After the success of my last batch of cider, I wanted to make some more. I was also excited to use my new press. I love it. It's so well-built, made with oak and stainless steel. I suspect it will out-last me.

Apple Prep

I didn't have any more of my own apples, but there was still plenty around. I was easily able to get my hands on 10 kg from neighbours.

The apples were quickly washed and then shredded. This time I had a Kenwood grater attachment. This was a serious upgrade from my last attempt, it was not only quicker, but the apples were grated more finely.

Juicing

The shredded pulp was loaded into the press, and the screw tightened, the juice rushed out. This was not only waaay faster than doing it by hand but also much more efficient. Combined with the improved shredding, I bet I got double the juice compared with the food processor and hand squeezing. It was also much less tiring.

All in all I got 5½ litres of juice. Most of this went in a sterilised demijohn for fermenting, the rest went into airtight bottles which I drank as fresh juice. Delicious 😁

It was a lot darker than the last batch. I assume this was due to the variety of apples?

Fermenting

Typically, at this point you'd add yeast. I wanted to use wild yeasts. They are naturally present in and on the apple skins.

This meant it was even more important to make sure that everything which touched the juice had been sterilised. It would be very disappointing if the whole lot had to be chucked out.

I put it in a coolish room (~18°C) and waited. It took 3 days for fermentation to start, it felt like a lot longer. Apparently this is normal for wild yeasts.

I put the demijohn in a tub just in case I hadn't left enough room for foam and it overflowed. It was fine last time, but it's impossible to know how vigorous the natural yeasts were going to be. It turned out to not be required.

It fermented for a total of 28 days. There was a long tail off toward the end.

The start gravity was 1.051 and the final gravity was 0.996. This equates to an ABV of 7.2%.

Bottling

It was crystal clear. I was really pleased. I carefully siphoned it off into the same style flip-top-bottles I used last time.

I got a total of 7x 500 mL bottles + a bit.

I really like the flavour, it's a little dry, but I knew letting it stop naturally would make it a little drier.

I shared a couple of bottles with my parents on Christmas day 😊 Yeah, I'm pretty late posting this...

Next Season

I'm already looking forward to next autumn. I will try to start earlier and make a lot more. Seven bottles don't go very far. I think the next step-up is to fill a 30 L brewing bucket I already have.

The apples from this batch were ~60% juice, so to get 30 L of juice might require 50 Kg of apples. Sounds doable.

I will definitely use wild-yeasts again too. I love that fundamentally all I did was squash apples and wait and got delicious cider.