The last of the Summer Wine (Cider and Perry)

According to our Orchard map which contains the layout of the trees with their details including when to harvest, the Williams Pear was due in February. So much for relying on memory and thinking it was March. Consequently the fruit was well advanced and soft and much of it was rotten. This is a side effect of bagging fruit i.e. it is not possible to see the progress without removing a bag. But then the Packham which is due in March was in peak condition and the combined yield provided almost two 20 litre buckets. Some was put aside for eating and the rest went towards Perry.

While out in the Orchard with the barrow and buckets it seemed wise to check the Cider Apples and the two eating apples Rich Red and Cox's Orange Pippen. Neither of the two eating apples had much good fruit. Just a season that wasn't productive for these two. In other years the Rich Red offers up some delicious produce.

The Cider Apples are Sweet Alford, Stokes Red, Yarlington Mill, Kingston Black and Bulmers Norman. Non of these produced well this year, leaving us with just under two 9 litre buckets of mostly miserable small fruit. One or two pieces of fruit did come to full size and the Sweet Alford was magnificent. These are mostly due to ripen in April/May but all were ready now and wouldn't last on the tree much longer.

The Harvest

Some of the pears were extremely large

Rather than muck around with small quantities of Apples it was easier to chuck the whole lot into the Scratter and make a Perry/Cider blend.

The scratter in action

Our guide for Cider and Perry recommends a Potential Alcohol of no less than 9% for good keeping qualities. The sugar levels when measured after pressing came in at about Brix 15.5 which is just under 9%. Our climate just won't allow the fruit to ripen any more, mostly due to the wet conditions arriving at the final stage of ripening. To get the desired result a little sugar was added to the juice to lift the potential alcohol level.

The pH was not ideal at around 5 and a little Tartaric Acid solved that problem. And so the scratting went quickly and the pressing carried on all night with a yield of a little over 12 litres which is fine. The juice has had CL23 yeast added and when the fermentation really kicks in it will go into a chilling unit at 10 C. A long slow cool fermentation really brings out the fruit nose in the final product.

As usual a big clean up afterwards. That is the last use of the Basket press for the year. After it dries out it will get a light sanding and a coat of non toxic paint before being put to bed. It has worked hard this harvest with over 400 KG of grapes and close to 100 KG of Apples and Pears.

The cake after pressing. Something for the chickens to enjoy

We have been keeping back more fruit for eating fresh and enjoying the quality of the home grown product. Next year the objective is to keep more product on the tree after the main harvest to see if we can improve the length of time it can keep. This is hard in our temperate climate. If we were further south I'm sure it would keep for a few more months especially something like the Beurre Bosc.

Vintage Update and Cider - Bottling

There is an expectation that life may become hectic in the next couple of weeks as various grapes ripen and reach optimum maturity for picking.

We still have our Tannat grapes to pick. Not many as the vines are young. We are eating the Isabella table grapes each night. They are quite ripe but being left on the vine is the best storage method. Because of the dry weather this has been our most successful year for grapes.

In our list of bought grapes Sauvignon Blanc will be ready this week. On Friday we should find out on the progress of Shiraz. The Tempranillo may be a way off as it was still a bit green two weeks ago. And the bought Tannat could be any time.

With the oncoming busy schedule it was time clean up any loose ends in the cave. Just a tad over 30 litres of Apple cider to be bottled in 375 ml bottles. This will free up two large demijohns and other assorted containers and some bench space.

This involved priming 90+ bottles with a half teaspoon of sugar and then filling them. Followed by capping with a crown seal and then penning a code on the cap for identity.

Gradually through the day it was all done and that includes lots and lots of cleaning afterwards.

I can see we are going to have a hell of a lot of Cider and Perry this year. The Pear trees are loaded and they won't be ready until February/March. Probably February this year with the heat. Jean will be pleased to be self sufficient in Cider/Perry for once.

Cider Making the next stage

On the 22^nd December the pressed Tropical Apple juice (must) was put into two demijohns and refrigerated to ferment at a low temperature. Neither demijohn was completely full to allow plenty of space for the fermentation in case there was any foaming. The juice in both batches was identical. The difference between the batches was the yeast and the temperature. TA1 had NWS Chardonnay yeast and TA2 had CRU56 yeast. TA1's refrigerating unit has a controller that keeps the temperature at exactly 15C. While TA2's controller allows the temperature to fluctuate between 14 C and 17 C.

