Apple Harvest day. A big deal in my little world as it means my first adventure in scratch wine/cidermaking begins now. We picked roughly 75kg of apples today of 4 varieties. Tomorrow we’ll pick from our tree hoping for an additional 40kg. For all those hitting my blog looking for crushing/pressing help, tomorrow will be a big day to find out whether things work as they should or not. Fingers crossed.
Tomorrow will also be the big chemistry day. With 6 musts [doing a batch of saskatoon wine as well] being created, there will be a lot of tweaking going on. I’ve designed a spreadsheet that takes 4 inputs: pH, titratable acidity, volume, and specific gravity – and it outputs the necessary amounts of SO2, tartaric acid, sugar, yeast nutrient, tannin, and pectic enzyme for the must. After much research and cross-referencing sources, I’m really stoked to take it for a spin. My brother-in-law who happens to be a chemist will be here bright and early to share his brain.
Newbie-note-to-self: all the apples are in different stages if ripeness. Some underripe, some overripe, and some on the money. My ratio of optimal ripeness is lower than I expected. Partly a consequence of not having the trees on your property and being able to monitor them properly for maturity – which I have been doing on the ones in my yard. Plus fruit varies widely based on position on the tree relative to the sun. Of course. Lastly – the crab apples have vastly more aromatics going on than the others.