Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

With 20 years in the culinary production game ourselves. We're hoping we can give through these conversations an insider's view into personal stories from the field, as well as an in depth behind the scenes look into some of the most popular food programming. In today's evolving culinary media landscape.

We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29,

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram.

This program has been brought to you by cider week New York City happening November 6 through 15th 2015. For more information check out cider week nyc.com

Hey, I'm Jimmy Carboni. From dear sessions radio. You're listening to heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritage radio network.org for 1000s more.

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Roberta's pizzeria and in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 late as usual 1245 there abouts till 58 We are super pleased. Oh we got as usual we have we have Anastasia the hammer Lopez. Hello. Hello. And actually we're going to be talking about something that she's a fan of for freaking watch. Yeah, yeah. Jack in the engineering booth. How you doing Jack?

I'm good. I just got a free bowl of chicken noodle soup from Jackie at the Roberta's kitchen. It was really nice for Yeah, how was it? It's really good.

What kind of noodles the flat noodles?

No, it looks some kind of handmade pasta, isn't there?

Have they fallen apart? Have they gotten mushy yet? They're getting there. Yeah, yeah, that's the problem. Right? Yeah. We have also Rebecca live tweeting out there. Rebecca. Hi. But we can talk about mushy noodles in a minute because we have with us to this week is cider week here in in the Big Apple. And presumably do you guys do well, I'll introduce them I'll ask them whether they also do Perry's or all these other things, which are getting hugely popular in the in the UK. Right Perry's are just going nuts.

on France. Yeah, yeah, Franco cares. Don't

miss them just messing with well, France is like France, if France were Belgium, they would be the France of pears, whatever. I'm not gonna get into it. Okay, we have John Reynolds here from the Fingerlakes from Black Duck cider. And he's here to let us taste out and talk about some sliders. And we also have Leafa sounds strong. Hey, am I pronouncing that right call center central from Central ciders. And they're in Hudson, New York. And we're here to talk about well, hopefully we'll get to some actual questions later. If not, I'm sure I'll just rip through some at the end or whatever. But you call it your questions. Hopefully cider related questions do 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 Now listen, it is my feeling that anyone who has the time interest inclination and takes the care to make a cider will also have something interesting to say about most cooking questions, so you don't have to have necessarily a cider related question but it might be helpful so let's

do that. And I have a caller who called like right at the top of the show has been waiting so let's see if it's cider or not. All right. Let's see if inside of a caller

you're on the air.

Hey, this is Jonathan from Tempe, Arizona.

How you doing? Not a good afternoon. By the way, Tempe Arizona not good It's good for many things. I love the smell of Arizona actually, frankly, when you get off the airplane that Arizona smell I like it. But it's not Apple country. Go

ahead pens on whichever.

It is not Africa. It's not a country. That's right. Yeah, this isn't a cider question, but I will definitely be interested in buying some cider. But, but it's a it's a question. I ran into it because I just bought a nova circulator. And I started doing some steaks, and I ran into the problem. Well, the exact problem that you made the Sears all four, where I just can't get a good enough crust and cast iron pan, right? On like, on a regular residential burner. Yes. But I do have a baking steal. So I was curious if I should try to maybe put the baking still on the stove or maybe just heated in the oven for that for an hour, just anything? Is there any reason to you the baking still over the cast iron. And granted, it'll be a while before I can make another Kitchen Kitchen purchase, such as a sizzle. So this is just an interim solution. Right? So just wondering if you thought about baking steel versus cast iron and stuff like that?

How hot does your how hot? Does your oven get?

550 just a regular residential oven.

Yeah. So what I would do in this situation, I would first of all, test this on yourself before you invite a billion people over for steak. But the thing is, I would I would try the baking steel, I think that's probably a good thing to try crank your oven, heat the hell out of it for a while. And then what I would do is keep the oven super cranked. And I would throw the stakes on one side of the of the thing and then flip it and hit a different section of your baking. So as you're baking steel will have how many burners will your baking steel hit? If you put it directly on your burners?

