Cider # 1

The apple blossom is coming along wonderfully this year - what a lovely pink colour!

And the delicious cider that the apples produced last year!  I've had some tonight so may be a bit erratic in my posts!

Homemade cider press - fun but not very efficient!

The tree - despite its unpruned state it is really healthy and produced more than 30kgs of massive cooking apples last year.  About 10kg ended up in the freezer and have provided loads of lovely crumbles through the year, the rest went into the cider, along with lots of other apples that we picked from the Bardsey Island apple tree (www.bardseyapple.co.uk/) and from various other friends and family's trees. 

The cider is quite nice - quite palatable, nice 'appley' smell, not too dry, but very acidic and probably a bit too strong.  I need to study my cider books this year before making the 2012 batch.  I think the main problem actually is that good cider is made from cider apples, not random cooking and eating apples!  I'd love to plant a decent sized orchard here one day, using 'proper' cider varieties, ideally old varieties that are very local and proven over time.