Autumn Days

Autumn always seems to come faster than I expect. I do love it, but it is over so quickly and before I know it the fire is lit and winter is here. 

But Autumn has plenty of treats and I'm enjoying trying to use my evening once I've picked the kids up to enjoy them.

Protect Small Cider Producers

The European Union is proposing to ban the current tax exemption of small UK cider and perry  producers. This will affect the small hobbyist and farm gate producers who, in my opinion, produce some of the best cider in the country and it might make it uneconomical for them to continue.

Now I'm not sure how well on line petitions work as they seem to have been done to death lately, but I think that this is worth signing. Anything that helps keep small businesses going and keeps us from having to buy from the same big firms has to be a good thing.

Follow the link and add you name if you want to help keep small rural cider producers going. There's also more information there about the changes:

38 Degrees - Protect Small Cider Producers

Making A Water Powered Cider Press - A Failed Prototype!

 My friend Brian and I have been on about building a cider press for ages. 

There are many simple designs we could build using screw threads or bottle jacks, but Brian is an engineer - so that would be far too simple for him! 

He talked me into trying to make a press that uses mains water press for the power to press the apples. This idea is nothing new as you can buy them on-line but they are rather expensive, our idea was to make one using cheap materials and then have the plans available for anyone that wants to make them. 

We decided to build press out of 3/4" ply (18mm) and use a wine bladder from a box of wine as the pressing part. We built the ply box to the size of the wine bladder, we knew we were taking a risk with this method as the bladders aren't designed to work under lots of pressure or if they are we have no idea what that number is.

 Brian adapted the screw cap on the front of the bladder to take some 1/2" copper pipe, this would make filling the box easier. Not shown on the pictures is the corner fillets we fitted in all the corners so the bags wouldn't be going into a sharp corner.

 Our mashing of fruit was pretty basic - a mallet and a plastic bag!

 The finished prototype! We added second side pieces so that dowels could be inserted to hold the top on and Brian fitted a pressure gauge so we could see the pressure we were working to.

And now the Science bit, straight from the brain of Brian :-

"So,

When we were pressing on the "traditional press" the "cheese's had an area of about 600 x 600 and the max force we could apply was 20T.  We probably applied less as we bent the frame before maxing the jack out.  Say we applied 10T of force.

So max force was 10,000kg or in engineering speak 100,000 N 

The area was 0.6 x 0.6m so 0.36m2

Therefore the max pressure we could achieve would be Force/Area or 100,000N/0.36m2

which we can round to about 300,000 N/m2 or 300,000 Pascal (a Pascal is 1N per m2, i.e. bugger all)

There are 100,000 Pascal in a bar of pressure.  A bar is also known as 1 atmosphere.  So the max pressure we were applying to press in a traditional way was 3 bar.  THe important thing to take away is the pressure in in the order of a couple of bar and not hundreds of bar which is used for olive oil presses.

Mains water pressure varies between 1 and 5 bar in the UK and I happen to know that we get around 2 bar at our place.

This is because you can also calculate pressure in "head" terms, which is essentially the pressure generated by a vertical pipe of water.  The important thing is that the static pressure (the pressure when there is little or no flow) is only dependent on the height difference between the water supply and the delivery point.  For every 10m of height difference the pressure will be 1 bar.  I happen to know there is at least 20m of height difference between the back shed and the water tanks, so there is at least 2 bar of pressure available to squeeze apples (assuming the bladder doesn't pop)!"

Goggles, we decided, were essential!

We had the science sorted, we had the box built and we had some pears to squeeze.

Juice!

Early signs were good, and juice started to flow. The pressure was making all the ply bend  and there was some serious creaking going on. 

We added straps around the outside as extra support, and then increase the pressure, then there was a small hiss and we decided to stop the experiment.

Unfortunately the bag failed. A small hole formed where the bag creases in the corner.

Unfortunately the bag had failed. It was only the smallest of holes, but we knew we were working with a bag that wasn't designed to be taken to this sort of pressure. 

