[Regia-NA] Scrumpy the Dog

[Hrolf Douglasson]

and  i always thought it was when the dog drowned itself trying to get the
cider:)
vara
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tracie Brown" <trbrown@uga.edu>
To: <list-regia-na@lig.net>
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 7:19 PM
Subject: [Regia-NA] Scrumpy the Dog


> About that scrumpy cider, with rumors of dead dogs floating
> in it -- turns out those dead dogs are functional!  Reading
> through Making the Best Apple Cider by Annie Proulx (better
> known in this university town as the Pulitzer Prize winning
> author of The Shipping News), I came across this ancient
> practice [my comments in brackets]:
>
> "Somewhere along the line word has gotten out that hard cider
> needs a big juicy beefsteak [or dead dog, apparently] tossed
> into it to 'ripen it up.'  What happens most often when this
> is done is putrefaction, not fermentation, resulting in a
> foul liquid that not even the devil could drink [but
> apparently drinkable by certain members of this list].  In
> the old days, a fermenting cider sometimes stopped bubbling
> in the midst of the process (known as ‘stuck fermentation')
> and the desperate cider maker, not realizing that the problem
> was a lack of nitrogen in the juice, know only that adding a
> piece of meat to the barrel would start the fermentation
> process up again.  The decomposing meat added enough nitrogen
> to the cider to boost the fermentation.  The people who drank
> this cider, with its rank off-flavor, called it ‘scrumpy.'
> Today, ‘nutrient tablets' sold by wine supply houses will
> restart a stuck fermentation without recourse to the meat
> counter [or roadkill]."
>
> Cheers!
>
> – Tracie
> jjjzjj