I got invited to come and pick some cider apples at a friends smallholding if I wanted to learn about cider making. My friends dad has a great wealth of knowledge in cider making and has done it for many years, so I thought he might be a good man to learn from - plus he's got a lot of cider apple trees!
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| It took Ev a little while to get into the swing of things! |
So Sunday morning Ev and me wrapped up warm and headed to the top end of our village for a bit of apple picking. We weren't going for huge numbers, just enough to make a few barrel fulls of cider.
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| Brians dad leading the way |
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| Brian ready to get picking |
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| Shake the tree! |
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| Tom Putt |
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| The little tractor took them all away |
In the end we filled the little trailer behind the tractor with mainly three varieities of apple - A
rgile Grise, Dabinett and then just one bag of Tom Putt for a bit of acidity. An enjoyable morning walking round like conasurs trying different apples. Ev survived quite well out in the cold, just kept eating apples - I think she ate a lot more than she put into the buckets and I've no idea how she did it because some of them tasted bloody awful!
The plan is to leave these apples for a few weeks before we scrat and press them towards the end of November - I'm looking forward to it!
Ah,......I remember pressing cider!
ReplyDeleteThats next weekend and I'm looking forward to it!
DeleteGetting a bit sick of the sight of them now, here :) Have fun pressing yours :)
ReplyDeleteYeah you've been flat out on the apple processing! I'm still in love with apples at the moment!
DeleteIt is hard to find good cider here because like most things, the government has outlawed it. Some one made cider from apples that had fallen where animals had been grazing and the manure contaminated apples were pressed along with the ecoli which killed people. So now we overreact and nobody gets to sell real cider in the store unless it has been processed into apple juice. You can make it for yourself for the time being until they start micromanaging that as well.
ReplyDeleteYour not ment to sell it if you produce over so many thousand litres but there are loads of places round here that sell it "at the farmgate". so it's not difficult to find the real stuff. I've brought some great stuff in the past and some stuff that would be best used to strip a door! Didn't know that manure could do that so I'll keep an eye out when we're processing them!
DeleteWe're having a year off from the pressing this year with the move happening, anyway we still have lots of bottles all around the place from last year.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I don't like the homemade cider so that's all Lovely Hubby's, I stick to the Strongbow ;-)
Not Strongbow!!!! any cider but that!
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