[biotinker]

> customary to chuck an iron ploughshare into the cider fermenting vat; it would completely disappear by the end of fermentation.

I have trouble believing that this was customary. It's absolutely the case that iron will dissolve in a large vat of fermenting apple cider, but the result will be a cider with some very odd and unpleasant colors and flavors. Not something that someone would want to induce intentionally. Most cidermaking books will instruct one to keep the cider from any contact with any iron, copper, or lead as all three will readily dissolve.

[denton-scratch]

I hear you!

It sounds like a bonkers tale to me (which is partly why I related it here). I've never tried to make cider, and I've never read a cider-making book. It certainly doesn't sound like the kind of hygiene practice that is normal in fermenting processes. But I do have the impression that hygiene is not taken as seriously in cider-making as in, for example, beer-brewing.

[biotinker]

Cider-making does have inherently less hygiene standards than beer-making. The apples have been outdoors for their entire lives, and spraying them with water only does so much. The cider itself is acidic enough that it's not a terribly hospitable environment for many microorganisms that would flourish in, for example, beer. Freshly pressed cider has plenty of other microbes swimming around in it, and while Campden tablets eliminate some, much of the success of the fermentation relies on your desired yeast simply out-competing and denying oxygen to the others.

Beer, by contrast, is boiled for an extended period of time prior to fermentation. This gives a sterile starting point, but doing something similar to cider will radically change the flavor.

[denton-scratch]

> The cider itself is acidic

Especially with scrumpy; it often (usually?) tastes pretty vinegary - not like commercial cider at all. I think it's much more refreshing and thirst-quenching than sweet commercial cider.

I like to cook with cider vinegar. It's refreshing, and relatively sweet. I'd say the difference between cider vinegar and scrumpy really comes down to a matter of degree.

It's surprising that vinegar is refreshing; but roman soldiers used to carry sour wine (vinegar) with their equipment.

And when a roman soldier (supposedly) passed a cloth soaked in vinegar to Jesus on the cross, he was passing him the most-refreshing thing he had - it wasn't some kind of sarcastic taunt.