Slàinte Mhath!

Unless you speak Gaelic or have a Scot in the family you may be confused by the title of this post...it's an old Scottish toast: 'slainte mhath' (pronounced slanj uh va) meaning good health. And the reason for toasting you all is that I've been busy making drinks, soft and otherwise, in the Holly Grove kitchen recently.

First off the bench is an update on the cider front; the first demijohn is now bottled. It has retained its deep pink colour and, if I can work out how the hydrometer works, I'll let you know the alcohol level.  I bottled the cider in 2 litre plastic bottles that had previously held sparkling spring water. They were sterilised with Milton sterilising fluid and then rinsed out with cooled previously boiled water. So approximately 5 litres of pink cider awaiting next summer.
 
The water bottles came in useful again for my first attempt at ginger beer. I love this spicy, refreshing drink and was tempted to try and make my own when I read of all the ingredients in the commercial brands compared to the simple ingredients in a homemade version, and it's made in a bottle, so no special equipment required! The result is a lightly sparkling, gingery, not too sweet, moreish drink; perfect for hot summer days and cosy winter evenings by the fire. I'll definitely be making lots more of this one and will slightly increase the ginger content next time.

Clockwise from the top - cider, ginger beer, apple liqueur, lemonade

Now on the shelf and ready for Christmas is my apple liqueur; two versions: one made with the rosy red dessert apples from one of the old apple trees and one made with Cox's from one of the newer fruit trees in the garden.  Some of this liqueur went into our Christmas puddings this year.  Both are a lovely amber colour, though more colour in the old apple tree version, and both taste divine. To be drunk in small quantities as they contain lots of alcohol, lovely with a festive mince pie or slice of Christmas cake. Can't wait!

And lastly for this roundup, lemonade.  This has proven very successful and like the ginger beer really easy to make. I made about 500ml of this and keep it in the fridge. We drink it diluted with sparkling water, about 50:50, so refreshing and tasty. I'm going to reduce the sugar content and increase the lemon next time as we like a sharper more lemony flavour.

Looking at this line-up I don't think I'll be buying much in the way of drinks from now on, if only I could make a decent Chablis and/or Merlot! In the meantime here are the recipes for the ginger beer and lemonade - cheers!

Ginger Beer
Ingredients
2-litre plastic bottle
quarter tsp champagne yeast
225g caster sugar
2 tbsp finely grated fresh root ginger
juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp honey

Method
Add the yeast to the bottle then pour in the sugar. In a jug, mix the grated ginger, lemon juice and honey together. Pour this mixture into the bottle and fill to three quarters full with cold water. Put the top on the bottle and shake until the sugar is dissolved. Top up the bottle with water, leaving a 2.5cm gap at the top.

Cap the bottle tightly, then put it somewhere warm. Leave it for about 2-3 days. Once the bottle feels very hard place the bottle in the fridge for several hours to stop the yeast working. Pass the ginger beer through a fine sieve and re bottle.Your ginger beer is now ready to enjoy.

Lemony Lemonade
Makes about 500ml
Ingredients
half a cup caster sugar
1 tbsp honey
half a cup water
1 lemon, zest and juice
450ml cold water

Method
Put the caster sugar, honey and cup of water into a small saucepan and bring to the boil, simmer for 2 minutes, until sugar has dissolved. Put the lemon zest and juice in a large jug and pour over the syrup. Allow to cool slightly then put the lemon mixture into a bottle. Add enough of the 450ml of cold water to fill the bottle.. Cap and chill for at least 2 hours before serving. To serve, dilute the lemonade about 50:50 with chilled sparkling water.

Thinking of Apples and Christmas Cheer

Two months ago, 11th of September to be exact, I found a recipe for an Apple Liqueur and thought I'd give it a go.  I didn't blog about it at the time as I wanted to get someway towards the finished product before I mentioned it here.

So here's the story so far...I had a small number of very large apples from our Cox's Orange Pippin - they weighed between 6-8 ounces each.  With some brandy left over from last year's Wedding Cake and some vodka from my Dad's visit to Holly Grove also last year, all I needed to add was some sugar.

