Little write up about my recent delve into brewing. Pleasantly surprised by the quality of product I've got from a little bit of hard work and hopefully one or two of you reading this might decide to jump in. Very straight forward process if you follow the right procedure.
Very fortunate round my end to have access to multiple orchards with a good variety of apples. I picked somewhere between 80 and 100kg (didn't weigh) of apples, some tart some sweet, in 5 hours or so after work and brought them home to "sweat" for a little bit before getting juiced. After a few days (recommended to leave them for a week) my eagerness got the better of me and I brought them outside to begin a long and tiresome afternoon of pressing apples.
The set up was not ideal but worked well enough for a first attempt. You can get away with less kit than I bought to get started, like using a tough container and a length of untreated timber to mash the apples instead of buying a fruit mill. If you do decide to use a fruit mill, chop your apples so they are small enough to get gripped by the jaws and mashed up! I stupidly spent 15 minutes struggling through with whole apples before I bit the bullet and started cutting them into quarters.
My mashing set up was very simple. A 100 litre plastic tub (sanitise it!) with a hole cut in the lid upon which the mill was fixed on top of, so the crushed apples would fall straight through into the box. As soon as this built up enough, I'd scoop them out and chuck them into the press and squeeze the juice out. I kept apples in the press for the entire duration it took me to grind up another load, and I would gradually increase the pressure on the apples to get as much liquid from them as possible. They compressed down to around 1/3 of the unpressed volume.
One whole afternoon and a bit of the evening later, I had about 21 litres of fresh-pressed apple juice (minus a little bit for refreshment whilst working...), which was juiced directly into a large sterilised bucket. After a lengthy clean up the juice was brought inside and put somewhere dark and out of the way.
The bucket has an airlock on it at this stage. Not really necessary as the fermentation is not starting yet. This next step is where your mileage may vary. You can either a) use the natural yeast on the apples, which will take longer and is a bit riskier (you might end up with a lot of vinegar), or b) you can sterilise the juice using something called campden tablets and add yeast after. Other options are probably available. The campden tablets will kill any natural yeast inside the juice, along with other microbial life which may spoil your hard work. After adding the right amount of tablets, secure the lid and put it away somewhere for 24 hours before doing anything more to it.
After 24 hours has passed, the campden tablets will no longer be active having broken down into component elements and it is now safe to add your yeast. A lot of choice here. Being a rookie myself I popped down to Wilko and bought a few different types. I ended up using a wine yeast, which seems to be well recommended by people more clued-up than me. The risk of using wine yeast is you may end up with a higher alcohol content than intended, as this yeast can survive higher % of alcohol compared to some other variety which is used specifically for making cider, beer or otherwise weaker alcohol. Add your yeast, you may also want to add yeast nutrient to get fermentation going and there are two other recommended additives. One is a pectin enzyme, like pectolase which can enhance flavour of the cider and prevent "pectic hazes", whatever they are! The other is bentonite which is not really necessary but can help clear your cider. As far as I can tell it's only application is aesthetic.
Mix everything well, and if you wish to you can ferment in the bucket! I got worried about too much air space above my cider inside the bucket which can cause it to spoil. This isn't a problem with added yeast as the fermentation is faster than natural so it gets a protective CO2 layer above it quite quickly. Nevertheless, I decanted into some demijohns (sterilise!).
It has a lovely raw apple juice colour at this stage which I was keen to keep. I'd recommend moving these onto something to catch spills because the fermentation can get messy if you didn't leave enough space. I did not leave enough space!!
Fermentation will cause colour changes in the liquid and it might start to look very concerning. Here my cider turned to a milky yellow but it changed colour again once the fermentation stopped. I assume this yellow colour is from the yeast cells floating freely around the juice.
By using an added yeast, my fermentation happened very quickly! Just under a week later, all the natural sugars have been used up and there is no more bubbling on the air lock. The yeast cake at the bottom has built up significantly too. At this stage I decanted from the demijohns back into the bucket (sterilise!!), leaving behind the yeast cake in the demijohns and added a fermentation blocker to prevent the sugar I was about to add restarting the fermentation. Adding another lot of campden tablets is also recommended in case there has been any contamination, and to kill any yeast.
For 20 litres of cider, I added 500g brown cane sugar, 200g granulated and 150g of set honey, tasting as I added the sugar gradually until it ended up where I liked it. A medium-dry cider not harsh on the throat and not sickly, but a nice balance and pleasurable to drink.
I was pretty shocked that I ended up with such a nice tipple, fully expecting to have apple cider vinegar for the next 10 years! Because the fermentation blocker and campden tablets were added, I can bottle this cider and it will stay flat thus avoiding bottle bombs.
Now comes the "cold crashing" stage. Probably best to have done this in a larger vessel and decant again leaving behind the sediment which will settle out but I don't mind a little bit of tat left in the bottom of the bottle. Maybe it'll add a bit of authentic feel to it. And anyway, I'm keen to enjoy a bit of this in the last of the English Summertime.
