4 ms·

Having grown up with relatives that made LOTS of home made wine from apple juice, I can assure you that wine can be and is made from many other things. The pro

• shawnz 4y ago
  What differentiates apple wine from cider?
  • enqk 4y ago
    To make good cider you want to use special apples, which are not really nice to eat, otherwise the drink is very sour. They do this in the Frankfurt region of Germany, where it’s called apfelwein. They drink it diluted, which helps. Different taste than the ciders from north west of france or the uk
    • shawnz 4y ago
      So cider is simply an apple wine made with special apples?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • karlerss 4y ago
    If you add sugar in 1:2 ratio to fruits and use a wine yeast, you'll get 12% abv wine.
  • terryf 4y ago
    For me the difference is in the process. Cider usually ends up being (slightly) carbonated and you let it interact with fresh oxygen. With wine making, you seal the bottle, add yeast and sugar and then add one of those circular tubes with water in it that lets co2 escape but does not let outside air in.
• afandian 4y ago
  What’s the difference, in process and result?
  • terryf 4y ago
    I'm not an expert by any means but my understanding is that cider is usually carbonated - so you don't let all the CO2 escape. As for the apple wine it was made with yeast, sugar and then one of those curly tubes that don't let air in but do let CO2 out. I remember a large room of those big bottles bubbling away.
    • nwallin 4y ago
      The process for making a carbonated or non-carbonated beverage is basically identical. Both will use airlocks (the curly tubes that don't let air out but do let air in) during primary fermentation. The difference between wine and vinegar is adding oxygen during fermentation; if you add oxygen you get vinegar, if you don't, you get wine. If you don't want it carbonated, you let fermentation do its thing, then bottle it. No special steps are required. If you do want it carbonated, you let fermentation do its thing. Then you can either put it in a keg and force carb it, (put it under high pressure CO2 overnight) or you add a small, precise amount of sugar then immediately bottle it. The added sugar will then ferment in the bottles, but the CO2 won't escape, carbonating it. I'm not an expert on cider/apple wine, my background is mostly beer and wine. I've made it a few times, usually carbonated, sometimes not. My understanding is that the terms are mostly interchangeable.
• sk0g 4y ago
  Is the difference between the cider and wine the presence of yeast (/hops)?
  • terryf 4y ago
    I haven't heard of hops being used in cider making, but maybe they are used somewhere? But yeast is involved in any fermentation process. You could make both cider or wine without adding any external yeast, but then you have a high chance of getting the wrong bacteria and messing it up. So almost everyone uses commercial yeast to start.
    • justsomehnguy 4y ago
      "Wild" yeast is a thing in both the cider- and beermaking. AFAIR it exists in the winemaking too, but it's even rarer.
• poulsbohemian 4y ago
  I live in a US wine producing region... there are a few people in the area who produce non-grape wines or non-commercial grape varietal wines as hobby projects. Strawberry wine in particular is memorable - a bit like rose; very nice on a summer day. I guess what I'd say about these wines is that they often simply don't fit our norms for wine. For example, when people come to my area they are either looking for wines that are refreshing to counter our hot weather, or wines that are big bodied and stand up against food. The non-grape wines are seldom refined to the degree that they fit traditional American wine drinker's tastes and expectations. In our area, many wines are > $50+/bottle, some $100+/bottle, and it's really hard to convince a consumer to pay that for a strawberry or cherry wine, thus they get sidelined as toy projects and thus forgotten about as legitimate wines.
  • terryf 4y ago
    You may very well be correct that it could be possible to make very good wine from other fruit but there's cultural stigma attached and the process isn't as well developed. In my country it's cold enough for grapes to not really grow well and there are some tiny farms that make and sell fruit wine and they suffer from exactly what you describe - it's very expensive and not well refined. If you go to one of these places and have a nice experience tasting then you may even come away thinking that it was surprisingly good, but then you take a bottle home and it just tastes like fruit juice compared to good grape based wines...
    • poulsbohemian 4y ago
      Are people making ice wine wherever you are?
      • terryf 4y ago
        Nor really as the grapes that grow are rather small and give relatively little juice. But of course maybe there is some small place that does...