Drink up ee zider!

On July 19, the day after my birthday, it was Ciderfest - a day when we tasted the 2013 cider for the first time, along with folk who had helped by donating apples or with the pressing. There were also some friends and family.

I'd tasted quite a lot of cider already, of course, and this year (my first attempt at making craft cider) I'd also kept the juice from different apples separate where possible to try to see what differences there were in the finished product.

It's fair to say that all the cider was rather too acidic, which is what you get when you use cooking apples. I didn't have any eaters, except a small number from the windmill (and they were a rather tart eater, it has to be said).

I tried two things to reduce the acidity. One was adding a culture of bacteria to prompt a malolactic fermentation in the cider. This converts malic acid into lactic acid and because lactic acid has a smoother taste, the cider should taste more mellow. I don't think mine achieved mellowness, but the malolactic culture certainly improved the taste. I think some of the bottles had a natural malolactic fermentation as well because some cider which previously tasted really sharp, actually seemed rather pleasant.

Anyway, I have learned a lot for 2014 (which doesn't mean the cider will be any better, just because I know what's wrong, doesn't mean I can fix it).

We polished off around 60 bottles of cider on the night and ate pork and apple casserole, followed by apple cake. There was also quorn curry for the veggies.

My cider was described as tasting like Champagne and also like Chablis. I don't know what type of champagne my friends have been drinking ...

Cider scare – am I infected?

Had a bit of a scare with the cider yesterday. I decided to inspect the carboys and the three glass ones all had a fine film of scum on the top of the cider.

Panic sets in with the thought of 15 gallons of cider being spoiled ... and what would I do for Thorney Ciderfest on July 19 – I might have a cider festival with no cider.

The cider didn’t smell bad, no scent of vinegar or other off flavours, so whatever it was hadn’t caused problems – yet!

On the cider forum (my regular reading) the general conclusion was that this was a film yeast, nothing to worry about. I’d probably left too much of an air gap at the neck of the carboy and that was what had allowed the yeast to grow.

So today, I’ve brought the offending carboys into the kitchen and, acting on the advice of the forum members, added some Camden tablets to the liquid to kill any yeast and topped up the bottles to reduce the air space.

There was also an opportunity for tasting to see if the acidity had mellowed at all – it hadn’t.

The three carboys contain:

1. Crossland Cookers
2. Windmill eaters
3. Chris Smith and Windmill Cookers

Both the Crossland Cookers and the blend of Chris’ and Windmill Cookers were both very acidic – around 2.8 pH. The Windmill Eaters were slightly less acidic (perhaps 3.1 pH). It’s clear that no malolactic fermentation has taken place yet and the Camden tablets I’ve just added will make sure none is going to happen for a few weeks.

The plan now is to consult the oracle of the cider forum again. There’s a suggestion that Henry Weston’s Old Rosie cloudy cider can be added in small quantities as a way of starting an MLF (malolactic fermentation). I’ve asked if anyone has done this successfully and, depending upon the response, will give it a try in about a month’s time when I can rack the cider one last time. MLF, if I can induce it, will convert some of the mallic acid (which is very harsh) into lactic acid (which is less so).

You can buy bacterial cultures, which will start MLF in your cider, but people who have used those don’t seem to rate them. Adding some Old Rosie, which must contain some of the right bacteria, seems a better solution (and if there’s any left over we can drink it).

The good news is that the alcohol content of the cider seems fine. I was aiming for around eight per cent and the three sherry glasses I’ve tasted have left me in the early stages of inebriation (which suggests it might be a bit more than eight per cent).

Harvesting gourds and malolactic fermentation

It looks as if our splendid summer is over, the weather turned distinctly autumnal at the weekend, with daytime temperatures down to the low teens and a strong, cool northerly wind blowing. It was also raining quite heavily most of the weekend.

On Saturday, my focus was on racking the cider, but before we got around to that I was pottering around the garden and noticed that several gourd plants had withered and turned brown. The gourds were still hanging on, but it seemed only a matter of time before they detached.

Margaret has been itching to pick them for a month, so as soon as I suggested that we ought to harvest them, she was out there with her basket. It's been a good year for gourds, we've had a decent number and also a wide variety. The only disappointment is that the fruits have often been rather large - I would have preferred smaller and more numerous fruits. This year, I did mix some Growmore in the with compost in the pots and I wonder if that had any effect. Mind you, I also did that with my butternut squash and it didn't seem to make any difference there - they were very much on the small size.

Margaret with her gourd crop

We've picked all the gourds from the three pots down the garden and just left some on the three pots at the side. These are still ripening and they haven't gone brown or withered yet. In fact, two of the plants are still growing and (even in the wind and rain) there were a couple of brave male flowers in bloom. They can have another week or two of ripening and hardening on the plant.

