A big thank you to our wonderful volunteers who have joined us at our Cider House in Herne Hill to help press over 1500kg of apples from all across London to make our debut 2016 vintage cider and juice!
Our day of traditional cider making started with washing and squashing the apples into fragrant pulp using our big, loud and yellow Apple Mill.
Next we formed the “cheese”, by making a series of pulp layers, eight to be exact, each wrapped tightly in cloth and sandwiched between slatted wooden racks. Once our cheese was constructed it was pressed by the hydraulic ram, and it almost halved in size as the delicious juice from within oozed out.
The pure golden juice was then transported into our fermenting barrels and is now bubbling away to create our 2016 vintage cider.
A big thank you to everyone who has helped us harvest, brought in their own apples and got stuck in at the cider house!
If you would like to volunteer or donate much needed apples, we have our last two pressing and bottling days coming up:
- Sunday 27th November – cider house open for apple donations (10am-1pm) and volunteers to help with PRESSING (9.45-5)
- Monday 28th November – apple juice BOTTLING (10-4)
Email Rosa@theorchardproject.org.uk or Lizzie at elizabeth@theorchardproject.co.uk for more details. See you soon.