2009 begins with veganism and cider

After surviving our first year in the house we were filled with plans for 2009. We were contemplating querying the council about whether we would be allowed to keep chickens in our garden so we could have freshly laid eggs when I suddenly decided to change my diet from meat-eater to vegan so I don't know why I decided so abrubtly but decide I did and within a week I was totally vegan and I'm really happy with it. Two of the Skulls are already veggies (and one used to be vegan) and the other is happy to eat whatever is around. They all seem quite happy trying out my vegan cooking experiements and I'll be posting some recipes and things from time to time.

Meanwhile, the Skulls has decided they would like to try their hand at making their own alcohol. Luckily for them, back in the Autumn I had found a huge apple tree at my workplace that nobody seemed to be bothering with. The fruit was just dropping to the ground and rotting so I started gathering it up and bringing it home to make pies, cakes and apple sauce. In fact, there were so many apples that we had ended up with three huge boxes surplus to our pie requirements that were sitting outside. So the boys began making some cider.

Unfortunately we didn;t take any pictures but next time we brew a batch I'll do some lovely step by step pictures.

This involved chopping and pulping about a hundred apples and straining the resultant pulp through a seive into a big vat. To this juice was added yeast, sugar and a tin of apple concentrate before sticking it into the airing cupboard to ferment for about 6 days.

After checking the specific gravity with a hydrometer (the boys love their technical kit) to ensure fermentation had stopped the cider was siphoned into bottles, a teaspoon of sugar added to each bottle (to make it fizzy) and corked.

The bottles were then put back into the airing cupboard to ferment for a few more days in the warm before being put in a cold place (the shed) to stop fermentation and let the brew settle.

Well, this weekend was time for the first taste test. We took a couple of bottles over to a band practice in a friend's warehouse and I think it went down rather well.



Twinkle