Yarlington Mill Cider Apple

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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 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.

Makers of fine fare gathered around the Market House between 11am and 4pm, and among the local traders taking part were Café Français at Sez, Llandinabo Farm Shop, Once upon a Tree cider and apple juice, and Just Rachel ice cream.

Visitors sampled cheese, sausages, pies, bread, vegetables, fruit and hand-made chocolates, and tasted the apple juice, cider, perry and wines on offer too.

“Pork and crackling with apple sauce, and cider mustard sauce”

• 1 small leg of pork with rind, or 4 pork loin steaks, pork chops or spare rib chops plus some rind.
• half a pint of strong dry cider
• 2 large bramley apples or 4 dessert apples
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1pt of double cream
• 1 teaspoon coursegrain mustard
• seasoning
• spring onions, chopped – or chives if in season
• five spice or cinnamon

For the crackling:

If you have the pork joint then remove the rind in one piece, otherwise use the rind bought seperately, if you are lucky enough to find some. Now take the pork rind and sprinkle with salt and leave it for ten minutes to get out the excess moisture. Place the crackling on a deep tray and cook for 20- 30 minutes on 200C or until hard and golden.

For the Apple Sauce

Peel and core the apples, dice into small cubes. Place apples, sugar and a tablespoon of water in a saucepan. Allow to cook for 3-4 minutes so not completely stewed. Put to one side to heat up later. This can also be done in a covered glass dish in a microwave oven. Add the five spice or cinnamon if preferred.

Cider mustard sauce:

Gently bring to the boil the cream, mustard and cider. Simmer until reduced by half, season. Place to one side. That’s all really.

The Pork pieces.

If you have the joint of pork after having removed the rind, cut it into 3/4 inch thick chops.

Griddle approximately two minutes either side and then place in a pre-heated oven at 180 c for 8-10 minutes until they are cooked through. Or you can cook them under the grill for about ten minutes one side, 3 minutes the other until cooked through and browned.

Putting the Pork and Cider recipe together

Heat up all the ingredients. Place the apple sauce on a plate, put the pork chops on the apple sauce then place the crispy crackling on top of the pork. Pour the cider mustard sauce around the pork and garnish with spring onions.

Do you know of any other great pork and cider recipes or other recipes making good use of cider or perry? You can always add them, and see others on the cooking with cider page on the ukcider wiki.