If you're thinking of brewing for the first time, don't think too much and give it a crack. Certainly think I've found a new hobby
Very fortunate round my end to have access to multiple orchards with a good variety of apples. I picked somewhere between 80 and 100kg (didn't weigh) of apples, some tart some sweet, in 5 hours or so after work and brought them home to "sweat" for a little bit before getting juiced. After a few days (recommended to leave them for a week) my eagerness got the better of me and I brought them outside to begin a long and tiresome afternoon of pressing apples.
The set up was not ideal but worked well enough for a first attempt. You can get away with less kit than I bought to get started, like using a tough container and a length of untreated timber to mash the apples instead of buying a fruit mill. If you do decide to use a fruit mill, chop your apples so they are small enough to get gripped by the jaws and mashed up! I stupidly spent 15 minutes struggling through with whole apples before I bit the bullet and started cutting them into quarters.
My mashing set up was very simple. A 100 litre plastic tub (sanitise it!) with a hole cut in the lid upon which the mill was fixed on top of, so the crushed apples would fall straight through into the box. As soon as this built up enough, I'd scoop them out and chuck them into the press and squeeze the juice out. I kept apples in the press for the entire duration it took me to grind up another load, and I would gradually increase the pressure on the apples to get as much liquid from them as possible. They compressed down to around 1/3 of the unpressed volume.
One whole afternoon and a bit of the evening later, I had about 21 litres of fresh-pressed apple juice (minus a little bit for refreshment whilst working...), which was juiced directly into a large sterilised bucket. After a lengthy clean up the juice was brought inside and put somewhere dark and out of the way.
The bucket has an airlock on it at this stage. Not really necessary as the fermentation is not starting yet. This next step is where your mileage may vary. You can either a) use the natural yeast on the apples, which will take longer and is a bit riskier (you might end up with a lot of vinegar), or b) you can sterilise the juice using something called campden tablets and add yeast after. Other options are probably available. The campden tablets will kill any natural yeast inside the juice, along with other microbial life which may spoil your hard work. After adding the right amount of tablets, secure the lid and put it away somewhere for 24 hours before doing anything more to it.
After 24 hours has passed, the campden tablets will no longer be active having broken down into component elements and it is now safe to add your yeast. A lot of choice here. Being a rookie myself I popped down to Wilko and bought a few different types. I ended up using a wine yeast, which seems to be well recommended by people more clued-up than me. The risk of using wine yeast is you may end up with a higher alcohol content than intended, as this yeast can survive higher % of alcohol compared to some other variety which is used specifically for making cider, beer or otherwise weaker alcohol. Add your yeast, you may also want to add yeast nutrient to get fermentation going and there are two other recommended additives. One is a pectin enzyme, like pectolase which can enhance flavour of the cider and prevent "pectic hazes", whatever they are! The other is bentonite which is not really necessary but can help clear your cider. As far as I can tell it's only application is aesthetic.
Mix everything well, and if you wish to you can ferment in the bucket! I got worried about too much air space above my cider inside the bucket which can cause it to spoil. This isn't a problem with added yeast as the fermentation is faster than natural so it gets a protective CO2 layer above it quite quickly. Nevertheless, I decanted into some demijohns (sterilise!).
It has a lovely raw apple juice colour at this stage which I was keen to keep. I'd recommend moving these onto something to catch spills because the fermentation can get messy if you didn't leave enough space. I did not leave enough space!!
Fermentation will cause colour changes in the liquid and it might start to look very concerning. Here my cider turned to a milky yellow but it changed colour again once the fermentation stopped. I assume this yellow colour is from the yeast cells floating freely around the juice.
By using an added yeast, my fermentation happened very quickly! Just under a week later, all the natural sugars have been used up and there is no more bubbling on the air lock. The yeast cake at the bottom has built up significantly too. At this stage I decanted from the demijohns back into the bucket (sterilise!!), leaving behind the yeast cake in the demijohns and added a fermentation blocker to prevent the sugar I was about to add restarting the fermentation. Adding another lot of campden tablets is also recommended in case there has been any contamination, and to kill any yeast.
For 20 litres of cider, I added 500g brown cane sugar, 200g granulated and 150g of set honey, tasting as I added the sugar gradually until it ended up where I liked it. A medium-dry cider not harsh on the throat and not sickly, but a nice balance and pleasurable to drink.
I was pretty shocked that I ended up with such a nice tipple, fully expecting to have apple cider vinegar for the next 10 years! Because the fermentation blocker and campden tablets were added, I can bottle this cider and it will stay flat thus avoiding bottle bombs.
Now comes the "cold crashing" stage. Probably best to have done this in a larger vessel and decant again leaving behind the sediment which will settle out but I don't mind a little bit of tat left in the bottom of the bottle. Maybe it'll add a bit of authentic feel to it. And anyway, I'm keen to enjoy a bit of this in the last of the English Summertime.
If you're thinking of brewing for the first time, don't think too much and give it a crack. Certainly think I've found a new hobby