I mean, I think like two total.

Okay, well, you could put it in 550 oven, right, get some good emits heat away the hell up to 550. So it's nice and even then crank your burners, throw it on your burner, put the steak on and then flip it and put it over on the other side. The one problem with a baking steel as opposed to a cast iron pan is you're not going to be able to get a lot of oil on it. And so it's going to run off and cause fires and flames and smoking. And it's very difficult to Yeah, yeah, it's very difficult to get a good sear on a pre cooked piece of meat. Because the surface of the surface of the meat is all you know, mountain bumpy. So you're gonna get big blonde areas where there's a concavity at the meat surface, unless you have a significant quantity of oil. And if you put a significant quantity of oil onto a baking steel, that's 550. So that's a recipe for huge, huge as Trump would say huge problems. So you know, I work with it, you can paint the oil on another thing is, are you preparing your meat?

I'm not no, ah,

pre sear. Look, I know, I know that like our good friend, Kenji. Kenji Lopez alt. He doesn't believe that pre searing is necessary. Here's here's here's where I think he's incorrect about this. Pre searing reduces the amount of searing time you have to do at the end to get X amount of crust. So if you do a pre sear on cast iron before you do your low temp cooking until down before you do the low time cooking, instead of taking two and a half minutes to reach a certain crust level on this on the outside of the steak, it will only take like a minute and a half. So you can you can greatly increase like how good your crust is, even with your current technologies without lighting fire to your house and pissing off whoever else lives in your house, you can greatly increase the crust you can produce by simply pre searing the meat before you do it, put it put it started. My art likes my art crust likes crust. So you'll get a good flavor development. And while it's true that if you put the same crust on it by doing posts, you're only you won't be able to probably tell the difference flavor wise between the two steaks, and there will be more moisture loss, which again is something we can argue about. But I don't care. I don't mean I care that you care about it. But I don't care. I know there's I'm not anti moisture loss in a piece of meat necessarily. So anyway, so I would go that route, I would try to see if a priest here can help you without burning your house down.

Yeah, I mean, I'd say next time, I will just do one preset, why not proceed to the results and then go from there.

Yeah, remember the whole thing about a pre series, it's saving you searing time at the end. That's the main thing about a preset. Another thing. Another thing you can do is you can like Let the meat rest longer out of the bag or even put it in a little bit of water to chill it down before you sear it and then you can do a radically longer see your time on it without overcooking the center.

Yeah, I did hear that somebody or I read somewhere where someone will put it back directly from the circulator into an ice bath for 15 minutes.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm in general anti that because I've run a bunch of tests based on the initial knowledge that I poo pooed of a guy named Bruno Gousto, who's kind of the godfather of low temperature cooking, even if he is French and the I'd like to French by the way, I'm just messing the. So if you put a bag directly in ice water, you tend to get less kind of reabsorption of the kind of juices, which again, I said I don't really care about. But most people when we do the side by side taste tests, they prefer the meat that is allowed to gradually reduce in temperature. So I also what anyway, so I'm a fan of just like pull it out of the circulator, like I pull, if you if you're gonna do a hard, hard sear, I'd pull it out of the circulator like like a good 45 minutes, maybe 30 to 45 minutes before you're going to eat it. And then for at least like the first 15 or so 20 like leaving on the counter. And then if you want to drill it even further, you can put it into regular room temp water, you know, you know, regular cold tap water, I wouldn't use ice and then and then you can put a monstrously hard sear on the outside and still not overcooked the inside but you have to be careful that you don't render the inside. So cold that people are like this steak is not hot in the middle people don't like that. You know what I mean? Yeah, especially because a bit richer. Be fat, the texture be fat gets, you know, unless you're like a cold beef. There are cold be fat people, man, no one. No, No, me neither. No. All right. Anyway, let us know as a Tweet, tweet back on onto cooking issues and tell us how it went. All right. Well, thank you.