It was good fun to design and build something like this even though it didn't work properly. 

I'm ever the sceptic and I couldn't quite believe the pressures that I was told we'd get off the tap (Theirs is from spring water with a header tank), but when we were pressing with it and the ply was trying to form the shape of a ball I understood the forces we were working with!

So although it's back to the drawing board I learnt a lot from this project and the next one will be even better! Although I don't think we'll bother until next year now though!

Anyone else spent time designing and building things only for them to fail?

Cider!

This week I picked up some of the cider that we made last year (see the blog posts here and here).

In the US this would be called hard cider.

I tried it on Friday night and it was good, a really pleasing taste. Not to sharp or strong. I could quite happily drink this for some time! A little cloudy but it's still quite young. I'll have a proper go at drinking some soon with friends and I'll tell you the true affects then -  I doubt it will take too much!

It's hardened my resolve to become self sufficient in alcohol in the near future. If my apple tree grafts take then next winter I hope to plant around 35 cider apple trees to give me a future supple of this fermented juice. Of course then I'll have to build a press and have somewhere to store it, but I'm sure these things will come with time.

Who else is planning to be self sufficient in alcohol or has already achieved it? What drink would you most like to be able to make (I'd like to try making beer as well at some point and I've made many wines in the past)?

Pressing Apples

On Sunday we pressed the apples that we had scratted the day before. I enjoyed the process as it was quite therapeutic and not something that could be rushed.

Here it is in pictures:

Laying out the first "hair" (dustsheets that have been washed ready for use) on top of a frame

The first cheese formed

Some of the pulp we were pressing - the red flecks were from the tom putts that we added to the mix of apples

Building up the stack. the two bars under the frame are called needles and they keep the frame sitting square until the next layer is added.

The press was fairly simple just using a 20 ton bottle jack with metal frame above - so not much could go wrong with it

The juice flowed well!

When being pressed the cheeses almost look like they've been glossed

It's amazing how thin it gets once its been pressed

We did two pressings in the end and that gave us 150 litres of apple juice

Testing the sugar content so we can work out the % of alcohol when it's finished fermenting

Dinner was a traditional Malaysian dish call mee hoon - Lovely and completely different from my normal sandwiches

We're now going to let the natural yeasts ferment the juice and the next step should be in a month or so. Trouble is I want to try the cider now!

Apple Scratting

On Saturday we started the next step in our cider making process. We crushed and chopped the apples in an electric apple scratter ready so we can press it on Sunday.

Cleaning the apples

The look good enough to eat although I wouldn't!

The electric scratter that made the job quite easy

My little helper carrying a bucket of apples with me. I'm surprised she found time between eating as many apples as she could get away with.

Waiting to be pressed

The theory of doing this over two days is that the cider has a greater flavour over one that is scratted and pressed on the same day. I think that we managed to tackle around 300kg of apples in a few hours, so not too bad going really and not long enough for my little helper to get bored!

Cider Apple Picking!

I got invited to come and pick some cider apples at a friends smallholding if I wanted to learn about cider making. My friends dad has a great wealth of knowledge in cider making and has done it for many years, so I thought he might be a good man to learn from - plus he's got a lot of cider apple trees!

It took Ev a little while to get into the swing of things!

 So Sunday morning Ev and me wrapped up warm and headed to the top end of our village for a bit of apple picking. We weren't going for huge numbers, just enough to make a few barrel fulls of cider.

Brians dad leading the way

Brian ready to get picking

Shake the tree!

Tom Putt

The little tractor took them all away

In the end we filled the little trailer behind the tractor with mainly three varieities of apple - Argile Grise, Dabinett and then just one bag of Tom Putt for a bit of acidity. An enjoyable morning walking round like conasurs trying different apples. Ev survived quite well out in the cold, just kept eating apples - I think she ate a lot more than she put into the buckets and I've no idea how she did it because some of them tasted bloody awful!
The plan is to leave these apples for a few weeks before we scrat and press them towards the end of November - I'm looking forward to it!