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2024 Merrybower Homestead

2024 Cider Making

October 28, 2024/0 Comments/in Cider, Orchard /by Dunk

Apple Picking

Apples Galore!

Sitting in the Dabinett tree

It’s that time of year! The leaves are starting to fall in the orchard, the sun sits lower in the sky, for a shorter length of time.

And the apples are starting to drop. Just one pressing is planned this year, life is so busy in other regards, but it was great to pull all the kit out, having not pressed anything last year!

Finally three of the cider trees planted years ago are finally fruiting enough to make use of their bounty, so Dabinett and Dunkerton Late were added to the mix. Tremlett’s Bitter was also picked, but in the end it didn’t have the bite I thought the mix needed – Dabinett pipped it in that regard. All are sweet, but the Dunkerton Late (picked because it’s sweet, and it has ‘Dunk’ in the name) is just pure sweet – no bitter, no acid, just an apple-shaped blob of sugar! As usual, they were picked and left to ‘sweat’ for a couple of weeks, to give the starch time to break down.

All the gear, a modicum of idea

This year I was joined by Sasha, the new member of the family who stumbled across us earlier this year. I’m still not sure she was much help, but she assures me that motivational presence is a thing.

10 litres of juice-to-be

Set up time is the biggest job I feel – cleaning equipment, arranging things in the right place so you can access each stage without going arse over proverbial in the rush to finish the job. The sun was out, indeed it was a glorious day to sit and make apple juice.

My kind of shopping list

The great thing about having a few years of doing this under the (ever expanding) belt, is that the process becomes less daunting. Outside it’s making sure the washing buckets are arranged in a neat line, the press has a wheel barrow next to it for the pomace, the scratter’s electric supply is far enough away from the liquids! Inside the house sits the notepad for the pH and Specific Gravity readings – useful for this batch, but also useful for ongoing records. I keep a spreadsheet for both readings by apple type, which makes it easier to plan a press in the future, for that ever elusive set of perfect readings.

To help with that process, I don’t press different apple types at the same time – each type is pressed individually. It also helps avoid a situation where one apple type is just unsuitable for pressing; yes, I’m looking at you Yellow Ingestrie. I’ll never forget being covered in small pieces of yellow apple flesh as it literally bursts through the holes in the press, in every direction.

Final Mix

Variety	Attribute	Percentage Mix	Specific Gravity	pH
Old Merrybower	Sharp	17%	1.050	2.8
Newton Wonder	Sharp	18%	1.045	2.8
Dabinett	Bittersweet	12%	1.052	4.0
Dunkerton Late	Sweet	15%	1.056	4.0
Coul Blush	Sweet	38%	1.058	3.6

Old Merrybower is a variety we know nothing about, other than the tree we have has been grown from an old (150-200 years old) full standard tree that blew down in a storm about ten years ago at Merrybower Farm next door. As luck would have it, I had just learned to graft fruit trees, so I nipped out to the falled tree, one of the last survivors of the old farm orchard, and took several scions from it. The farm has a replacement tree, and we have one. It’s an acid cooker, but not as sharp as a Bramley (what is?!). Great for adding acid to the mix, for preserving properties.

Newton Wonder is our local apple variety, from Kings Newton, and is another sub-acid cooking apple that is quite edible raw later in the season. I would say it has a more complex flavour profile than the Old Merrybower, but again, acid enough as a preserver.

Dabinett is a classic cider apple – great for pressing, and is termed a ‘bittersweet’. It’s not rocket science to figure out that it’s sweet, but also has that bitter quality that gives cider it’s ‘body’ and depth of flavour. I was hoping to use Tremlett’s Bitter in the mix as well, but it didn’t quite have the body I wanted.

Dunkerton Late was earlier than I expected, but is just pure sugar in apple form. Not even particularly apple-y if I’m honest. It’s the first time I’ve used it – it was planted in the hope that it could provide sugar for all of the later cropping acid apples, as sweet dessert apples, other than russets, seem to be early/mid season croppers.

