Cider Outcomes

Well, the cider took. The mostly-Bramley fermented nicely to produce a splendid but very strong and tart drink by Christmas. The brew from the mostly-Spartan was slow to start and hasn't conditioned as well, and is indeed rather bland but just as strong and it softens the Bramley rather well. They're both still improving and drink very nicely in a fifty fifty blend in the glass.

Key point one seems to be that a pressure barrel is well worth the expense. Neither brew is as good after going flat in the fridge. And the second is that fining doesn't seem to make much difference -- it threw a lot of sediment but it was still cloudy. The unfined Bramley brew is probably the clearer of the two now.

The truly shocking thing is how much the supermarket bill has gone down after I started drinking homebrew. That decline in revenue is probably why Alastair had to put the booze tax up in the budget.

Absolutely the Last Apple Entry this Year

It's been an astonishing year for fruit, but there's a price to pay. In ordinarily heavy years, plum tree branches can easily break with the weight of fruit. This year has had so much water that the damsons were the size of plums and edible straight off the tree while the table plums have needed props, to hold up the masses of disappointing bland fruit. And while the flavours been fine, we've had apple branches broken to create more challenges for the winter pruner. I drove past this old orchard today and saw trees pulled over or split in two -- it'll take more than pruning to fix that.

Cider

Last weekend I picked a lot of apples: 50% Bramley, 30% James Grieve, 20% Spartan with oddments of John Downie crabs and Conference pear, and screwed it down to a bit over four gallons of juice. I'd say there was a ratio about three gallons of loose apples to one of juice, but that may be optimistic, They were all fresh off the tree and hard, so I don't think I mashed them as well as I should have. Anyway, after a rather slow start, it's fermenting nicely with whatever Wilkinson sell as wine yeast at this time of year.

It was extremely hard work. The book had been rather lyrical about the benefits of community endeavour with everybody helping to get the work done. Mrs U left me to it, driving off to visit her parents, and I pounded out the whole lot using the boss on a 17lb fence post digger and a six liter screw press myself.

Since I set that lot going, I've learnt that 80% cookers is a bad thing (too acid), that using fresh apples reduces the juice yield (too hard, and too tart), and basically I've done it all wrong. So today I filled the mower trailer with 60% eaters and the balance mostly Bramleys and I've hidden it in the shed. In a fortnight's time I'll see whether they've softened up, and perhaps make myself some less acid cider to blend. For certain the Spartans had the dullest juice so I'm afraid the cider will be bland, but we'll have to see how that goes.

I know a secret

And it's a surprise: the best juice comes from crab apples.

Admittedly they were ripe red John Downie, but straight off the tree they were still a lot more like hard red berries than proper apples, and they were the devil to crush. I got three pints from a gallon of mush, and it was sweet and appley with a lot of the puckering richness which I think is malic acid. Drinkable - delicious - running off the press.