slow to ferment

After a couple of weeks, I was expecting a bit more action to be honest.

The layers are separating but there's not a huge amount of fermenting going on.

So I decided to bring it indoors to see if it made a difference and yes it does, after only a couple of days it's clearly fermenting away quite happily and it's obvious that I've overfilled it.... Note to self:

1 - ferment indoors as it's too cold in the shed
2 - when filling the bottle, leave plenty of room for fermenting as it rises quite a bit:

pressing ......

OK, well this weekend was pressing weekend. The apples had been sitting for about 2 weeks and they were a bit softer so pressing the apples would be easier now, plus some of the apples were starting to go a bit brown. Some more than others as one box was in the house and one box was in the shed.
Blimey, my first attempt caused me to rethink, even after sitting and softening up for 2 weeks, the apples there was no way that my homemade press was going to give me the pressing power for these apples.
Initially i thought chopping the apples would be the way to go but i thought why stop there? So I threw them all in the blender instead. I've no idea what affects this may have on any of the bacterias needed for the fermenting but the whole lot went into the blender. After that the chopped pulp all went into the press in batches. Making sure the batches weren't too big as the juice would come out the top rather than the bottom.
After pressing the lot which went rather well I've emerged with about 2 litres of juice which I'm quite pleased about.
To keep the flies off, whilst letting the gases out I've attached a ballon to the top of the bottle with a couple of pin pricks in it so that should do the job.
Now we wait I guess.... I've no idea how long so that's what I now need to investigate. I'm not adding any yeasts, instead i'm relying on the fruits of nature to take it's course...... I'll post updates on the fermenting progress.

homebrew starts here

It's the time of the year when i start and clear the apples on the lawn every few days and throw them in the compost .... what a waste!

As dad gave me a cider press last year i thought i'd dig it out and give it a go so last weekend I checked it worked, replaced the broken parts, put it all back together and cleaned it up ready to start... but where to start???   I've no idea what's involved or what to do.

After a lunchtime surfing the net there's a lot of surely unecessary steps and products needed, this can't be right. How did they make cider 300 hundred years ago? so i keep reading and I've got a plan. All operations should start with a plan!

This is a blog of  my very first attempt at making my very first cider, the easy, non technical and free way without needing to buy anything...or so i hope.

This weekend I'll pick some apples from my tree and store them in a bucket in the shed for a couple of weeks so they soften up a bit. Must remember to cover them up as I dont want flies using them to bring up their babies in... I've also managed to get a box load off Jamie which is the first hint I've discovered; use a variety of apples to make the cider, not just the ones from my tree.