Throughout the year we’ve been experimenting with a lot of DIY booze making. We’ve made a lot of wine; lemon, orange, parsnip, strawberry, peach, bramble, orange & lemon. We also attempted dandelion wine but the dandelion heads went unfortunately mouldy before we could add the yeast. We also made a bitter from a kit and then tried making a porter from scratch which turned out well. I also brought a berry flavoured DIY kit cider but this was disappointing.
As the apples have been ripening, it seemed only fitting that we turn them onto cider. We have seven apple trees to plunder and spent an afternoon ridding them of their fruits. Plucking them from the branches and scavenging any fallen ones which hadn’t succumbed to pests. Max’s newly built scratter worked wonders and reduced all the apples (large and small) to manageable juicy pulp. The apple debris was swiftly filling the tub and the juice was already up to the half way mark. We excitedly fired in more apples into the rotating wooden shredder which gobbled them with ease and spat out the gold needed to make cider.
Once the tub was full we began to feed it into cider press, squashing it down and flattening it with the compressing blocks. Then we would apply pressure by turning handle and voila – fresh apple juice spilt forth and cascaded into the plastic tub.
We filled one tub and are leaving it to ferment with it’s own natural yeast. We will another and added some specific cider yeast. With the rest of the stuff we filled two dozen bottles and pasteurised it to make apple juice 🙂
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