Cidermaking

After getting my cider press built and up and running it was time to finally process my apples. I got my friend Tom up as photographer /glamorous assistant /slave labour. I had collected some of the apples back in September so there were a few gone black and unusable. The apples that were up to standard were first crushed so they are easier to extract the juice from. I have seen machines designed for this but we used a more rustic method involving a plastic box and a piece of 4x2. We broke up the first batch reasonably well, making sure each apple was broken. Later batches we broke up a lot more so the apples were in a rough pulp. This made it easier to extract juice and we got a better overall quantity of juice as well.

Crushing apples

Once we had our pulp we transfered it to the bucket, which we had lined with a filter bag. When I designed the press I had allowed for a very large bucket but the one I found was a little smaller. It will allow me to adjust the press if I need to process larger amounts of apples so it is a good thing really. But while using it this time I had to put extra bits of timber under the bucket to raise it up and put more timber than I would have liked under the jack to that it would push the plunger down onto the apples.

If the bucket was bigger we wouldn't need so many timbers.

This made the post in the middle much less stable. After the jack becoming airborne once or twice, I decided for health and safety reasons it was probably better to stabilise the centre post. To do this I added two pieces of 2x1 to stop the centre post moving off centre when pressure was applied. This made everything much more stable and once this was done we had no more "health and safety issues."

The angle on the centre post before the changes were made

The two "runners" added to keep the post from slipping

After we had everything stabilised it was a matter of getting down to pressing the apples. At first we tried using a hydraulic trolley jack but it was too big to use. We then used a scissors jack from a Nissan Micra which was a better size for the press. Once we got into our rhythm of crushing, filling, pressing and emptying we got through a good few sacks of apples.

The left over apples

 After we were finished we had that wheelbarrow over flowing with left over apple mush. It made me wish I had the pigs back this year, they would have made light work of that lot. I will have to wait until I have the pigs back next year to make use of left overs, this lot is destined for the compost heap. In the end we had 30 litres of juice. 10l was from apples I got from a friends' grandfather and the other 20l was from a mix of apples from friends, people from work and that kind of thing.

The 20l batch of juice

I decided to keep the two batches seperate to allow me a bit more control over the flavour by blending the two together to get my final product. I also have two sacks of crab apples and a few apples from the garden to make into seperate batches to allow me to blend them together. I chose to add sulphite to my cider. This was to kill of bacteria and wild yeasts in the juice which should prevent spoilage and allow me to add my own yeast which should be more reliable. Some people don't like to add sulphites but I didn't want to risk ending up with 60l of vinegar. I did this on Tuesday night after collecting all the juice and then left them until Wednesday morning so the sulphites could do their work.

Wednesday morning I put my two batches into the fermenters. I measured the pH levels of each juice and they were each 2.8. The ideal range for cider is 3.2 - 3.8. After struggling to remember about the pH scale and whether acidity is high or low I realised I needed to lower the acidity. The acidity can be higher depending on the amounts of cooking apples you use, and I did use mostly cooking apples so I kind of expect this to happen. To lower the acidity you can add precipitated chalk. It is a calcium based powder which I bought from a homebrew shop. I added a teaspoon per gallon which brought the pH level to about 3.1 which was close enough for me. I then activated my yeast in warm water with yeast nutrient. I also added pectolase to reduce the chance of haze in my cider due to the pectin in the apples. I then added the yeast to the juice and left it to do it's work.

40l of cider, blackberry wine, elderberry wine, 20l of cider

Now I have to wait until the fermentation begins, it has been about 10 hours since I added the yeast and there might be a few small bubbles starting to form. Hopefully by the morning I will have full fermentation. I will post when I am taking on the next step with the cider which will be racking the cider, siphoning it off the dead yeast and sludge at the bottom of the fermenter and moving it to finish the fermentation in another container.

EDIT: Here is an update on the cider

Until Then.