Cider has been much in mind this week. At the start of the week, I'd been concerned that the fermentation hadn't happened properly, but when I investigated, I found the specific gravity had fallen below zero and all the sugar had fermented. It had happened steadily, without much froth, but quickly (within seven days). The cider I tested was from the batch made with Crossland apples - it was bone dry and very acidic. The pressed juice had been sweet and quite delicious, but I wouldn't wanted to have drunk much of this lip-pursing liquid.

Advice on the cider forum was to use eating apples rather than cookers (but I used what I could get hold of and only one tree of eaters was available to three cookers). The recommended ratio of three parts eater to one part cooker was not an option. Other suggestions included artificial sweetener (Splendour seems to be the sweetener of choice), but most people said I should just give it time.

The harsh acidity in cooking apples is caused by an excess of mallic acid and, given time, this can be converted to lactic acid by means of malolactic fermentation where a naturally occurring bacteria gets into the cider and works its magic. As well as converting the sharp mallic acid to more palatable lactic acid, the process can also impart a spicy taste to the cider, which craft cider makers are very proud to achieve. Malolactic fermentation by natural bacteria won't work in temperatures lower than 15 deg C or in juice where acidity is below 3.2, so I think we're right up against it on acidity. Anyway, I've resolved to let my cider mature for six months and then taste test it. If it's still too acid, I can either use artificial sweetner or introduce a bacterial culture artificially to promote a malolactic fermentation. Apparently, cultured bacteria doesn't add spice, but it can give a pleasant buttery taste (I'm not sure I like the idea of buttery cider).

On Saturday I tested all barrels and all had completely finished fermentation. There was a marked difference between the three types. The windmill eaters have already produced a very nice cider, the blend of windmill cookers and Chris Smith's apples have produced a sharper, but very good drink and the Crossland cookers, which tasted so acidic at the start of the week, already seem smoother. So all juice was racked (the cider siphoned slowly off the sediment at the bottom of the barrel) and barrels were filled to exclude air and sealed. I'll leave them for a month or six weeks and then put them in the garage to mature over winter (I'll have to make some room).

We've enjoyed cider-making so far, it's been interesting and I like the idea of getting something for nothing. I have three full barrels (over 15 gallons) and five, one-gallon demijohns. I'd lose a gallon in the next racking, but I have around 95 litres and should end up with around 300 330cl bottles. I'm busy saving all the beer bottles that I can.

I might branch out into apple juice next year with the plan being to offer to pick people's apples, press the juice and sell it back to them as sterilised apple juice. We'll see how it goes.

Davina pounding the pulp, while I get the press ready for juicing

Pulling the pressed pulp bag from the basket

Starter yeast culture ready to be added to the juice

On Sunday the rain was lashing down from the north and it was a pretty miserable day. We'd arranged to have lunch at Sam and Lucy's in Walthamstow and Holly was invited as well. Sam did lamb shank to a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (a TV chef) recipe and it was nice. I got told off for being fussy and leaving some fatty bits - the story of my life.

Sam had also picked the gourds that Lucy has been growing and it was interesting to compare. Hers were smaller (a better size in honesty) and she also had some that we didn't, including a couple of knobbly green pear-shaped ones. We both had various sizes of bishop's hats.

It was pretty wet in London and so a planned walk didn't happen and Holly was a bit of a pain in the house for four hours. She travels really well in the car though, has a look out of the window for a bit and then, if we're going any distance, she just hunkers down for the duration.

We made good time there and back (less than two hours each way) and we were back by 6pm; in time to have a glass of wine and a few nuts sitting in the summer-house, listening to the rain lashing against the side. It sounds bonkers, but it did give Holly some outdoor time and I rather like the feel of sitting in a shed or tent and hearing the rain pelting against it.

We'd got an e-mail or Facebook post from Max to say he and Toby Knights had completed the Yorkshire three peaks (20 miles and 1600 metres of climb and descent) in under six hours. Considering the weather, that was very good going, or so it seemed to me. They're training for the OMM (Original Mountain Marathon) which is being held in a couple of weeks time.

Weekends seem to disappear in the blinking of an eye and before you know it your phone is bleeping to tell you it's 5am on Monday morning - time to get up for work. It was still raining a little this morning, or rather a fine, wet wind, which had come round to the south (through 180 degrees since Sunday). Only another nine weeks and I'll be finished work for good.

Cider-making weekend

This weekend was the big press when, assisted by Margaret, also Davina and Laura from work, we aimed to get all the apples (almost 250kg of them) sorted, washed, scritted and pressed.

And that’s exactly what we did! The weather was beautiful (warm and sunny) and it was a real pleasure working hard in the open air for a couple of days. Much different from our usual working environment - air-conditioned office.

The process was fairly straightforward and we worked on the patio and patio table by the house. There was one person washing the apples and sorting out any bad ones; one person doing a second rinse and putting them into the scritter; one person cranking the scritter and one person on the press.

