Apfelwein
Apple Wine

I was recently introduced to the treasure that is Apfelwein y a fellow on another forum named "EdWort," who lives in the US but has strong family ties in Germany. He has a thorough and detailed post about it here, which you can read, if you want to:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=14860

I barely made it through the first page of the thread before deciding that this one was too German for me not to try - it also triggered a few memories that I hadn't thought about in quite a while, so I made it my mission last week (April 8th, to be exact) to give this a go. Here is some background on the subject, along with an accounting of my attempt at this traditional German beverage.

Fair warning: I am absolutely incapable of brevity, so grab a cup of coffee, a bottle of home-brewed beer...or perhaps a glass of apfelwein...before proceeding!

As I said, this one quickly became yet another labour of love for me, as it has some personally-significant family ties. My family is part of an "ethnic group" (for lack of a better term) known as "Germans from Russia," which means that they originated in Germany (usually in what is now Southwestern Germany and Alsace), then migrated to the Russian Empire at the invitation of Catherine the Great and her descendents in order to set up "colonies" and farm the rich Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean soil. Specifically, my family belonged to the sub-group called Schwarzmeerdeutsche(Black Sea Germans), settling in what is now Ukraine between Crimea and Bessarabia (modern-day Moldova). Later on, under the tyrannical rule of successive Russian Emperors, conditions became untenable for these stubborn, freedom-loving Germans, and many of them took their agricultural talents to the American Midwest and to Argentina, where they still have close-knit, thriving communities today. The ones who stayed behind were to eventually suffer extremely brutal oppression that could be called "ethnic cleansing" at best - and "genocide" at worst - but that's another discussion.

In any case, to get back on track, my direct German ancestors emigrated from Sulz, on the Beresan River in Ukraine, to what is now Dunn County, North Dakota, where they took up a rural life and thrived. We know that they brewed beer there, because the hops are still growing wild there, and I intend to take a trip "back home" with my father this spring in order to bring back some cuttings/rhizomes from these hops in an attempt to grow them here.

Eventually, my grandfather came along, which of course led to me. My grandfather was an avid wood-worker and gardener, very close to the land - and as I get older, I find it more and more compelling for me to emulate his simple, self-sufficient lifestyle, hence my interests in things such as charcuterie, gardening - and lately, woodworking, brewing, cheese-making...and wine-making.

My grandfather made a lot of wine - I don't remember him actually making any, but my dad does, and together, we are working on re-creating some of the wines that my grandfather made - chokecherry wine will most likely be our first "official" project, as we both recently got home wine-making kits and we each have a supply of chokecherries, carefully packaged and frozen since last fall.

What I do remember, with great clarity, is that my grandfather made this same apfelwein that is described by EdWort in the link above; although, since he grew up in the US, he simply called it "apple wine," which would have been an English translation of the German term that he would have heard fro the older folks as a child. I remember seeing many bottles and juice jars of apple wine - in different shapes and sizes - lining the shelves of his basement. I also remember "borrowing" a couple of bottles of it during my teen years, and I to this day, I can still taste how good it was - nearly exactly as EdWort's descriptions say it is. It was a practical wine - without fuss or frivolity - very much like my grandfather, and as I was reading the opening posts by EdWort, I realised that this very stuff must the same as the "apple wine" that my grandfather would make, and set out to re-create it.

As I said above, this is simple - very simple - perfectly suited for a rural lifestyle and "amateur" farmhouse winemakers who are not terribly concerned with enzymes, additives, vintages and so on. It is meant to be a way to make use of the abundance of fresh apples in the autumn, and will provide lasting refreshment throughout the year ahead. I managed to read through 71 pages of EdWort's extensive thread, and I had to chuckle at many of the people who replied and how they were excited at the idea of trying this traditional wine - and who then proceeded directly to modifying it, playing with the formulas and ratios, "twiddling with the knobs," and generally working very hard to create something else entirely. I am 100% certain that what these folks created was good stuff - but was it the traditional apfelwein that EdWort tried so hard to teach us about? I'm not so sure.

My amusement was short-lived, however, when I saw that because I have no specialised shop for home-brewing supplies nearby (the closest one is 250 miles away), I would also have to make a couple of slight modifications of my own; I hope that they indeed indeed ended up being quite minor, and do not affect the characteristics of the traditional wine in an essential way.

Here are some vital statistics for my attempt at making apfelwein:

Batch size: EdWort makes it in 5-gallon batches, but my attempt was for 1 gallon (hey, it works for me!).

