Pressing apples to make cider

A very interesting and enjoyable day preparing and pressing apples to make cider. Our apple tree always produces far more than we can ever use and I've long wanted to try my hand at making cider. A few weeks ago, as you may remember, I was on duty with a trainee at Cranbrook Road crossing who shared most of our interests and offered to help us make some cider. So today was the day. We also had many Bramley apples from Doreen's tree to add to our Worcester Permains.

We took about 150lbs of apples around but unfortunately as the apples were so juicy we brought nearly half of them back. You can see the strong flow of juice from the press. In the end we produced some 5 gallons of juice which is now beginning to ferment and is likely to have an ABV of between 6-7%.

After the pressing we had a very enjoyable lunch and further talk about folk music, walking and all manner of other topics and it was only with reluctance that we left to come home.

It was a very late night last night as we had to call 111 for Doreen at 11. 30pm and weren't able to get to bed until well after 1.00am.