What's Been Happening At Lavender Valley
The cider has brewed out, and so Anzac Day became Bottling Day. So I’m calling this Anzac Cider.
Of course, the first thing to do was to wash and sterilise the bottles. I bought a funky bottle tree to dry them overnight. Pretty cool, huh?
The Bottle Tree
Yesterday we managed to pick and sort all the apples, and wash, crush and press about 60% of the total. Today we finished off the last three trays. Here’s a picture of the setup, except for the press which is off to the left of the shot.
The Bench in Production
Last post I showed you the apple tree we protected, and the apples we picked. This time I’ll show you the sweet setup I have for crushing the apples, and pressing the juice out of them. I bought an apple crusher and a wine press from a Melbourne company called Winequip (they were good and delivery was very quick, so I don’t mind giving them a free plug). I also bought a 60litre fermentation barrel. I built a bench for an existing stainless steel bench top we found on the farm when we bought it, and I have to say, it’s working out very nicely. It’s not obvious from the picture but the bench has a hole in it where a tub or basin used to be, so fitting the crusher over top of that means we just have to capture the apple crushings as they fall through.
Apple Grinding Bench
We inherited a lot of fruit and nut trees from previous owners of the farm which we now call Lavender Valley in beautiful downtown Burra. Unfortunately, most are dead and the rest are wildly (and I mean wildly) overgrown. And some of them actually bear fruit! This has been an excellent growing season, and I decided to try to protect my crop on the largest of the apple trees with bird netting (it looks somewhat like giant spiders had invaded).
The Apple Tree