Giant Cox's Apples

Starting the liqueur was fairly simple.  About 1.25 pounds of apples are washed and then sliced in a food processor, or by hand with a good sharp knife - no need to peel just core and remove any damaged parts.

Pack the sliced apple into ajar and cover with 1 cup of brandy and 1 cup of vodka. I also added a cinnamon stick.  Put the lid on the jar, label with the start date and put in a cool dark place - mine went in the pantry.  Then leave for a month for the fruit to absorb the alcohol.

Ready to store for one month

When a month has gone by drain the liquor through a sieve and squeeze the fruit pulp to extract as much liquid as possible.  Then strain the liquid through very fine muslin or through a coffee filter, as I did.  Combine 3/8 cup of sugar and 3/4 cup of water, bring to a boil and then cool.  Add this syrup to the liquor and stir well.  Return this liquid to the clean jar, seal and relabel with the second stage date and place in a cool, dark place for another month. 

Twice filtered juice

When another month has passed, repeat the straining and filtering process and bottle your liqueur. 

Here's one I made earlier

Leave for another month and then enjoy!  I made 500ml of apple liqueur with these quantities and am looking forward to tasting the results at Christmas time - cheers!

Hubble, Bubble

Hurrah!  The cider fermentation started in the bucket evidenced by bubbles and foam.  Yesterday evening I took the next step in the process...into the demi-john with the brew.

This stage is known as racking off.  I started by sterilising the demi-john, syphon tube and airlock in a solution of Milton sterilising fluid.  Whist that was underway I went out into the garden for a few hours of general autumn border and kitchen garden tidying.  I've cut out this season's fruiting canes from the raspberries and  tied in the canes in neat rows for next summer's fruit year.  It all looks very neat and orderly.  Then I addressed the annual bedding which was looking very sorry for itself after our first real frost of the season on Sunday night.  The raised beds in the kitchen garden were next on the list for a sowing of green manure; but I ran out of daylight, so back to the kitchen and back to the cider...

The sterilised dj was placed on a small step stool on the floor and the bucket of fermenting juice on the island unit worktop.  Then the syphon tube was placed into the juice and then suck on the tube to start the juice down the tube and into the dj, without getting a mouthful of yeasty apple juice, unfortunately NOT!  But it didn't taste as bad as I expected, but then why should it? it's going to be tasty cider after all, isn't it?

Lovely Pink Juice

What struck me most was the lovely pale raspberry colour, this must be from the deep red apple skins and, thinking about it, even when I make apple pies and crumbles with this variety the flesh of the apple has a pinkish tinge.  I wonder if it will hold this colour in the finished cider...now I am getting ahead of myself.

I  successfully racked off the fermenting juice with a little help from the Handyman; though no photos of this process as there was no-one free to hold the camera! The airlock with some sterilised water in it was inserted into the neck of the dj and then we watched and waited anxiously for the first air bubble to make its way through the airlock...YES!  

Fermentation Continues!

How exciting is this - one of the highlights of life in a country cottage - some may say 'get a life' well I think I have a very good one!  So where to keep the fermenting juice, somewhere away from curious cats, in the pantry will do and I can peep in on it from time to time.  More cider news in the next couple of weeks when it will be time to rack off again into a clean dj and allow fermentation to complete.

Juicing the Fruits

Part 2 of the Holly Grove cider making experiment began with washing the apples.  We are lucky enough to have a large butler's sink in our utility room which makes the job of washing all the apples a little bit quicker and easier.  They were quite dirty as most of them were windfalls with only a handful picked straight from the tree, so this was quite a water-intensive process.  I would put the used water in our water butts, if they weren't already full to overflowing with the recent rain!

With the apples cleaned I began to cut them into quarters. A useful tip that I picked up whilst researching cider making is to cut the apple horizontally through the middle creating a star-shaped core. This will show up any little creatures burrowing their way to the centre of the apple and allow you to discard/cut out the damage. Once quartered and any damaged flesh removed, it's on to the pomace (pulp) making stage.

