My first cider brew from last year, pictures and all.

[shiversaint]

Hello everyone - I've been lurking for a while now but thought I might as well join up.

Just wanted to post a bit about my first cider brew that I did last year.

I started quite late in the season, gathering apples from just about every source I could find. I wasn't sure of the majority of the varieties. I am thinking now that there were quite a few cooking apples in there but I'll get to that later. Anyway, here come the pictures....

This was a tiny scratter that I made - was more a proof of concept and I was never really convinced that it would work. In the end I found out apples are a hell of a lot harder than I thought and the whole thing exploded on about the third apple....! I had bought a pulpmaster and fully expected to be using it. And I did...!

Here was our pressing tent. We picked a horrible day for it and this is my mate Tommy who very generously helped me out. The rain was really coming down and we needed to get under cover somehow....!

This was the first press of juice from the 6L press I bought from Germany for £100 off ebay. Worked like a charm

Tommy having some fun with the pulpmaster.

Some of our pulp.

The process we were going through, washing the apples in the black tub, pulping into the red and pressing into the blue.

Tommy doing some sterilising in the rain, and the basket that held about half of my apples. I think I had about 75 to 85 kg in the end.

Here is a shot of the demijohns. The lighter colour juice was from the pictures above, and that had been going for about 4 days in that photo. The darker colour juice...see below

When riding down the A272 on my motorbike, I spotted a chuffing massive apple tree!!! I nicked Dad's Range rover to go and get a big load and to semi secure me on the roadside, and lo and behold, the were effin Golden Delicious apples!!!! Nevertheless, I picked about 15KG and made another two demijohns, which are the darker ciders in the image above. I didn't ripen these off at all to preserve a bit of acidity, and pressed pretty much the same day.

Finally, a picture of the ciders that had cleared a bit better.

So that's my story every one....I used generic cider yeast, my OG predicted a possible ABV of about 6.5%, and FG suggests I got it to about 5.9%. I used pectolase in only one of the Golden Delicious demijohns, which I also added about 250gms of sugar to. That one is still long term conditioning after two rackings in the demijohn, so no idea how it tastes. The other Golden Delicious one is not particularly great but I suspect still needs a lot more conditioning.

In the end, I had a keg and 4 demijohns of cider from the main press, which was searingly acidic initially. I did no acid adjustment, which is why I think there might have been quite a few cooking apples in there. I did my best to avoid them though. There were some crab apples too for a bit of variety and plenty of dessert apples. 6 or 7 months on, the cider from the main batch does taste pretty good from bottle now. It's still quite sharp but has a very classic mouthfeel and so much better than tramp juice. I think another 3 months will probably do a lot from it. Tasters from the keg have a very tannic test which is quite bizarre, almost identical to apple skins. I think that needs a lot more maturation.

Hope you enjoyed the read. :

Julian

 

[Mark1964]

looks great welcome to the forum we will be making some real fruit wines and cider too this year :thumb:

 

[Devonhomebrew]

well the 6L things are small but work very well i got one pressed 15 gallons last year going to pressatleast 100 this year good brewing wheres abouts are you shiver

 

[alphacento]

Looks awesome! Well done

 

[rich27500]

Would love to see some of the finished product, Dad and I are about to make our first forays into cider production. We have a pretty impressive apple tree but it produces cookers so a fair deal of scrumping will also be necessary.

 

[shiversaint]

Good to see another saints fan rich ! Be careful with the cookers, I think I used a few too many and my brew has quite a tang to it, not for the faint hearted.

Devonhomebrew: I'm on the Surrey/Hampshire border. Are you seriously going to press 100 gallons with just a 6 litre press?! I was thinking of invested in a 12L or 18L press this year just to make life a little bit easier.

Anyone have any good scratter plans? I want to make a decent one this year.

 

[graysalchemy]

Well done with that lot. :thumb:

A good balance of cookers crabs and eaters is necessary to give a balance of malic acid and tannin. Eaters tend to be low in these and it is tannin and malic acid which give cider its bite. Maturing will help especially if you think your cider is a bit acidic as it will undergo malolactic fermentation where by the malic acid is converted into lactic acid a much more for giving acid. :thumb: :thumb:

 

[tazuk]

sweet i did about 150 ltr last 2 sep last year made my own press and used a garden shredder with top taken off it worked a treat now just started drinking it now i did back sweeten some with slender i think it taste **** but the other lot just cider is nice and dry mmmm roll on cider season 2012 :clap: :thumb:

 

[Reburner]

Nice post, thanks.