Seasonal Wine - Windfall Wonder Apple Wine

[Col]

My God, I've never seen so many apples in my life – if Adam and Eve landed in my garden, the pair of them would end up certified. So far, I've picked maybe 200 lbs, and they've been in the shed for about 3 weeks now, maturing away. That still left, however, Christ knows how many on the ground and up too high to reach, so I decided to make some apple wine out of the windfalls. Firstly, I juiced the apples, in the same way as I do for cider making; firstly, I wash the apples, then I quarter them; this makes them easier to crush, and also exposes any decay or unwanted residents at Hotel Pomme.
   I've been meaning to make myself a scratter along the lines of the one that that Wendell bloke made on YouTube, but of course I never got round to it, so I'm sticking to my old method. This involves throwing about ten inches of quartered apples into a keg with the top cut off – a bloody great bucket, really. Then, basically, I pound the bejasus out of them with a wooden pole about 8 foot in length (the 'pole' was actually a banister rail in a former life, and is plenty heavy enough to smash the smithereens out of the apples). If you picture a mortar and pestle on a grand scale, you should get the picture. I actually picked up this method from a book by Michael Pooley and John Lomax, called Real Cider Making on a Small Scale, which is well worth a read. He does, however, suggest that you could sing shanty songs while bashing the apples, which is just a little too hippyish for me...
   Anyway, I bash the apples until they are well and truly pulped; it's tough work all right, but I find it perversely satisfying – I pretend the apples are scale models of politicians/bankers/soccer players from a certain premiership team...no, let's not go there...
   So, on to my press. This is basically another keg with the top and bottom cut off – a cylinder with a crapload of holes drilled in it. This sits in a large plastic tray, with a hole drilled in the corner that houses a tube with a small tap on it. I built a heavy wooden frame around this, with a horizontal beam that a car jack is attached to. When the apples are pulped, I line the cylinder with muslin, throw in the pulp, cover it with a heavy plastic disc that was a chopping board in a former life, and wind the jack down onto it...I badly need pictures, don't I? Wish I had a decent phone.
   Anyway, to the recipe – a makey-uppy job, really. I collected 3 gallons of juice, which had an OG of 1047 – a lot down on last year, when it was 1063. This gives me 570g of sugar in the gallon (excuse the switching from Metric to Imperial – I'm of that age, I suppose), but I'm making 4 gallons, which will allow the addition of sugar I need. So, I have 1,710g of sugar, but need 4,260g (1,065g x 4) to leave me with an SG of 12%. I added 1,125g of sultanas for vinosity (3 x 375g bags from Tesco's, God love 'em), which were scalded, strained and chopped as usual - these are 69% sugar, giving me 787g of the sugar I need. This is assuming that all the sugar is extracted, which is a bit of a leap of faith, but what the hell, leaving me having to add another 1,763g of sugar (please feel free to ridicule my calculations, if you wish – I have a first class honour Humanities Degree, but maths and I have always had a very John Delaney/Roy Keane sort of relationship).
   So, I dissolved the sugar in 6 pints of boiling water (or 3.40957 Litres!), let it cool a bit, lobbed it in my fermenting bucket along with the apple juice and the sultanas, and added 4 camden tablets and 4 teaspoons of pectolase. The following day I added the yeast starter that had been bubbling away for 24 hours, along with 80g of citric acid, and a good teaspoon of tannin – wasn't sure about the tannin, but time will tell. It was bubbling away merrily within a few hours, and after 7 or 8 days, I'll strain this into one of those plastic water fountain bottles – I deliberately dissolved the sugar in 6 pints of water, which means my total will be 2 pints short of 4 gallons, allowing for any foaming that may occur in the fermenting vessel.
   So, there you have it. I've probably bored the Shee'ite out of half of the forum members, but hopefully someone has gleaned something from my version of Windfall Wonder Apple Wine; if not, I apologise. Now, time for some cider...

[Bubbles]

That was a great post, enjoyed it!

And yes, you do need photos! 

[Ciderhead]

Nice job


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