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Home Brew


Ken L

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My dad does cider on ocasion and my apple trees will be going in over this winter once the hard landscaping is done outside.

 

If you can get your hands on a real cider apple, it will make your job a lot easier when it comes to blending the apples to get a good cider. Ours is mostly bramley with some cox (because those are the apple trees we inherited) but it's been difficult to get the acidity and tannin right. I experimented with crab apples and quinces to up the tannin and ended up adding a malolactic culture to knock the acidity back, but the results were not perfect. A good bittersweet cider apple would have made all the difference.

 

This place appears to sell them:

 

http://www.ciderappletrees.co.uk/

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If you can get your hands on a real cider apple, it will make your job a lot easier when it comes to blending the apples to get a good cider. Ours is mostly bramley with some cox (because those are the apple trees we inherited) but it's been difficult to get the acidity and tannin right. I experimented with crab apples and quinces to up the tannin and ended up adding a malolactic culture to knock the acidity back, but the results were not perfect. A good bittersweet cider apple would have made all the difference.

 

This place appears to sell them:

 

http://www.ciderappletrees.co.uk/

 

Would it be childish of me to make a joke about you sticking your cox in your homebrew?

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Would it be childish of me to make a joke about you sticking your cox in your homebrew?

 

As long as you leave 'Granny Smith' out of your joke, I think you'll be OK Elton.

 

John.

Angling is more than just catching fish, if it wasn't it would just be called 'catching'......... John

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If you can get your hands on a real cider apple, it will make your job a lot easier when it comes to blending the apples to get a good cider. Ours is mostly bramley with some cox (because those are the apple trees we inherited) but it's been difficult to get the acidity and tannin right. I experimented with crab apples and quinces to up the tannin and ended up adding a malolactic culture to knock the acidity back, but the results were not perfect. A good bittersweet cider apple would have made all the difference.

 

This place appears to sell them:

 

http://www.ciderappletrees.co.uk/

 

 

Steve

In Kent the cider tradition uses eating apples with cooking apples addded to get the acidity right there is no notable cider apple grown in the area. Anybody ever been apple yowling or wassailing before?

Tony

 

After a certain age, if you don't wake up aching in every joint, you are probably dead.

 

 

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The advice that dad got was no more than 20% cookers. He might go a little over that but I don't think by much and he was very happy with the results.

I don't really have the space for a dedicated cider orchard (or the capilaries) so that's probably the route that I'l go down - a cooker and a couple of desert apples and use the excess for cider. If i do 40l or so a year i'll be happy.

 

Put a triel gallon of ginger cider on last night. A bit slow to start but it's going. This will be a baseline from which I'll work out what I want to achive from a full size batch.

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Steve

In Kent the cider tradition uses eating apples with cooking apples addded to get the acidity right there is no notable cider apple grown in the area. Anybody ever been apple yowling or wassailing before?

 

Been cider pressing, always been a bit nervous of cidered up folk shooting shot guns into trees though.

 

I live right in the middle of the cider apple orchards, terrible views in the spring.

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We've got one monster Bramley tree and three small Coxes (stop sniggering at the back). Because the Bramley is so productive, and because there is only so much apple pie, apple sauce, apple crumble and stewed apple a man can eat, we end up with the surplus being at least 50% cooking apples, perhaps more. So the acidity can be a bit of an issue. That isn't the big problem, though - the big problem is the lack of "bite", which can lead to a bland tasting cider. Not a problem if you're trying to emulate Woodpecker, but more of an issue if you want a more authentic flavour. Might be possible to get round it by adding tannin artificially - you can buy powdered grape tannin, or oak chips.

 

These are the trees at the moment - looks like it will be a good year!

 

 

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