So why the delay then?

Well as mentioned in me previous posting, there's been some organising to do. What with impending nuptials coming up and trying to make the Good Life both Good and a Life which isn't as easy as it seems.

There is major upheaval in the garden at the moment which in finest tradition I haven't thought to photograph so I will take a few in progress shots and blog about that later.

But to the wedding. I know my readership is largely female which may or may not say something about me (it's the beard, chicks dig the beard!) so I am sure this will be a period of interest for you all.

We are trying to have our wedding as cheap as humanly possible whilst still maintaining a level of acceptability. I am divorced, my previous wedding cost about £150 as we disappeared of to Gretna. This did not meet with a lot of approval it has to be said so something greater is needed.

Also I have to think about m'Lady. Whereas I would happily do the same again she would like something a bit more weddingy.

I have a few issues though as after having a baby, getting married is probably the singularly most wasteful thing people will do in there life. I am not talking about something bad here, just the amount of money/materials that are wasted. Seriously, how many mums do you know who shop in charity shops or put their kids in hand me downs? I know people who got new Silver Cross prams for each child they had. In contrast my daughter was the sixth member of our family to use the same highchair, one I managed to fall out of when I was young.

Given the amounts of money I have seen thrown at weddings it does make me a bit apprehensive of the whole process.

But m'Lady is amazing and thoroughly on my wavelength which is probably why we are getting hitched.

Neither of us want something lavish, in fact we are trying to do something as low key and traditional as possible. More details will follow on this but lets get to the important bit. 

Alcohol.*

I envisage a few beverages being drunk that day and this comes with quite an impact to the environment. A lot of wine is transported in bottles which is hugely weighty and fuel heavy. Stuff that comes from outside Europe is often bulk transported in huge tanks then dispensed into bottles here but that comes with a few problems. Firstly it is outside Europe so lots of drink miles. There is often a huge plastic tank to dispose of as some are shipped in plastic containers, more oil consumption. Air is the enemy of wine. Decanting is a delicate process, otherwise the wine can go stale or vinegary. To compensate chemicals are often added often with their own carbon/fule footprint.

So I want something a bit better. Well for some wine, we have enlisted the help of a few CSA members down at Swillington who are keen home brewers. So lots of local hedgerow wines then. For something a little more regular, we are lucky enough in Leeds to have the most northerly vineyard within the city boundary! They are a little pricey but the are about half a mile from the venue, how much more local can you get.

As I keen Home Brewer I am making a lot of stuff myself. I intend to make a decent amount of beer but before that we had september. 

September is typically cider month. English apples are readily available and I had access to plenty this year.

Now for good solid instructions go read Murphyfish makes cider as his instructions are great and he is very thorough.

I am less so it has to be said. I see too much cleaning as a waste of water and unnecessary chemicals. Keep in mind we discovered alcohol as a means of sterilising...

So I made a batch for home, well I aren't letting all the Mad Apple Juice leave the house after all, I am quite fond of a bottle. This turned out to be around 8.5 % abv.

You may have seen this before and wondered what it means. It is literally Alcohol By Volume and is the percentage of alcohol in the liquid in the bottle. Simple. Calculating it is a different matter! But it is relatively straight forward if you know the gravity readings, but I'll come to that as it gets important later on.

So first thing give everything a quick wash down. Then it's a matter of chopping up everything and putting it through a masterchef to chop it into little iddy biddy apple chunks. These are then put through a press and the juice is squeezed out and collected. The process is very simple and straight forward but very time consuming and labour intensive without a scratter and a large press.

So after three 5 hour nights, we had pressed all out apples and set them fermenting, waited a bit bottled it up and it's in the cupboard of alcoholly goodness upstairs again.

Then I went and got more apples and started making some more. It was at this point a friend mentioned I might not want to be serving 8.5% cider to my family and friends as he put, "We can drink it, can they?"

Not knowing the answer to this and not wanting to risk an apple induced riot, I decided making it weaker might be a handy thing. This is not easy, again we will come to this.

So the process begins again, mash apples down into little bits however you can. Too small and you can end up with pulp in your juice, too big and you can't get enough juice out of them, so there is a bit of playing around here. Some people take the cores out of the apples, I don't, the juice gets strained as it leaves the press and everything is fine. Some people put  their chopped apples into water with a small amount of lemon juice in them, this stops them going brown. I don't.

Having got everything mashed and juiced, I put 18 litres of juice in a tub. At this point I add some pectolase and a campden tablet or two. Pectolase is the enzyme that breaks down pectin. Adding this stops the cider turning too brown. The campden tablet kills any natural yeast that might be present. Any yeast will start fermenting, even bakers yeast. However the quality and result vary wildly so it is better to stop unwanted fermentation and use a known factor like proper brewers yeast. Again some people choose a specific yeast for Cider, I don't. Ordinary brewers stuff is fine so long as it is strong enough to survive at higher alcohol strengths.

So leave it a day or two after adding the campden tablets for them to do their work and disperse, then add the yeast. If you do this straight after the tablets, then they kill this yeast as well see?

Just before the yeast goes in I draw off a small amount of liquid and using a device called a hydrometer I take a gravity reading. A hydrometer is nothing more than a glass bubble that floats in the liquid. It has a calibrated scale on it and will float at different levels depending on the density of the liquid. 