I'm turning this into the cider hotline. So we're only taking cider and Apple calls. And we actually have two calls. So one is an apple question. One is a cider question mark. Hey,

listen, Jack, give me give me give these let's give these guys at least 30 seconds each day to give us like who they are and what's going on that we know. And then we'll take the call stand the line, they stand in line don't leave a site of calls because we want them so we

don't want them. So I'm Black Duck cidery. We're up in the Fingerlakes basically in wine country. We took really good grape land and planted trees started about 15 years ago, mainly pear and apple trees. So we've made all our neighbors in the Fingerlakes hetas. You know, because they think it's great bland. And basically three years ago we got a commercial license. These are all natural fermentations are ciders. There's no fining no filtering. We don't take anything away. We don't add anything. And we make we make four kinds. And when you were talking about Perry, one of them is a Perry. I did not bring it today because we are sold out we sell out quick. But it is a steal Perry. So it's quite different than most of the English or French Perry's because there's no carbonation.

Cool. And how close are you to Geneva?

I'm halfway between Geneva and Ithaca. So I'm like 25 minutes from Geneva. So and I actually worked at the egg station at Geneva. So I worked. Were sort of the Noah's Ark of apples

with like Winfield Forgeline was still there. Were you there?

What I was nice. So you know, Phil, oh, well, I've

met him. Yeah, Phil forestland for those you that don't have no idea what we're talking about. Jim, even New York is the is like, is like the mothership of Apple's in this country. I mean, straight up, it's like, it's ridiculous. And this guy feel forced line, I guess best known for going to Kazakhstan and bringing a whole bunch of wild types back. And so they have 1000s of kinds of wild type apples, many of which could be market apples, because they're delicious. And anyway, so you want to go ahead and talk a little more about that for a sec before? Yeah,

well, I mean, and it's, you know, it's basically the USDA is germplasm repository. So they're holding these apples, essentially, their varieties basically, so they don't get lost in history. And and it's true that they went not only to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, but they went to China for collection trips. And basically the theory is that the apple sort of originates in Central Asia. And that's sort of the center point of the you know, silk trade routes and you have trade from China, you know, to the Middle East and so forth. And, you know, eventually these apples sort of go you know, well to where they grow now in Europe and places like that it spreads to the US obviously, people bring them over settlers, but it is amazing place it is your tax dollars at work. So the public hard work No, no doubt. So the public actually can go there certain times of the year and you can go toward these orchards and you know, see a you know, 2000 apple varieties, different ones all in the same orchard.

If we have time later. I can we can talk about visiting Stasi night. We haven't been there. We went to the brogdale. We've been to a couple other places. But I've been to Geneva with Harold McGee, we could talk about fruit tastings and Apple Mecca and pilgrimages hopefully we'll have have time but before but before we get to college life one year, give us give us some story, give us some give us some life.

So I'm based in the Hudson Valley. I produce cider in a small barn in southern Socrates. I had lived in New York City, Brooklyn for a number of years spent roughly 10 years working in the wine industry. various capacities importing distribution, restaurants spent more than dozen years of my life in restaurants also, but also worked with winemakers in Oregon in Germany, doing harvests and so forth like that, that really informed a lot of the kind of transition In focus of cider making for me after I left kind of the wine world to focus on something that was a little bit more indigenous, so to speak to where I'm living, trying to stay rooted in the Hudson Valley in New York State and exploring cider a lot, because it's has so much in touch and in line with what drove me to be passionate about wine, but also because there's just a lot of unexplored territory at this point. Both in recovering a past in history that cider is involved with here in the United States, but also in exploring new frontiers informed by everything from new understandings of flavors and farming and, and that kind of thing. So yeah, I'm working out there now, where this year actually tonight officially is the first commercial release of the cider I've been producing for several years. The directive is generally focused on a want of exploring terroir in various areas through cider. That has proved to be a little bit of a naive exploratory element, in my case, because just the access to certain apples, but not being your own farmer growing your fruit is incredibly difficult if you're keeping a focus on specific varieties and a specific level of quality. So we're exploring it as much as we can, but right now, producing a couple bottlings of last year one we have here is all from Columbia County fruit and there's another bottlings for single orchard fruit. And this coming year from 2015, it's going to be a different program altogether, but with a focus on heirloom varieties that are from North America or some cider varieties as well. But hopefully with a focus on a limited number of apple varieties for bottling as opposed to large blends, try and kind of, you know, focus on what these individual characteristics are for the specific varieties. So

a lot to talk about, but color let's get some cider, colic cider color once you are on the air, so we're

gonna go into cider question first Apple question. Stay patient.

