Cidermaking 2010 October 17th

After much too much prevarication, we've finally got round to some respectable cider-making. There is nothing to it whatsoever, honest.  We borrowed a small press from farming friends and with it a large plastic bucket and a fence post with a metal bar set cross-ways through one end.  Using the fence post, we mashed the apples to a fine pulp in the plastic bucket and loaded the mash into the net curtain, which forms an inner bag to the press.   

Next we squeezed the pulp into a jug until no more juice could come out of it, and poured the juice into a pressurised 40 litre plastic beer barrel (see below). We repeated this until the barrel was full, then screwed the cap down tight.  No sugar, no yeast, no ham, no rats.  It took a surprising number of apples, but a relatively short period of time to accomplish.

 Cider in its pressurised barrel, ready to drink by December.
(Note the sediment settled out at the base)

Having filled the barrel with pure cold-pressed apple juice, we sat the barrel on a windowsill in the cool larder and left it.  The pressure built up, the apple juice corrupted slowly, and fermented. With a little taste-testing along the way, we have found that fermentation ceased by the end of November (when the temperature fell).  The juice is no longer sugary at all, and what we have in the barrel is a dry apply cider of a moderate strength. No doubt we could increase the strength by adding wine-making yeast and sugar.  But it doesn't seem like we need to. The end result is very pleasing, but unlikely to last until Christmas for supply and demand reasons.  There was a lot of talk about secondary fermentation in May, when the larger warms up again, but since the cider is unlikely to survive that long, any questions on that theme are academic. Theoretically it would keep on improving until next summer.

(I) Apple Wine December 2010

December Apple Wine

Although it seems a bit late in the year to start the apple wine, its the first chance we've had.  We're using cooking apples which we picked in September/October from the orchard.  They seem fine and fresh, so we have followed these steps today:

1. Sliced the apples roughly and mashed them in a bag with a meat tenderiser.
2. Squeezed and halved two lemons
3. Added apples and lemons into a large sterilised wine barrel (60 litres).
4. Poured over several kettles of boiling water.
5. Stirred the apples.
6. Covered the apples with tap water (about 20 litres) - we used to use spring water from Malvern but the car isn't up to the trip today.
7. Stirred in 2kg of granulated sugar (all we have today).
8. Added two sachets of 'champagne' yeast to warm water, left it to start fermenting, then added to the barrel of apples, sugar and water.
9. Left the barrel in the outhouse with a clean cloth covering it. 

Mashing the apples

We need to: 

1. stir the apple barrel daily for a week.
2. add a further 10kg of sugar and one more sachet of yeast.
3. remove the apple pulp and top up the water at the end of the week.

Leave it for a week.

Elderberry Wine IV: Racking the Wine

The fourth instalment of the elderberry wine.  Its December 12th, and rather later than planned (it must be said), we racked off the elderberry from one PVA barrel to another identical one.

All we've done today is to sterilise a second barrel using crushed campden tablets, and to transfer the icor into it using a tube and some muslin. As you can see, the whole thing has the appearance of a nasty blood transfusion service or a particularly gory operation. Put the tube into the full barrel which is sitting on a stool above the height of the new clean empty barrel. Suck on the tube until the wine begins to flow, then all that is necessary is to ensure that the one end stays covered by liquid, and that the squirty end doesn't pour red wine all over your clothes and the floor. Its a question of aim. 
The purpose of racking off wine at this stage is to separate the useful liquid (the proto-wine) from the dead yeast cells, the bits of fruit which escape the previous filtration, and unwanted dead livestock, etc. Removing gunk from the wine is good. We should have done this three weeks ago though.

Wine transfusion.

In line with tips from my gardening diary, we have also added 14 crushed campden tablets, which should stop any further fermentation, and help to clear the wine, which at this stage is still cloudy (as expected).

Elderberry Wine III: 23 September 2010

So.... in addition to what we've done already.  The full amount of berries was added on 14th September, nine days ago.  According to the recipe, we've overdone the amount of time that the berries need to stand in the sugar and yeast.  Also, we failed to add more than 4kg of sugar at that time.

