Hi guys,
I have an orchard ful of apples and pears. I want to this year try make some cider. Im not too sure what varieties of apples there are but I would say 60 to 70% of them are cooking apples
can these be used to make cider?
Help - orchard full of apples and pears
You could start by having a look at this.
Take a look here. http://www.cider.org.uk
Andrew Lea is one of the UK's leading experts and his web site is brilliant. The problem with too many cookers is there may be not enough sugar and too much acid. You can always add a bit of sugar. Acid can be reduced a bit if you induce a malo-lactic fermentation (either naturally or by a culture). You may also be short of tannin, which means less of a west-country-style cidery bite (depends what you like). Andrew sets out all the parameters for acid etc, including advice on how much sulphite to add. It will take a while to read it all, but you really can't do better.
Andrew Lea is one of the UK's leading experts and his web site is brilliant. The problem with too many cookers is there may be not enough sugar and too much acid. You can always add a bit of sugar. Acid can be reduced a bit if you induce a malo-lactic fermentation (either naturally or by a culture). You may also be short of tannin, which means less of a west-country-style cidery bite (depends what you like). Andrew sets out all the parameters for acid etc, including advice on how much sulphite to add. It will take a while to read it all, but you really can't do better.