{"id":3090,"date":"2018-10-07T20:05:21","date_gmt":"2018-10-07T19:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.merrybower.co.uk\/?p=3090"},"modified":"2020-07-21T19:42:51","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T18:42:51","slug":"2018-cider-no-2-pressing-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merrybower.co.uk\/?p=3090","title":{"rendered":"2018 Cider No.2 Pressing Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Picking<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Cider No.2 has typically been\u00a0a “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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>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.<\/p>\n

The Pressing<\/h3>\n

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\u00a0placed 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Original Pressing Plan<\/h3>\n

The original plan was something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t
Variety<\/th>Attribute<\/th>Percentage Mix<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Slack ma Girdle<\/td>Sweet<\/td>14%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Catshead<\/td>Sharp<\/td>14%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Tremlett's Bitter<\/td>Bittersweet<\/td>14%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Wyken Pippin<\/td>Sweet<\/td>14%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Rosemary Russet<\/td>Sweetsharp<\/td>7%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Marriage Maker<\/td>Sweet<\/td>14%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bramley<\/td>Sharp<\/td>9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Barnack Orange<\/td>Sweet<\/td>7%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ashmeads Kernel<\/td>Sweet<\/td>7%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n

The final plan, in liquid percentages was this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t
Variety<\/th>Attribute<\/th>Percentage Mix<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Warners King<\/td>Sharp<\/td>4.87%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Catshead<\/td>Sharp<\/td>9.74%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Tremlett's Bitter<\/td>Bittersweet<\/td>24.35%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Wyken Pippin<\/td>Sweet<\/td>12.35%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sanspareil<\/td>Sweet<\/td>14.6%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Marriage Maker<\/td>Sweet<\/td>4.87%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bramley<\/td>Sharp<\/td>9.74%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Barnack Orange<\/td>Sweet<\/td>9.74%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ashmeads Kernel<\/td>Sweet<\/td>9.74%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n

\"\"<\/a>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.<\/p>\n

The pH and Specific Gravity values for each juice were like this at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t
<\/td>Specific Gravity<\/th>pH<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Warners King<\/td>1.050<\/td>2.8<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Catshead<\/td>1.058<\/td>2.8<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Tremletts Bitter<\/td>1.056<\/td>3.6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Wyken Pippin<\/td>1.065<\/td>3.2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sanspareil<\/td>1.046<\/td>3.2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Marriage Maker<\/td>1.062<\/td>3.2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bramley<\/td>1.052<\/td>2.8<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Barnack Orange<\/td>1.062<\/td>3.2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ashmeads Kernel<\/td>1.070<\/td>3.0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n

\"\"<\/a>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:<\/p>\n

70 litre blue barrel and test demijohn – pH 3\u00a0 .0 – SG 1.057<\/p>\n

30 litre fermenting bin – pH 3.2 – SG 1.059<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0a “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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cider","category-orchard"],"yoast_head":"\n2018 Cider No.2 Pressing Day - Merrybower Homestead<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The 2018 Cider No.2 is early this year, by about three weeks! 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