Started 2nd September 2013
Will fill this in later
Tuesday 3 September 2013
Sunday 1 September 2013
Cider
Started 30th August 2013
Our first windfall apples have dropped. It's been a very good year for apples - our tree is well loaded, hundreds more on the tree. I picked a couple of buckets of apples from a neighbour. A friend has a big bag of apples for us too.
I've decided to make a gallon of cider. It's not my usual drink, but as we have the apples and a fruit press, we've got to try it.
Our fruit press is quite small, so we can only press a small number of apples at a time. Windfall apples get bruised and damaged and won't keep, so I've used these first. The other apples are in temporary storage in apple boxes scrounged from a supermarket - they can stay there until I have time to press them.
We roughly chopped the apples and dropped them into a food processor, blitzing them into almost a puree. We first tried "finely chopped", but found that puree releases more juice. However, the juice from a puree also contains a lot of very small apple particles - the liquid is very dark, like gravy. Half a bucket of (small) apples gave us about 2 pints of liquid.
It takes time to chop, puree and press the apples, so we decided to get the cider going with just that 2 pints and to add more apple juice later. We poured the liquid into a demijohn and added some of my yeast starter liquid, then fitted a bung and airlock. By the following morning there was a thick froth on top of the liquid and the airlock was bubbling away. If we'd filled the demijohn before starting the ferment, it would have bubbled out and made a real mess!
I'll add more info later
Our first windfall apples have dropped. It's been a very good year for apples - our tree is well loaded, hundreds more on the tree. I picked a couple of buckets of apples from a neighbour. A friend has a big bag of apples for us too.
I've decided to make a gallon of cider. It's not my usual drink, but as we have the apples and a fruit press, we've got to try it.
Our fruit press is quite small, so we can only press a small number of apples at a time. Windfall apples get bruised and damaged and won't keep, so I've used these first. The other apples are in temporary storage in apple boxes scrounged from a supermarket - they can stay there until I have time to press them.
We roughly chopped the apples and dropped them into a food processor, blitzing them into almost a puree. We first tried "finely chopped", but found that puree releases more juice. However, the juice from a puree also contains a lot of very small apple particles - the liquid is very dark, like gravy. Half a bucket of (small) apples gave us about 2 pints of liquid.
It takes time to chop, puree and press the apples, so we decided to get the cider going with just that 2 pints and to add more apple juice later. We poured the liquid into a demijohn and added some of my yeast starter liquid, then fitted a bung and airlock. By the following morning there was a thick froth on top of the liquid and the airlock was bubbling away. If we'd filled the demijohn before starting the ferment, it would have bubbled out and made a real mess!
I'll add more info later
Blackberry Wine 5
Started 25th August 2013
With a hot summer, the blackberries are out in force - but not everywhere. Here is suburbia it's often difficult to find them locally as people hack down their "unsightly" brambles. We took a trip to the common over the road, only to find a church group had raided all the blackberries for a jam making session. We have to get up early to get berries before they do!
Luckily the brambles have grown well in our garden and in the mother-in-law's garden. I'm hoping for a haul of about 50lbs this year - if I didn't have so much (proper job) work to do, I reckon I could easily rake in 100lbs.
My plan is to make the blackberry wine in 4 gallon batches, one after the other. All the blackberries will spend "some" time in the freezers, which are rapidly filling up with fruit and veggies.
I don't want to be on the laptop when there are more blackberries to pick, so will finish this later.
With a hot summer, the blackberries are out in force - but not everywhere. Here is suburbia it's often difficult to find them locally as people hack down their "unsightly" brambles. We took a trip to the common over the road, only to find a church group had raided all the blackberries for a jam making session. We have to get up early to get berries before they do!
Luckily the brambles have grown well in our garden and in the mother-in-law's garden. I'm hoping for a haul of about 50lbs this year - if I didn't have so much (proper job) work to do, I reckon I could easily rake in 100lbs.
My plan is to make the blackberry wine in 4 gallon batches, one after the other. All the blackberries will spend "some" time in the freezers, which are rapidly filling up with fruit and veggies.
I don't want to be on the laptop when there are more blackberries to pick, so will finish this later.
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