Coul Blush – I have high hopes for this one. It doesn’t have quite the depth and flavour complexity of, say, Ellison’s Orange, but it definitely got better the longer it stayed on the tree, and is quite sweet, for that all important sugar to alcohol conversion needed to kill unwanted bugs off. It’s a variety that’s used as one of the botanicals in Caorunn gin, so there must be something about its flavour that others have also seen! These were the last from the tree, so I imagine at their peak for cider-making purposes. We’ll soon see!

Juice Analysis

Honestly, the analysis can be taken with a pinch of salt – I had an educated guess at the tannin and malic acid content of Old Merrybower, Coul Blush and Dunkerton Late, as I could find no data on them. As it stands, it looks to be a slightly acidic, less full-bodied cider than the ‘ideal’, but my last full-on tannin cider was too bitter for my taste, so I’m not distraught. And 7.6% is by no means the weakest I’ve made before, so no complaints there!

	Sugar	Malic Acid	Tannin
Ideal Cider Value	15.00%	0.40%	0.20%
Cider 1	13.87%	0.46%	0.09%

2021 Merrybower Homestead

Wild Flower Experiment #1 – Killing the Grass

April 25, 2021/0 Comments/in Acre Field, Orchard, Wild Flowers /by Dunk

Getting rid of the rye grass and clover

Welcome to our wild flower experiment, a trial looking to introduce wild flowers to the orchard. There are several reasons for this – one is to encourage pollinators to the orchard, and another is to cut down on the amount of grass cutting needed.

When we sowed grass, before the orchard was started, we thought we might graze it with sheep or geese. Local advice was to use a permanent rye grass lay, essentially a mix of rye grass, timothy grass and white clover. As many know, and we have come to learn, rye grass grows quickly. Really quickly. Which is great if you have animals that like eating a lot of it. As we primarily run chickens under the orchard trees, for their ability to eat a lot of ground-living grubs and bugs and their manure, grass is a secondary food for them. The geese are much better at it, but they’re next to useless as bug control. The result is that we end up mowing grass, which is a waste of resources and time.

It’s been an idea for a while to add more flowers to the acre, and after much deliberation we’ve decided to run a small wild flower experiment, adding a 3m wide ribbon of wild flowers that the orchard trees will sit inside. The immediate base of each trunk will be kept clear naturally by the chickens, it seems to be a favourite hangout for them which they then scratch around in. The first stage is to test the theory on just one row of trees in the half standard quarter acre orchard (or, as we call it, the ‘big’ orchard, because the trees are larger than those in the bush quarter acre orchard (the ‘little’ orchard).

We’ve bought wild flower mixes before from Charles Flower, of Charles Flower Wildflowers. He very kindly has given us some advice after chatting through our plan, and advised us that rye grass is awfully hard to get rid of once you have it. The initial idea was to rotovate to a shallow depth continually over the growing season, but with the space to rotovate, we’ve decided to lay weed suppressant fabric where we will eventually sow the wild flower seed. We’ve used two layers of 100gsm fabric, to hopefully cut the majority of light out. I know one layer will do it as we used it last year over the space of two months to gain more room to grow vegetables. Hopefully three months of two layers will do much the same, only better, and still leave us August in which to rotovate and hopefully nobble as much new seedlings as possible before sowing in September. So far we only have enough fabric to the cover the area you see here, but more is ordered, actually enough to cover two tree rows, but I’ll have to see if we can resist the temptation to do that before knowing if it works.

Hopefully the end result will be more nectar for the insects needing it, and a more interesting habitat for the chickens. As far as wildlife is concerned, it could be a haven for the voles we have here (and therefore the various owls), and the longer vegetation will hopefully keep the soil moist for longer, encouraging insects that the resident hedgehogs will also happily feast upon.

2018 Cider No.2 Pressing Day

October 7, 2018/0 Comments/in Cider, Orchard /by Dunk

The Picking

It all started out with a sunny day, as it usually does. Unless it’s raining, which hasn’t been that often this year, really.

Cider No.2 has typically been a “pick the apples mid October, press them end of October” thing. This year the condensed but intense growing period in the summer has forced the fruit to ripen quicker than usual.

