Steel Kitten

Making pear cider - part 2

Day 1

Yeast starter added Sunday evening about 10pm. Everything mixed well. Some gas is being produced already and it has a frothy head.  It is necessary to leave a headspace in the demijohn during primary fermemtation due to the froth that is created.

Day 2 - evening.

Both demijohns are really frothing now and producing tons of gas. The airlocks are bubbling constantly. If you look closely at the right hand jar you can see bits. That was the champagne yeast demijohn and all of those bits were constanly in motion, rising up and then falling back down. 

Day 3 - fermentation is slowing down and there is a thick sediment. At 6am the bubblers were producing one bubble every 6 or 7 seconds. By late that evening they were producing a bubble every 15 seconds. It's almost time for racking. 

Racking - separating the sediment from the fermenting liquid - proved to be a bit fiddly. The siphon broke!  And it would have helped enormously if I hadn't have forgotten to bid on a set of 14 demijohns on ebay that were just round the corner from us, so I resorted carefully pouring off the cider from the sediment using 5 litre plastic water containers from the supermarket. They've done the job quite well and for a fraction of the price.

Of course I had to do a taste test too. Not bad at all! The champagne yeast cider was a little less flavoursome than the baking yeast cider, but the latter was a lot sharper. It will definitely need time to mellow, but at this point we were incredibly impressed because it was alcoholic!

The most important bit of secondary fermentation that I had to remember was to fill the demijohn to the neck as too much air can lead vinegar production not cider. To reduce the amount of headspace, I added some sterilised fresh pear juice (which had to be strained as the juicer is too efficient and added a lot of tiny bits of fruit) from newly squeezed pears. It also had the added benefit of feeding the yeast a bit more as they consumed almost all the sugar I add added during primary fermentation already.

Boy did they like the frsh pear juice! They frothed up all the way throught the airlocks in less than an hour, which was not the plan. So I took off the airlocks and put on ballons instead, which would at least contain the froth until it all calmed down. 

This morning I got up early and replaced the balloons with sterilsed airlocks as it was clear the feeding frenzy had calmed down.

So now secondary fermentation will take place for a few weeks to finish off all the sugars from the extra juice I added, however I am going to have to rack off again shortly because there is a sediment from the fresh juice lying quite thickly on the surface and now on the bottom. After that I will rack into food grade plastic bottles designed for sparkling drinks and let it mature for a few months.

If all goes according to plan, this cider may be ready to drink around Christmas-time, although some places recommend you leave cider to mature for nine months.

I don't think Martin can wait that long!

Making pear cider - part 1

 

 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.

The last of the jam making

 

Last week I filled my cupboards with jam made from  the last of the plums. I hadn't been able to do as many as I would have liked due to time contraints- about 20 to add to about 5 left from last year - but marmalade season will be upon us soon so I shall make up then. And of course I haven't yet done a hedgerow glean so I could well have a few more pots of jam to do then. 

 

While I was clearing room in the cupboards to fit all of the jam, I happened upon some of my alcoholic experiements from last year - the slow gin and the sloe...erm...I can't remember.

 

I think it might have been vodka in this jar (I remember wanting to do sloe vodka), but I'm just not sure because of course I didnt' label it. Twit. Anyway, that's bottled up now. In an old rum bottle that I haven't taken the label off. Just to confuse things further. Of course it could actually be that it is the rum in with the sloes because it begs the question of where the empty rum bottle came from. Whatever is in there, it needs a bit more time as it was a bit sharp. The sloe gin wasn't. Slurp. Yum. Slurp.

Oh and a bit of a warning. When you pour a whole bottle of alcohol in with the sloes, don't expect to get exactly the same quantity out. Spirits generally come in standard bottle sizes so I thought I was safe. Oh no. The alcohol extracts the juice from the sloes so you end up with more than a bottles-worth. And if you are like me that extra ends up on the work surface and on the floor while you stare in disbelief and try and work out where the excess came from. 

