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.

Birnel / birnedicksaft

2020/10/03 today I took 15litre of pearjuice and turned it into "Birnel". Two pots of 7-8 litres each, on the cooker for at least 8 hours, on mark 7. Towards the end, the fluid starts frothing like the sugar when making caramelized potatoes, and there is also a delicious caramel aroma. The end product is about 1.5-1.7 litres of Birnel, in two glass jars with rubber seals. Closed while the Birnel is hot to create a vacuum. According to one website, it will last a year while unopened.

Ideas for use:

• mix with the jostabeer juice instead of sugar.
• use instead of sugar for caramelising potatoes
• birnebrot?

Notes - next time, put it on to cook before going to bed, will use cheaper electricity.

If I were to only reduce to maybe half the volume, I could put twice as much in a vat, higher sugar concentration, then ferment. More efficient use of space. A 100 litre vat at 80% would then hold approx 10 crates of juiced pears. Worth keeping in mind if I were to become more efficient at picking up and washing.

If the 19 trees produced e.g. 200kg each - 10 crates - that makes 3800kg. Reducing that by a factor 3, and I would need room for ~1300kg.

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 ?

2020/09/13 have added shredded Schneider to the 16kg. Vat C1.

Processing notes

2020/09/13 I have started picking up apples. I'm going to try to pick up four crates every day, two in the morning, two in the afternoon.
2020/09/17 Haven't quite managed to stick to that schedule :-) Close though.

The washing is still the bottleneck - I'm filling in a crateful into one of those grey Rako boxes, 40x60x30, letting them soak in water. Actually works pretty well, but I need to create a pipeline. Pick up two. start soaking two, while I process the previous two.

2020/09/17 I have started using the hydraulic press. with a 60x60cm press-sack that arrived today. Could have been slightly bigger, but it'll do. Need press-hölzer though, the hydraulic cylinder doesn't go far enough down. At least one thick slice of wood, maybe two. The press takes about 50litres, I put in three cratefuls.

2020/09/17 Bought an old alcoholmeter in the Brocki today, according to Richter and Tralles. It has a thermometer and two scales, by Richter and by Tralles.

Die Alkoholometer von Tralles und Richter sind die gebräuchlichsten. Beide sind Prozentalkoholometer, d. h. sie geben durch die Zahl, bis zu welcher sie einsinken, an, wie viel Prozent an absolutem Alkohol in je 100 Th. enthalten sind. Sie unterschteiden sich aber dadurch, dass Tralles nach Volumenprozenten, Richter nach Gewichtsprozenten rechnet. Das Alkoholometer von Tralles war früher im Deutschen Reiche das gesetzliche Mittel für die Bestimmung des Alkoholgehaltes.

2020/09/18 Press-Holz: Have experimented with a circular piece of chip-board, it broke pretty quickly. Have bought a bit of beechwood (Buche), but cutting it is pretty tough. For pressing, the finely shredded maische becomes more and more impenetrable as it is compacted. Just shifting the maische around in the press-sack helps produce more juice. More than once.

2020/09/19 Have managed to make a new pressholz, four crescent shaped bits of Buche, glued/screwed together.

2020/09/20 Used the above, works really well. Also for a small single-crate batch.

2020/10/19 The "Berner Rose" apples from the Benzelheim are too soft to juice. They turn to mush which clogs up everything. I have managed to make about 25litre for cidre. 2020/10/20 The "Belle de Boskoop" apples are difficult to wash, they look as if they dirty. The juice is nice, slightly sour.

Observations about the Faser-Plast hydraulic press

No doubt most efficient with larger loads, towards 3 crates worth, but as noted above, also works for a smaller single crate. Press is easy to use, but with the fruit being thoroughly shredded, I expect the load gets too dense too soon, preventing juice from penetrating. Lifting the plunger and opening the press and then shaking the maische, works 2-3 times and produces more juice. Is also easy to do, really not much effort.

2020/10/06 feeding the compressed maische through the shredder again, produces a very finely chopped material. Even after two times of shaking as above, I think I got maybe another litre.

Todo: get the next bigger press-sack, 70x70. Also put a grip on the big circular Pressholz, makes it easier to put in and take out.

Some overall observations

with the shredder, it is easy to process a crate of fruit. Apart from the actual picking, the bottle neck is now the washing. After a storm, it is easy to pick three, four or five crates, maybe even more, but the washing takes time. Using the 60litre Rako crates is not a bad idea, but some sort of automatic movement of the fruit would be useful. Rebuilding the Heuschnecke is overkill, I have no need for that kind of capacity. It would be cool to take a crate (approx 20kg) and tip it into a bath, and have it automatically come out the other end in maybe 10-15min.