November
2009
End
of Season
I always
feel regretful during the pressing season that I am unable to write about it at
the same time. Contributions to my
Cidermaking Year should surely dwell heavily on the actual cidermaking part of
the year. That I am only able to write about it afterwards is simply that I find
the intense period of heavy work is thoroughly exhausting. At the end of each
long cidermaking day I have looked at the computer through bleary eyes,
managing only to get the gist of the many accumulated emails on the Cider
Workshop, before falling into bed. I've
picked up interesting facts and some useful tips along the way, but have felt
too tired to make a contribution.
Back in
September before pressing began in earnest, I managed to make a pleasing job of
fitting the new butterfly valve to the outlet of the pomace hopper. A check was
then made by half filling the hopper with water and leaving it over night. Not
a drop leaked out, so I felt encouraged enough to proceed to the next stage.
This entailed making an eight inch diameter guide tube to fit below the valve.
The purpose of this was to prevent the discharged pomace from splattering over
all and sundry, especially when the first few layers of the cheese were being
made. The tube was made from polypropylene cloth garnered from one side of a 1
tonne building sand dumpy bag. It seemed to be ideal, my intention being to
roll it up like a trouser leg to reduce its length, as the height of the cheese
increased. The woven plastic material would also be easy to wash clean between
pressings.
The awesome
day came. I milled and milled until the hopper was full of pomace. The ceiling
groaned under the weight and I had a fearful vision of the whole lot caving in,
but all seemed to be well. I convinced myself that it was safe to stand below
the half a ton of apple, then with the exciting thought of how I could now
build a cheese so quickly and efficiently, I pulled the handle of the
valve.
It worked
beautifully. I was ecstatic as the pomace flowed into each cloth. Four layers
of the cheese were built in quick succession. Then came layer 5 and with it the
beginning of a problem. The pomace was sticking in the hopper. It was much
drier than when I started. Obviously the juice was running out of it, into the
first layers of the cheese and the pomace was now too stiff to slide down and
out of the valve. I knew that it would be necessary to pump some juice back up
to the hopper to keep the pomace fluid. Somewhat disheartened and realising
that I no longer had the time to mess about with pipes and valves, I decided to
put the hopper experiment on hold.
You know what happened next! The apples season was now under way.
Pick and press, pick and press! I had to hastily revert to the old method of
hanging the pipe from the pomace pump over the top of the press. As before,
this 2 inch diameter pipe could then plop sausages of pomace on to each new
layer of the cheese. I reverted to my usual method of dashing between the press
room and the milling room on a continual basis, as each cheese was made.
Although disappointed about the hopper, it did not really matter to me; the
only thing that mattered now was to get the apples through. Luckily for me, in
the latter half of October my friend Dominic who made cider with me last year,
returned to help out. We worked well as a team. When one of us was milling, the
other could be building the cheese and also find some time to wash the next lot
of apples.
Dominic is
an enthusiastic cidermaker. Normally a landscape gardener, he managed to tear
himself away from a big project in Scotland, to have a cidermaking holiday in
his home county. I loved the idea of his working holiday but soon found I had
to work harder than I normally do, just to keep up with him! Of course I told
him what had happened with the hopper. From then on he could not then let the
matter rest. We would have to have another try! In the interest of maintaining
throughput, I managed to put off any further experiments until his last day
here. In the meantime his furtile mind alighted on a little experiment of his
own. He brought some white T shirts to work one day and placed them between the
layers of the cheese. Interesting tannic crisscross patterns were evident after
the pressing. The cider T shirt had been invented! I expressed doubts about the
permanence of this form of dyeing, but Dominic's enthusiasm never wavered. When
he told me that he had sold the first one in a pub for £20, I began to think
that he might be on to something.