Add to that the fact we have numerous wasps this year and more hornets than we’ve ever seen, the poor old apples have been hard hit. And the many insect bites have soon rotted the apples – a bad year for brown rot too. So all in all, I’m impressed with how much fruit we actually ended up with.

As we picked the various varieties to add to the mix for 2018 Cider No.2, Mikey the Marsh Daisy “stood guard”, which roughly translates to Mikey “stood guard whilst his ladies helped themselves to the freshly picked apples”. Plenty to go around though.

The Tremlett’s Bitter looked particularly gorgeous – the red of the apples is so intense (no filters were used on that photograph!), and I can’t wait to see the impact they have on the cider. It’s our first year of a really good crop off this tree, which is awfully exciting.

Once they were all picked, several hours later, on to the little grey Fergie and pootled back to the house where they’ll sit outside for a week or two sweating. This is where the starch in the apples turns to sugar, which in turn will convert to the alcohol which gives cider its shelf-life and storage qualities.

The Pressing

Rob popped around again to help press whilst Suz took on the animal cleaning, with Jay’s help. This time round we had a much better system in place. The first wash and cutting table. where Rob sat most of the time, was sat in the full sun, which helped. Then the second and third wash buckets were placed between the table and the mill, where I could sit. The press was next to the mill, but faced a direction where we could empty the bladder after each pressing on to the drive gravel. The barrow for the pomace was a distance from the mill so as not to infect anything in the clean area.

It took us about five hours to process 200kg of apples, which in turn gave us 100 litres of juice. The bottle neck is definitely the press now – the mill could easily feed two 40 litre hydropresses – one being filled whilst the other is pressing. It was also a long process as we pressed each apple variety separately, and this mix had a lot of varieties. This was done so the pH and Specific Gravity could be measured for each type of juice, to add to the records for the orchard. Also we could add the right ratio of juice to each of the fermenting containers (70l barrel, 25l bin 4.5l demijohn) . I think in a 7.5 hour day , with two presses, we could press at least 600kgs of fruit for this kind of fiddly mix of nine varieties.

The Original Pressing Plan

The original plan was something like this:

Variety	Attribute	Percentage Mix
Slack ma Girdle	Sweet	14%
Catshead	Sharp	14%
Tremlett's Bitter	Bittersweet	14%
Wyken Pippin	Sweet	14%
Rosemary Russet	Sweetsharp	7%
Marriage Maker	Sweet	14%
Bramley	Sharp	9%
Barnack Orange	Sweet	7%
Ashmeads Kernel	Sweet	7%

The final plan, in liquid percentages was this:

Variety	Attribute	Percentage Mix
Warners King	Sharp	4.87%
Catshead	Sharp	9.74%
Tremlett's Bitter	Bittersweet	24.35%
Wyken Pippin	Sweet	12.35%
Sanspareil	Sweet	14.6%
Marriage Maker	Sweet	4.87%
Bramley	Sharp	9.74%
Barnack Orange	Sweet	9.74%
Ashmeads Kernel	Sweet	9.74%

Despite most of the fruit in the orchard ripening early, Rosemary Russet was sticking to her guns and remained unripe. The Slack ma Girdle also had ripened too early and we lost a lot of the crop to insect damage, so the sharpness missing from the russet was replaced by some Warners King, and the sweetness missing from the Slack ma Girdle was replaced by Sanspareil.

The pH and Specific Gravity values for each juice were like this at the end.

	Specific Gravity	pH
Warners King	1.050	2.8
Catshead	1.058	2.8
Tremletts Bitter	1.056	3.6
Wyken Pippin	1.065	3.2
Sanspareil	1.046	3.2
Marriage Maker	1.062	3.2
Bramley	1.052	2.8
Barnack Orange	1.062	3.2
Ashmeads Kernel	1.070	3.0

Whilst the 70 litre blue barrel and test demijohn had the above mixes, the 25 litre fermenting bin had a slightly different mix as there wasn’t as much of some of the juice types as we’d hoped. To that we added 2.5kg each of Allington Pippin, Ribston Pippin and Newton Wonder. The final reading for both types are as follows:

70 litre blue barrel and test demijohn – pH 3 .0 – SG 1.057

30 litre fermenting bin – pH 3.2 – SG 1.059

Cider No.1 Apple Pressing Day

September 22, 2018/0 Comments/in Cider, Orchard /by Dunk

Last Year’s Cider No.1

This time last year we picked around 30kg of fruit, and considered it a horde worthy of Crown intervention. From that we ended with 30 litres of apple juice, which turned into 50 pints of lovely cider about eight months later. It took about five hours to make that, with the hand-crank scratter and beam press we’d hired from Whistlewood Common (Melbourne Transition group), but it was worth the effort.

