TITLE: Cider making
DATE: 2022-12-02
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
====================================================================
This is a record of the cider we made in 2022.
We picked and pressed the apples on the 1st October. We collected 3
wheelbarrows full of apples. 1 Lady Sudeley from the West Farm
Orchard. 1 green eating apple and 1 green cooking apple from a
neighbour's garden.
[Lady Sudeley]:
http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?varid=3360&&frui
t=apple
We set up with a bin full of water to wash the apples, a table with
knives and chopping boards to chop the apples, a garden shredder to
shred the apples, and a 6 L cider press to press the pulp. We had a
bucket for cut apples and another bucket for rotten or otherwise
unsuitable apples on the table. We shredded the apples into a
bucket. The apple juice was drained from the press into a large
bucket. We set the cider press up on scaffold batons to raise it up
off the ground so the bucket could go underneath. Each variety of
apples was pressed separately into their own bucket.
We produced seven 1 L bottles of apple juice. Three bottles of
green eating apples, two bottles of green cooking apples, and two
bottles of Lady Sudeley. The bottles were plastic fruit cordial
bottles so they could be frozen.
We produced six demijohns (1 gallon, ~4.5 L each) of juice for
cider:
- 1 pure Lady Sudeley (SafCider yeast)
- 2 pure green eating (1 SafCider yeast, 1 sweet yeast)
- 1 pure green cooking (SafCider yeast)
- 1 50% Lady Sudeley and 50% green cooking (SafCider yeast)
- 1 even mix of all three apple varieties (SafCider yeast)
[SafCider yeast]:
https://fermentis.com/en/product/safcider-ab-1/
[1 sweet yeast]:
https://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/bulldog-sweet-cider-yeast.html
The whole process to press the juice from start to finish took from
~09:30 to 15:00, with an hour break for lunch in the middle. The
pressing without the equipment setup took about 2 hours. Cleaning
up at the end took the most time, washing everything to get rid of
the sticky apple juice and pulp.
We produced two kilner jars (~750 ml each) of vinegar, 1 pure Lady
Sudeley and one pure green cooking. We added Willys organic apple
cider vinegar with the mother at a ratio of 12:1 juice to vinegar
to start the fermentation, and left the jars open covered with
muslin. The Lady Sudeley batch grew a scoby on the surface, but
also grew mould after about two weeks, so it was thrown away. The
green cooking batch was left in a dark place until the 1st
December, then filtered through muslin and transferred to a sealed
kilner bottle. During the fermentation it grew 4 separate scoby
layers, with the first three sinking to the bottom, which maybe
means it was fermented for too long. Alternatively, maybe the jar
was disturbed multiple times, causing the surface tension to break
and the scoby to become submerged.
[Willys organic apple cider vinegar with the mother]:
https://www.willysacv.com/product/willys-acv-live-fermented-apple-ci
der-vinegar-with-the-mother/
The cider demijohns were kept in a room with a temperature of
~18-20C until the 1st December (61 days). We bottled ~28 L of cider
in total. All the demijohns produced good cider.