By the time
that Dominic's last day here arrived, I had fixed a diverter valve from the
juice pump to direct juice up to the hopper via a pipe through a hole in the
ceiling. We set about filling the hopper with pomace and then attempted to
build a cheese in the manner I had done before. As soon as the pomace started
to stick in the hopper we pumped some juice into it. It needed a lot of juice
before things started to happen again. Looking into the hopper from above, it
seemed that the pomace soaked up the juice like a sponge. The pomace needed to
become quite sloppy before it would slide down and out of the hopper. It was
also obvious that some way of ensuring an even mix of pomace and juice was
needed. This was the cue to try the motor driven stirrer paddle from Barry's
milk tank. This worked well, producing a nice even porridge of pomace in the
middle of the hopper. Yet the pomace was still loathe to slide out through the
valve. We then played about with the juice pipe and discovered that the secret
was to play the juice against the inside walls of the hopper thus reducing the
friction between the pomace and the lower sloping sides of the hopper. We got
it to work well enough eventually, but it seemed that the juice feed would have
to be split 4 ways so as to play on each of hopper sides. I got the uneasy
feeling that the whole thing was becoming over engineered. I may decide to give
up on the idea altogether before next year. It needs to be given a bit of
thought in the meantime.
The other
thing that is new this year is the 6,000 litre mixing tank for my pub blend.
This is situated behind the ciderhouse on a plinth built from concrete blocks.
As the ground is sloping it was necessary to make some sort of a platform to
stand the tank on. In the summer I had a university student here doing holiday
jobs in the garden. James proved to be good with brick work and also made what
has now become a most useful paved area in front of the ciderhouse. I also got
him to make the plinth for the big tank. I told him to be aware that it must
support 6 tonnes, so he dug down to the chalk subsoil for its foundation and
built it up as a box made of concrete blocks. The box was then filled with
brick and concrete rubble. It looked solid enough to be a gun emplacement by
the time he had finished! The big black tank was then proudly positioned on its
new perch to await the cider season.
Not long
after Dominic's departure when the 6 IBC tanks had been filled, I took a 50 ml
sample from each. The samples were put together in a jug to provide me with a
'moment of truth' as to what the final blend may become. I was pleased with the
combined ph at 3.6 and the fruity flavour seemed to have the right amount of
tannin. The combined gravity at this stage was 1010.( None of my juices had
been very high this year, all having started in the 1045-50 region. No doubt
due to the poor summer). Then came the big move. It took me the next 3 or 4
hours to pump the whole lot into the big tank outside. It filled the tank to
just 2 inches below the top outlet, into which I fitted one of Vigo's jumbo
airlocks. The finishing touch to this was an upturned flowerpot over the
airlock to prevent birds from dropping anything unpleasant into the water
channel. For the next week or so, I daily checked the tank with a spirit level
to see if it had begun to lean. It
remained reassuringly vertical. Since then however, I've noticed settlement
cracks have appeared in the brick work. Perhaps next summer I need to put a
reinforced concrete top on the plinth to spread the load. I should add that the
IBCs are now all washed out and sterilised ready to have the cider back again
should anything really untoward happen to James' brick work.
No season is
ever free from disasters of one sort or another. Pipes sometimes flop out of
tanks during pumping and spray juice all over the place. This happened once
this year despite my use of spring clips to hold pipes in place. The first sign
was a ghastly brown rivulet coming out below the tank room door. However, by
far the worst thing this year was St. Em's sudden and complete loss of
pressure. I had been expecting a problem because the water hydraulic pump had
been squirting water pistol like sprays during pressings last year. I could not
see how to do anything about this because the nuts on the pump were too big for
any spanners that I have. I just hoped that I could get through OK again this
year. But no, it was not to be. Right in mid season, the seal in the pump
really blew out and water shot out everywhere with considerable force. I now
had no pressure and no press! Luckily it was the week before Barry's Do at
Burley and Albert the press expert was there getting all the machinery ready
and in fine form for the great annual steam pressing week end. I made a mayday
call to Barry. To my amazement Barry and Albert were here within the hour. Then
by the time I'd made them a cup of tea, Albert had applied his big plumbing
spanners and taken ST.Em's pump apart. The seal was soon replaced. Since then St Em has been pressing as well as
ever she did. Thanks yet again to my wonderful cider friends!
Now I have
some time on my hands for keeving, the 'hobby part' of the job. The trouble is,
it is a very funny year. Temperatures are still too high and the apples have begun
to get scarce. I have resorted to sulphiting the juice to the 'full yeast kill'
level, to forestall fermentation and give the keeve a chance to work. This was
successful with the precious 100 litres of KB from my own orchard. It did the
whole thing in one week! I only just managed to rack it from the cap before the
fermentation started. At the moment I'm
waiting to see if a 400 litre tank of Dabinett & Ashmead's Kernel will
similarly oblige.
I am not
optimistic, as the weather is still too warm for November.
Rose.