Knowing that this year would be bigger, in terms of fruit production, I’d been sizing up which route to go in terms of buying in kit, and talking endlessly (ask Suz…) about the various options which would see us enter apple heaven, floating on gossamer wings no doubt.

This Year – the Kit

Vares Fruit Shark Megalodon

The first piece of kit to arrive was the scratter – wonderfully called the “Fruit Shark Megalodon”, produced by a company named Vares. It was this or the Speidel Mill, both powerful, but I liked the fact this is made from stainless steel rather than plastic. The fact Speidel offer replacement plastic housing makes me wonder.

40 litre Hydropress

The second piece of kit to arrive was a 40 litre hydropress. I love the fact that it’s powered by the water mains, water being pumped into a large bladder balloon in the centre which pushed the milled fruit outwards and against the sides of the cylinder, which as holes to allow the juice to run down the outside and collect in the gutter. It’s a beautifully simple system and in practise it was wonderful!

Apple Haul No.1

This photograph shows it with the lid off, the milled fruit having been squeezed down the sides between the bladder in the centre and the outer cylinder walls, and then covered with the cloth. The idea of a 40 litre hydropress rather than a larger 90 litre, for example, is that one person can easily manage the 40 litre, in terms of emptying, carrying and so forth. Also, if production increases then adding another 40 litre press to the set up means one can be pressing whilst the other is being emptied, ridding yourself of a potential bottleneck. The Megalodon would easily produce enough milled fruit for two presses – we found the bottle neck in this set up was us not preparing the fruit quick enough, and the press.

This Year – the Fruit

Apple Haul No.2

As mentioned, last year we managed to scrounge 30kg of fruit for our first pressing of the year. This year we thankfully had our little grey Fergie tractor to help us out as we filled about seventeen Eurocrates and hauled up 260kg of fruit! Next year I imagine it will be even more!

Rob busy apple sorting

Our good friend Rob offered to help pick the fruit, and then process it (cut bits out and provide banter). I was so thankful when I saw the amount of work, but two of us, powered by bacon butties, tea and apple juice, managed to process the fruit in about six hours.

That said, about two hours were wasted by faffing with the new kit and a few mishaps – apparently blue barrels (we’ve moved on to 60 litre barrels to ferment in now) are quite slippy when covered in apple juice. Luckily I didn’t spill the entire contents when one slipped out of my hands! And why was I trying to pick up a half-full barrel? Because it turns out that a washer on the inside of the tap doesn’t keep the juice inside the barrel, so we needed to retap the barrels. Next time will be much smoother, I promise 😀

Dunk & Rob loading the Fergie

Finally, the fruit we used for Cider No.1.

The original intention can seen in the post Cider Plans 2018. However, as all good plans of mice and men, it unraveled as the freak weather we’ve had this year caused some fruit to drop, and others to ripen early.

Wocester Pearmain was or main issue – we just didn’t have enough. But on the plus side Tremlett’s Bitter stepped up to the mark and ripened early, so we managed to sneak some of those in, something we’ve never been able to manage in a first press of the year.

The original plan was like this (in weight of fruit, as we assume it all presses about the same – which it doesn’t):

Variety	Attribute	Percentage Mix
Yellow Ingestrie	Sweet	30%
Worcester Pearmain	Sweet	20%
Rival	Subacid	20%
Lord Derby	Acid	20%
Queen	Subacid	10%

The final plan was this, in liquid percentages:

Variety	Attribute	Percentage Mix
Rival	Subacid	33.5%
Lord Derby	Acid	32.5%
Yellow Ingestrie	Sweet	11%
Worcester Pearmain	Sweet	10.5%
Tremlett's Bitter	Sweet Sharp	10%
Queen	Subacid	2.5%

Again, notes were taken for the Specific Gravity and pH of most of the juices.

