June 2009

From CiderbyRosie blog

June 2009. 1

High excitement and a bit of bother!

Towards the end of last November I spent a sunny day on my knees in Venetia’s orchard picking up the last fallers from amongst her various cider apple trees. I had previously collected the Yarlingtons, but now the Dabinetts had decided that their time had also come. The grass was full of them, beautiful, big and rosy. Next along the row, another big carpet from the Brown Thorns, brightly orange, also beckoned. I picked solidly all day, ending up with over half a ton bagged up in the back of the Landrover. My back ached terribly but I felt satisfied to have picked enough that day for one complete pressing on St. Em. There must have been even more than I thought, because next day’s pressing produced 400 litres of juice. Having laboured so hard and seen the beauty of the apples close at hand, as compared with my usual casual regard of machine harvested apples, I felt loathe to add the juice to the main blend. Rather than that, I decided to keeve it and make it as a special. Unfortunately the keeving did not work, so in January with this separate 400 litres of now fully dry cider, I found myself wondering what to do with it. The sensible thing was to put in with the main blend. This I did for the most part, but I could not bear to lose all of this rather special pressing, so I kept 120 litres of it in a blue tub, to bottle for home consumption. I happened to give this cider a try, just as I was about to put some cider into demijohns for the Bath and West. I liked it so much that I decided to send it to the Show instead of the main blend. What was to happen next has become one of the most memorable episodes of my life.

I’m still dazed and amazed at my unbelievable good fortune with this cider at last week’s Royal Bath and West Show. To win the cup for the champion Farmhouse Cider was like a dream in itself. When that same cider was then chosen as the Supreme Champion of the Show, I scarcely was able to take it in. It seemed just incredible! Having had a completely trophyless lifetime, (I was totally useless at all sports in my schooldays), to unexpectedly win two silver pots, big ones at that, was certainly breaking new ground. I was thrilled to bits! For me this was not only the high point of this cidermaking year but of all my cidermaking years and doubtless of those yet to come. A joyful, once in a lifetime experience, thanks to the golden juice from a tiny, 18 tree, Dorset orchard!

I felt honoured to be the first cider maker to bring these two trophys to Dorset. On coming back here with them last Saturday, I had the curious thought that bringing the Worshipful Fruiterers Supreme Cider Cup out of Somerset, seemed rather like stealing the Stone of Scone. I note however that Alex Hill wrested it across the boundary into Devon, after winning with his Bollhayes Cider in 2006. But in all other years it has remained solidly in its home county, being won by Somerset producers, large, medium and small (notably our Michael Cobb in 2004).

I might have known that such braggart thoughts could elicit an ancient Somerset curse, perhaps muttered by some old farmer on the Levels, into his mug of scrumpy. And so it was that on Sunday morning I found water was pouring out from under the ciderhouse door and there was an unpleasant hissing sound coming from within. A pipe had burst during the night, spraying water upwards and drenching everything. The electrics had tripped due to water in the light fittings. The steel vats had been topped up with water on top of their sealed lids. Fortunately this was unable to penetrate into the cider held below the seals. Most things were none the worse for a soaking but there was one terrible exception. A few days earlier I had worked hard bottling, corking, wiring and labelling, 150 bottles of keeved Kingston Black.

I’d then packed them into cardboard boxes and stacked them below the table for temporary storage. This whole stack of boxes had now become a soggy mess. It took most of Sunday to get the water out, from in and under furnishings and equipment. Today I set to work rescuing the bottles of Kingston from their squelchy cartons. I found that a large number of the bottle labels had also been ruined. There is a lot of work that now has to be done again.

It was a chore sorting out this little disaster area today, but I was buoyed up with a new resolve. When the Kingston has been reworked I intend to bottle the winning cider with a little sugar into heavy weight bottles. This should then preserve it as a sparkler that can be enjoyed as a memento of last week’s success, for a good few years to come. I wont put any boxes of it under the table though, just in case.

Rose

Steam cleaning oak barrels

BucklandSwifty wrote:

I have two 40 gallon oak ex whiskey barrels, one of which was used to mature last years cider in. I am pondering the best way of cleaning it. There is only the usual bung hole in the top, I had thought of half to two thirds filling with water/sterilising solution and introducing an airline to get it “boiling” around. Having done that, pump out the water. My next cunning plan was to steam the barrel, here is my problem, what to use to supply the steam? Any ideas? The major drawback with the 40 gallon oak barrel is handling to my mind!

Any advice gratefully received.
Chris

I used to use these ex whisky barrels. They were bought from distilleries in Scotland at £2 each and brought down here by the HGV load by a smart guy in Somerset, who sold them for £25 each. Mostly they were bought from him by gardeners and sawn in half to make big planting tubs. I insisted that the ones I bought still had their bungs intact and were thus still whiskey sterile ( one still had a litre of whiskey in it, that I discarded!). They made good cider in their first year, but I took against the strong whiskey overtones. I’m not fond of whiskey, but I had imagined that the lingering effect would have been much more subtle than proved to be the case.

