Cider Days With Michał

DJ Wysocki aka Michał is a guru of many things and was a great young lad when I mentioned making some cider, in that he said he could bring me some organic chemical free apples from the wild East where his family has a small holding. So I got organised in the ol' kitchen and cleaned all surfaces getting it all ready so that we could get the party started.

demijohn fashion parade

Fill the bath with apples and soak them giving them a little scrub if need be.

And start the juicing

working it through some muslin

but wait there is more

Michał getting a run on the juicer

mixing up the duties

choppy choppy

and after filtering into a demijohn

keep working on those apples remaining

and juice it

this is all the waste from our fabulous Hurom juicer

unveiling the last batch

squeezing out the left overs.

and finishing with two demijohns and a fermenting bucket. After a good 2 hours.

New Boozey bits

It has been a while since I made some more liqueurs. I don't think I made anything last year.... maybe some Wiśnówka (cherry liqueur). This year we have been drinking some great Fernet Citrus a fabulous Czech beverage which one of my fabulous students brought me because you can't buy it in Poland. Hence, we wanted to make some sort of digestive. It is very difficult to find a good/easy recipe for a herbal based liqueur, so we had to think about it ourselves and design something that might be similar. It is of course hard as you won't know for a month or more how it does taste. Time in this case is your enemy, where as with liqueurs normally it is your best friend.

We gathered together some things we thought might make a good brew.

Some spices

Spice and ginger

Some lime rind, with lemon thyme and a vanilla bean

some mint and lemon balm

A couple of oregano leaves and the heavy stuff gets added.

Now mix.

The whole recipe:

10g Lemon Balm
13g Spearmint
1g Thyme

5 Cloves
10 Peppercorns
15 Aniseeds
10 Corriander seeds
5 Cumin seeds
1 Vanilla pod

16g Ginger (peeled)
Lime (Juice and zest)

300mL White Rum
~600mL Vodka

105g Sugar
100mL Water

Combine all the dry ingredients into the jar including the lime zest and juice. Heat the sugar and water in a pan until it has dissolved. Add this to the dry ingredients, then the white rum and top up with Vodka. Shake and store in a dark cool place. Shake whenever you remember it.

Or maybe some plums

Totally stoned

Pack the kids in

Add a vanilla pod brandy and vodka and store somewhere dark

Pick some bountiful wild foods. The horseradish leaves for bread and the mirabelle plums to eat and maybe try a liqueur, the French of Lorraine can't be wrong.

Now add some sugar and gin and vodka.

a bit cloudy but from all reports that is normal.

Now let's wait and see how they taste..... 2 weeks after bottling the first two and they are very very good. The Mirabelles need much more time.

The sun, the bottle and the brew

This morning we woke to blazing sunshine, we thought great, off the the markets and then breakfast. I checked the temperature and it was nearly -20C, we thought we should go and support the markets anyway. Off we rolled all dressed up like teletubbies going out in the snow. We get to the market and only about 10 stalls from a normal 100 or so were there. Yes, you guessed it, we weren't too happy. Luckily it was only a short walk there and back and whilst there we were still able to visit our favourite apple and pear stall, to grab some much needed vitamins and healthy snacks. Not much else was available and with the limited stalls each was packed with elbowing grannies and sniffling old men. So we darted home and nipped up to the local fruit shop for the other things we were missing. On the return I wanted to get a move on with the brewing culture I have. So I went and finally bottled my nettle beer brewed here. I have been dabbling in the Wisnowka every now and again such as at Christmas time, but I am still yet to commit that to bottles it sits safely in the corner enjoying the parrots chirps above it.

13 Green and one brown bottle sitting on the wall

Then I decided to rack off the elderberry wine. I probably should have done this about 3 months ago, but, m'eh I was lazy. I must tell you the elderberry wine is amazing. I really am shocked at just how good it tastes! For such a poor sorry bunch of late season berries (you can see that post here)it has really come on well. It has a scent of stewed fruit on the nose, then a strong alcohol entry onto your palette but then finishes with a has a really lovely long finish of rich cherries, almost like a dry port. I don't think it will win any awards, but I really wasn't sure what to get from it. I will certainly make it again next year and with more "prime" fruit.

Bucket o' wine

The old workhorse Demijohn

The now removed elderberries

Has a nice deep red colour

Swirled.

Elderberry Wine - well let's hope so!

So we will return to Torun in the next blog. But, just a quick alcohol related note. You may recall me making some Elderflower wine, champagne and cordial. Well the wine has matured after about 3 or 4 months in the demijohn and has made a magnificent floral white wine. It looks something like this on a nice warm day when chilled.

So if you don't pick all the flowers you end up with some berries remaining later in the year. Also, if you remember to go and pick them you can make some wine, apparently. I found when I got to my harvest ground that someone who was sneakier than I, had already been and pillaged the area. Luckily, they must have been short as there were still some berries on the upper branches, but the wind had thinned out the density somewhat. I even picked a few dried bunches as well just to try and get more flavour into the wine as I was worried that I didn't have enough. I have never tried to make it but, most recipes called for like 1.5kgs of berries. I only had about 450g, so, we will have to see how it goes.

So now a quick little wine making maths:

This

Minus this

And this

Gives you these

And then later this.

So the crushed berries have now been added to 2.5L water, some sugar (500g), some citric acid (1tsp probably too much to be honest) and some yeast (1 packet of red wine yeast) of course. We will see what happens, it isn't bubbling away with any intensity yet, but we will hope to hear it soon!

Brewing up a storm.

So, a quick World Of The Alcohol, or WOTA for short, update. It is always a busy time at this time of year, as there is so much produce popping up. Most of it of course needs to be formulated into some form of alcoholic beverage. Some of the latest things I have been up to.

plus

                                                                          when using this

 like this

You get this

 

and if you add it all together you get this.

 So ingredients are as follows:
1.4L of Vodka
1.5L Brandy
600mL Warm water which is mixed with 500g Dark Muscovado sugar
2.8kg of sour cherries most pitted but leave about 20 or so with stones.
easy as.

I have also made a black currant nalewka in a similar format, however, as yet I have not added any sugar as I want to see how sweet it turns out. It is already getting that great colour of cassis.

 What else has been on the boil? Oh, so apt. I have been making nettle beer again. This time the nettles are a little older than last time and maybe we didn't collect as much because of this.

So nettles plus water

Gives boiling water with nettles.

Strain them

Then you get a beautiful nettle tea which is great too. I decided to follow a different recipe this year to last which had good results and even better ones with time. So this year I used this one I think I like it because it was posted by the author on my first Polish birthday. So that is bubbling away still even after moving the liquid off the lees. So we will wait a little long till I bottle it. Hopefully avoiding any accidents

Like this one. The exploding world of elderflower champagne. Thanks Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. So if you want to ever make elderflower champagne, use the recipe that I linked, and made, on here but not Hugh's. This explosion happened at 4 in the morning and as you can see destroyed the plastic container that I thought would hold any leakage, the biggest piece of the Grolsch bottl was the upper neck all 5cm of it! Certainly some power. That said the other recipe makes a delightful brew, of which I thoroughly recommend. Those who have tried it really enjoy it, like Spumante but more floral and less sweet.

Happy brewing!