	Specific Gravity	pH
Rival	1.050	3.2
Lord Derby	1.048	2.8
Worcester Pearmain	1.045	3.2
Queen	1.051	2.8

The final overall Specific Gravity was 1.050 and the pH was 3.2. To gain a better idea of the final alcohol level, I also mixed up a demijohn at the same ratios as above, and we’re forcing that to ferment quicker than the main barrels in the garage, This way we can see where the fermenting stops, as cider can often be down as low as 0.997 rather than the 1.000 people expect. It will also help me to know when to bottle to gain natural carbonation in-bottle, without going over the allowed 3bar pressure.

Oh, and the final amount of juice? An amazing 125 litres 😀

Cider No.3 Pressing & Cider No.2 Update

November 26, 2017/0 Comments/in Cider, Orchard /by Dunk

Cider No.3 Pressing

The final cider making day of the year, and what a day was forecast! A height of five degrees Celsius, with rain from mid-day to mid-afternoon – lovely! The thermals were extracted from the rear of the wardrobe where they’d lain since last winter, and with four layers on I ventured out, double-socked and ready for anything. A pub brolly, kindly donated by our friend Nev, cast its welcome shadow over the scratter and chopping board, with my little gnome seat central to the whole operation. I felt I was about to perform a Phil Collins’ drum solo, with more apples and less drums. Everything bar the press was within arm’s reach of the command centre gnome seat; baskets of apples, two cleaning tubs filled with water (a double-dip operation to remove large dirt, then finer grime), a second gnome seat to balance the chopping board on, the scratter, a cast-off’s bin for disgarded apple bits cut out, and a barrow for the pomace. Maybe next year I’ll do it wearing a gorilla costume.

I’m not complaining though, whilst I had the luxury of sitting/stooping, Suz and Bunny were down the patch, cleaning out the chooks, whilst Smiler was duck and goose cleaning!

I’d only got a 25 litre fermentation bin to fill this time, so not too bad. Realising that I wouldn’t be able to use all of the apples at my disposal, I started with the main varieties I was interested in using. I should say at this stage that I’m really excited about this cider – it uses our local Newton Wonder apple and a Normandy bittersweet that is finally giving a good crop.

I tend to work on the rough visual amount of apples to figure out the eventual mix, which is a rather ambiguous method as each variety gives a differing amount of juice for its weight and size. Therefore, for the first time, I actually measured the amount of juice going into the mix! I need to be careful as it’s getting a bit too accurate for my liking 🙂 The eventual mix was something like this:

Apple Variety	Specific Gravity	pH	Volume (Litres)	% of Mix	Crates
Newton Wonder	1.056	~3.2	10.0	41%	1.2
Medaille d'Or	1.066	~3.2	5.5	22.5%	1.0
Forfar	1.062	3.2	4.0	16.5%	0.5
Rosemary Russet	1.060	~3.2	3.5	14%	0.5
Dabinett	1.054	4.2	1.5	6%	0.2

Based on my basic knowledge of the varieties, the sweet,sharp and bitter mix ended up something like:

21% acid
65% sweet
14% bitter

(This is assuming Newton Wonder is subacid – 50/50 acid/sweet, Medaille d’Or is bittersweet – 50/50 bitter/sweet, Forfar is 100% sweet, Rosemary Russet is 100% sweet and Dabinett is bittersweet – 50/50 bitter/sweet).

The final SG reading was 1.060 and the pH was 3.2 – both respectable!

As you can see, we’ve invested in some proper crates! Up until now it has been a mix of the hand cart and donated mushroom boxes. As the quantities are getting larger, we’ve had to step up to euro containers, which are perfect for lugging food items around in, and if you buy used you can get a real bargain! Again, for the record, I’ve also added how full a crate was, so in future I can work out the volume of liquid to expect from a given number of apples – this was a good run for working these varieties out as there was very little spoilage and therefore wastage.