Despite this, the fermentation was still carrying on today when we opened the barrel, as evidenced by the bubbling of the water escape trap at the top of the barrel.

Tonight, we strained off the fruit, separating from the icor (burgundy-red juice) with a coarse muslin bag.    We transferred the liquid from one 60l barrel to another, newly sterilised with Campden tablets, using a jug and the muslin as shown in the photo above.  We squeezed out the fruit as much as possible to extract every ounce of juice remaining in the fruit. By the end of the process of washing the fruit through with more water, and squeezing it out, we ended up with the sixty litre barrel full of purple-coloured proto-wine.  Assuming that fermentation will continue, we have also added a further 7 kg of sugar, bringing the total to 11kg - which should hopefully result in a dry red wine which is drinkable.  

The next stage will occur 4-6 weeks from now, at around the end of October, when we'll rack off the sediment - strain the wine through muslin again - at which point the primary fermentation ought to have ceased. Until then, the barrel is back into a warm outhouse with a water escape airlock on top to release the gas produced by the action of the yeast and sugar.

Raspberry Jam

Raspberry Jam in the making

The raspberries from the allotment are just about ready to pick now.  The first fruit have been ready for about a week already, and there are many small green set fruit remaining on the plants, which suggests that the Durham crop will continue for the next few weeks at least.

Robin's Recipe:

1. Take raspberries and sugar in equal weights
2. On a low heat, warm the fruit until the berries start to break down and liquify
3. Slowly, while stirring, add the sugar
4. Increase the temperature until the fruit/sugar mix achieves a rolling boil (no lid on the pan)
5. Stir occasionally for about 20 minutes. 
6. Check to see when jam is ready by dropping a blob of it onto a cool plate.  If the blob sets and wrinkles when pushed with your finger, then its ready. If not, keep boiling it.
7. Pour mixture from pan to a sterilised pot.

Elderberry Wine II

The Durham Elderberries

Another 4kgs of elderberries from the St. Margaret's allotment hedges behind the house at Allergate.  I've just added 2kgs of sugar, 4 pints of boiling water and another sachet of wine-making yeast to this jam-pan full of fruit.  I gave the mixture a good mashing up and a blend to release the fruit juice, and when the whole thing has cooled down, then I'll combine this second batch with the elderberries which we gathered from the hedgerows around Duns Tew on Thursday of last week.  

All together in the same 60 litre barrel, we will have around 8kgs of fruit, which we hope we can top up with water and leave once the primary fermentation has gone on for about a further four days from today.

Allotment: September 2010

Rosie Weeding the Main Beds

As usual at this time of year, the weeds are getting out of control.  In the picture above, we look across the main vegetable bed, which we planted with a green manure clover seed earlier in the year.  It also contained our garlic, onion and shallots.  Out of shot to the right are two lines of rainbow chard, spinach and love-in-the-mist.  

Rainbow chard

Rosie is digging the onions, which haven't been great this year.  Probably we put them into the ground too late without any prior composting of the soil.  The main bed really hasn't been a great success this year, other than the chard, which as usual is fantastic.  

Behind Rosie in the pictures above and top are the scraggy pale beans, which have been awful this year, and behind them, the rhubarb, which has been great.

Hannah downs tools for drinking.

We have undertaken the following tasks:

• harvesting artichokes, onions, shallots, autumn raspberries, Victoria plums, chard, spinach, and rocket.
• weeding creeping buttercup, comfrey, and thistles from the main bed, paths and 'grassy' area around the shed.
• digging new bed between the blackcurrant bushes and summer raspberries.
• moving rocket, mint, marjoram and horseradish to the new bed.
• moving gladioli to newly weeded bed by the gate; and hollyhocks from the main bed to the gladioli bed and in front of the shed.
• buying onion sets and daffodils to be planted on our next visit.
• harvesting elderberries for wine.
• trimming the boundary hedges. 
• fire

Artichokes

The Olde Elm Tree

Rosie Moving the Hollyhocks

Weeding

 

Digging

 

Some of the September Crop

 

Clearing the main bed

 

Space for the next crop