Hi, Dave, how are you doing? All right.

Hey, this is a nice coincidence. So I'm trying to track down the elusive ash meets kernel. And so I was wondering if you have any tips for finding that in New York City and or if you have any substitutions you'd recommend for your liquid intelligence?

Yeah, so for those who don't know I really like Ash means kernel because it's a high sugar high acid extremely rich kind of Apple there are people who make hard cider with it, but it's actually I think, probably a very challenging Apple to make a hard cider with just because of its high acid content. So I think you probably need to mean cider people you tell me but I think we need a lot of mellowing before you could do that the

personal preference I would say

no and we grow quite a lot of that and it goes into blends now as a straight varietals Yeah, you would almost have to put it through malolactic fermentation need to reduce the acidity of it and I think that's what people do when they generally make it as a straight varietals but it's a it's an amazing blend in there and there's probably some in this ya know, there's some attributes in this site or had I known you one of them I would have brought them down to the city for color

attributes or attributes are fantastic the first attributes I ever tasted was actually from Geneva from the Ag station in New Hampshire poverty lanes orchards grows ash meets for commercial sale they shipped via ball door with a distributor here in New York City. And they will work I mean they're probably working overtime now because it's like you know, the amount of know how whether they'll take calls now but they they can they can provide it and stars you ever seen it at our Green Market? No, I've never seen an argument and the problem with Yeah, the for the recipes that I that so like, you guys don't have a book and in the book has a chapter on Apples, specifically apples and cocktail but they're not fermented apples they're apples that we use kind of fresh and I think there's nothing beats ash meats for like cocktail work like Ash means is like kind of like par excellence like cocktail Apple to work with, even though it is hard to source. I will say this if you're using it in cocktail work, and you want to preserve that kind of like rich acid note of ash meets kernel like processing right away. I mean, like, you know, I've had people we've ordered the we've ordered the cases from poverty lanes, and they come in and some knucklehead will put the case down in you know, in a hot basement next to a dishwasher and then they're toasted inside of a day. They're there. They're just they're a shadow of their former self they've lost their richness they've lost their punch the you know, they've they've star witness, in essence care

that by saying like those apples, though, if if left to cure in a good environment can really increase a lot of that richness and complexity a flavor quite a bit, you know, and then also on that note to a variety that may work as a decent substitute that sometimes easier to find as Golden russet. While different has a lot of similar kind of profiles. I would

throw a cock sorry PYP in which I don't know in the city but it probably is slightly easier but it's another you know famous English Apple high in acid and very aromatic. But it may also be slightly different you

don't really see a lot of Cox here because as educated as you'd hope New York City Market is like we demand crunchy and like a good Cox's not is not crunchy. It's more of a crumbly apple and Americans, I'm very sad to say, can't appreciate the crumbly texture of like an old fashioned.

And there's very few places in this country where you can really grow them. Well. I mean, Finger Lakes as well.

Yeah, they do. Well, although there's still issues. I mean, it's probably the most difficult tree that we have to grow into orchard.

