just add a few bottles of wine to dial it in. I like to think of it as retro wine making.

So the main point of steam juicing is to remove the need to destone. It's also much simpler to destone the pulp after it's been through a steam juicer as it will just mush through a colander if needed. The idea is that some of the juice coming off the steam juicer may actually be disadvantageous to add as it increases the acid levels too much.

I know malt can increase body but would prefer to stick to a 'only damsons' recipe. Obviously including nutrient yeast pectalose and other bits. Perhaps getting a proper MaltoLactic culture would help as well although I suspect I have already had this happen in other batches I'm not sure.

 

[cellular]

* the quantity of acid in a kilo of fruit will not significantly change based on if the fruit is steeped in a primary or if it is steam/ heat extracted. I am going to guess that you are extracting an astringent (tannin?) flavor. Astringent is the flavor of alum (chemical) or green skins from banana.
* damson is in the plum family. I would expect that there is significant pectin extracted with a process above 165F. ,,, curious what species/ where you are picking them?
* astringent which is from tannin should be possible to remove with a fining agent as egg white or gelatin. I would test some of the fruit juice to see if fining agents remove the objectionable flavor. Astringent from tannin will decrease with years of aging.

Yes the quantity of acid will be the same if I used all the fruit either way but I was thinking if I binned/'used for other things' half of the later run-off from the steam juicer then fermented on all the pulp I would be able to use more fruit to help increase body.

Damsons are a cooking plum, the ones I am using are a variant called Westmoland damsons from a commercial orchard. They were very popular in the 40's and considered to be the best in the country and make the finest of all jams but have since gone out of fashion like a lot of other cooking fruit (the uk has a long history of traditionally cooking fruits). Their tannins and colour are good and very grape like. The tannins are in the skins and need a pulp fermentation to get them out. The stones on the other hand are not great and can impart a bitter almond flavour if fermented upon for any decent length of time and are a pain to extract individually. I think this almond flavour is more from an alcohol extraction than from just water.

 

[Ohio Bob]

So your concern is more with dealing with the stone? What if you froze the fruit? That breaks down the cell walls faster and the stones would be easier to pick out of the thawed mush.

 

[Rice_Guy]

* if the goal is to increase body fermenting on the skins is standard technique. Another option without the flavor impact would be add gum arabic.
* if one of the goals is to cut acid we have tools like calcium carbonate (slow reacting), potassium bicarbonate (fast reacting) or lab chemicals as sodium hydroxide (have you tasted a TA sample to see if the objectionable acidic flavor goes away?), (fast reacting)

Yes the quantity of acid will be the same if I used all the fruit either way but I was thinking if I binned/'used for other things' half of the later run-off from the steam juicer then fermented on all the pulp I would be able to use more fruit to help increase body.

Wine has many methods for production.
Flavors are sometimes hard to name (I have laughed at terms that show up on the consumer complaint line/ I have been behind the mirror window watching the taste panel wondering how I could help them name the chemical they were ranking without having them walk out).
A factory would probably steam and then gently run the fruit over a food mill.

 

[barryjo]

Hi All,

I've made a few variations on Damson wine now (they are a small british stone fruit traditionally used for cooking and jam making). Overall these little fruit seem to have everything I need in them but it's just a matter of balancing it all out.

Stoning them is a pain so after some recommendations I got a steam juicer and started using that. Unfortunately I found that while the steam jucer makes short work of getting the liquid out it also pulls a lot of acid so the result needs to be diluted significantly then chaptalized before fermentation, this is no bad thing as the liquid alone is almost a concentrate. The only issues is that not being able to ferment on the pulp (in particular the skins) really reduced the colour and flavour of the resulting wine. But it does make it drinkable much sooner, clear better and much lighter and easy-drinking but it can lack the big tannins and body that the skins can give it.

Have others found the same with the steam juicer? Perhaps If I tried the first few pints of liquid out the juicer then put the used skins and pulp from the juicer on this with some water and sugar it would reduce the acid levels so allow me to use less water. Otherwise a double salt deacidification pre ferment may sort it but it would need to be quite a bit of change and it seems heavy handed. A final option would be to do some mega brew of the steam juicer leftovers with just enough water and blend that back in as necessary? The steam juicer leftovers taste quite watery if eaten which normally hints low acidity.

Just musing on the idea as these little sukas do seem to have what I want in there, just need to not loose too much body to water when trying to reduce the acidity. Obviously banana gravy/grape concentrate/glycerine are the other potential solutions but I want just damsons if possible.

Thoughts?

I use a steam juicer on chokecherries, apples and other "pittie" fruits. Freeze and then juice. I will put the smush from the juicer into a kneehigh nylon stocking and add it to the primary. After about a week, remove smush and discard.