cider workshop

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Heron Valley Cider Tasting
Cider workshop – speaker needed, Manchester

Archive for the 'cider workshop' Category

Heron Valley Cider Tasting

Published at November 14, 2009 in Heron Valley, cider workshop and organic cider. 1 Comment

Heron Valley Cider

We ordered one bottle of Heron Valley Cider to try and it arrived today so we made a tasting video to share our reaction on opening the bottle and trying some of the cider.

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Heron Valley Devon cider is claimed to be “Authentic Devon Cider”

None of this ‘serve over ice’ rubbish…. We make our award winning cider in an entirely natural and honest way, using local Devon Cider apples, many from ancient orchards, pressed in our hydraulic press through Acacia boards and cloth, and then allowed to ferment and mature naturally using the wild yeasts present on the skins of the apples. No added yeasts, water or sulphites, just pure Devon cider apple juice fermented and nothing else.

and yet the label says that it’s only 6% and lists as an ingredient, “organic cane sugar” so there’s a bit of an anomoly there.

The cider was clean tasting, fruity and sharp but perhaps not quite dry enough for my preference, but I could easily drink a pint of it in one go, and then maybe another.

So we ordered a whole bag-in-box of the Heron Valley Dry cider and made another tasting video when it arrived.

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Excellent cider and all made with 100% organci cider apples, and no added sulphites. There are some people would have you believe that it’s impossible to grow apples organically on any scale, and that making cider without using sulphite is a horrible gamble, but fortunately the good people at Heron Valley Cider aren’t listening to any of them.

One box of Heron Valley Dry cider cost £35 delivery included so that works out at £3.50 a litre which is less than £2 a pint for some of the best natural cider you can buy anywhere.

Video by Cider Workshop

Cider workshop – speaker needed, Manchester

Published at October 15, 2009 in Workshop and cider workshop. 1 Comment

Cider Workshop

Agnes from Abundance is holding a Cider Workshop on Monday 26th October in Manchester and is looking for someone from this group to do a short talk about making cider.

Abundance is a group which works to harvest and redistribute surplus apples and other fruit and veg in the city of Manchester, similar to other urban scrumping schemes, and the forthcoming cider workshop will be in association with the Manchester Permaculture Network.

There will be an apple crusher and press available for the cider workshop, so it was thought that people could bring along 2/3litre clean containers with them together with juicing apples to the workshop, for a practical demonstration as well as a short talk, provided that somebody knowlegeable can make themselves available in the area on that night please.

Cider Workshop - A mill and press could be available

Cider Workshop - A mill and press could be available

Cider Workshop Contact

If anybody is available and would like to help out at the Manchester Cider Workshop, please get in contact with Agnes via the Ukcider group

Manchester Cider Workshop

The Manchester Permaculture event on Monday 26th Oct, 6:30pm – 9:30pm, is billed as a cider making workshop.

We’ve got a home brewer coming from near Manchester to talk a bit about cider brewing, and we are also going to juice some apples using a crusher and apple press.

Other Cider Workshop Events

Cider workshop events take place from time to time whenever a group of people from one area with an interest in making cider on an individual or collective basis can get organised to learn more about the craft. Sometimes UKcider members organise these through the group but there are occasionally cider workshop events taking place which we don’t even know about, centred around orchard groups or city farms. The only pre-requisites are a willingness to cooperate and the availability of some apples of one sort or another to press. The freshly pressed apple juice can either be split up amongst the cider workshop attendees or else carefully watched over collectively  and then distributed the next year as cider.

What happens at a Cider Workshop?

Plenty of notice ensures a well attended evening with loads of apples brought along by attendees and demonstrators alike.
It doesn’t mattter if not all of them get pressed. It’s best if there are some cider apples to show but no worries if the apple varieties represented are hugely biased in favour of culinary and desert apples from people’s gardens. After a short talk, no longer than 45 minutes, it should be possible to get through twenty litres or so of juice in a couple of hours, using a small basket press. Measure the specific gravity and the acidity of the juice before distribution in bottles for home fermentation.