The basic process for our production is as follows:

• Harvest
• Milling
• Pressing
• Fermentation
• Storage and blending

 

Harvesting
As we are not yet self sufficient in fruit we buy in some fruit at the beginning of September.

Farmer Jack Freeman assures us that he has not sprayed his orchard since the war, but we are not quite sure which one! A tonne of apples is then hauled back to the mill by our faithful 1966 Volvo 120 estate or 1967 series 2 land rover.
Our fruit varieties of Harry Masters Jersey, Dabinett and Michelin are ready near the end of October.

Milling

The fruit is picked and selected by hand, washed and then milled, reducing it to a pulp.
Rotten apples make rotten cider. And are removed!

The fruit is milled with a purpose made small mill, which is just like an industrial food processor.
Here, Mark Parry works the mill.

The manual selection of fruit will prevent any stones grit or foreign bodies damaging the mill.

We try to move the milled apples as quickly as possible from mill to press to prevent the tannin oxidising and making the juice darker in colour.

Pressing

The pulp is loaded into the press between wooden racks and made into cheeses with a cloth. When the press is full, with about 200kg of fruit pulp, the pressure is slowly applied and the juice is transferred to fermentation vessels.

The press is about 100 years old and is a Swiss made Bucher Guyer. Just the same make as Weston’s and other large producers, although theirs are the size of a large house!
Last year we fitted a motor to it to speed up the free travel movement, but the final turns, up to a 50 tonne squeeze, are done by hand.

 

The juice quality is checked for specific gravity, which tells us how much sugar is present, and for acidity.
The malic acid, which provides the “bite” in apples, is essential for a good fermentation and making a clean sharp taste in the finished cider.

The juice is treated to kill off the wild yeasts and reduce oxidisation of the tannins and special yeast is added. This gives us our unique taste and appearance.
The fermentation takes place at ambient temperature and can take several months when the temperature falls below 10 degrees C. Later on, in April or May, when the spring warms up the cider, a malo-lactic fermentation can occur. This reduces the acidity and makes the flavours more complex.

Storage & Blending

When the fermentation has finished the cider is taken off the yeast sediment and stored in bulk tanks. Different batches are mixed which evens out the differences, which occur in small batch production such as ours.  But the variations are part of the charm of a hand made craft cider.

 

We were warded this at the Harbury festival in autumn 2004, later Tardebigge Cider was awarded the Midlands Gold Award for Cider by the Campaign for Real Ale on the 27th December 2004  and more recently the South Downs Gold award in 2008.       We do not, as policy, enter competitions; however our customers are beyond our control!