Cider making

We’ve been picking, sorting, chopping, pulping and pressing apples all day as our cider making gets started.

By the time we finished to do the evening chores and have dinner, we’d filled one fermenting vat with a little over five gallons (25 litres) of apple juice pressed from 70kg of apples.

We only have another six 25kg bags of apples to go…

The actual cider make process starts by filling the milling bucket with sorted apples to the milling bucket. Any apples with serious blemishes go to the OH to have the bad bits cut out.

Normally, we’d wash the apples thoroughly with lots of water, but our water shortage means a quick wash is all they get, which will mean changes to the way I normally make my cider.

Also, I normally make cider when all the apples are so ripe that you can push your thumb into them. A lack of rat-proof storage space this year means only about one-third are that ripe.

The others are ripe enough to come off the tree and be eaten, but not as much as we’d normally like.

That means less sugar content and either a less strong cider or, sacrilege, adding sugar.

The milling bucket, of food-grade plastic, has a supposedly sealed lid with a hole in the middle. A sharp paddle sits inside the bucket with a shaft rising through the hole and then fastened into an electric drill.

You fill the bucket with apples, set your drill to the highest speed and then force the paddle down into the apples. It takes longer than you’d think and it’s well worth stopping halfway through to add more apples.

In the picture I’m holding the lid on one handed, but it’s better to have two people with one doing nothing but hold the lid on!

The next job is to load the finely milled pomace into the press.

We line the press with old but clean muslin cloths to stop too many bits going into the fermenter. If using old cloths, make sure they’ve been washed with old-fashioned soap flakes and rinsed thoroughly. (Laundry detergents and fabric softeners do not go well in cider.)

Fill the press to the bottom of the screw thread. Fold the cloth across the top, then place the circular wooden blocks on top of the cloth. Then stack the spacer blocks on top, then the compression plate and then screw down the handle.

Then it’s time to screw down the press and extract the aple juice. With this type of basket press, do not empty it when the handle is first level with the top of the wooden sides - the pomace will not be fully compressed.

Instead, wind the handle back off. Take the blocks out, and add more fresh pomace up to the bottom of the thread again. Reassemble the press and screw it down again.

I find that even a second pressing still takes the handle right down to the top of the press, so I repeat the filling again.

With the third pressing, make sure that the press is well bolted down to a very secure surface or have an assistant hold it down. This is when you’re going to do the final, hard press.

Wind the handle down as hard as you can until the handle will turn no more or the juice stops flowing. If you can’t turn the handle any further, stop, have a cuppa and let the juice continue to trickle out.

When the juice has stopped flowing, unwind the handle, remove the blocks and remove the pomace.

NOTE: As the pomace is under a lot of pressure, you will get gouts of apple now and again. When doing this batch, some hit the ceiling and then fell on my back, as you can see in the photo. Cider making is a very messy job so do it outside or on a tiled, easily cleaned floor (as we do).

Once all the juice has been extracted, you have to remove the pomace from the press. The photo makes it look easy!

We mix the pomace 50:50 with rolled barley and feed it to both the pigs and chickens, which all love it.

Once the fermenter is full to a little over the five-gallon mark, you can either pitch your yeast immediately (our normal practice) or add 1-2 Campden tablets per gallon. This kills off wild yeasts and bacteria that can lead to things like “mouse taint”.

Good, well cleaned apples processed through sterilised equipment shouldn’t need Campden tablets added. However, while our equipment was all sterilised, we didn’t have enough clean water to thoroughly clean the apples, so we added five Campden tablets.

We’ll leave the apple juice to sit until Monday morning (36 hours) to allow the Campden tablets time to kill off the nasties and spend itself. Then, we’ll pitch the yeast. This means our cider won’t be organic this year, but should mean that we don’t have anything spoil the cider.

Once you’ve pitched the yeast, cover the fermenter and leave in a dark place with a temperature of at least 15C. This will give a long, slow fermentation.

If you want cider for Christmas, as we do, ferment above 19C and below 21C. The flavours won’t be as developed, but it will still be good.

We’re doing one batch of five gallons with a submersible heater set to 20C and cider yeast. This will be our Christmas/New Year batch. We’ll do two more batches at 15C with wine yeasts and these will be for consumption well into next year.

The apple blend

I know the sort of cider I’m after - very strong, dry, pronounced apple taste, lots of body with a hint of tannin and lots of complex flavours.

That means getting the right blend of apples. I use 60-70% sweets to get alcohol content, 20-30% sharps to get body and acidity, and 10% cookers/crabs/bittersharps to get tannin and acidity.

I use different sweets and sharps to get the complex flavours. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any bittersweets around here but I still get a pretty good result.

I taste each time I complete one crush and adjust my apple blend accordingly. When the juice is slightly oversweet for my palate, acidic enough to clean the palate but no more, with about as much tannin as a weak cup of tea, and lots of flavours, I know I have a good base to be working with.

Cider yeast gives a slightly sweeter and less strong cider than I prefer (although still dry) while wine yeasts really deliver the punch and dryness I’m after.

The OH doesn’t mind my cider yeast version, but steers well clear of the wine yeast version.