to Get on a Brew

The majority of my apple harvest is destined to become apple champagne.

I find this to be an amazingly cost effective way of using the apples.  It is easy to make but there is one essential trick of the trade that requires a little bit of thought.  Any apple wine (or cider, for that matter) requires the juice from a number of different varieties of apple or crab apple to be mixed together in the must and which is then fermented.  This gives the really good flavour.

I find the easiest way to achieve this is to juice the early apples and then freeze the juice.  As the later varieties of apple mature the frozen juice can then be thawed.

So here you see yesterdays pressing of apples that has been allowed to settle in the fridge overnight.  This is then skimmed and the juice started away.

I am looking forward to sampling the first batch of this....