That minor difference caused TA2 to stop bubbling today. The next stage in this process was to siphon (rack) the cider called TA2 from its primary fermentation demijohn which has a large airspace into a smaller vessel to eliminate as much surface area. This is done to minimise oxidation and prevent spoilage.

A guess was taken as to how much volume was there was. A visual check indicated more than 15 litres but less than 20 litres. Using simple siphoning tool the cider was gravity fed into a 15 litre container. When it was full the remaining juice filled a two litre demijohn and a 375ml bottle exactly (just luck). With most of the air eliminated airlocks were attached to all three containers. As the cider warms up to the ambient outside temperature these containers will most probably start fermenting again albeit very gently as any residual sugar is converted by the yeast to alcohol and CO2.

 

The smallest container has a slightly different colour as there are still some suspended solids. As it settles out it will be racked into a yet smaller vessel.

There was some sludge in the original container which is known as gross lees i.e. the expired yeast cells and any pulp which made it through the coarse filter during pressing. As the cider completely finishes its fermentation it will gradually clear as the remaining yeast and any other suspended material settles to the bottom.

Once this occurs the cider will be siphoned into 375 ml bottles with some sugar added and crown sealed. The added sugar will ferment and force CO2 into the liquid creating a sparkling cider. There will be a small amount of debris resulting from this second fermentation. It can be either drunk or as most people do carefully decant their cider into a glass leaving the sludge behind.

The cider will have a distinct apple nose as a result of the cool, slow fermentation. The purity of the original juice provides a distinct apple flavour. The acidity is such that it will have a crisp refreshing finish.

 

On the baby front the Ferds received this Christmas present and are starting to show interest. One of the five has a voice change and makes a distinct quack. Ahh children growing up.

 

 

Temperature Control in Cider making

Don't try this at home unless you are prepared to see a spike in your electricity bill.

Our first attempts at controlling temperature began with frozen plastic bottles being dropped into the fermenting liquid (called must). This worked to a small extent but required a lot of effort and lots of bottles being re-frozen. It was useful to prevent the temperature becoming excessive but not effective to maintain low temperatures of 15-20 C or even maintain a consistent temperature. And there was the associated risk of contamination by leaking bottles or frozen debris from the freezer.

We then slowly acquired a number of previously discarded refrigerators and freezers. The internal shelving is removed and most of it recycled except for doubling up on the bottom shelf for reinforcement. Sometimes the containers may weigh in excess of 50 KG.

We purchased some inexpensive timers like the one above. The must is allowed to begin fermentation and then the fridge/freezer activated. Once the internal temperature of the cooling unit is close to the desired level the timer is activated. By trial and error the desired run time is ascertained. initially it may be 15 minutes every hour and as the activity of the yeast diminishes it may run for only 15 minutes every 3 hours. If the temperature gets too low the rest time is extended and if too hot the run time is extended. A bit fiddly but after a while a rhythm develops. The attraction of the timers at the time was their cost - 2 for $10.

The downside of the timers was that we also needed to buy these min/max thermometers with a long lead on the probe. Sitting the digital readout on top of the fridge/freezer and the probe inside the unit or even the must meant the situation can be assessed at a glance and it was also easy to look at the temperature fluctuations during the night. Accuracy was much better than frozen bottles.

But seeking perfection we came across a cheap ($20) digital temperature controller. The downside was that it runs more frequently attempting to maintain the temperature setting. It also has an annoying manufacturing fault. When plugged into a power point the readout is upside down. By using an extension cord this is alleviated.

Now we finally found a better controller ($20 also). The readout is larger (great) and there is  setting for temperature variation e.g. The ideal temperature for Cider fermentation is 13-17 C. The controller is set for 14 C with a upper variation of 3 allowing the must to rise to 17 C before power is restored to the fridge/freezer. Bliss.

