We are lucky to have an apple tree in our garden, however when we moved into our house the previous occupants had knocked copper nails into the trunk and grown a huge amount of ivy all over the tree making it look a bit spooky, but worse was chocking the tree, also it created lots of mould and made the apples very small and very scabbing. We cleared the ivy which took ages and pulled the nails out and waited a few years, watching and waiting hoping the tree would revive and it did slowly each year the apples getting better. Last year we got enough good looking apples to make some cider it was a little sour but still nice considering the apples were still in recovery. This year we had a bumper crop of lovely looking apples that were crisp juicy and sweet.
After picking and washing, we got on with chopping and juicing the apples. Seeing as we don't have an apple press we used our Champion juicer, which is a real work horse as you can see from the picture. The big saucepan is full of juice and the flat pan is the fibre part of the apple, good for the compost.
We let the juice sit for 24 hours to let the sediment settle, then syphoned and strained it into a demijohn. Ali added 1tsp of yeast per gallon of liquid, enough sugar until his hydrometer said it was good and boozy and some other bits as he sees fit and leave it to brew till it stops popping then filter and syphon again into bottles to sit for a few weeks before enjoying, not bad getting free alcohol from your back garden.
No comments:
Post a Comment