It's also um, I don't know how sensitive all apples are to it. But I was in the brogdale we start seeing I broke into a section where they were testing Cox on a bunch of different rootstocks wildly different same piece of dirt different rootstocks on Cox. And I don't know, like I said. Yeah. So, you know, I don't know whether it is more sensitive than most to rootstock in terms of flavor, but it was definitely it. I know it was sensitive. It's the only one I've ever done a comparative tasting on

that one. It's a very low vigor tree. So that's, that's part of the problem, too. You can't crop them early, or the tree never gets beyond a certain height. Yeah, they just have a lot of issues. They're just susceptible to everything and disease wise insect and, you know, and that's sort of why even in England and ripping them out, and replacing them with sort of more modern varieties. Just for that reason, they, you know, it's not not economically viable even for them, right in the motherland,

do you do growing for for eating market as well? And I do, yeah. Do you find it disheartening that you have to do like, for instance, like it's impossible to get good early season apples, because they're always harvested too early, because they go soft, almost instantly. And so they're not it's not even point buying, like low dyes or transparents here, because they're like, there's not good?

Yeah, those are, I mean, for me, that's too early. I mean, our sort of earliest ones are like for eating or st Edmund's rasa, which is another it's a full rosette is another English apple. And that one has like pairdrop sort of flavor it's not very high and acids but we also use an insider blend and that's really for us right at the beginning of September so I don't mess with any apples generally that are August ripening because I do they're they're very short season very short lived and I think the flavor is on most of those.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I also like the people I had no offense the people I buy them from occasionally but like they harvest them when they're like baseballs Yes. Don't like starchy nasty. We have another caller still on the air. We do. Yeah. Caller you are you're on the air. Hey, Tony. Yes, yes. Your question, sir. Do you still there? Do we lose them?

Maybe he dropped his phone.

He'll come back. He'll be back. He'll be back whenever you get back get back as in the meantime, we're gonna start opening some cider to taste it. What are we gonna taste here first gents. By the way, we'll start like cider the one thing in the world maybe that she likes she likes cider. Nice. Well,

if I can find something to actually open a bottle of cheese bottle of course we didn't. Cider makers don't actually carry a bottle over

look at that Jack. Yes. All right. Intrepid engineer jackings.

So So since I came over on the subway, and my bottle is sort of a little full. I'm a little worried.

At the same time, right? Nice. Yeah, sure. Why would I want you to Okay, describe the ciders that these suckers on the air don't get to dunk into doing

this. So ours is a why is this? A little little technical difficulty with the I will I will let the beverage director restaurant MAN Yeah, exactly. That's why I shouldn't be involved. So the Black Duck one is actually our hops cider. And this is mainly sort of heirloom American heirloom fruit which is different than most of our other ones. We generally use more true cider fruit English and French bitter sweets and bitter Sharpes but these are also our hops so it's Fuggles can golden cascade and a unknown noble hop and grab

it is haha oh it's hot. Unfortunately stars she loves cider not hops person. Oh, on suicide we need more jackets. Jackets. You guys Yeah, cops. Gloves

out. Just Just smell it. Maybe won't get hops. Maybe we'll get the other plant in the hot family.

Yes. Now we're deep. We're dealing with we're dealing with an an unfiltered product here. An unfiltered

unfined Yeah, I mean, this was ambient yeast you know, natural yeast fermentation. And essentially, with the hops we pick them. We dry them we freeze the hops because they're they're ready in August or early. September, we ferment the gray, our grapes, we ferment the apples when they're completely done fermenting. At some point, I make a blend of the ciders. And I put the hops whole cone in the cider. This was about five and a half days, I pull it back out, and then actually the scout bottle conditioned. So it said another few months in the bottle. And basically this is the product.

Sometimes you might like it because it's dry hot. It's not it's not obviously, when my brain is on fried, it's not bitter, it's not bitter. It's not boiled with hops, right.

But when that's the big difference that when you put heat to hops, that's when you extract out most of the bitters. And, you know, essentially, when you dry hop, you're getting more of the aromatics of the hops out. And any bitter that's in this is probably more from the apples and less to do with the hops themselves. So

John, you probably said this, but my mind space for a second, did you co ferment the hops with the apples? Or was it all infused after the

No, no, so it's completely fermented. And then I put a blend together from from some different tanks and get get the base where I want it. And then I add the hot whole cone after fermentation is complete. This This particular one is just by taste. These ran for just about five and a half days. I pull it back out and you know, then we bottle condition. So basically, you know, you know, and this is what you get, this is the only product other than I do make a black current one sometimes that that we sort of put something else in other than apples or pears. And I will say the reason we made this is, you know, everyone needs a gateway. And this is our gateway cider for beer drinkers.

