Cider

Growing up in the West Country brings you into contact with Apple Cider from an early age. Our apple tree, now in it's third year of growth gives me a feeling of optimism but rather than wait until Autumn we wanted to see if cider was a decent possibility.
Turns out that it's not that difficult.
The apples need to be crushed and squeezed. We used a juicer. This isn't always recommended because you are meant to avoid metal in the process. We used a combination of apples going cheap and some apple juice.
Once we were done, 5 litres of apple juice smiled up at us from a bucket. We added campden tablets to kill the natural yeasts and after 24 hours introduced cider yeast. To start with it was disappointing. But aftre a while the bucket got quite foamy. After three days we transferred it to a plastic 5 litre container and added an air lock.
Then the activity really started.
For about two weeks the concoction has bubbled and fizzed and formed a crust.
We have now decanted it into lemonade bottles and now we wait.
At some point we'll find the courge to drink it..... watch this space!