The pear juice just after having the yeast added. Oops...forgot the bungs for the airlocks so had to use balloons as a temporary measure.
With so many pears and apples coming off the trees and with my recent sudden craving for Bulmers and Thatchers cider I've decided to have a go at brewing my own this year. It started last weekend.
For obvious reasons I wasn't going to buy a scratter or press of any kind until I knew for sure I would like to do this again - they're not cheap bits of kit by any means. This left me with a couple of options - buy a whole fruit juicer or use my food processor to chop the fruit, let it hang in a bag over a bowl to drip and then giving it a thorough squeezing. I opted for the first idea being short of time at the moment and having a prodigeous number of pears to get through.
The first lot of pears - about half my tiny tree. This is actually three quarters of what I had to juice - the rest were in a small box out of the picture.
I wasn't the only one it seems. I went to five stores and rang numerous others to find a reasonably priced juicer, but they were all sold out unless I wanted one that was three times my budget for three times less motor power. Er no. So that left me with plan B - the food processor and hand squishing.
I didn't have a suitable bag so I improvised and used some stockings. Each litre of juice used four stockings-worth, each stocking used three food processor bowlfuls of minced pears, and each bowl took nine average sized pears. So a small demijohn of 4 litres took 108 pears. I have 14 litres so far or 378 pears-worth.
Then I squeezed the squeezed stocking s a bit more using a baking tray, plate and some free weights left over from my weight training days.
To say I'm knackered is an understatement. I squeezed and pressed for around 15 hours across Saturday and Sunday. AND I have an equivalent amount of pears to press this weekend so probably another 15 litres worth to come.
Enough damgummit!
I'm never doing hand pressing again. Monday morning I managed to reserve one of only four whole fruit juicers delivered today to an Argos that is close to my work. Thank goodness for that...
Couldn't resist having a little go.
Anyway, I used this recipe here, mainly because it was easy, I understood it and it didn't blind me with jargon as many other sites to. However, I accidently added too much yeast - one packet is supposed to do about 23 litres as opposed to the 4 in each demijohn I was doing, so I added 20g/litre of extra sugar to each demijohn to give the yeast some more food.
I had read that different yeasts produce different flavours so I thought I'd try a couple of options. In one demijohn I used champagne yeast, in another I used baking yeast and the third (not seen in the pictures) I used a 50/50 mix of the two. By the way, everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - was washed in hot soapy water, sterilsed in Milton fluid for 15 minutes and then rinsed. I wasn't going through all of that pressing only to have it ruined by bacteria or wild yeasts.
Disaster nearly struck when I realised after I poured in the yeast starter that I had airlocks but not a bung to put them in!!! I raided the birthday cake decoration drawer and found some balloons which would do the job until I could get some proper bungs.
However, I had *no* idea that the smell of fermentation was so unpleasant. I'm sure, like I did, you have in your mind that fermentation smells a bit yeasty, a bit like uncooked bread, yes?
No. Fermentation gives off sulphur fumes so the whole bottom of the house has smelled of rotten eggs for two days. Absolutely rank. Apparently some yeasts produce more sulphur than others. I thought about moving the demijohns out to the garage, but I wanted to see what was happening in the jar every day so we've braved the nostril stinging fumes and left them in the kitchen.
Tomorrow - after four days fermentation and a distinct lessening of The Whiff - I have to rack the cider, which involves siphoning it off from the sediment at the bottom of the demijohn, topping it up with fresh juice and then leaving it to ferment further for a few weeks.
I shall report back when that is done.