Nice. I like that. I like

this good. Gateway headphone to make sure the caller got on. Are you on caller?

Oh, yeah. Okay. Hey, ask your question. While we're while we're drinking this, by the way, you should know because you can't taste it. That there's very good. I think there's very good acid control on this. Maybe it's because you're adding also some, you know, a little bit of a 10 and bitterness or hop aroma. Maybe that's what bounced up a very good, I don't think so.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, back to that earlier, you're talking about Ashley's maybe too acidic, you'd have to blend it. Again. It's all personal. And I think I'm a lover of higher acid beverages. When I was in the wine world. It was champagne and Riesling, and Gruner Veltliner, and that was my world. And so the cider definitely leans that way. So I think there's a there's a broad range of what's acceptable, but I think this has a great balance, especially for that bitter note to Yeah, yeah, to have some acidity to keep that. To me. It's all about energy in the beverage, which acidity gives everything?

I call her Sorry, sorry to cut you off yet again. Caller what is your question?

My question is about keeping, keeping cider.

What's the what specifically? The question? Oh, specifically,

specifically, the question is, I've been, you know, doing my own keeping experiments over the years for the last couple years. And I can't seem to get it down, like to a science, essentially, obviously, it is, but I can't seem to get it to come out, like evenly every single time and I know that there are a lot of places that do it on a regular basis, you know, like industrially, I think, so I figured someone's got to know something about this, you know, that I'm missing. And I was wondering because I know it's involved similar, you know, hydrocolloid type stuff. I was wondering if there's like a synergistic effects with another hydrocolloid. You know, because it's low methodical pectin, if there's anything we can do to like, you know, get it get it evened out,

I will say where they do that in France

first describe describe the process for people who have no idea what's going on with keeping is or what's going on. So, so

keeping basically is a process where you sort of, we get a, what they call the brown cap, which is packed ends and things like that come up, and you have some of the nitrogen and vitamins and things like that, that are in the juice settle down, and you essentially take out the liquid in between so you're basically taking cider and starving it of the things that yeast need to ferment quickly and, and maybe finish the fermentation. So you know, then basically, you get a very slow fermentation if it's done right, and you can actually get it to stop and have you know, residual sugar in it. And not have to use other processes sort of do it. It's a natural way to do it. But even in France and parts of England where they do it, it isn't a science, and they don't make it happen all the time. And I will say varieties usually play a big role in it too bitter sweets generally make it easier to do and also temperature is a huge factor. It has to be cold enough to make it happen and then not too cold but not too cold. True, true. And then there's just some amount of luck it truly is a little bit of luck and I mean I know the biggest producer in the US that I know that's doing Keven on a commercial level is Kevin from easy orchard which is out in the west coast and Tea, it's a hit or miss thing for him, he sometimes get partial keeps, sometimes it gets full cubes. And sometimes it just doesn't happen. And he has to ferment, it's sort of an unnatural

gimmick. I don't know what they are exact, but they do make some additives, which I would never involve myself with, down to, like, help the keel along. Because I mean, what you're the beauty of the key was the idea of lassoing the whole situation into kind of this great balance between failing and not failing. And it's also important to think dimension that, you know, you can't have residual sugar in his cider from various methods. And one of the other key thing methods is this oxidative quality, which is also something you have to kind of monitor and keep them balanced with both temperature and air exposure after the fact and so forth. Because, you know, I don't personally don't do cubes because I enjoy some q ciders a hell of a lot. Like, that's not my goal to make any kind of oxidative style cider.

Yeah, I think most people, especially on the steel side produce a fairly highly oxidized product. Now.

It does happen. There's many reasons we can discuss why that's the case, but can and should.

But yeah, the key I don't I can't speak to like how to help you be successful. What about the solid content of the juice before it's fermented? Does that mean, it does have something to do it too? Because,

you mean, depending on if you're if you are straining it in some way when you're juicing it or not at all? And what's your press? And like? What was the texture of the apples? And did they squirt through the press and put more sediment in your juice than necessary for that cube, because the weight of those things as I understand it can cause like difficulty in the true separation of pectin to the top and other sediment to the bottom

of the Keith. Yeah, and I also don't make any kif ciders, although in the past, when I was experimenting, I did make, you know, small five and 10 gallon, lots of kif cider and right, I added nothing. And I would get I'm is a rough estimate, probably half of them to work. And the other half didn't. And you know, I was using true bitter sweets and things like that, which I'm at least told helps. If you use them straight up dessert fruit, it's, yeah, it's sometimes harder to make it work.

Do you do, as I understand to, like you mentioned bittersweet, and so forth often work a little better, because they do tend some of them at least tend to have a lower nutrient level to begin with. And they also have a higher pH. So that's another thing that we considered like, that's why a lot of keep ciders that are successful, aren't necessarily that high in acidity, or they don't have that sense of acidity in the palate, because they generally start with a higher page to begin with. And which also create in a whole new danger zone in that situation, because you have an oxidized juice that you're leaving a little bit open to the elements has a high pH, so it's a little bit more likely to be inviting to certain bacteria that you may not want later on. So that's it's a tricky, but it's also one of these beautiful things that was discovered by accident by people just putting juice outside because they needed a place to store it. And it happened to be cold and the Chateau Bruun developed and they had to salvage what was there and figured this whole method out over a number of years. So Delicious mistakes.

Yeah, yes. Color to that debt. Does that help at all?

Yeah, it does. I was actually hoping more for like a food science perspective. I appreciate, you know, the natural, you know, amazingness of the apples, but like, I would be probably adding like pectin, methyl esterase or something like a Novo shape, or something like that. And I was thinking from you know, hydrocolloid perspective. I know. There are a lot of synergistic hydrocolloid interactions, I was wondering if there's something I could dislike, you know, the, you know, get

it. Successful key without that yet.

Yeah, I have, it's just, it does seem to be without the pectin methyl ester, as you're saying.

Yeah, with just basically Oh, no, no,

yeah. I mean, without protecting methyl ester, I

mean, it's okay. So like, here's, here's, here's an example that I don't know what's going to happen. So I'll let I'll let you know. And unfortunately for me, there's too many variables to this to actually separate this stuff out. But I can't afford a cider press yet. So I only have one tree I'm gonna plant more and by the way, what do you guys think about fall planting you profile planting or anti?

No, no, I think it can work as long as you mulch it and you know, get it watered in and we don't have severe severe winters, I'll talk to you.

I want to plant some apple trees, but I don't you know, I whatever I can get into it, but the I mean, I will if you want but the so I juice with with like regular, you know, human like home juicers. So my first cider that I did this year, I did an a Champion juicer which provides a fairly low solids juice, I did not treat it at all with any sort of any sort of pectinase because it was already low enough. And when you when you treat a juice early with pectinase, you strip a lot of flavor out of the juice. And so that's why a lot of times for cocktails where I need a clear juice for carbonation, like I have to use extremely high flavored varieties like an ash meats because if you're hitting it with a pectinase enzyme, and then stripping the solids out that early like you know it's just they get too thin like a lot of apples can't survive it from a flavor standpoint. Okay. i This time I juice because Mark from Del Posto gave Anastasia an extra juicer Anastasia is like this is the size of my freaking kitchen with the Hama gonna do with this day if you want this juicer so I got this Breville juicer, which is a centrifugal basket juicer, radically higher solids content in his juice. So I have no idea so much though, and this is why the variable is too much that I hit it with a little bit of pectin next because it was just so it was like a slurry like you know, much more higher solids and you would get in a press. And so I went unfortunately for you color I tried to do with with some pectinase But you know, I'm keeping it fairly cool. So I don't know like how much of a breakdown what it's gonna be completely Only time will tell as journey which wasn't a journey journey, I think right? I know. Only time will tell I know.

