Building Unity Farm - Winter Fermentations

It's the dead of winter in New England, with new snow on the ground and temperatures near zero.    The animals are clustered together in their barn spaces and heated buckets are keeping their water liquid.There are many indoor tasks to do on the farm during winter - sharpening chain saw chains and other tools, reorganizing the workbench, ordering seeds, planning for Spring planting (we've been tractor shopping), and nurturing all the fermentations begun in the Fall.Our fermentations include 3 kinds of cider, mead, cyser (a mixture of cider and honey), vinegar, sourdough,sauerkraut, and fermented pickles.   Here's an overview1.   Cider, Mead and CyserAlthough we bottled 4 cases of sparking cider in the Fall, we still have 12 cases in the fermenters.    Fermenter #1 is a Champagne Yeast fermentation of 11 different kinds of apples kept at 52F in our mudroom to prevent Malolactic fermentation.  The malic acid in apples is a dicarboxylic acid with a sharpness/crispness that I like in a sparkling cider.  Think of it as the flavor of a green apple.    When I make sparkling cider, I add 6 grams/liter of dextrose at bottling to prime the cider for carbonation.  The malic acid and dextrose create a harmonious flavor that's very refreshing.   I typically have a 16 ounce bottle of sparkling cider with lunch on weekends.   After 2 months of aging, the ph of this cider is 3.75 and the malic acid taste is very notable.Ferment...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs