Personal pages/Season 2020

Season 2020

2020/05/29 Just some preliminary notes:

• we have had no frost or snow in spring, so it could be a bumper crop. Schneider apples, golden delicious and Mostbirne over at Freitag.
• also plenty of Jostabeeren growing.
• I will likely not have any more room than last season, so limited to the same ~900kilos. Maybe I can fit another two 100litre vats into the boiler-room.
• use schneider and/or golden delicious for cidre ?
• juice mostbirnen and ferment the juice, but add sugar ? use the 300litre vat? it's too big for solids.
• vats available: 10 x 100litre, 2 x 150litre, 1 x 300litre. Not including the 100litre Graf for watering.
• I also have the 3 x 200litre blue vats, as well as some 9 or 10 of the large airlocks (Gärspund). I have one or two 100litre blues as well.
• will need to think of what to do with the left-overs.
• need to buy press-säcke for the big hydraulic press.
• consider replacing the funnel on the Häcksler.
• need to maintain a spreadsheet - "maische-status" - and put labels with numbers on the vats.
• ideas for a washing plant? something with brushes and water sprinklers.

Reflux experiment with a heatsink and fan on the main pot - I don't think it is particularly effective. The temperature on the heatsink is good, with a big fan down to 28C, but on the copper pipe, it's still 65-66C. I suspect that is too high for any vapour to condensate?

2020/06/13 I distilled the 30litre vat with the whole brown (black) pears, plus a few litres of leftovers of the last vat with pearmash. Yield was about 1litre of clean alcohol, X%, but the interesting thing was that the pot did not shake whilst boiling, it just sat completely still on the induction plate. I'm guessing because there was enough space in the water between the pears, for the vapour to escape easily.

2020/06/14 Have found another 30litre vat with what must be pear juice. I really must keep better records.

2020/07/06 Have picked 33kg jostabeer, plus Nadine's and what Nicole picked for us last year.

2020/07/09 Total jostabeer harvest is 45kg, plus some 2x3kilo that Nadine picked so 51 kilos.

Solbærsyltetøj

2020/07/13 I picked another kilo and turned them into jam (solbaersyltetoej) - about three jars worth. Turned out excellent!

1kilo of berries, 500g sugar, 1 bag (30gram) of M-Gel. Boil berries in 4dl of water, 7-8mins, slowly mix in sugar whilst boiling, mix M-Gel with sugar and stir in. I don't know that it jellified very much - I think the M_gel stuff said to mix in before adding the sugar.

Josta-trester

It looks like the trester makes up about 1/3 of the weight after juicing. With 40-50kg or more, that is 16kg, quite a lot. For now I am freezing it and expect to mix it with pear or apple juice. Or pear trester etc. I guess I'll have to use a large 100L vat or maybe two/three of the 30litre vats.

Objective: to figure out if some mix of Josta with apple or pear, trester or juice or mush, will result in something more appealing to the palate.

• 5kg Josta + pearjuice
• 5kg Josta + pearjuice + sugar
• 5kg josta + pear trester + water&sugar

or

• 16kg josta + pearjuice + sugar ?

Sale of old Obstpresse and Walchli Obstmühle

On 27 August, I sold the old Obstpresse for 70 and the Walchli Obstmühle for an amazing 223! I think I picked up the Obstpresse at the Brocki for 40 or 45, couple of years back. The Obstmühle came with the large hydraulic press, which I bought in Sep 2019, total price 402.