 |
| In the US this would be called hard cider. |
I tried it on Friday night and it was good, a really pleasing taste. Not to sharp or strong. I could quite happily drink this for some time! A little cloudy but it's still quite young. I'll have a proper go at drinking some soon with friends and I'll tell you the true affects then - I doubt it will take too much!
It's hardened my resolve to become self sufficient in alcohol in the near future. If my apple tree grafts take then next winter I hope to plant around 35 cider apple trees to give me a future supple of this fermented juice. Of course then I'll have to build a press and have somewhere to store it, but I'm sure these things will come with time.
Who else is planning to be self sufficient in alcohol or has already achieved it? What drink would you most like to be able to make (I'd like to try making beer as well at some point and I've made many wines in the past)?
Hubby makes a fair amount of wines and Elderflower Champange that is so easy to make and you dont need a lot of equipment.
ReplyDeleteIts Dandelion wine time at the moment if made now its ready for drinking christmas day.
He makes a lot of larger and bitter as well although buys the bases in, when we get moved and he has more space he wants to have a go at making mead.
Mead's so simple, all you need is enough space to put a demi-john.
DeleteUnless you intend to make industrial quantities of course.
~I've made Elderflower wine before and my sister and I got quite drunk on a bottle of it without realising how strong it was - it tasted like pop! Surely if you pick dandelions then you'd wet the bed.
DeleteEnjoy it while you are young 'cos when you are old and decrepit like us and you have to take tablets then enjoying a nice glass of something is a rare thing!
ReplyDeleteI don't ever get drunk any more. I just have a couple of glasses on either a Friday or a Saturday night. It doesn't stop my little girl pointing at beer or cider in the supermarket and saying "dadda juice" which must make everyone think I'm an alcoholic!
DeleteIt makes my previous meagre efforts seem quite tame Kev. Followed your links and really enjoyed your process, definitely given me food for thought.
ReplyDeleteThose weren't my trees though nor any of my equipment. I need a few more years to get up to that sort of production!
DeleteLol....I can't stop the nurse in me
ReplyDeleteIt looks like urine!
Well if you peed this out then I'd be first there with a glass...
DeleteI envy you! ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I could send you a bottle over when my trees are big enough!
DeleteCider's about the only thing I don't make, I tried "turbo cider" a couple of times, but that's not from scratch.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing what can be made at home, I usually make a few wines every year from free hedgerow or very cheap glut produce, most drinkable, and some excellent, must admit to a few failures though.
The modern beer kits are very good, and so simple, our local (soft) water makes excellent stouts, milds and ales, but not so good lagers, seemingly it needs a harder water.
Mead, that ancient drink is also very simple to make, and cheap if you have a source of free honey
It's even possible to distill spirits, very easy as well according to the "easystill" or "smartstill" sires, but sadly illegal in some countries. If you do this, once you've produced the basic strong spirit, there's so many essences to make just about any type of spirit or liqueur.
As with most projects, proper equipment is worth investing in, and once owned, will last almost indefinitely.
I made some turbo wine before now but we never drank much of it because it didn't taste quite right!
Deletedistilling it illegal in the UK - I've got a book on it somewhere and I don't like the sound of what it can do to you if you get it wrong (blindness for starters). I've never like spirits much anyway.
Mead will be one for when I've got some bees as I don;t really like honey!
I've loads of demijohns but I'm going to try and pick up more at the car boots this summer.
I could deal with a little cloudy. You are on the right track, I was wondering what you were going to do with all of those fruit trees.
ReplyDeleteI've gto big plans for all those trees! Well some of them at least!
DeleteCumbrian gave me an excellent recipe for Mead and Jeddah gin, Kev. I have blogged about them before. I have had lots of attempts at making bitter but I never get it right or I buy kits that are far too cheap. So it will be back on the Newcastle Brown Ale tins tonight. You miss English ale living in Ireland.
ReplyDeleteI made some beer once from a kit and it exploded! a story for another time I think but it was quite dangerous, my fault completely though!
DeleteAle in winter, cider in summer I always think!
We make dandelion wine, but it is very time consuming. We made apple wine for the first time last year,we'll have our first tasting next month.
ReplyDeleteJane x
I've made loads of different wines back in the days when I was a bit younger and liked to drink a bit more. from oak leaf through to wheat wine. I might put a few recipes on here at some point. Apple wine is meant to be nice - let me know how you get on.
DeleteWe used to live in a big old farm house with apple trees in the yard. We made cider several times. I love cider, but never seem to have the time to do it anymore. I've tried several bottled types in the store but it seems to me that people brew it for the alcohol content and not for the taste. I really don't like the dry yeasty taste of commercially brewed cider.
ReplyDeleteI made mine from 80 percent sweet apples and 20 percent hard little cider apples. It made a nice sweat cider which with just a mild fermentation had a little bite and a little pressure in the mason jar when you unscrewed the lid.
I'd like to do it again and actually control the fermentation. Then bottle it for winter. I doubt the wind will ever blow me as good a yeast as I had at the old house so I suppose I will buy yeast.
Anyway, I start to ramble on other folk's blogs. Enjoyed this post. Gave me something to think about.
The yeast is normally on the bloom of the apple skin so you should have no problem getting some wild yeast to make your cider with. To get the taste right some people bottle single variety ciders and then blend them with each other to get the right tastes. this means that if you get it wrong you haven't wrecked the whole batch!
DeleteWe have some good commercial ciders over here which makes brewing your own even harder as it has to match up. I'm in proper cider growing country!
We make gallons of wine each year and of course damson and sloe gin. I grow lots of "Fuggle" hops, though I have never made beer, even tho' D. is a real ale drinker. A local micro brewery has asked if we can produce enough fuggle for them to make a batch of beer and I have absolutely no idea. They will have to wait until the hops are ready methinks!
ReplyDeleteI may well have enough apples this year to make cider..looking good so far. Yours looks good.
My Lovely Hubby makes his own cider ..... I prefer Strongbow ... I know .... I'm a bad self sufficient person ;-)
ReplyDelete