Pressing 2015

Pressing 2015

A Cheese pressingDSCF0112

Busy times, apples arriving and the pressing season is well underway.

Amongst the pressing for the week ahead we have decided to have an Open Day, call and visit us and see cider making in action. On Wednesday 28th October we will be open from 10.00am until 3.00pm, take care with parking and remember it can be messy.

So far we have picked up 3 tonnes of Perry pears and pressed these, we will have alot more perry for the summer ahead. Interesting to do, but perry pears are much more tricky than the cider apples, they all ripen at differnt times and will readily rot from the inside if you mis-time the harvest.

Next came Kingston Blacks from a beautiful old orchard at Stoke Abbott with many mature trees and nearly as many slopes to struggle over with the harvester!

This week we had our first 10 tonnes of the main crop which has all now be pressed and is blipping away nicely in the barn. Pressing produced a good yield of juice but all of the fruit has slightly lower sugar levels than last year.
Lots more to come and perhaps 1 or 2 special single varieties in small barrels.

We have pressed some apple juice too, all now safely bottled and stacked. So far just Early Windsor but we hope to do some more Elstar later on.