Drink up thy Zider

Zomeret Zider makin' 'as come t' Valencia...
(Or, Somerset Cider making has come to Valencia)

For Thanksgiving we have been challenged to produce our own cider. Hard cider, as you Americans call it. Just plain old cider in England, especially in the South West, and we all know that the world's best cider comes from my home county of Somerset. We even sing songs about the stuff (watch the good old Wurzels in action).

After a bit of research on the internet we found out how to make the golden nectar. One problem... Somerset cider apples are hard to come by in Southern California.

Now! we could have bought a gallon of raw apple juice from a shop and simply added yeast to ferment  it into cider, but the challenge was to start from apples. We could have juiced the apples, but Lisa and the girls insisted on having me build an apple press. So on Thursday night, armed with a few 2x4's, some bolts and a Home Depot bucket, Cora, Violet and I constructed our very own press, with a car jack to apply the force to squeeze out the juice.

On Friday we bought 20 lbs of Braeburn apples (recommended in a book my boss lent me at work) to produce our gallon of juice.

Saturday was cider-making day. The girls peeled off the apple stickers and washed each one. I then cored and cut them into chunks. Lisa and Cora then blended them in a food processor to make pulp.
It was now time to test out the homemade, patent-pending, Howard Press-o-matic.

We put all the pulp in a cheese cloth sack, placed the sack in the press bucket, on top of which went the pressing head - some blocks of wood. Sat on top of this teetering pile was a two-ton car jack.
Cora pumped the jack a few times to apply a down force; then, hey-presto, juice poured out of the holes around the bottom of the bucket, ran into the tray and flowed into the stock pot underneath. After a while we managed to squeeze out one and a quarter gallons of juice from the 20 lbs of apples.

Later that night Lisa and I pasteurized the juice by heating it to 160 degrees, and then poured it in the jugs ready for the fermentation process to begin. After it cooled off, we added a crushed camden tablet to kill off all the wild yeast. This then had to sit for 48 hours before we could add the yeast.

Tonight we did just that. The cider is now in the fermentation process.

If this were a Master Card commercial:
4 2x4's, 1 bucket, 1 tea tray, a handful of bolts and a car jack- $40
20 lbs of Apples that "might" work to make cider- $17
2 jugs of really crap wine, just so we could use the jugs- $15
Brewing supplies and yeast- $25

Having fun making a gallon of cider that you can buy at any Somerset farm shop for $20. Priceless!

Remember! This November, vote Team Howard.
Team Howard is endorsed by The Wurzels.