I’ll add a page in the future with all this data in, and also save it to the main fruit spreadsheet, which desperately needs updating with the one on my computer!

Cider No.2 Update

The juice sat for around two weeks in the unheated garage, and finally started to ferment, nice and steadily. Today the specific gravity is 1.020, and it’s beginning to clear nicely. I’m going to rack it as soon as it gets to 1.015, and then bottle it at 1.005, for a natural carbonation as it matures in the bottle. By next summer it should be done!

Cider Plans for the Future!

September 20, 2017/0 Comments/in Cider, Orchard /by Dunk

As I mentioned in my cider plans and thoughts post last Sunday, we have gaps in our tree rows where cherries and plums failed to grow, and we have gaps in our apple varieties when it comes to cider making. I don’t like gaps, they make things look mussed up and untidy.

Cider No.1 – October Pressing

Putting together Cider No.1 this year, our October pressing, it was painfully clear that we are missing early bitter varieties to give a cider that elusive body. We have one, Tremlett’s Bitter, and as its blossom this year was nobbled by a late frost, we had no fall back. To that end, we’ve ordered an Ellis Bitter and a Major, both bittersweet trees, to complement the plethora of cookers and eaters we have, early in the season.

Bear in mind that there are a few thoughts on a good balance between the three main qualities you need from an apple to be used for cider – sugar, acid and tannin.

For cider apples, a 50% bittersweet and 50% bittersharp is a figure bandied around. Others mention 50% sweet, 35% sharp and 15% bitter. Also bear in mind that cookers tend to be acid (sharp), or subacid (weak in acid) if they also make good eaters – like the Peasgood’s Nonsuch, eaters tend to be high in sugars (sweet), and tannins (bitter) are the rarest in that they make your mouth pucker when you eat them, so you tend to need cider apples for that, or some crab apples.

My initial deliberations for the potential apples for Cider No.1, from our orchard, are:

Lord Derby – acid
Warner’s King – acid
Slack ma Girdle – sweet
Yellow Ingestrie – sweet
Ellison’s Orange – sweet
Ellis Bitter – bittersweet
Major – bittersweet

Until the Ellis Bitter and Major start producing well, in 5-6 years, we’ll have to rely on the Tremlett’s Bitter, or if that fails, just make the Kentish style cider with only cookers and eaters. With a bit of fizz this may well be a nice light refreshing cider.

Cider No.2 – November Pressing

This month we have quite a few bittersweet and sweet apples, but nothing much in the way of decent acidic apples. We do have the Bramley, but we have so many sweets and bittersweets that we could possible make two different ciders in November, or press quite a lot of one mix. So to add to the acid quota, we’ll plant a Brown’s and another Bramley. The potential list of candidates looks a bit like this:

Bramley’s Seedling – acid
Browns – sharp (acid)
Yarlington Mill – bittersweet
Tremlett’s Bitter – bittersweet
Dabinett – bittersweet
Medaille d’Or – bittersweet
Marriage Maker – sweet
Barnack’s Orange – sweet
Ashmead’s Kernel – sweet

Cider No.3 – December Pressing

I don’t know the reason, but this pressing is my favourite. Maybe it’s something to do with the impending winter, when the gatherer instinct is at its height. Or maybe it’s the satisfaction of having pressed the last of the apples, a sense of closing the year’s last chapter before settling down to cosy up in front of the stove and the winter ahead. I do know it’s great to wake up to a foggy, chilly and damp day, knowing that some manual work will soon get the blood pumping.

To the matter in hand. This month is the month of cookers and the hardiest of eaters, the russets. However, we do lack the pure sweets, and this is where another specialist sweet late season cider apple will be planted – the Dunkerton. The list of potentials looks like this:

Newton Wonder – subacid
Egremont Russet – sweet acid
Rosemary Russet – sweet acid
Dunkerton – sweet
Vilberie – bittersweet

Whilst we have no pure acid apples, I’m hoping that the combination of subacid Newton Wonders and relatively acidic russets will be enough. I’m terribly excited about this cider because:

it uses our local apple, the Newton Wonder
it uses the Vilberie, which I learned to love when we visited Normandy two years ago
there’s an apple with my name in it!
my rudimentary calculations shows a certain mix of the above apples gives a sweetness/acidic/tannin result near to that which is regarded as the ideal mix for the perfect cider.

