Another orchard extension

Last year we tripled the site of our orchard, from 1000 to 3000 square metres (3/4 of an acre in old money). At that time, there was a plot of similar size beside our own that a friend was trying to buy, but this year he decided against it, and asked if we were interested. After a bit of consideration, I said no, but a few weeks ago, while walking through our own orchard, I strolled though the plot for sale and began to have second thoughts.

This new plot has not been looked after for quite some time. The trees are often too close together, and in summer, the canopy is almost unbroken even between rows. Very overgrown, and what I kept describing as like something out of Middle Earth. My original negative decision was based on the amount of work our existing orchard already needs. Although it was better cared for, I still have a lot of cutting to do to rejuvenate, or open up most of the trees, and the thoughts of taking on another 90 or 100 trees was a bit overwhelming. Until I strolled through...

The man selling it got my number from my friend, and called me to ask if I was interested, and I told him we'd think about it over the weekend. Which I did, to a rather extreme level. My poor wife was sick of me running through scenarios, and pointed out that we wouldn't have to do anything if we owned it. There's no commercial pressure, just a hobby, and to be honest, part of the appeal was to try and preserve this as an orchard, as it borders onto tillage, and other sections of the overall orchard have been felled and sown with crops instead (see the treeless strips in the aerial image below).

So, the decision was made. We agreed a fair price, and today the legal contracts were signed, so we are now formally the owners. This now doubles our overall orchard size to over 6000 square metres (1.5 acres), which is rather daunting as a hobby!

Green areas are what we've owned till now. Today we added the red area.

The orchard itself has six rows of threes, four of which are continuations of one of our existing plots. The varieties of trees are pretty must the same, as they were all planted at the same time, in 1958. Varieties that were popular then, like Glockenapfel, Boskoop, Jonathan, Jonagold, Goldparmäne, Brettacher, Cox's Orange Pippin, and several others that I have not yet identified, but which are really interesting in terms of flavour profile.

Originally, the ends of every row had cherry trees, which our current plot is missing, so we will gain, I think, 5 very large cherry trees. Inside the cherry trees, each row then had a few pear trees, and this is repeated a thee ends of the rows we are purchasing. Mostly they seem to be conference, mirroring the ends of the current rows, but there are a few other varieties, like Bürgermeisterbirne/Köstliche aus Charneux, and I hope some perry pear trees and more Williams Christ.

We will have our work cut out, and probably need to take some drastic measure to open the plot up, for the sake of the trees. Personally, I'd also like to get in a full row of classic English and French cider apples, but let's see how it all develops. I'm probably nuts...

Apple Harvest and Cider 2018

2018 was a strange year for our apples. The spring started warm and dry, and like all across Europe, the summer was a scorcher, and very dry indeed, shortening the season on many crops. "Notreif", or emergency ripe, one of my farmer friends said. And apples were of course affected. Varieties that we would normally be harvesting in mid-October were dropping en masse from early September, and the quality of the drops was not great, presumably a reason the trees decided to shed them so early. Nevertheless, it was indeed a bumper year for fruit, with most trees straining under the weight of the apples.

This was also the first year harvesting from the second orchard plot we purchased around this time last year. With about three times the amount of trees we had before, we didn't really have to care about the early drops, most of which we ended up discarding, as they would not keep. But we had plenty that we properly harvested using the tried and tested tarp-and-shake method.

This year we pressed over several weekends, including pressing for friends and neighbours. In total, I think we pressed about 2.5 tonnes of fruit, using the same mill and presses as last year. This time, however, as we had a greater choice in varieties to choose from, we also pressed some single varieties, to get a feel for them. If they work alone, fine, if not, I'll either bland them or get them distilled.

As well as our apples, this year I was also offered quince by a local chap. I expected a few sackloads, but it ended up being just over 300kg, which we pressed yesterday. Quince schnapps is quite popular here, so i reckoned that's what we'd do with them. But the juice is really tasty, with a decent acidity, a slight bitterness, and lots of sugars and perfumy, fowery flavours. If it still tastes good after fermenting, I'll set some aside for ageing as a kind of quince wine.

It's a difficult fruit to process, being rather hard and quite dry. But with a fine milling, the juice is released, though from about 280kg of fruit, we got 120 litres of juice, so about 42% efficiency. Other methods might be to use a steam juicer, but we couldn't have done that in any great quantity, but we might experiment with a 5 litre batch to compare.

For ourselves, we currently have the following in fermenters:

• 60L Gloster
• 60L Goldparmäne (King of the Pippins or Reine de Reinettes)
• 60L Jonagold
• 60L Conference pears (actually to be distilled, but if it tastes nice, may keep it)
• 160L blend of several varieties, that has since been transferred to an oak barrel.
• 240L mixed varieties that is destined to be distilled in the next couple of months.
• 120L quince (also pressed for distilling, but the juice tastes so good, I may keep 60l as a wine/"quince cider", or for blending.

