Preparing for bottling

I ordered bottles through amazon because all the people I tried to buy from in the vicinity were out of stock. Alex had the manufacturer throw in the bottle washer and dryer with the shipment from Italy when they got stuck due to the strikes there. So Alex spent the morning washing bottles and they are now drying. 

We plan to bottle the cider and the red wine first. 

Pressure and foot operated

The white bottles look smaller than the red? 

Packaging is hard to unwrap

Rondo, Solaris and Cider (l to r)

More bottles

Storm Ciarán is on the way, the third cyclonic low-pressure system already this year. The jet stream has apparently done a wobbly again and we are in for a procession of lows. We can expect hurricane-force winds and torrential rains with this one, worst in the south and east. And they have already experienced severe flooding. 

We were in Galway for the Macnas parade and the full moon caused flooding on the high tide even with the flood-defence barriers in place. We had a lovely time in a house right on the river. The Corrib has a mighty current and it is mesmerizing to the point of being frightening. I much prefer the gentle rhythm of the sea. The parade, by the way, was phenomenal. Today is All Hallows Eve but it won;t be a pleasant Halloween Trick or Treat for the kiddies across most of the country. The rains should be moving in by this evening. 

What effect all this rain will have on the vineyard I can't predict, but it all is very strange. The orchard trees are blooming again and the leaves have not yet dropped from the trees and vines. But Alex lost all but one of his hives. There had been too much rain since July for them to forage and he didn't know to feed them. 

Some highlights from the Macnas Parade in Galway on Sunday evening, the day the clocks turned back...

Last batch

 

We had one last fish box full of beautiful apples to process. So we got into the winery in the morning and chopped and churned and crushed and pressed until all the juice had been forced out of the fruits. 

When Alex opened the vat with the juice from yesterday, it was fermenting heavily. It looked alien but smelled divine. We added the juice from today without adding yeast, figuring that the yeast from yesterday had multiplied and would be fed by the new apple juice. Alex stirred and covered it over. 

We estimated that we have about 40 litres of juice fermenting. We have about 25 litres of juice frozen or refrigerated and ready to drink. And it is delicious. We were worried about these being Bramley cooking apples and perhaps not sweet enough, but we like it just fine the way it is. 

Curiously, although the remains of the apples looked like they were still quite plump, they feel dry to the touch. It will make awesome compost next year. And now I don't have to feel guilty about apples going bad over the winter like last year. We did save two trays which Alex wrapped individually in newspaper to preserve. We'll see if that helps. 

Hard cider

 

Today, we decided to make apple cider. I chopped apples while Alex ground and pressed. I worked through two fish boxes full of apples, some of which were nicely ripe and soft to cut, others were hard.

I then prepared the yeast. I was advised that champagne yeast is the thing to use, but I had all-purpose wine yeast and lots of it. I mixed 200 ml of juice with 200 ml of warm water with some yeast nutrient - enough to cover 25 liters of juice which Alex forecast would be our take. As the rule of hand recipe calls for one tsp yeast per gallon of juice, equivalent to 25l = 6.6 gal, I mixed in 7 tsp yeast. Better to go more than less with yeast. 

The Brix measured 10.05%. The room is now a steady 22C. I poured the yeast mixture in after it was bubbling nicely. We'll come back to finish the final fish box of apples tomorrow and we'll add the juice to the rest that is fermenting in the SS tank. 

As today was awful weather, with Storm Babet coming through, it was a great day for an indoor project. I  LOVE having the shed. We faired okay in this, but down south they got a month's worth of rain in 24 hours. Post-Biblical they called it. Heaven help us. At least we'll be able to drown our sorrows. 

Apple Juice

The old apple press takes hard hand-cranking

We braved the elements of Storm Babet, which is drowning Cork and southern England, to process the first batch of apples - the equivalent of two fish boxes. We cut the apples, put them through the masher of the old apple press, then chunked them into smaller pieces in the destemmer/crusher, and finally pressed them in the Hydropress before storing them in plastic bottles in the new fridge freezer. (Good timing)

It was hard work but satisfying and the juice is very tasty. We got two five-gallon buckets full - eight 2l bottles and plenty of small bottles. We gave two to the Tinsleys last night.

Today we will continue as we have three more fish boxes full of apples. But this time. we are going to make hard cider. It's essentially the same process as making wine so we'll just use one of the steel fermentation vats. A rule of thumb is to add a teaspoon of yeast per gallon of juice. I happen to have a lot of yeast. 

We've tested much of the equipment now and we love the hydropress but we are not enamoured by the destemmer/crusher. Granted we used it on apples not grapes, but it made such a mess, flinging bits of apple across the room in all directions. It's also quite loud and scary. I'll reserve final judgment until next year's grape harvest. 

On the weather front, parts of the country recorded a temperature of 0C yesterday and today parts of Cork have already measured 115 mm rain - more than a month's worth and it's still raining. 

What a mess!

Fridge delivery

 

We bought a fridge freezer for the shed and it was delivered today. Now we can store yeast in cold temperatures and have cold drinks to satisfy our thirst in the remote wilderness of the shed. It's a Bosch and it's reasonably energy efficient at E. 

We also harvested the cooking apples (Bramley) and had a bumper crop this year, with some massive apples, one of which is enough for an apple pie. So we will crush and press a whole lotta apples tomorrow. Perhaps try our hand at cider. Very exciting. 

Room is set