Apple juice: Back in the day, freshly-harvested apples from any local source would have been used; given the time of year, my location and my resources, this isn't much of an option for me, but that's alright, for there is a perfectly-acceptable, albeit modern alternative. EdWort reports consistently delicious results using store-bought apple juice, as long as said apple juice is free of preservatives (ascorbic acid is the sole "acceptable" additive), and is pasteurised. Due to the limited inventory of my local grocery, I only had one variety of apple juice that would "fit the bill" - it was a store brand that was 100% apple juice (good) and pasteurised (also good), but with no preservatives (which would have been bad). In short, it was just right! The flavour of this particular apple juice seeme very well balanced between sweet and tart to me, and I am quite happy with the choice. It is not the TreeTop brand that EdWort says he uses, but the next time I have the chance, i will definitely get some of that and try it for comparison.

Sugar: The addition of sugar to this beverage kicks up the ABV from 6% (which is what it would be with no added sugar) to 8.5%, which moves it from a cider and into the realm of wine. EdWort uses 2 pounds of corn sugar per 5 gallons and reports wonderful results; unfortunately, the closest corn sugar available to me that I am aware of is 250 miles away, so that option was out for me. I also suspect that my grandfather probably had none available to him, either, so this was no big deal. Reading the thread, it looked as though there are several "acceptable" alternatives, including brown sugar, which triggered some vivid memories from my childhood. I remember very clearly that my grandfather always eschewed white sugar in favour of brown sugar for everything that he sweetended; he had a little yellow TupperWare container of it on the table and would spoon or shake some of it out as needed. With that in mind, I decided to use dark brown sugar; I know that folks report a darker and slightly-sweeter end product with brown sugar, but this is not a problem for me, as I certainly remember his wine being darker-coloured and having a bit of sweetness to it, with a nice alcohol warmth (not heat) that would sneak up on you. So, brown sugar it would be - as mentioned above, EdWort uses 2 pounds of corn sugar per 5 gallons, so I scaled this amount down for a 1 gallon batch, and measured 4/10 of a pound to use for this attempt.

Yeast: EdWort uses Montrachet yeast, but this was also unavailable to me at the moment. What I did have was Premier Cuvée, which by all accounts (that I can find) is very similar to Montrachet, so I had no qualms about using it. EdWort uses a packet of yeast per 5 gallons of juice; I thought that my package had about a quarter of a packet in it, but when I poured it in, it looked closer to a third or half of a packet, and I am sure that this will work just fine.

That's all there is to it - everything needed to carry on a very old, German tradition in the 21st Century. Following EdWort's basic procedure, I sanitised my equipment, dropped about a quarter of the total apple juice (I had two half-gallon containers of it) into my fermenter, dissolved my sugar in the remaining half of the first container of juice, then poured it in. Next, I added my yeast and ran the remaining half-gallon of apple juice through the funnel in order to rinse everything down into the fermenter. The result was a nice, clear (at first), dark(ish) mixture that already looked very much like my grandfather's old apple wine; this gave me some reassurance that I should be on the right track.

EdWort starts right off with an airlock, rather than a blow-off tube; but old habits die hard, so I started out with a blow-off tube, which would get the apfelwein through the first few days of active fermentation.

The next morning, I was happy to see some very vigorous bubbling in the fermenter, letting me know that things were moving along very nicely. The apple juice had become quite cloudy over-night, which is something to be expected; according to EdWort's schedule, it will clear off very nicely at the four-week mark, and my limited experience with making apple cider agrees with this.

Three days later, it appeared that the fermentation had slowed a quite bit, so I replaced the blow-off tube with an airlock. I will do my best to ignore it until the 4-week mark, and then see what we have at that time. After a total of perhaps six or eight weeks, I'll bottle it in the traditional German way - without any carbonation/priming sugar - and will then do my best to forget about it until early fall. If I get the chance, I will of course get a few more batches of apfelwein going, because I have a feeling that a gallon of this will not be nearly enough!

That's where things are for now; more as it happens, etc. &c. My thanks to EdWort for taking the time to introduce this tradition to me, especially as it re-kindled a few very treasured family memories.

Ron

Different apple types should make a big difference in flavor.Here in NY that's not too big a problem . BTW soon China will be a major apple producer in the world !!
One of my relatives always made a white wine .
QC ?? All had the same basic flavor but some were dry , some were sweet and all powerfull .He never bothered to date the bottles . "Just pick a few bottles to take with you !!"

I started this project on April 8th; this morning - over 2 months later - I transferred the apfelwein to its permanent home, re-purposing a 1-gallon jug from a very good cider that comes from an awesome orchard in my mother's hometown:



The transfer went without incident; there was very little trub to sift through and my mini auto-siphon performed like a champ. My yield was just an ounce or two below the predicted gallon, and I can live with that.

Naturally, I had to try just a small sample! It was very good, and I am very sure that I achieved a measure of success with this. The apple comes through very nicely, and the apfelwein seems crisp, dry and refreshing, just as advertised, with a comforting, warm finish. It is not sweet, but there is something there that resembles sweetness - I'm nt enough of an expert to define it, but I like it.