Pressing is not finished quite yet, as we have apples in storage (tumping, I learned is the correct term) that will be pressed for a keeved batch next weekend. Last year i made 50 litres of keeved cier as an experiment, and while i didn't think I got a full keeve, it fermented long and slow in our coldest cellar, and stopped with a final gravity of 1.012, so still has quite a nice sweetness to it. I'll report more fully on this year's batch, which i will increase to 120 litres.

So quite a busy and early harvest and pressing season this year, which has further distracted me from finishing the attic conversion, but I'll try to get back to that in the coming weeks, so I can start the tree pruning with a good conscience. Speaking of which, the orchard will expand again later this year, doubling our plot to 6000 square metres (about 1.5 acres). But that'll be a post in its own right!

Adventures in Distilling (Part 1?)

Germany is pretty well known for its love of rules and regulations, and the area of making alcohol in the home is no exception. Home brewing only became legal in December 1985, but even so, homebrewers are required to register with the tax authorities, but can brew up to 200L per year without needing to pay tax. But there are some areas where long tradition has meant fairly lax rules (from the perspective of an Irishman), particularly when it comes to distilling. Ok, you can’t really do much at home, though as of this year, you can buy a 2L capacity still without the requirement to register it with the tax authorities, but that’s just for playing with.

No, the real meat is the tradition of nearly every village in the south having its own Abfindungsbrennerei, a type of small distillery where farmers could bring their leftover cider, or mashes made of berries, pears, quince – whatever fruit they had to shove in a barrel – and get it legally distilled. Sadly, this kind of distillery is certainly on the wane, and this decline will likely accelerate after changes in state monopoly laws relating to distilling (basically, the state bought alcohol for industrial use from the distillers, but that ended this year) and I know of two in nearby villages that have closed since we moved into the area. But we still have one in our village, now in its third generation. And from what Horst says, he could be the last, as his son has no interest in taking it over.

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of being able to assist in distilling my own schnapps, something I had been looking forward to doing since I had my first apple mash distilled this time last year, but was not able to be there. That time, I delivered 120L of apple mash and received 21L of 43% ABV apple brandy to play with. This year, I broadened the variety, with 60L cider, 60L of cherry plum mash, and 75L of pulped grapes. I was eager to see how these would work out.

Horst’s still has been altered several times over the years. Originally, the copper was encased in brickwork that contained the firing chamber, and was, I guess, a simple alembic still. In 1975, his father-in-law took updated the still so it was free standing, and incorporated a stainless steel water bath that surrounded the copper, so it would not be in direct contact with the flames. But he still had to distill each batch a couple of times, at least, to get a good product out. In 2004, Horst took over and further modified the still to convert it into a column still, so he could do a batch in one go, and also distill continuously. But it remains wood-fired, with the heat controlled by a flue, so it all feels properly artisanal, in the best sense of the word.

Horst’s methods have been handed down, so there’s not a lot of science in it, just practical experience. But those who have been getting their spirits distilled by him over the years always say he does it well, and I certainly had no complaints last year.

We started with the cider. This was the remains from some experiments, all thrown into a barrel to get up to 60L, and was about 7% ABV going in. We retired to the adjoining kitchen for coffee and cake while it heated up, but as he’d done a batch for a neighbour previously, it was really fast in getting up steam. It was enthralling, peering through the little portholes of the so-called analyser, watching the vapour condense and trickle down again, before being taken up and over to the rectifier, where it was finally cooled and condensed, trickling out in a steady stream into a bucket. I knew enough about heads and tails, and had assumed there’d be some complicated tests to know at what point to discard the first runnings, or to stop collecting the hearts, the stuff you really want. But no, we did it by smell, taste, and even sight. The initial liquid smelled like UHU glue, and was milky, later turning crystal clear, with a rich, sweet aroma, before drying out. On the other end, an alcholometer was used to constantly measure the ABV of the spirit coming out, and collection was stopped when the ABV dropped to 45%. After this, the rest was collected till it ran to 10%, and discarded. Rinse and repeat for the others.

I ended up with the following results:

• From 60L 7% cider, I got 4.5L spirit at 65% ABV. Pretty ok.
• From 60L cherry plum mash, I got 5L new make at 66% ABV. Better than expected!
• From 75L grapes, I got 5L at 62%. Actually, this was a disappointment, but I knew the original gravity of the grapes was a bit pants.

