Matt's Blog

Today was my first attempt at cider making. My initial plan was to use a garden shredder as a mill. Unfortunately examination of the internals showed to much mild steel. 

The second choice was t-shaped blade on an electric drill. It worked quite well in a large bucket, though not brilliantly. The white circular disk is the lid of the tiny bucket that the device originally came with. It was there to try and stop quite so many bit of apple being thrown out of the bucket when the drill is going. 

This is the resulant pomace (or whatever it's called) 

First pressing underway. There are four cheesing in there. I could have fitted more in the press but I'd ran out of net curtains.

 Here comes the juice. 

 First pressing pretty much complete (and slightly wobbly, luckily nothing fell over). I was using solid boards between the cheeses. Most other people use slatted boards but I can't see it making any difference. Notice that the boards are bowing up at the edges slightly - I need to arrange a more even pressure distribution if possible. 

 Finally this is how it ends up after a first pressing. I did breaj it up and do a second pressing to squeeze a bit more juice out. I now have just over 5 gallons of apple juice in the end (and lots more apples to go). Camden tables have been added tonight and the yeast goes in tomorrow. Specific gravity was 1050, so not particularly high. No doubt I could try adding sugar but for this year I think I'll leave it well alone. 

Slightly geeky person that I am, Ive been writing an xUnit type test harness for VBA code.

http://code.google.com/p/excelvbaunit/

Ive got it far enough so that I can start writing unit tests to test itself.

I'm not quite sure why, but whilst at Shrewsbury folk festival at he weekend, I decided to buy a top hat.

Very nice, but where on earth am I going to wear it?