Of course, it’ll probably fall on its face, but it’ll be fun trying!

Pendragon Apple – Red Fleshed Fruit

September 19, 2017/2 Comments/in Orchard /by Dunk

Pendragon Apple

Our Pendragon tree has borne its first Pendragon apple – in fact, four dark red fruit with amazing coloured flesh. The taste is okay – it’s fair to say these are grown for their ornamental looks first and foremost, but they’re not a bad eating apple. Maybe one day we can squeeze some pink apple juice!

I learned to graft with this tree, the scion taken from Nigel Deacon’s tree at Sutton Elms. Nigel was the chap who kindly taught me to graft, and I keep meaning to ask him if he’ll teach me other methods – he’s an absolute whizz with the genetics of trees, and specialises in collecting red flesh varieties and varieties native to Leicestershire.

Hopefully we’ll be using this next year!

Cider Thoughts 2017 & Cider No.1

September 17, 2017/0 Comments/in Cider, Orchard, Preserving /by Dunk

As the orchard matures, new trees become available and the choice can be overwhelming when it comes to choosing which to press together. Liking to keep things simple, as life can be complicated enough as is, I prefer the idea of pressing apples in batches – those that have ripened and been picked at the same time. This is how we’ve pretty much done it since day 1, and at our scale with one tree of each variety, it makes sense from a logistics point of view; no hassle with multiple single varieties all bubbling away only to be blended down the line when they’re all ready.

So every year I sit down, assess which trees are currently ready for picking and pressing, which category they fall into with respects cider making – sweets (for the sugar content), sharps (for the acid content) and bitters (for the tannin content), and how much we then need to pick from each. As is usual in the early season, we have plenty of sweet dessert apples, and the early cookers, like Queen and Peasgood’s Nonsuch, tend to be subacid, so not particularly acid. The term ‘subacid’ seems to be an old left-over description for the qualities of an apple variety that is neither particularly sweet or particularly tart – a dual-purpose for want of a better word. The Peasgood’s Nonsuch is classed as a cooking apple, but is not a bad eater in my opinion, although you’d be hard pushed to find a lunch box to pack it in to as they can larger than a baby’s head!

We have only one apple tree that falls into the “bitter” category that is ready early, and that’s the cider apple Tremlett’s Bitter – a Bittersweet apple (having both sweet and bitter qualities). However, this year it failed to fruit due to a late frost killing off the blossom, so it looks as though our Cider No.1 will be more along the lines of the South-East England method, using sharps and sweets (cookers and eaters) in a typical 2:1 ratio. It will, in theory, turn out lighter, crisper but with less body than a cider with more tannins, but that’s also something we’ve ended up with over the years from Cider No.1. It does lead me to think we’d be wise planting some other early bitter varieties as a safety measure. More on that later, as we have a few gaps in the orchard to fill, and I’m sure some serious pondering over one or two of last year’s ciders is in order!

Today we’ve picked:

5% Slack ma Girdle (sweet cider)
5% Elton Beauty (sweet dessert)
10% Yellow Ingestrie (sweet dessert)
35% Warner’s King (sharp culinary)
45% Ellison’s Orange (sweet dessert)

Slack ma Girdle

We’ve included this variety purely for the sweetness factor. If we had other earlier cider varieties to complement it, I’d rather it went in there. As it was, it was ready and would otherwise be wasted!

Elton Beauty

Again, another one at the end of its shelf-life on the tree, it’s one of my personal favourite eating apples we have, along with the Ellison’s Orange below. It would have been a shame to lose the sweetness it brings to the cider.

Yellow Ingestrie

A tiny apple that people seem to find too unusual to eat fresh, though they’re actually missing out on something wonderful!

