Cider making

Now the promised post on cider making. Like all alcohol production it is actually remarkable simple. Last year we had a very poor apple harvest and hardly enough to eat let alone make cider. But the year before I had already made a batch of cider of which I wrote here. That time we crushed the apples in an old fashioned grape crusher and then pressed them in a basket press. Whilst this was a relatively quick way of working, I found the juice yield slightly disappointing. An estimated 50kg of apples gave us about 12 litres of cider after all the deposits were racked off.

This is how we did it this year. We picked some 100kg of apples of two varieties. One is a local variety caled Rotella, a slightly flattened shape apple with good acidity, firm juicy flesh and a very hard skin, which makes them good for cool storage.


The second variety I'm not sure what it is. It is similar to the Dutch variety Boskoop, which is generally regarded as a cooking apple. It is browny yellow in colour with a rough skin, high acid and sugar content and a more mealy consistency.


We first sorted the apples into to 2 batches, one with anything slightly damaged, bruised or with worm holes destined for the cider and the other with perfect appearance to be kept in trays in our cantina which we recenty took over from our absent neighbours (the absent neighbours don't know that, so we're calling it a squat...)

That left us with approximately 50 kg to go into the cider. This time I decided to really give our electric juicer a test and process it all through there. It passed the test with flying colours and the juice yield was much greater than with the method we used 2 years ago. However, it took us the best part of a day to get some 35 litres of juice.

This was filled into a large clean demijohn. It is important at this stage that you use a container big enough to allow the must to froth up during the first couple of days of violent fermentation. This particular container has a 70 litre capacity. Also make sure you place it where you will want the fermentation taking place before you fill it to avoid any hernias trying to move it afterwards.

You could simply leave it like that and fermentation is likely to start with any ambient yeasts, however I prefer to add some yeast at this stage. The enemy of any wine is oxygen, but one of the by-products of fermentation is CO2. As CO2 is heavier than ambient air it will form an invisible layer on top of your fermenting brew protecting it from oxygen. Hence the quicker your fermentation starts the better your chances are of not ending up with vinegar. So I added a few sachets of ordinary baker's yeast and put an airlock on top. The airlock is filled with water allowing excess gases to escape but not allowing anything into your wine in the other direction.

Now you sit back and wait. Depending on how much sugar your must contained originally and on the ambient temperature, fermentation can take anything between 1 to 3 weeks. Once you see that activitiy has seized, i.e. no more bubbles rising and your airlock not bubbling, you test the stuff. Carefully insert a length of plastic tubing inside and suck some into a test tube or similar. If you have a hydrometer insert it, and if it shows zero, all the sugar has been converted to alcohol and fermentation is finished. You can also simply test it by tasting. Concentrate on the front of your tongue to see if it is completely dry.

Now you are ready for the next stage. You will notice the cider being cloudy and a heavy deposit on the bottom of your demijohn. Carefully syphon the brew into a smaller container with a plastic tube avoiding to disturb the heavy deposit, which consists of dead yeast cells. The target container should be placed at a lower level and you simply suck at the end of the tube until you have a mouthfull and it will then start running into the lower container all by itself. Do not attempt to simply pour it from one container into another.

Ideally the smaller container should now fit the liquid snugly with as little as possible air in contact with the cider and it should be closed tightly with a cork. Leave like this for another week or 2, during which the liquid will clarify further and another much smaller deposit will form. Rack off this deposit in the same manner and bottle. Ideally you should now leave it mature for a few weeks before drinking it, if you can resist that long. In total, after the rackings we made 25 litres of cider at about 8% alcohol.

In an ideal world you have special cider apples, which make the best brews, but failing that you want sharp rather than overly sweet apples. Our brew is perfectly bone dry, quite high in acidity (we also picked much earlier than we did 2 years ago), with fruity apple notes and a certain earthiness. One other thing, whilst the odd worm or brown bit wouldn't spoil your final product, if there's a lot of rot I tend to cut that out. Another advantage of using the juicer as you handle each apple individually.

Cheers!

