Cider Making & Juicing at
Beeson Farm
This year saw the revival of cider making at Beeson Farm near Beesands South Devon. In 1998 and 1999 a one acre north facing hilly field was planted with fruit trees including a mixture of sweet, sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp vintage cider apple varieties including Sweet Copin, Sweet Alford, Broxwood Foxwhelp, Hangey Down, Browns Apple, Scarlet Crimson, Kingston Black, Brown Snout, Frederick, Tom Putt, Pendragon, Stoke Red, Sops in Wine and Major. The aim was to reestablish a typical South Hams orchard landscape grazed with sheep as a setting for the farm barns which were being converted to holiday cottages. (see www.beesonhols.co.uk)
In bygone days all the apples at Beeson Farm were pressed at Lower Farm where the old disused press still remains. To form a central feature to the farm yard at Beeson a large circular granite apple mill acquired at a farm auction at Denbury now provides an attractive garden water feature. These old mills were relatively inefficient and with no mill wheel it’s productive days were over.
The magnificent blossom this Spring resulted in the best apple crop to date from the orchard. As the apples started to fall in early September a collaborative, collecting, milling and pressing event took place involving another Orchard Link Member who has a two acre orchard near Lannacombe Mill which was replanted 15 years ago. On three sunny afternoons picking took place and the apples were gathered in.
A Google search was made for suitable barrels and as luck had it Vigo in East Devon had just taken delivery of 200 forty gallon ex rum casks from Scotland. Two were ordered along with racking pipes, hydrometer a 225 litre ex fruit juice container, airlocks, manicubes, bungs and yeast. Despite being delivered to Norfolk by mistake they arrived just in time.
“Real Cider Making on a small scale “ by Pooley & Lomax indicated that we would need 800 pounds of cider apples to provide enough juice to fill one barrel. It warned us that if we put in cookers we might well have a very acidic outcome. Thinking we might be short on cider apples Ben Pike the Orchard Link harvest Coordinator was contacted and he put us in touch with another orchard owner at South Pool who was unable to harvest and use their crop. We found this a jolly useful service. There followed another two hours of picking and shaking trees.
The Orchard Link mill and small press were hired for two weekdays at a total cost of £ 35 and set up in an old unconverted barn used for table tennis. The first day of milling and pressing got underway at 10.30 am and went onto 7.00pm with a two hour lunch break !
Our German guest family in the adjacent holiday cottage also took an active interest in the process.
As advised by the Real Fruit & Drink Company at Stoke Gabriel, the apple juice was poured into the plastic fruit juice container to allow settlement overnight before being racked off into plastic bins and carried to the farmhouse cellar where it was poured by jug into the barrel. This was laid horizontal above the ground on the old farm stretcher /pig butchering block which we found in barn !
We found five people a good number to man the mill and press which were easy to use and proved quite adequate for our small enterprise. By the end of the second day the five of us had filled two 40 gallon casks and had very large quantities of juice for drinking and freezing. A useful point to note is that a one cubic foot block of frozen apple juice will yield 5 gallons of juice, so a 6.5 cubic foot freezer will provide a year round supply of apple juice.
The stable temperature of 15 degrees centigrade at night and 16 in the day in the cellar seemed ideal for the fermentation. However to guarantee success, a starter bottle of yeast was added to each cask. A vigorous fermentation is underway with the casks being topped up regularly with apple juice to ensure air contact is minimised. Before fermentation the specific gravity of the juice was measured and indicated that if all the natural sugars were fermented out and no extra sugar added a cider 5 percent alcohol by volume would be achieved. Decisions on further racking and how to finish the cider for consumption have yet to be taken.
A very good time was had by all and we hope to judge the success or otherwise of our endeavours by Christmas !
Robin, Veronica, Warwick, Jill, Geoff. Barbara, Brian, Jennifer, Jonathan and Lilian
For more information on traditions orchard please visit www.orchardlink.org.uk
