Making Cider

At the back of our new garden we have 6 apple trees. We're unsure what they all are. Some could be eating apples and some are definitely cookers. 

Given that we've already eaten several crumbles and pies, we thought we'd turn our hand to cider. 

Several years ago we got a lot of beer and wine making kit from Freecycle. One item we'd never used was a fruit 'crusher' which attaches to a drill. After a couple of goes with the battery operated drill, I upped it to the mains drill and had much greater success. 

We'd brought the press online just after w moved in as a present to ourselves, hoping that we'd get round to cider this year and now we were ready to use it.

In all we got two demijohns (2 gallons) of juice.

Dutifully following the recipe in the book I'd got with all the free kit, we then sterilised the juice with a couple of Campden tablets in each. Unfortunately, I then read a few blogs which advocated using the natural yeasts on the apples to ferment them - the ones I'd just killed with the Campden tablets.

After two days, I added yeast as he recipe said. Unfortunately two days later I had no fermentation - either the Campden tablets hadn't dispersed or the yeast was dead. I made up a little yeast test on the windowsill and found that they yeast was indeed dead.

So now I'm at the stage where, a week on, I'm waiting for my new yeast to arrive in the post, and I've popped another Campden tablet in to stop it from spoiling while I wait.

The plan for mulled cider at Christmas may turn into New Year, or even Easter at this rate!