Personal Pages/Apple Harvest 2018

The two apples trees on the field are "Schneider Apples", a variety local to Zurich, discovered/named in 1746.

2018/09/15 The maize harvest team moved in and cleared the access to the two apple trees.
2018/09/16 picked up 4 x 17kg, Aksel picked up 8kg, so about 75kg. Plenty more left on the ground and still hung on the trees.
2018/09/22 Sat have squeezed 2 of the frozen crates, looks like about 20litres. Have 6-7 green crates waiting for washing and cutting.
2018/09/24 Mon have squeezed 1 frozen crate.  Two more getting ready to defrost by Wednesday, then press Friday.

2018/10/04 Thu have about 80litres of juice for making cidre.  

This season I am doing it slightly differently. I am making:

• one portion of cidre, in a 100litre vat.
• two 100litre vats with all the leftover bits, brown, black, rotten etc.
• two 150litre vats for apple, cut and frozen.
• one 100litre vat for the trester from the juicing. Will be adding water+sugar.

I saw a documentary about the making of Williams brand - they never juiced anything, they put the mushed/crushed fruit direct into the fermentation tanks. I presume plus maybe some anti-pection enzyme? Apparently the taste is in the skin of the fruit. I am going to try the same, so still washing, cutting and freezing, and then straight into the vat(s).

For crushing the leftover bits into a pulp, I bought a hand-operated "mincer" in the Brocki. It has no knives that will cut the pips or any bits of apple stalk. To the first vat, I simply added a yeast starter, for the second vat, I added enough fermenting mush from the first vat. 20181004 They are both bubbling happily.

Some loose comments:

• The 300litre vat is too big to handle, takes up too much space.
• might be useful with a metal frame support for the vat instead of the Rako boxes with the wooden shelf on top.