Mead update

Some months ago somebody agreed on my behalf that I would make some mead which is a very ancient alcoholic drink made from honey.
After a bit of Googling, speaking my local home brewing shop in Bedford and buying the necessary kit, I got going.
The first thing I discovered that making mead isn't a quick process and letting it mature for up to a year is quite common but I managed to find some recipes that gave me an even chance of being alive to drink it.
Next ingredients. Coincidentally this year I decided for the first time to harvest all the apples on the trees rather than let them turn to puree on our garden and to stop the pigeons getting all the cherries, so I had all the raw ingredients and so far I have started orange and cinnamon, raspberry two batches of cherry and a  blackberry.

There are many types of mead and I have put together a leaflet for the day I actually get round to selling it at the Forest Centre which can be downloaded from here.
The first batches seemed to be doing OK so with the loads of apples I had from the garden, I decided to make a batch of the most ancient of the mead's, cyser.

For no particular reason I thought I might just log the steps in the making of the cyser covering  the preparation, fermentation, ageing and eventually the point where it is tipped down the drain to cause an ecological disaster greater than the Torrey Canyon, devastating the local countryside and moving Ravensden below Chernobyl in the list of 'Favourite Holiday Resorts You Might Like To Visit In 2016'.

There appeared no need to core the apples [a mixture of cookers and eaters] so they were chopped and then frozen as fruit that has been frozen gives up more juice apparently.
Once defrosted the next step was to pulp the apples. Fortunately a couple of years go my son in law made me a device to do this that rejoices in the name of a scratter. Like the other things Chris has made, its a lovely piece of craftsmanship, with everything fitting beautifully and works on the process of feeding the apple chunks into a hopper where a hand cranked drum studded with screws mashes up the apples.

Next step is juicing and I use a small aluminium hand cranked juicer.

It's bloody hard work. However eventually I have finished up with a bucket of brown juice. That smells of apples which is encouraging.

The apple juice, honey, yeast and some chopped dates are then put in a 5 gallon fermenting bucket and will be left for a couple of weeks.

The fermentation started very quickly and is very vigorous and my son's bedroom, where its being kept, reeks.

 

More later