I put the wine away to mature and develop its characteristics. I'll do my best to forget about it until around Halloween or Thanksgiving, at which time I'll sample it again. According to EdWort's timeline, It should really be coming into its glorious own by that time.

If I get the chance, I'll start another batch of this soon, to carry me through winter. It really is good stuff!

Oh, Tas, you are incorrigible. Alexey Miller (Chairman of the Gazprom), German Gref (Chairman of Russia's largest savings Bank), Alfred Koch (former Minister of state property privatization period) is all vivid examples of the suppression of the Germans in Russia . Don't know whether Apple wine recipe is German. It is not excluded. But a good thing, especially if you do not know what to do with apples. In the traditional recipe there are two difficult moments - getting the juice and the production of "water lock" to prevent in the process oxygen. . There is a fairly simple recipe: peeled of seeds apples are fed through the grinder. You can add sugar and raisins, if apples are not very sweet, and leaven - any berries, powdered sugar, such as redcurrants, but unwashed. The berries have natural yeast. The mixture is placed in a glass jar, the neck of which fits over the rubber glove. It is secured with a transparent adhesive tape (in Russia called "Scotch"). Need to make sure that the glove will not come loose and not broken, but usually the carbon dioxide gradually diffuses without tearing the glove. This method has the popular name "Heil Hitler" (just don't tell anyone). In three weeks, or when the hand drops, the mixture is pressed through cheesecloth. This process is easier than the pressed juice from fresh apples. Then the wine is bottled. You can add sugar and brandy (for preservation).

That does sound good, vashper - I have been looking into some ideas with mead that incorporate berries and raisins. We have a few to choose from here, including "buffalo berries" and chokecherries, both of which are very good!

Taz, my ancestors were German Saxons, first established historically about 240AD, but eventually settling in Transylvania in about 1140AD. I have a book called "Burghalle Remembered" which traces the ancestry. I met a woman last week who's grandmother was from the same village (Burghalle) and shares the same name as my own grandmother - not the same person, though, but I'm sure we're related somehow.

I picked up winemaking from my grandmother and made it from the grapes on their farm until it was sold in the late 80's. I never made Apfelwein but if we had a meager year with the grapes I would top the barrel up with fresh cider and let it work.

We made it the old-fashioned way, too. Simply the juice from our own grapes (drawn off the crushed mash - the smell of the early natural fermentation is heavenly), ordinary bread yeast and sugar to taste.

The wine was always appreciated, near and far. I recall making it for the toast to the bride at my sister's wedding. Most of the guests ended up drinking it for the rest of the night!

One thing that I used to do was pick a bunch of wild grapes. They were too tart to make wine with but they added a very rich color to the wine from my grandmother's grapes.

My grandmother usually waited until mid-winter before firing up her still, as the revenooers weren't inclined to walk the mile through the snow from the main road.

She grew her own poppies for poppy-seed rolls, too. The RCMP would come each spring and count the plants, then each fall before she harvested the full seed-pods, because they were opium poppies that she grew.

Alright this has gone far enough. I'm putting you both on probation.

Vashper, get back on the Humor thread where you belong.

and Tas I swear to God I saw you slumped over in a doorway downtown today drinking out of a paper sack. (Apfelwein, my ass!)

You see, Kensco, what is humor? Just meaningless and fruitless banter, sometimes bad for the teeth, and the wine is good for the heart and stomach.
Tas, I'm not very familiar with the North American berries. Not all berries are suitable for use as a starter because they contain natural antibiotics that prevent fermentation. For example - lingonberry (or cowberry). When the sugar was rarely available, this berry used in a mixture with blueberries as a preservative. Wild grapes will probably be perfect.
Conventional technology (a large bottle of water-gate) has an important advantage, I found it when I was a schoolboy.

It turns out that the diameter of the rubber flatus tube is sufficient to be to push more thin tube of PVC. My father always had 1-2 bottles in the work, and the small loss of product, as far as I know, did not notice. With a three-liter jar and a glove I wouldn't have passed such a focus .

Vashper, after that last post, I have a feeling I know what you studied in university.

Not "studied", and "improved knowledge"

My apologies - I just experienced the July and August from Hell, as far as work is concerned. Things have calmed down quite a bit, and I can hopefully keep up better.

Unfortunately, I may also have to start a new batch. My #2 son - who admittedly has a "problem" - decided to guzzle this down like cheap ThunderBird before I even had a chance to try it. This was a couple of weeks ago, after I had very, very deliberately nursed this apfelwein from beginning, through fermenting and during aging. I wasn't even going to try it until October, as it would presumably have been really hitting its stride by then.

But now, nothing.

I am still trying to decide whether or not to start a new batch, or use the boy as a "donor" for experimentation into blood wine.

I've started my new batch of apfelwein, using Montrachet yeast and white sugar.

Results to follow!