Cider Making 2010
Friends of ours, Sarah and Richard, have a house in Warwickshire that has a rather large garden full of apple trees. Richard tried to make cider last year by putting some apples in a bucket and mashing them with a wooden fence post. Unfortunately it was a treated fence post which imparted a slight hint of creosote to the cider. Having learnt his lesson he decided to research into home cider making. On arrival we found, much to our surprise, he’d built a complete press!
None of us really knew what we were doing but it didn’t take us long to get stuck in. Rich had a couple of bins made from a cut down 250 litre plastic barrel, a plasterer’s bucket and a long length of untreated wood for mashing the apples. Soon the apples started to come in with the help of the kids. Even though we managed to put a hole in the plasterer’s bucket, the wood was too heavy and we were overfilling the pillow cases with the mashed apples, the juice started to flow.
We were daft enough to actually start picking the apples and proof of this is left: Dicky picking apples. Needless to say we were soon shaking the trees. Richard getting stuck in, below. The apples were very ripe and a majority came down with ease. Each apple was inspected and only those not rotten were taken for mashing. Before long the bins were full.
Below: Alex decides its not a good idea to stand under an apple tree whilst dad’s shaking it! Time for a sharp exit! We soon realised that picking apples off the ground was just as time consuming as picking from the tree.
Above: Lets get mashing! Jamie and Nick with the mash tub.
Left: Me and Dicky grinning like Cheshire cats. We were absolutely in our element. Here we are taking the mash and putting it into a pillow case ready for the press. Dicky has the biggest hands so he’s doing the shovelling. We soon discovered that we were over filling the cases and we were not extracting as much juice as we’d hoped. Keeping the filling down and spreading it out, giving it a larger surface area, soon gave us a better result. Testing the juice with a meter gave a pH of 3.5
Right: Me and Dicky getting to grips with Richard’s home made press. He obtained the plans for the press off the internet and paid a wood merchant to supply the parts ready cut so all he had to do was bolt and screw the parts together. As a basic press it worked very well but modifications are in the pipe line to strengthen it. By the end of the day cracks were seen to be developing. Using a bottle jack to apply the pressure I was surprised it lasted so well.
As you can see, left, we had the pillow case too full and the bottle jack (operated by Jamie) couldn’t deliver the pressure needed to extract all the juice. The kids had a great time and we all enjoyed the apple juice which was remarkably sweet. Testing it with a hydrometer gave a reading of 1048. Alcohol content will be around 6% which is pretty reasonable. We all decided that extra sugar wasn’t needed. No extra cost which suited us all. Left: Alex, Jamie and Luca with the press. Me and Rich drinking juice.
Above: A right hive of industry. By this time we were all finding the mashing a bit of a chore. The wood was just too heavy and we were all complaining the next day of aching arms, in fact aching everything! Left: Dicky and his son Nick doing some mashing.
Right: We now have the wood cut in half which not only made it easier to use but meant two people could mash at the same time. We still found it hard to keep up with the apple deliveries though! Below: One of the many tubs of apples.
Above: Jamie and I inspecting the juice while mum and dad decide how big it was (?!) Below left: With the wood in half mashing rate increased. Below right: Jacky and Nick picking damsons for making jam.
Left: Sarah picking plums whilst Dicky and I appropriate a tarpaulin to collect the apples.
We used at least two varieties of apple. The one which can be seen on the tarpaulin was unidentified but the other variety was a Bramley. It was a pity we didn’t have any crab apples which would have made for a better cider. We made approximately 27 gallons (120 litres) which was blended between five fermenting buckets. I decided to try the traditional way of cider making and that is to allow the natural yeasts on the apples to do their own work. This is expected to take much longer than the modern method followed by the others of sterilising with campden tablets then adding a recognised cider yeast.
Next year we hope to have a mechanical “APPLE SCRATTER” to do the work of the mashing and who knows how this will all develop?
Above/right: The juice being blended and below: My juice doing it’s own bit and showing a head.
Updated: Wednesday, 29 September 2010
