Well I’ve got my new Vigo press into action and started off a couple of what should turn out to be very interesting brews!!
I decided to press the grapes from my vine this year instead of boiling them up with other stuff to make wine – in the end around 2kg or so of grapes made just a fifth of a gallon of juice. I had frozen a couple of punits of home grown raspberries and strawberries so I defrosted those and chucked those in too. Finally I topped up the gallon demijohn with pressed apple juice from the apples off our tree. So that should give me a gallon or so of a kind of fruit wine-cider hybrid.
I also managed to fill a big cardboard box with apples I’d scrumped from various different trees around the place – there must have been at least half a dozen different varieties in there. I spent last night juicing those and got about 3 gallons of pure apple juice which I’ve put in a bigger fermentation vessel.
With both brews I added crushed campden tablets to sterilise the juice, leaving it for a couple of days before adding some wine yeast and yeast nutrient for a stronger brew.
Apparently this year is a tasty year for apples, so I’m really looking forward to the result!! It’s going to be difficult to resist drinking the stuff for another 12 months!!
Green Cottage 