The downsides of this unit is it comes with only the probe and the power the connectors must be purchased and wired in. Not a complex task but a bit of care is required to make sure no bare wiring is exposed and the leads are secured well to prevent pull out. Fortunately we had some male plugs from old recycled appliances and only the female plug needed purchasing. It also has a short probe lead.

 

The other half of Cider Making

This applies to Cider, Beer and Wine making equally.

It's the cleaning. Before starting the scratter was hosed out to remove any dust, the press was also rinsed and the demijohns had a sulphur solution which needed rinsing out.

 

The scratter drum

 

Then afterwards the process is repeated. The afterwards cleaning is really critical and must be timely. In hot weather the pulp particles and sugars dry quickly and adhere like glue. As soon as an item is freed from duty it gets a quick rinse if there are other tasks going on. Then later it gets a good scrub before drying and storing. With wood articles (or anything porous) the surfaces are rubbed with Potassium Metabisulphate to ensure all bugs die. The demijohns are stored with sulphur solution just in case something is missed in the cleaning. That way it doesn't take long to bring it back into service.

Once the press is finished its service and dry it gets a coat of paint on any scratched metal to prevent rust being in contact with the acidic juice. Nothing worse than a metallic taste in the wine or cider.

 

I've found that most of the time involved in making something is engaged in cleaning. A lot of people have a romantic idea about wine making but the reality is it is the worst product to handle from a cleanliness prospective. Grapes leave a sticky residue wherever they have travelled. Often grapes will turn up months later under fridges and cupboards where they have rolled during processing.

Performing the cleaning as you go makes the chore a little more palatable. It also has a side benefit in that it provides a chance to reflect on the making tasks. Just mentally going through the processes and making sure that each step has been executed. Something akin to to a quality control process. When multi tasking with multiple batches it's easy to overlook something and a silent review while working on a less demanding task helps. Having a check list is important but sometimes in the heat of the moment it can be easy to forget to tick a box.

Making Cider

Today we harvested all the apples off the Tropical Apple tree roughly about 50 KG. This is the best harvest ever. Partially because more fruit was bagged against fruit fly and partly because of the dry weather that assisted in fruit set and growth. 



 

The scratter that was made from information on web a couple of years ago is designed to process a large amount of fruit. And today it received its first volume test. What a great machine. The task was completed very quickly and the whole unit taken outside (it is on wheels) and hosed clean in minutes. The scratter is almost completely made of recycled material. The timber is harvested from old pallets, The motor and pulleys from old washing machines and the drum holding the stainless steel teeth is an old Ironbark fence post put through a lathe.

Normally the volume is so small we only use a small press but for once we were able to utilise the larger wine press. The only difference was using a cloth liner for the smaller pulp. An old nylon curtain worked perfectly.

The scratter in action. A bucket of apples emptied into the feed in tray and about a dozen apples dropped into the hopper, then adding a few at a time as the stainless steel teeth shred the apples.

The pulp is pressed and the juice loaded into the demijohn. Roughly about 60% yield of juice. After the first hard pressing the pulp is loosened and pressed a second time. This produces a few more litres.

The pH was tested at 3.48 which is perfect as the ideal is between 3,.0 and 3.8.

The Brix was 11.5 and ordinary sugar was added to chaptalize to 16.5. This will produce an alcohol level of 9% which is the minimum recommended for flavour and aging. It is possible to make a lower alcohol but it will not mature as well and requires higher levels of Sulphur. Potassium metabisulphite was added at the rate of 50 ppm to kill off any bad bugs and the yeast will be added in 24 hours.

Two different batches will be put down with different yeasts and once the yeasts start their work the demijohns will be refrigerated to 15 C. The fermentation at lower temperatures produces better nose and mouth flavours. Higher temperatures can boil off the better esters.

A few apples were put aside for eating fresh. They go really well with blue cheese.

Perry

Harvested the Beurre Bosc pears on March 7th, a reasonable crop given the heavy rain. Sugar was a bit down but chaptalized to bring it back to a potential alcohol of 10.0%. Adjusted pH from 4.19 to 3.25 with the addition of Tartaric. There were a few apples ripe on other trees and they went into the mix. Sweet Alford, Stokes Red, Kingston Black and Rich Red as well as a few Williams and Packham pears the cows had knocked down.