That sir. Some hair. hairband

was one. Yeah. Anyway, the now have the lyrics of the song. costume. Yeah. So the point being that, you know, maybe if you were to take some juice and hit it with if you didn't want to use a science perspective, but you were able to do it successfully with pectin, methyl esterase. You still there even what you were able to successfully do to do it by you pretreated the apples are you treated that you crushed it, then treated the crush with pectin, methyl esterase. And then and then pressed it? Yeah, so you're only treated when you're if you're just treating the crush with pectin, methyl esterase, especially if your transit time is not too high. You're only really affecting like a percentage of the of the juice before of the product. And so you could probably maybe you don't I mean, if you liked that method continue to use that method. The only problem being the pec and pectin methyl esterase no other shape is increasingly difficult to source so like monitors pantry is not selling anymore. Guzman from Novozymes only sell at 25 litre pails which is like you know five orchards worth of freakin enzyme. So you might want to, you might want to try just adding some slurry to it like some extra or like using a different juicing technique for some of it just a boost your solid content on it, because I don't think that the pectin metaclass race is doing much besides that,

as you mentioned is also it does strip a little bit of flavor, right? So when you're doing that you can you're losing a little bit of solids instead of having them infuse at a slower rate. So it's it's expediting the whole killing process, to a certain extent, which I think you kind of run the risk of maybe losing a little bit of your final flavor of product. Yeah, well aromatics, right?

Everything. There is no there is no effect. One thing don't affect the rest in any sort of cooking really, you don't I mean, like everything that you do. For instance, on this second batch. I met you know, I've cured the apples for a couple of weeks. And also I froze a portion of them because I needed to because they were damaged than when I was harvesting them because I don't want to give up my tree is a standard Apple treats the tallest freakin apple tree I've ever had. So I literally had to beat the fruit off of the top of the tree. I don't have a ladder that can get up to the top of this dang tree. And so a lot of the stuff was damaged. I couldn't juice it right away, so I froze it and then when it thaws, it thaws. Like like like a brown bag, which is kind of cool. It kind of tastes good, actually. But it's too many variables for me to actually describe to the caller like what's going on because it's now it's partially frozen, the juicer was like making the slurry, who the hell knows

you can have good results with that sometimes, too. If you're juicing frozen fruit, a lot of those ice crystals in the water will stay frozen while the juice and the nectar releases and you can end up with a higher concentration of

flavor. I've done a bunch of years ago, I did a bunch of side by sides on purposely freezing apples to simulate like, like post thaw like post initial freeze harvest of like certain varieties, like you know, certain late season varieties. And I had some good luck actually developing some interesting flavors with apples that are that were just simply like artificially frozen and then allowed to thaw before they were before they were

used to juice Yeah.

Well, I think I'm gonna add I think I'm gonna try adding some like low methodical pectin, hopefully maybe to help you know, yeah, get things going. Yeah, you know, amp up my my pectin, the mounts, maybe that'll help you know, stabilize some of the ones that aren't quite, you know, coming together.

Right. Well, let us know let us know what happens like in however many weeks or whatever it takes let us know let us know what happens I'm always curious about these things.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

By the way, speaking of apple trees, I don't know what the heck I'm gonna do with this dang tree all the lower branches are basically it's weird they produce fruit this year was an unbelievable I think for a lot of people like fruit we're in our area like the tree we just went bananas. I don't know whether it's because we had a hard winter or what but the tree just went totally ape like made so many freaking apples.

No this was the perfect year. I mean, last year in New York State was a short crop year for a lot of a lot of regions. So you know, when the apple trees have all that kind of energy and the pollination season this year was perfect. I mean, we had no rain and warm days when moon to blossom was around and you know, honey bees are lazy and prima donnas, and they won't work you know if it's below 55 If it's raining and things like that and some of the other pollinators so I think it was just you know, a confluence of all these things you know, like crop last year for most people so you know, you're pretty much guaranteed a big crop and just the pollination was just perfect the weather. So I mean, for us we had the biggest crop we've ever had. There's a