Each of these will be diluted down to 40 or 43%, so I guess I’ll have between 7 and 8 litre of each variety. If I want, we can also chill filter, but I am undecided on that as yet. I hadn’t realised he had filtered my apple brandy last year! I may try some wood aging again, but probably less wood than last year, and for the grape spirit, I had planned on making some compound gin. But then, I had expected to get more out of them.

But how much does all this cost? Everyone has a right to have up to 50L of pure alcohol distilled per year, which is a lot! Of course, you pay tax on it, but the Abfindungsbrennerei system is based on an approximation of how much alcohol you would get from 100L of mash. The word Abfindung can mean a settlement payment, of sorts, so in effect, you “settle” with the tax authorities based on typical volumes of alcohol per fruit type. If you get more than expected, then it’s a bonus, If you get less, it’s tough luck. But usually, the rates are well below what you would realistically expect to get. When you register with a distillery, you state the fruit type, and the volume, and this is declared to the tax authorities, who send you a bill, and the date and time when your batch will be distilled.

For example, for apples, the tax tables say a result of 3.6 litres of alcohol per 100L of cider. Clearly this is really low, as with a 7% cider, in theory you could be getting up to 7 litres. Of course, take away heads and tails, but it would still be more than 3.6. But this is what the tax is calculated on, so for my example above, I paid 22 Euro tax on what should end up being about 7 litres of finished spirit. 

Horst is retired, but the distilling was only ever a seasonal thing, besides his normal job. Nevertheless, he has regulars coming to him each year, with maybe 1000L of cider to get distilled. He himself was doing up to 2000L a year, but as the state no longer takes it, it is hardly worth his while. With the costs of getting 2000L of juice pressed (€500!), plus the tax, then the rates he'd get selling his spirits to larger commercial producers, it's no wonder smaller distillers are closing. I've offered to press for him this year, for free. It'd be by hand, but I think with three presses (my two, and he has one I could restore for him) working in parallel, we'd do it easily in a day.

I have to admit, I'm now preoccupied with distilling, and thinking how we could improve the process a bit, but I have to wait till next year. Who knows, maybe when Horst doesn't want to do it any more, maybe I can keep the tradition going, so another village distillery won't be lost.

New orchard plans

A few weeks ago, a lady popped by the house to ask if we were interested in buying a piece of orchard, just a 10 metres from the plot we bought in 2014. Four rows of trees that I'd been admiring, as they were well kept, and many labelled with the variety. Two rows had been in her family for many years, and the other two they purchased a few years ago. It was with heavy heart they decided to sell, but felt it was too much work as they had other projects to look after, something I could understand!

We had to chew it over, but decided we'd go for it, if for nothing else, to ensure that the apple trees stayed as they are, and not be felled and the ground incorporated into the adjoining tillage. We've agreed a fair price and are currently waiting for the legal parts to make it official.

On our current plot, we have the following apple varieties:

• Goldparmäne (Reine des reinettes / King of the Pippens)
• Cox Orange
• Belle de Boskoop (both the normal and red mutation)
• Klarapfel (White Transparent)
• Glockenapfel
• Jonathan
• A couple others we do not know yet.

The new plot has all of the above, other than Jonathan, plus the following, that we know of:

• Neckartaler (possibly also called Rheinischer Winterrambur)
• Brettacher
• Rubinette (one of the few "modern" varieties there)
• Plus others unknown right now

The new plot has 54 trees (apple and pear), and our existing plot 30, with gaps across the two plots that leave generous space for another 20 new trees, which we will purchase for planting early in 2018. We've been researching German heritage apple varieties, of which there are a great many types, but also trying to make selections that would also be good for cider, in the Irish or British sense, rather than German.

So far, our list includes the following:

• Börtlinger Weinapfel
• Gravensteiner
• Hauxapfel
• Öhringer Blutstreifling
• Rheinischer Bohnapfel
• Schöner von Nordhausen
• Zuccalmaglios Renette

We'll be adding some pear, cherry and plum trees to that list also, as the cherry plums behind our house are very old, and we'd like to ensure a supply in years to come.

I'd like to order some classic British cider apples from the UK. It's difficult to find suppliers that will ship to Germany, despite getting tips via Twitter from those in the know, and it seems that Orange Pippin Fruit Trees is one of the few that easily ship to mainland Europe, albeit with a limited selection of true cider apple varieties. So far, I think I'd like to order the following as half-standards:

• Dabinett
• Harry Master's Jersey
• Ashmead's Kernel (as it sounds tasty)

Let's see where we end up.

Cider pressing 2017

Two weeks ago, the new mill and press got their first use. The harvest was a bit crap this year, after the late frosts, but we were lucky enough to gather about 330kg, enough to fill the wooden cask again, and maybe finally try keeving 60 litres.