Initially the density of the liquid is high, due to the sugar content, my original reading was 1056 which will finish up somewhere above 8% when fermentation has finished. To calculate ABV you take a final gravity reading when fermentation has completed and use the following calculation to figure it out.

(original gravity-final gravity)/7.46 = ABV

I know once fermented the FG will be around 1000 and all the sugar will have gone. 

This is where problems occur, to achieve a weaker cider I can take regular gravity readings and kill the yeast at the reading that would calculate out to my desired alcohol level. But this leaves a lot of sugar behind which can occasionally start fermenting again over time (it's really hard to make sure no yeast is present when you are transferring things, it's one of the most common organisms on the planet, is on nearly everything including you and is even occasionally present in the air) which we don't want.

You can if you don't have enough room, brew this down to 8% and then dilute the strong cider however this is prone to issues caused be oxygen. These can be over come but it is tricky to do, involves boiling water first and then cooling it quickly and adding it carefully to the cider. Too risky, I need these bottles to be drinkable in a years time. Cider will keep up to about 18 months to two years. You can buy vintage ciders, some people reckon you should drink the last of last years cider as you make this years. This to me means a period of no cider which isn't a pleasing thought, although in truth ours didn't last to see this tradition this year! Om nom nom is all I am saying...

Back to track anyway, my best option was to figure out the dilution ration before hand. That is dilute the raw apple juice enough to lower the density and therefore Original Gravity to a level that will give me a more palatable strength. 

I decided on around 4.5% as a decent brew that won't blow everyone away.

So here is the clever bit..

Original Gravity X Original Fluid Volume = Desired Orignal Gravity x New Volume

To find the desired original gravity I simply transpose the calculation to figure out an abv of 4.5 and bob this in to the above.

So...

(OG x OFV)/DOG= New Volume.

The difference between the new volume and the original volume is how much cold water I need to add at this point to give me the desired outcome. Robert is as they say your mother's sister's husband.

That all looks a little bit brain hurty and it can take some getting your head round but it works.

My numbers came up with add 10 litres. So then add the water and bung in some yeast. Leave it somewhere warm and preferably dark and don't interfere with it too much. You can give it the odd gentle stir to keep the yeast dispersed in the fluid, I don't. I've found the bubbling of the yeast leads to it self stirring and thats enough for me. After a week or so it should have finished fermenting. This is variable depending on many factors, the way I tell is to watch the little airlock I attached to the barrel and see if it is bubbling. If it doesn't I will take my gravity reading, anything above 1010 would concern me. Mine was down at 1000 exactly on target.

At this point I sterilise another barrel and put half a teaspoon (proper measuring one) of sugar in the bottom for each half litre. This is for priming the bottles. This sugar will start a secondary fermentation in the bottles that will lead to the production of CO2 and some more alcohol. You don't have to prime but if you don't you won't get fizz unless you use some carbonation method. If you do prime, you need to add 0.5% to you abv for good measure. I had already accounted for this in my 4.5% because I am a clever bugger.

Some people prime each  bottle individually but having tried this I found it tricky, time consuming and the results were hit an miss. One bottle would fizz everywhere and the next wouldn't fizz at all!

So I batch prime as above, half a teaspoon or 6 grammes of sugar per half litre of cider. I also added some non fermenting sugars to the barrel at this point to bring the sweetness up again. My cider is very tart. It makes your lips recede in a way Canute would never manage and you walk around looking like Esther Rantzen for the rest of the day. This is not everyone's taste so I sweetened it a little bit to take the edge off it. Using a non fermenting sugar means this will not turn into extra alcohol and gas.

Then syphon the cider into this barrel, you can pour it in, or scoop a jug out at a time into this barrel but again this can all cause unwanted oxygen to get in. I syphon and the flow conveniently stirs everything up for me as well. Once all the liquid is transfered off the yeasty sludge in the bottom of the original barrel, I give it a gentle stir to make sure everything is mixed and then syphon it into bottles and cap it. It's important to use bottles that are designed to take pressure. Lager bottles are ideal but tend to be a little small. If you have bottles that have contained cider already these are also fine. I prefer Grolsh bottles as the top is reusable so long as it is cleaned. Failing that I have plenty of real ale bottles. These tend to be around a pint and are generally bottle conditioned therefore strong enough for the process. Some ale bottles are not thick enough to take the secondary fermentation process and will explode under pressure.

At a push you can use plastic pop bottles but be warned, plastic is much harder to sterilise well so more chemicals are needed. To me cider should be as natural as possible.

So for all my effort what to I have to show for it?

54 bottles of 4.5% cider all prepared for september next year. These are now safely put away with the other 60 bottles I made for us. They are of course clearly labelled by writing the ABV on top so I don't get them mixed up.

Like I said, clever bugger me.

So there you go, this accounted for around 3 weeks in total of the time I have been absent. This includes picking and processing the apples and the cleaning involved. Apologies for how long this one has been, and the presence of gratuitous maths. Right m'Lady has just removed cake from the oven so I am going to sign out and go and get some.

*Just joking m'Lady