Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Monday 18 October 2010

Making cider 2010

Take 150 lbs of apples, carefully picked and placed in boxes in car boot.



Take them round to friends house where their wonderful equipment can do its stuff



Wash the apples


Feed the apples into the scratter ( to chop them up)



Chopped apples dropping into the tub, waiting to be loaded into the press.



Layers of chopped apples go into cloths ("hairs") inside frames, divided up by boards, until a stack ("cheese") has been built up, then the press gets to work and ....lots of apple juice comes out.


At the end I was left with this pommace (the remains of the chopped apples) wonderful on the compost heaps

and







30 l of cider. ( and another 25 l of pasturised juice waiting for me to go and collect it!)

Thank you Nige and Debs, another lovely session pressing apples!

6 comments:

  1. Can hens eat the pommace?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well they can, but because I have a lot of it, and it would save me some money on feed,


    they don't want to...(sigh)

    ReplyDelete
  3. My hens love the pomace left from our apple pressing luckily :o)

    Doesn't washing the apples wash off the wild yeast? Or do you add wine yeast to the juice?

    ReplyDelete
  4. No it doesn't wash the wild yeasts off Hazel

    Indeed the DJs are bubbling away nicely as I type.

    Some people do kill of the wild yeast with Camden tablets and then add tame yeasts but we do it the traditional way and always have alcoholic drinkable cider...

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love apples and all the things that come from them. Cider is one of the better things though....

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love apples in most forms, and cider is most definitely one of them!

    ReplyDelete

Hello! Thank you for reading my blog and for commenting. I try to reply as quickly as I can and I really appreciate your interest in my life and doings here in The Compost Bin.

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