I'm attempting to keep the full bottle of sloe gin on the left for a bit longer to see what it tastes like next winter, but Martin made a lot of nomnomnomnom noises while sampling the half full one on the right and now has his eyes firmly fixed on my full bottle. I sense a struggle in the offing. 

Anyway, I'll be down to the supermarket this weekend buying bottles of gin for this years sloes and I intend to do an awful lot more bottles of it. I'd like to do six or seven, so I can keep half maturing for the next few years and drink the other half throughout the coming year, but that depends on the sloe harvest. 

Now, an honourable mention. My mother has been foraging.

Unfortunately, I was diagnosed as having a mild nut allergy a few months ago, but there's no reason why I can't grind them and use them with flour in cakes for Martin. 

Finally, there's been a lot action at Steeltowers last weekend besides the driveway being done.

I have finally decided to attempt home brewing.

The next post from me tomorrow will be about my forays into the shadowy exceptionally smelly world of making cider.

The driveway gets done

We're almost done now on the driveway! Six years I've been waiting for this. 

I wanted to tell you all about it sooner but it has been dragging on a bit. We're about two weeks out on the timings for getting it done due to cock-ups and mistakes, and now we're at a natural lull while the post concrete sets. We still have a massive gatepost to set in place and half a fence panel, then we can paint the panels and posts, and roll back the aggregate around them. So another couple days tops. But it's close enough for me. 

The driveway being scraped eight days ago

It's been an odd, but very satisfying feeling to have saved up for this project and paid cash for it. Just like the Fiat 500, we were determined not to take a loan out for it and saved up the money. 

Martin was quite nervous watching everything being ripped up.

When it's your own hard cold cash being handed over it makes you a lot more apprenhensive.

We laid the membrane down two days ago in the very early morning...

Getting something on credit can sometimes feel like you're removed from the whole thing. I've felt more personally invested in the things we've paid cash for than I ever remember feeling about things we've bought with loans. It somehow seemed less real with credit. 

 

...ready to take delivery of 10 tonnes of Shierglas Silver granite at lunchtime

With credit you don't have the weight of those thousands of personal moneysaving decisions to remember. The takeaways you went without. The holidays done on the dirt cheap, if done at all. The broken dishwasher you decided not to replace just yet so you could save the money instead. 

The work begins to barrow and rake the aggregate over the drive

Then there's all the comments from people who couldn't understand how we could put up with it for so long. "Just get a loan!" You'd be surprised how often we've heard that over the last couple of years, despite the recession. We even had one person who said they coudln't stand the sight of the drive and so didn't want to visit us anymore, as if to emotionally blackmail us into getting a loan to do the drive. It didn't work. We simply told them "Fair enough. Goodbye." We're no worse off without them as it turns out. 

90% of the fencing completed yesterday. The gatepost and half panel will go in shortly.

To celebrate what is a massive event for us, we went round to our local garden centre and ordered a huge winter hanging basket to be made up that will last until next June. When that turns up in two weeks, the driveway will be completely finished.

What a great feeling!

A watchful companion

I was getting ready for winter today and focusing on one of my Urgent and Important tasks - getting the remaining woodpile into the dry. A couple of months ago I cut up a about a third of the woodpile using a circular saw and stuffed the bunker full. Then all the remaining lovely dry wood sat in the rain for a while. 

Rather than spend hours doing that again, I roughly cut and stacked all the wood on our remaining woodpile in the shed to keep dry until it was needed.

I was halfway though when I was aware I was being watched. Two small, beady curious little eyes followed my every move from high corner of the shed. 

I had disturbed it's happy home. I could tell it was happy by the extent to which it had made its way through one of the pears!

Move out mousy. It's my shed. 

The tipping point

Well it finally happened.

Martin and I reached the tipping point the other day, or rather I did and as is the case when one partner does, it's hell for the other and they usually swiftly follow suit unless urgent action is taken.

The sheer number of things here needing to be started, needing to be completed, needing to be fixed, needing money, needing time, needing effort and energy I just don't have anymore completely did me in and Tuesday I came in from work and went to bed.

