Cider Making

 Cider Making

When living in the countryside during the 1980s I could hardly help but notice the terrible autumnal waste of fallen apples in orchards.

Most of the fruit had fallen from people’s trees to rot on the ground beneath, enjoyed only by four-footed animals, birds and insects.  I saw the apples as potential cider - a natural source of pleasure going to waste. 

In my plan to make cider from these windfalls I would want a press, a method of pulping apples, hessian cloth for holding the pulp in the press, large containers for the fermentation such as carboys, sugar, yeast and fermentation locks.

It is not my style to buy expensive cast-iron equipment, I like to design and make such things myself.

I was then fortunate to have access to some old oak fencing posts. These were formed into a very strong rectangle on end. Within it would be the bags of apple pulp to have juice squeezed out of them by the power of a hydraulic car jack. The juice would then run over lumps of fresh baker’s yeast on its way to join some sugar, and then ferment into alcoholic cider.

To pulverise the apples, which might be whole, half-eaten, or rotting brown (i.e. already fermenting), I would need some kind of crusher. This I found in the form of an old clothes mangle. I studded its two wooden rollers with protruding stainless steel screws, and built a hopper above to hold the apples. The crushed fruit would then fall into a bucket on its way to the hessian bags and the press. All well and good.

But it didn’t work. When the rollers were set too far apart the apple bits produced were too large to press satisfactorily, and when too close, the apples simply rolled around and refused to be crushed. So I had to resort to a bought, lidded bucket where an electric drill was used to spin a blade to turn apples into pulp. But it was slow and a bit tedious.

For my apple supply I was invited to fill sacks with fallen fruit in friends’ gardens, only discarding apples that had turned black with white spots. 

Omitting details of the press, the car jack was positioned above the bags of pulp and operated by hand. Now, instead of lifting a car, it was simply depressing itself. 

Despite making many creaking noises, the juice flowed with freedom, filling carboys and demijohns. In these containers the juice, mixed with added yeast and sugar, produced carbon dioxide (emitted through fermentation locks) as it fermented to form cider.

Glass bottles with screw tops were readily available. So when the fermentation was complete, and the cider quite dry and ready, a teaspoon of sugar was added to each bottle before being filled to create effervescence.

The cider was drunk right away, given to donors of apples, or placed in racks for the future. A bottle tried 25 years later was quite delicious.

I understand that the present owners of the stable where I made cider each year have kept every item of my endeavours exactly as they found them.

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