Hi there, need some help with my first attempt at cider...
My friend has a small orchard at the end of their garden and we keep missing the opportunity to gather the apples each year...this year we managed to organise ourselves!
So, collected a wheelbarrow full of apples...mushed them...squeezed them...and ended up with about 20 litres of juice. put this into a clean foodsafe bucket.
Following some very basic instructions on the web... we believed we just had to leave the juice uncovered inside for a few days whilst it begins to froth-up...then when the activity slows...put in demijohns with airlocks and wait a few months.
The juice has been sitting for 3 days now and small mould spots are appearing on the surface...but nothing much else is happening. After reading more on the web...I see the safe route is to add campden tablets and then yeast... is it too late for us to do this? or should we stick with what we are doing? mould cant be a good sign!???
Any help would be much appreciated... we plan on collecting another batch of apples this weekend...but lots of work went into getting the first 20 litres...and we would much rather save this batch!
Thank you all for your time.
Ben.
My friend has a small orchard at the end of their garden and we keep missing the opportunity to gather the apples each year...this year we managed to organise ourselves!
So, collected a wheelbarrow full of apples...mushed them...squeezed them...and ended up with about 20 litres of juice. put this into a clean foodsafe bucket.
Following some very basic instructions on the web... we believed we just had to leave the juice uncovered inside for a few days whilst it begins to froth-up...then when the activity slows...put in demijohns with airlocks and wait a few months.
The juice has been sitting for 3 days now and small mould spots are appearing on the surface...but nothing much else is happening. After reading more on the web...I see the safe route is to add campden tablets and then yeast... is it too late for us to do this? or should we stick with what we are doing? mould cant be a good sign!???
Any help would be much appreciated... we plan on collecting another batch of apples this weekend...but lots of work went into getting the first 20 litres...and we would much rather save this batch!
Thank you all for your time.
Ben.