I called time and put the covers under my head all upset and flustered. Martin arrived and dug me out from the covers using tea, soup and sympathy.

When I finally stopped feeling knackered and sorry for myself (the next day), Martin and I went to the local harvester for lunch and wrote down a huge list of everything we had started or needed to start and then divided them up into an Urgent/Important time management matrix.

If you've never done this before it's extremely effective when you're drowning in stuff and your nose has just slipped under the water. It was first devised by President Eisenhower and improved upon by Stephen Covey in "The Seven habits of Highly Effective People." Eisenhower once said: "What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important."

Then we commited to only working on the things that were Urgent and Important for the next couple of months, slowly bringing things across from other quadrants and using the same principles to sort them. Ideally, we want nothing in the Urgent/Important quadrant at all and be working on all the life-changing goals and priorities in the Not Urgent/Important quadrant.

Urgent/Important

• Get the boiler fixed - have been putting it off as we wanted to spend the money on something else. Something that was actually not important and not urgent.
• Martin to finish a big plane to sell - Martin has a huge plane worth an awful lot of money that he wants to sell, and has had an offer, but he needs to improve a few bits and pieces on the plane before he can. He's put it off for nearly 7 months because it's not a fun project for him to do.
• Do the driveway - for my sanity and to stop me hoovering, to take pity on the neighbours who have to put up with it, for security. Only one more phonecall to go and we should have a firm date from a contractor to start in around 2-3 weeks, but we need that date from him to make sure everything else is ordered in time.
• Replace garage roof - it leaks and is dropping lots of dusty asbestos-based stuff on Martin beloved Fairthorpe. We've been putting off stripping it off and replacing it with a better rubberised product.
• Finish workshop roof - still not completely finished and it leaks. It needs special metal edging to stop the water leaking in and waterproof it.
• Winterproof green shed - still have not put one of the end pieces and side pieces on it so it will almost definitely leak this winter.
• Cutting up wood for winter - all that lovely dry wood we had a few months ago is out in the rain. I need to cut it up and get it stashed away.

And here's a few things (4/15) on the Not Urgent But Important list:

Paint chicken run fencing - it needs wood preservative, but is actually pressure treated and will go another year or so before it becomes urgent. However, would like to do it before this happens so it goes in this list to be planned for.

Buy an under-counter freezer - I have to leave a lot of bargains on the shelves because I don't have the freezer space, but realistically I can live out of our current freezer for about two weeks without buying anything. However I would like to improve our stockpile in time.

Repair/replace dishwasher - it takes more time for us to do the washing up by hand each evening that it does to load the dishwasher and run it. I do miss the dishwasher but it is not an urgent thing to have so we'll manage for now.

Buy laptop - we want to replace the eight year old tower that Martin has to save space and improve the speed that it takes him to do anything, but this again is something to plan for and is not urgent.

Would you like to see some of the best bits that made it onto the list of non-essentials (7/16)-  the Not Urgent and Not Important list?

• Put remaining CDs onto ipod - that would be the CDs I forgot were up in the loft for the last five years until I found them the other weekend
• Print and create album of our wedding photos - outstanding for five years now. Another few months won't make any difference. Let's face it, what's more important - the marriage or the pictures of the wedding day? Precisely.
• Clear ironing pile - yay go me! Get thee behind me non-essential ironing
• Finish needlepoint - well it's not that important is it?
• Put up shelves in green shed - and what will I put on them? I actually have nothing to go on any shelves, I just thought they would look nice.
• Decorate bedroom - yes, this was a surprise one! Despite having had that outstanding for some time, I was prioritising it above the winter-proofing the sheds and workshop to stop things being damage by leaks, and getting rid of dangerous asbestos-based products in the garage. I even had it prioritised above fixing the boiler. How wrong can I be? we have no-one staying at Christmas or the New Year so what's the hurry?
• Moneysavingexpert forum - massive waste of my time. Like rubbernecking a car accident looking for cheap excitement most days.

So we now feel on top of things and have an action plan.