It is at this point that I digress from official cider-making wisdom as I'm going to make my pomace in my little food processor; a gift from my Mum about 13 years ago and still going strong; and extract the juice from my apples using my new fruit steamer...and how long will that take you? I hear cider makers around the country cry...well...

Little Mouli Processor

My Shiny New Steamer

After filling the reservoir of the steamer with boiling water I began to add the chopped apples in batches as they were processed. After about 45 minutes I had filled the fruit steamer to the brim with pomace and then it was just a case of keeping an eye on the water level to ensure the steamer didn't boil dry and running off the resulting juice into the fermentation bucket as it filled its allotted space in the steamer.

Pomace from the Processor

Whilst the juice was being generated I made our evening meal and set about a bit (huge pile) of ironing, then after about 3 hours I had my gallon of pasteurised apple juice.  As the juice is extracted using steam it pasteurises as it goes.  This means that any yeasts on the apples are destroyed, removing the need to use Camden tablets in the cider production.  Cider can be made using the naturally occurring yeasts but, by all accounts, this is a bit hit and miss, so I'm using a champagne yeast in my brew.

One Gallon of Apple Juice

Mash after Juice Extraction

So a gallon doesn't look much but my idea is to experiment this season and learn from the process.  Once this gallon is in a demi-john, hopefully within the next 2 to 3 days, then I'll go through the steps again to make a second gallon next weekend.  When the Handyman and I saw the mash that remained after the juice had been extracted it made us wish for a pig to polish it off, we settled for adding it to the compost heap.  So now our heap smells deliciously of apple!

Beginning of Fermentation?

The final step for this part of the process was to allow the lovely deep pink juice to cool down, it comes out of the steamer boiling hot. The yeast, about 1 teaspoon, was mixed with warm water and added to the cooled juice in the fermentation bucket and the lid popped on. Now all I can do is wait to see if the juice begins to ferment.

I know that my process won't do for more than a gallon of juice but it works for me as I love to be in the kitchen and can easily occupy myself with cooking and baking whilst the juice is generated.  I suppose that if we wanted to use more of our apples in cider production then we'll have to consider a cider press, but for this season and this experiment the little Mouli and the shiny fruit steamer will do.

I should also credit one of the most useful websites for simple cider making that I found whilst searching for information, refreshingly named - How to make cider.

I'll post more in the next week to update on the fermentation or not of the brew.

Cider Making Beginnings

The Handyman and I have been talking about attempting cider making with some of the Holly Grove apples since we moved here just over 3 years ago.  With everything else we've been doing this has slipped down the priority list, but this year I'm going to have a stab at the process.

I've been reading a lot on-line and in books and, though an absolute novice, I'm going to try a more simple approach that doesn't require a cider press and a still room to store the huge quantities of pomace (technical jargon for pulp), demi-johns etc.  I may live to regret this approach, but at least I'll have tried.

I've purchased a fermentation bucket, a couple of demi-johns with airlocks, a hydrometer, a syphon tube and suitable yeast.  I tried to get hold of cider yeast to no avail, it seems to be sold out, probably as it's apple harvest time.  One of the sites recommended using champagne yeast as a substitute, so that's what I've got.  I'm using Milton sterilising fluid to prepare the bucket etc.

My plan is to make 2 gallons of cider which, by most accounts, requires about 48 pounds of apples!  I'm going to mix our unnamed variety of cooking apple and the lovely red eating apple on our old apple trees together with a small proportion of crab apples from our Red Sentinel tree.  So let the gathering of apples begin...

...and 45 minutes later, here's what 48 pounds of apples looks like...almost all are windfalls with little or no bruising with only about 2 pounds of crab apples - well it's a very young tree.  

Time to sterilise the fermentation bucket and then on to the juicing of the fruit...more updates to follow at each stage of the process, successful or not!

Winter Chills

I'm sitting in front of the fire wrapped in blankets with a nasty cold feeling very sorry for myself. The fields outside the window are covered in a heavy frost and a smattering of snow, perfect weather for a mug of hot chocolate, some Christmas biscuits and a favourite film on the DVD - I'm beginning to feel a bit better already.


More recipes to follow when I've stopped sneezing and sniffling!