However I decided to give the barrels another go the following year hoping that the whiskey flavour would be reduced to an acceptable level. I was then faced with the same problem as you are now, how to clean the barrels. I’d read the books that mention thrashing chains around in the barrels and steaming them out etc and decided that I just could not be doing with all that palaver. I just hosed out the barrels with tap water then dangled a Vigo sulphur candle on a piece of wire through the bung hole of each and put the bungs in to contain the sulphur dioxide smoke. Half an hour later I quickly removed the wires and rebunged the barrels. Perfectly good cider was made in all of them the following year, though I still did not like the whiskey flavour, albeit much reduced.

The barrels have now been relegated to garden planters and two have been printed up to advertise my cider business at the entrance to our property. These are now leading a very useful life as they have stimulated a fair bit of business!

Rose.

A question of yeast

There is often discussion amongst cider makers as to whether it is best to use a wine yeast for fermentation, or just to let the natural or ‘wild’ yeasts of the apples themselves do the job. I like my cider to be entirely a product of the apple and for me this means that it is essential to use apple yeast.

I came to this conclusion some years ago on reading of the work carried out in England by Lloyd in 1894. He studied the effect of inoculating apple juice with various yeasts, both from wine and from cider apples such as Kingston Black. He found that the ciders so produced could be distinguished from each other by their aroma and bouquet. The juice fermented by the wine yeast had acquired a vinous character, whereas those fermented with the Kingston Black yeast produced a series of ciders corresponding in character to the true Kingston Black product.

In my own way I have proved to myself that there is something in this theory. In August each year I collect the early apples from my orchard. These are mostly eaters at this time of the year, the majority of them being Discovery and Tom Putt. It is of course too early for Kingston Black. I select only those that are perfectly ripe and wholesome, wash them thoroughly and then make a few gallons of their juice. It is gorgeous to drink, but I make myself put a couple of demijohns of it aside to turn into cider. I add one Campden tablet per gallon as a precautionary measure and then just leave the jars to ferment. About 4 weeks later, I begin the pressing season proper with the early season cider apples. By this time, the demijohn ciders are well advanced. Their yeasts have multiplied, they are fizzing well and the airlocks are merrily plopping. I pour them into the juice of my first main pressing. They then become the starter for the main blend and their characteristics are thus permeated through out all the cider that is made throughout the season.

It is a big leap of faith, but it works well for me. Over the last 4 years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve found that my cider is remarkably similar to that of previous years. It has the same marmalade colour, and virtually the same taste, aroma and body. This happens in spite of the fact that the blend of varieties and the weather throughout the ripening season, inevitably changes from year to year. Other cider makers tell me that this phenomenon is due to ‘in house yeasts’ on my equipment and within the ciderhouse itself.

I prefer to believe that those late summer yeasts from my orchard have a lot to do with it!

Rose

My website

Two and a half years ago I began to think about having a website. I mentioned this to Andy Roberts. I told him that I was not in a particular hurry but that I felt I needed to make a move in that direction and asked for his advice. He advised me that it would be a good idea to at least lay claim to the ciderbyrosie domain name and then think about the website later on. I thought this was sensible and so I asked Andy if he would kindly arrange it for me. Me being me, I then procrastinated for ever and a day about getting my own website.
After all, what need had I of a website, with absolutely no intention of ever selling cider on the Web? However I now had a web address that led to nothing at all so, I asked Andy if the address could link automatically to my Cidermaking Year on UKcider. He agreed and this interim measure this has been useful. As well as the UKcider connection, the wiki pages were found and read by a number of people who happened on them after seeing the web address on my cider boxes in pubs. A few even became fans, telling me that they were keeping up with the latest episodes! A lady in our village likened me to Eddie Grundy on the Archers; a somewhat dubious compliment!

I had come to the conclusion after the first year or so, that I really ought to have my own site. I’d noticed that other craft cider makers had already taken this step and I found some of their sites very appealing. The problem was that I had no idea how to go about it. Following our real cider pub sticker campaign, Jez, who having clearly demonstrated his design expertise in providing us with no less than three versions of the sticker to choose from, mentioned that he could even be persuaded to design websites if asked nicely! I thought that this was very civil of him but did not like to ask, and so was delighted when some months later he suggested it to me directly. I’ve gradually been getting bits and pieces together for it and still have some writing yet to do. In the meantime Jez has started the technical bit and produced a temporary home page that is activated by www.ciderbyrosie.com or www.ciderbyrosie.co.uk. I’m looking forward to having a site of my own. Being already familiar with Jez’s smart and purposeful Cider Workshop site, I know that I am certain to be pleased with my own, when it is up and running.