The new mill is a real timesaver, compared to last year's manual efforts. Just keep it running, and feed it apples! The mechanism is really impressive, and it's easy to clean, as expected. The new press is also amazing! 250kg fit no problem, and from that, we got 150L of juice, so 60% extraction.

If you'd like to see the gear in action, have a look at the video below.

It's fermenting away now, and I'll leave it another while before transferring it to the oak cask. This weekend, I'll do a small pressing for the keev.

The electric apple mill

Last year, some readers may remember (could they ever forget?) that I had acquired a fruit mill and press from a friend’s parents, in a nearby village. They had been in a barn that was flooded badly in May 2016, when the region was badly hit with torrential rain. I cleaned up and restored what needed restoring, and put them to good use making cider.

But there was another mill in the barn, that was squatter-looking, had no hand crank, so needed a motor. I left it there. But earlier this year, they contacted me to say they had to empty the barn, as it was now sold, so anything that was still in it would be dumped. Needless to say, I went back and bought it for the princely sum of 20 Euro.

The remains of he floodwaters

It's red!

After an initial clean (my son got a chance to play with the pressure washer), to get the crusted mud off it, I left it over spring and summer, and only recently decided to pick up this little project, between building tasks. An added impetus to this, was the fact a neighbour, and fellow Stammtisch member, gave me an old electric motor, complete with cable and switches that he kindly mounted on a board for me (thanks Rüdiger!).

Although basically cleaned, the gears and axles were still pretty gummed up with a combination of crusted old oil, and silt from the flooding. It was time to take the whole thing apart and clean the individual pieces. 

No more mud, but very creaky.

Crusted old oil covered most of the moving parts.

The wooden stand got another clean with the pressure washer, and then some TLC with Murphy’s Oil Soap. The original colours seemed brighter, and with the layers of grime removed, any patches showing natural wood looked warmer.

I tried several methods to clean the gunk off the gears. I’d read hot citric acid was good, but it was not as effective as brake cleaner in getting the really bet-on crud off the parts.

No more old oil residue.

Lastly, any part that would be touching the fruit got a fresh coat of Kelterlack, the traditional resin-based paint for exactly that purpose. There were remains in the hopper and the milling parts and chute, so they got a light sanding and a new coat.

Reassembling was a piece of cake, and it was satisfying that everything could move with ease after the deep clean. Every moving part has a lubrication point, ranging from a simple hole or hollow on the smaller parts, through a mini cup with spring-loaded lid for one of the gear wheels, right through to oil baths, with a ring around the main axles, that would draw oil up and keep the axles lubed as they rotated. All very simple, all very effective.

The only thing missing was how to get it all moving. I had been asking around about motors the past year, and in the past couple of months, was given two. One from a chap who got a new circular saw, so didn’t need his anymore, and another ancient one from a neighbour, which I deemed more suitable, as it ran slower, and with a smaller drive wheel. Rüdiger, the neighbour, also happens to be an electrician (retired last month), so he mounted everything on a board, with switches and cables, and delivered it. In return, I brought 50 litres of cider to his retirement party, so I think we were both happy!

He also gave me some old leather drive belts, and a loan of a tool for fitting end a kind of catch at the end, such that a pin could be used to hold them together, and make a loop. No idea what they are called! But the photos should clarify. 

The belts were pretty dry and not so flexible, so they got a wash and an oil, so they were a bit more supple. They were ideal for the main drive belt, which needed 60mm, but another belt was needed to link the main drive axle to the axle the powers the pushing mechanism. This needed to be max 40mm, but due to the nature of the 60mm belts, and the fact they were shorter lengths stitched together, I couldn’t simply cut a centimetre off each side. I ended up buying a 2m length of 35mm belt, which cost 30 Euro, but it was worth it. I cut to length, fitted the clamps, and cut a section of a nail to use as a min to join the ends. It fitted perfectly.

First tests showed that it all worked very well, but to my mind, too fast. Normally, these would probably have been powered via a transmission, a bank of various-sized wheels on an axle, itself powered by a motor, so you could choose what wheel to attach the mill to, to get the right speed. We actually have one in the barn, fixed to the wall, but it is rusted fast. 

The alternative was to swap out the drive wheel on the mill for a larger one, and this is what we did. Good friend and brew-buddy Frank had one lying around, and his son milled a collar, to adapt it to the slightly smaller axle of the mill, so it fit like a glove. We gave it a test last night, and while it is definitely slower, I can't help thinking that the pushing mechanism is still a little too fast. We've a plan B, but we'll test the mill as it is first. Stand by for some video footage in the next week or two!