Because of fruit fly and birds we bag the fruit in cotton bags just after flowering. This seems to work well although there is a little lost fruit if the bags get wet as it weighs heavily on the branch. Some of the apples mentioned above are true cider apples but we have never had enough of all varieties to make a traditional cider blend but we have managed a few varietal ciders occasionally.
The Beurre Bosc , Williams and Packham pears all do well here as does the Tropical apple and they make acceptable cider and Perry.

The homemade Scratter works well and we had enough fruit to use the big basket press. When time permits I might try to make some finer adjustments to the Scratter to get an even finer pulp but as it is measurements have shown it results in 50-60% juice yield. It looks like we have about 10-12 litres fermenting away in a 25 litre demijohn using NWS Chardonnay yeast.

Spent some time adding extra rows of screws to the Scratter drum. A quick test showed an enormous improvement in performance. The fruit chips are much smaller and resulted in better yields of juice.



Beurre Bosc Pears



Scratter Drum

Home Made Scratter

Pressing Pears in the baby press

Freshly modified Scratter Drum with additional rows of screws

Cider and Perry, Last Fruits of Summer, Mushrooms

Apples, Pears, Cider and Perry

December/January is the time that the Tropical Apple is ready for harvest. The fruit was left as long as possible to maximise sugar content and we harvested making cider. As usual timing was poor. We hadn’t tasted last year’s cider before we bagged up this year’s crop to protect it from parrots and fruit fly. The previous year’s cider was great. Now we wished we had gone to the trouble to bag more fruit to make a greater quantity. The cider was not sweet but it was sparkling and very refreshing at the end of a hot day.

Well we still had the pear trees and the Cider Apple trees to harvest later so maybe we would still get a reasonable quantity.

On the Orchard map the harvest months are noted. Well it turns out they are wrong. The dates are for trees in Tasmania not NSW north coast. Our fruit ripens 4-6 weeks earlier. Well luckily we were checking the fruit and discovered it was ready. For some reason some of the apple trees failed to mature any fruit in the bags while others were fine. Still there is enough to make a little more cider. The best tree this year was Stokes Red.

The Buerre Bosc produced a goodly amount of fruit as it always does and we were able to make Perry for the first time. Next year a big effort will go into bagging as much as we can. There are still two more pear trees to harvest a Williams and a Packham. We may not have sufficient cider and Perry to bath in but there will be enough to taste test some more experiments.

The process is fairly simple using our Champion Juicer. The fruit is cut into pieces and juiced. The sugar level is tested. All the batches we did came in at around 15 Brix which is fine. The juice is warm and the yeast starts quickly. We used Chardonnay yeast as an experiment. As opposed to beer yeast which we tried last year.

Fermentation is done in demijohns with an airlock. Once the bubbling stops it is racked into 375 ml bottles and half a teaspoon of sugar added to create the fizz. Then leave it. It will be fizzy in two weeks but a little bottle age is better.

This year there will be four distinct (trial) batches. The trials are on pH, yeast type and sulphur addition (or not). This should give us a good feel on how to proceed next year. Very exciting.

Last fruits of the Tomato Bed

The relocating garden in the paddock that we call the Tomato bed is still producing food. The tomatoes have gone although there make be a second flush in another month. The rockmelons are still going albeit slowly. The bitter melon is coating as is the okra and capsicum. The pumpkins and squash are coming on and some were ready. The Hungarian wax capsicum is still flowering and forming fruit as is the zucchini. The big surprise is a cucumber plant  has germinated and we may get another crop before the cold sets in.

Mushrooms

Sometimes we wish we lived in France so that all the mushrooms could be taken to the local chemist and identified before we poison ourselves. Trying to identify edible ones from a book is damned hard trying to use photographs. Every time some gorgeous looking mushroom forms we find two possible candidates in the book. One is edible and the other is poisonous and we can’t tell the difference.

A recent email to a friend at the nearby university asking if there were any experts about proved fruitful. The friend as it turns out studied mushroom as part of his science course many years ago. All we need is a sample.

Of course by this stage these massive white oyster shaped clusters weighing kilograms had finished their life cycle and nothing remained but a brownish black smudge.

OK we’ll be ready next time.