I intend to keep updating The Cidermaking Year. During the construction of my own site, this still remains available via the UKcider wiki. The ‘Year’ is now 6 years old but I can’t just cast it off like an old jacket. Entry by entry it builds the picture of how my little cider business came into being, so I want to have a link to it from the new website.

Rose

PS. Thanks to Andy’s recommendation, Cider by Rosie is now going down well with the holiday visitors at the Castle Inn in Lulworth Cove. Alex the landlord emailed to say that he had seen the Real Cider sticker at the Square & Compass and asked if he could have one or two of them for his pub. I will be happy to oblige him tomorrow on my delivery round. Fortunately I still have a dozen or so of the batch that Dick printed for us.

Reality Dawns

The big 6000 litre tank is nearly in position behind the ciderhouse. Chris and Ness who live a few doors away have a fencing business. They kindly offered to take the tank from the garden and transport it to the back of our place using their large tractor. It was quite an amusing little scene, but one that needed a lot of skill. The first part of the journey was along the village road to reach the gate to the field behind our house. The tank was carried on the tractor’s front loader whose forks had been fitted with special extension tubes. The tank, being 2 m wide by 2.3 m high, completely masked any view of the road ahead, which meant that Chris was driving the tractor blind. Ness walked on one side of the tractor and I walked on the other, each of us making reassuring, though possibly confusing, hand signals to Chris as the big black beasty nosed its way along the road. Luckily there was no other traffic at the time. Crossing the field was much less demanding but another display of skill was needed on reaching the fence. We have a 6 ft wooden panel fence along the back. Chris found that the tractor could not lift the tank quite high enough to clear it. What happened next was a treat to behold! He slid the tank off the forks on to the grass. It was now time for Ness to demonstrate her tractor driving skills. Chris sat on one of the forks and she lifted him up with it and drove the tractor forward until the fork was alongside but just above the tank. Chris then climbed along the fork and lashed the lifting eye on the top of the tank to the end of the fork. He climbed down and Ness then lifted the tank off the ground as high as it would go. It still did not clear the fence. I began to think it was a lost cause but Chris climbed up on the tractor and tilted the forks, effectively lifting the tank just a little higher. On the the next attempt the tank just cleared the fence and was then easily lowered to the ground on the other side.

Over the last two weeks a concrete base has been made for the tank to sit on. The tank will have a built in advantage, due to the ground behind the cider house being about 3 ft above the floor level inside the tank room. This height difference plus the the height of the concrete base for the big new tank means that it will be possible to gravity feed from it to the 6 IBC tanks in the tank room, after the first stage of fermentation and blending.

On seeing the big tank nearly in its place behind the ciderhouse I’ve had several onslaughts of my favourite daydream – to jump the 7000 barrier and grow the business. Several times now I’ve paced out the area available, and could easily imagine another 4 or even 5 of the 6000 litre monsters sitting there. Now that would look a proper job, an impressive sight indeed, like a mini Westons! Well I can tell you emphatically, that dream faded away for ever this week. Circumstances have forced me to work at the rate that would be required by an annual output of 18,000 litres. It has been very tiring and time consuming. I’ve shipped 38 x 20 litre boxes over the last week, delivering by day and often packaging well into the night. I could never keep that up on my own, especially not with all the book keeping needed by the liability for excise duty.

Reality has dawned! But how did this happen? Warm weather created a surge in demand from the pubs. I did some extra marketing and gained four more outlets. Silly really, but I can’t help myself doing it. Then in parallel with this there have been several good orders for festivals. It seems to have all come at once, but it has had the good effect of bringing me down to earth. No more daydreams, I will stick to my 7000 litres, it is a job enough for an old un !

There is only 2000 litres of draught left for this year, so I could even have a rest period before pressing starts, or at least find some to make improvements to the equipment.

It was good here today! This morning I acted as collection point for ciders destined for the Gillingham ( Dorset) Football Club Cider Festival, to be held on 27 th June ( see wiki ). Last week Barry left 3 of his B-in-Bs for it here. Today I had the pleasure of meeting Martin Inwood, a craft cidermaker from Bere Regis who had also brought his cider for the festival. Patrick, the Festival organiser, had arranged to collect these ciders, together with my own, and was already here when Martin arrived. It was a sunny morning so it was only natural to have a little cider tasting in the garden! Martin had anticipated this I think, as he arrived, bottle in hand. Our first toast to fine weather was with his latest ‘Lulworth Skipper’, a fine clear golden cider that had been matured in an oak wine barrel. It was excellent, crisp and pleasantly oaked. It confirmed that I do like oaked cider after all, if like Martin’s, the oak is fairly subtle. I can now put the early bad experience with whisky barrels behind me and move on. I’m getting to like wine barrel cider! Just as the Monkton Wyld ‘Wider’ delighted me at Powerstock, Hecks Port Wine has become a firm personal favourite.

I must get one or two ex wine barrels from somewhere before the autumn. Anybody know where?

Rose