Cider, harvesting and patio news.

 We finally got round to bottling the 2011 cider last night.

Am slightly surprised I could find my Hydrometer straight away ( actually, am astonished!) , but pleasantly surprised by the strength the cider came out at - 6.5%, Tastes good as well :)

And I took 4 Kg of Damsons out of the freezer and set them off on the road to Damson wine ( in the white fermentation bucket)

When they have thawed I will add lots of boiling water to them, leave it to cool, add pectolase then leave them for four days, stirring now and then.

This freed up space to open freeze another 6 kg of Damsons, for use later in the year in another batch of wine or to make Jelly or Cordial. I have no time to make any more at the moment!

I have 80lb of Beth pears to process - will be using the steamer which fits on my pasteuriser to make pear and tayberry juice - and then some of the juice will be turned into pear jelly while the rest will be bottled immediately.

It is a bit of a drawn out process using the steamer/pasteuriser but it has the advantage that the juice comes out pasteurised, and just needs to go into hot bottles.

I will also cold press some of the pears and pasteurise the juice from cold - but that will be a job for the weekend, along with the first of the cider and apple juice making :)

Cheers!

Patio update :)

It's now finished, apart from the pointing, which needs a dry day and dry slabs to do. Which we did not have, yesterday or today.

I have not taken a photo of it as it has been too blooming wet!