The Calm After the Storm

Well the weather sure has been playing up again! Saturday turned out nice, which was just as well as we went to a Guy Faulkes celebration with a bunch of ex-pats further up in the Lunigiana. It’s funny the things you do when you move abroad. I’ve never attended a bonfire night in November when I lived in England; for a start I always have had sympathies for the anarchist burning down the Houses of Parliament. Well after all the rains we had had the bonfire never lit anyway, but we had some fireworks, mulled wine and bangers and mash and a jolly time was had by all. On the way there we stopped at Villa to check on the progress of the wine and cider. The cider has nearly finished fermenting and smells divine. Shame there’s going to be less than 15 litres by the time we’ll siphon it off it’s sedimets. Won’t last us long the way we drink…

Sunday afternoon the rains set in again and it soon developed into a downpour, which lasted all through Monday and Tuesday, culminating in an enormous thunderstorm Wednesday early morning. The photo was taken in the morning after the skies finally started clearing again. As usual after a storm our phone lines were down again and have only just now come back on. Luckily the power cuts only lasted a few minutes and water supplies remained uninterrupted this time. After having been stuck indoors for over 2 days, we were glad to get out again yesterday to check both in Arcola and Villa for any storm damage. Everything was fine albeit muddy.

All that rain and the still relatively mild temperatures meant that weeds are coming back in record time. My radicchio, Swiss chard, fennel, and cabbage that I sowed relatively late are all covered in weeds. We were going to attack them today as the weather looked fine this morning looking out of our window facing south. However as we arrived on the west facing side of the house we saw dark clouds brewing and even heard a few distant rumbles of thunder. We went to Arcola anyway, but, sod’s law, as soon as arrived there it started to drizzle. This is the trouble if you don’t live next to your land. It’s fine just nipping in and out of the house, but for us it’s a 10 km trek every time.

We picked a few more windfall olives though, as I put the first lot into jars. I followed another recipe out of ‘Liguria in arbanella’ (I shall add this book to the list at the bottom of this blog), Olive alla Taggiasca. Taggiasca is also the name of the best olive variety in Liguria, although ours are almost certainly Razzola. Taggiasca is a very small variety giving very delicate, fruity flavours, whilst Razzola is slightly bigger and a bit more spicy in flavour.

To preserve them for eating you immerse the olives in a brine of 1 tbsp of salt to 1 litre of water for 4 days, changing the brine daily. Then you make a brine with 150g salt to 1 litre of water, add a large sprig of rosemary, a bunch of thyme and 8-10 bay leaves and bring the lot to the boil. Simmer for 3 minutes and leave to cool. Drain the olives and fill into jars, adding a small sprig each of rosemary and thyme and a bay leaf. Drain the herbs from the brine and top up the jars with the herb-infused brine. Seal and wait for some 40 days to 2 months.

Finally, I (or rather this blog) have had a mention on the forum of Italy magazine (http://www.italymag.co.uk/forums/) in the last couple of days and visitor numbers have jumped up all of a sudden during the couple of days I couldn’t even get on the net. So thank you to the person concerned based in the Marche I believe and welcome to any new readers. I shall add the link to the forum to my other links on the side. It’s a useful forum for anyone interested in all things Italian.

Indian Summer and Cider Making

Well the much cooler weather and damper weather that had started on the 14th September has given way to a second Indian summer period, which started on Wednesday (8th). Daytime temperatures are back up in the mid-twenties and even at nigh it doesn’t drop much below 20 degrees. The clear blue skies and continuous sunshine really show off the leaves on the trees which are starting to take on golden hues. It’s just as well we are getting some nice weather again, otherwise we would have had an unusually short summer period this year, lasting for only 3 months. Now we seem to get a bonus week or two.

We did plough over a terrace last Saturday and planted it with broad beans for spring harvesting. I never seem to have enough each spring to conserve some for later use, so I dedicated practically a whole terrace to them this time. I suppose they are ready when nothing else much is growing (April/May) so they get eaten straight away. On Thursday we dug over a bed and sowed peas. I need to find another couple of locations for a greater supply for roundabout the same time as the broad beans. I also started my autumn cleaning work by strimming half the terraces. I shall finish the job today or Monday.

Yesterday we started our first cider experiment. Our friend Irene from Switzerland came out to help us. First we picked the apples, some 50 kg of various varieties. Not all the trees were as prolific as last year, but we had some really tasty, sharp apples. The majority were a variety, that according to Irene is called Boskop in German, a large, sharp, hard- and rough-skinned variety, yellowish-green in colour. Very juicy and tasty.

Then we put the lot through the crusher, which evidently is designed for grapes, but eventually crushed the apples too. Then of course we pressed out the juice. A beautifully dark golden, cloudy, sweet juice emerged. On testing the potential alcohol the must showed a whapping 11%! So it should be drunk with care and not by the pint like British cider. We made about 15 litres only, but hey it’s better than letting the apples rot on the tree or be eaten by the local wild boar population. Although I’m told the pigs taste better if they are killed just at the moment they try to eat an apple. This is the way they are often served here, still with the apple in their mouth.

Anyway, weather is far too good to sit here on my computer. Out I go!