Pressing Chris Coakley’s grapes last weekend had been a really useful dummy run for the press and my first job this weekend was to screw the press down to a pallet, so we could get some decent purchase on the handle without it moving around. I’d also got enough blocks of 2x2 wood to pack the pressure plate of the press so we could push it down deep enough to get maximum juice.

We all co-operated really well as a team and with my iPod on shuffle, we also had some music while we worked.

I wanted to process the apples by type, so I could see what the various characteristics - acidity, sugar content, etc - was of each one. We had cooking apples from the Crosslands, cookers and eaters from the windmill and cookers from Chris. We started with the Crosslands’ as we had almost 100kg of those.

It all worked well, although the apples which had been through the scritter were not really bashed up enough. We tried a double scrit, but that didn’t help and the first pressing left quite big pieces of apple in the basket, which would have contained useful juice. For the next batch, we mashed the bucket of scritted apples with a fence post and that resulted in a much better juice yield, but it was time-consuming and quite hard work.

Apple scritting with Laura Jones on the handle

Later in the day, I worked out a different process. Most advice is to halve your apples and quarter the larger ones before they go into the scritter and that what we were doing. However, many quarters were going through broken in half or only slightly more. My scritter is a little different in design to some others I’ve seen. They seem to have toothed rollers, set quite close together and so they would need fairly small pieces to drop down between the rollers to be crushed. My scritter has hard plastic rollers set with sharp spikes and it is obviously a different idea. The rollers are wider set, so apple quarters just get pulled through. However, if you drop in whole apples, they can stick above the rollers and so are ripped and grated as the rollers turn. This change resulted in a bucket of shredded apple which was much more useful. We still did a quick mash, by which time the apple was good and mushy and a fair bit of juice ran out while the press was being packed. The pressed apple pulp when it came out of the press was quite dry, although there were still some pieces of apple which might have contained squeezable juice.

This change in operation speeded up the process and increased our juice yield by a good 10 per cent.

Margaret apple bashing - almost ready for the press

The press was a basket press which Tom and Sam had bought me for my birthday. We managed to extract about 120 litres of juice from 250kg of apples, so it was close to 50 per cent efficient. I’d have liked to have got a little better than that and we could perhaps have topped 50 had we started the different scritting technique earlier - you live and learn.

The main issues with the press for this quantity of apples was just how many times it had to operate. It’s not really designed for this quantity. Getting sufficient pressure on the apple pulp required really hard work turning the screw and it would have been useful to be able to have got more pressure on the pulp for a final squeeze.

Pressing the apples with Davina Page. I am providing ballast.

As it was, it did a very good job and it’s really satisfying winding down the screw and seeing the juice flowing out. The press did about a gallon to a gallon and a half each press, so four presses filled a barrel and we did five barrels. The compost heap now has quite a pile of shredded, pressed apple pulp. You’d expect it to be quite wet and slimy, but all the juice has been pressed out, so its almost like wood chippings. Not sure how quickly it will break down.

I had intended to test each apple variety and grade them for sweetness, sourness, acidity, tannin ... Trouble is that they all tasted very sharp. There was a hint of sweetness, but sour (so bittersweet) and someone could taste lemon (but we had been to a wine-tasting session on Thursday night, so perhaps our palettes were over-sensitive?). We tested the juice from each batch and, considering the apples were quite sour (bittersweet) the juice was really very sweet and tasty. You could have drunk a glass very happily. The last pressing were the windmill eaters and the juice there was like nectar.

I also tested for acidity (all around 3.2, which should be fine) and for sugar content which was around 103 grams per litre, which would give a potential alcohol level of 6 per cent. I wanted to aim for 8 per cent alcohol, so I added sugar to bring the level up to 140 grams per litre. I’m just going to have to hope the tannin level is all right. The windmill eaters came in at 7 per cent.

We needed to go to Burghley Home Brew in Newborough to buy extra fermenting vessels and I got robust plastic barrels, which should be good for maturing the cider as well as for the initial fermentation. Davina and Laura were checking out the kits offering five gallons of Merlot in two weeks - I think we might soon have some keen wine-makers on our hands.

So the apples are pressed, the juice saved in barrels; it has been sulphited, pectolase added to remove fruit haze and yeast nutrient added. I added yeast starter cultures to two barrels yesterday and will do the other three tonight.

Now, it’s a matter of letting nature do the rest. Well, I will have to rack it a few times, mature it, bottle it - and then drink it.

Quite exciting, I’m glad I had a go. If it works out, then we can do quite a bit more next year. I think I’ll throw a barbecue for all the apple donors on St Swithin’s Day (July 16) next year. That should encourage more donors in 2014. Chris has already offered pears, so perry might be another string to my bow.

Henry Erskine Crumb, who runs Listora was telling me about a chap in Wiltshire who collects apples from homes, presses the juice and sells it back to them. It sounds as if he pasteurises and filters the juice, puts it into a fancy bottle, adds a label saying where it came from and charges £3 a bottle. Henry says their apples last them all year.

Chopping apples - Laura was later made redundant