One Day Course
(Level: Beginner)
Course Dates: Saturday 26 October 2024
Price per person: £95

(Max: 12 people)

Pick, press, and preserve your own apple juice, cider and cider vinegar in our ancient apple orchards.

Apple orchards were once widespread across Great Britain but sadly over recent years many have been felled and grubbed up at an alarming rates.

Here at The Sustainable Garden we have an ancient apple orchard of nearly 80 trees that’s been in existence for many hundreds of years. It’s shown on ancient tithe maps and originally provided cider not only for the lords of the manor but was used as payment for the labourers on the farm.

We’ve been making our own apple juice, cider, and cider vinegar here for seven years and have learnt how the quality depends on the varieties of apples used.

We have a fantastic selection of traditional old Devon varieties to choose from in our own orchard, which were cultivated specifically for making into cider and include Fair Maid of Devon, Slack Ma Girdle, Brown Snout and Black Dabinett.  These contain high levels of acid, tannins or sugars and gives us a good mix of bittersweets and bittersharps.  We make traditional “Real Cider” as defined by CAMRA, from 100% apple juice, no added water or sugar, unpasteurised and bottle conditioned from a mixture of all the apples in the orchards.

With cider apples you wait for the fruit to fall before collecting them.  You will help pick a selection of apples, wash them and put them through a pulping machine.

We then put the apple pulp into metal formers surrounded by muslin cloths to make “cheeses”  of pulp, which are layered between wooden slats before being pressed by a hydraulic jack.  We collect that fresh juice pours out of the press and store it in demi-johns.

You will get a demi-john of your own to take home with instructions of how and when to do the next stages of cider-making in your own time.

And if it all goes wrong, fear not! You can make it into fantastic cider vinegar which is full of nutritional goodness and healing properties!

We will also do one press with sweet/ dessert apples from our orchard for the purpose of making into apple juice that you can drink straight away, or we’ll show you how you can freeze or pasteurise your apple juice to keep for a whole year.

The day includes a history and nature walk around the old orchards to learn about the biodiversity and ecology present in old apple trees and orchards, as well as how and when we prune old trees, or not!

Includes course notes, refreshments, and a delicious locally-sourced lunch.

Book your place online, or for more information email [email protected] or call 07951 946489.