Yellow Ingestrie

Once ripened properly, it turns a lovely warm buttery yellow. The shock in eating is the assumption it will be a bit anaemic in flavour and soft – like an over-ripe Golden Delicious. Nothing could be further from the truth – the flesh is fine, not gritty, almost buttery smooth, and it’s firm and sweet. They are the perfect apple for a young child’s lunch box to be honest! However, we had a good crop, so in they go to Cider No.1!

Warner’s King

Our earliest culinary apple, over half have fallen off the tree – and these things can be huge! It didn’t look like many and I assumed I might have to pad them out with another cooking apple, but as it was they easily filled a third of the truck, leading me to look for another sweet apple to help balance out the ratios!

Ellison’s Orange & Marsh Daisies

Ellison’s Orange

These have been a favourite at Melbourne Deli, our local customer whose customers appreciate the unusual and scarce varieties we grow here. However, they are at their best right now, and we have the Allington Pippin ripening right next to them which is also a great eating apple, so we’ve decided to pick the rest and add them to the cider mix. I’m hoping, as they’re an offspring of Cox’s Orange Pippin, that they’ll bring some of their complex flavours to the cider, although they are juicier than the Cox, in my opinion, so maybe that might come out a bit diluted. We’ll soon see!

A Full Cart!

No one touches Penny’s apples!

We’re leaving them outside to sweat for a couple of weeks before pressing. The press is booked for this coming weekend for plain non-alcoholic juicing, and then the weekend after for cider-making – then everyone’s happy! Even Penny, who might bag the odd apple to chew on.

Merrybower Heritage Orchard fruit can now be bought at our local Melbourne Deli!

September 1, 2017/0 Comments/in Acre Field, Orchard, Produce /by Dunk

What a week! With the fruit in the orchard ripening well in the current weather, Melbourne Deli have decided to stock our apples and pears – wow! It’s fantastic to see seven years of hard work of planting, pruning and feeding, finally coming to fruition (pun well and truly intended).

It’s also extremely gratifying that there are like-minded people who not only want to buy locally grown fruit, but relish the idea of trying some of our country’s older varieties. After all, we planted everything we have in order to be as local as possible, and there are flavours here in Merrybower Heritage Orchard you will never find in a supermarket, or even an old-fashioned outdoor market! We have everything from the apple variety bred purely to make the best apple puree to accompany a Sunday roast pork, to an old 1600’s French variety for making authentic French-style Tart Tatin.

Each piece of fruit is hand-picked on the morning we deliver, checked for bruising and insect damage, washed, dried and lovingly packed into towel-lined wooden boxes or reusable plastic trays. Even the boxes are made here from wood we’ve kept, then sealed with a food-safe hard wax oil.

Shown are some of our early varieties:

Elton Beauty – from 1952, one of our more modern dessert varieties (and one of my personal favourites) which failed commercially as it missed the August markets – its sweet and juicy characteristics only really coming to the fore in September. Having said that, all of our fruit seems to be a week or two early this year, which is lucky for August buyers at the Melbourne Deli!

Worcester Pearmain – a classic popular dessert apple, nothing really to dislike about it. From 1873, it has a slight hint of strawberry in a good year, and also makes a decent stewing apple.

Yellow Ingestrie – the oddball apple from the 1800s, a small yellow variety that develops a distinct pineapple backnote as it ripens. It has Orange and Golden Pippin as parents.

Queen – an extremely handsome culinary apple from 1858 – once a very popular garden apple, especially in its native Essex, but rare to find today. It cooks to a brilliant yellow puree with a sharp and powerful flavour, but is also decent enough for baking.

The Perfect Sight

March 16, 2017/0 Comments/in Chickens, Orchard /by Dunk

You know those times when everything just feels perfect – when the small things that niggle are put into perspective and for a moment everything is just as it should be. For me, and I know others here at Merrybower, it’s ‘down the patch’, where you step into another world – a world that belongs to the animals, the trees, nature – where you’ve guided things but never have complete control – nature’s not too kindly towards you taking complete control.

Today was one of those days, and this photograph sums it all up – a group of happy fat Light Sussex hens scratching beneath a fruit tree coming into blossom. A display of the life there is, and all the life yet to be.

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