Cider Making. A Momentous Day for Us.

My avid interest in all things cider is a fairly recent passion in life. Infact, it only began about seven or eight years ago, when purely by chance Karen and I stopped for farmhouse B&B at Broom Farm in Peterstowe, Herefordshire.
http://www.rosscider.com/
As they say, the rest is history. After falling under the cidery influence of Mike, Phil, John, Hilary and gang, my life path has been changed for ever. I just love the ideaology that goes along with the making and drinking of cider.
To start with, we began by making just a few gallons of cider each year for our own use. Our early attempts were made from apples begged from friends and neighbours and they were either eating or cooking apples. So that we could eventually use cider apples in our cider, in the winter of 2008 we started a programme of planting our own cider orchard.
Last year my son and I decided that it might be an idea to try taking our hobby on a little further and to turn it into a commercial venture and so, last season we made slightly over 2000 litres. Today was a momentous day for The Morfa Nefyn Cider and Apple Juice company. Todays the day that we bottled our first ever barrel of cider.
Here's how our day went on.


First of all we cleaned and sterilised the bottles.

We had thirty four 60 litres barrels of cider to choose from.

We chose this one. It was pressed on the 16th of September 2011 and the apples came from a community orchard at Plas Tan y Blwch in the village of Maentwrog.

With a little bit of muscle power, we put the barrel up above the bottling machine, so that gravity would run the cider into the bottling machine.

With the machine filling four bottles at a time things didn't take us long at all.

The next step was for us to pasteurise the cider in the bottles before sealing the tops. We took the cider up to 74 degrees and that was it, job done. Then we fastened the lids and laid the bottles on their side so that the hot cider pasteurised the inside of the tops.

Our cider certainly tasted OK before being pasteurised and now all that we have to do is to let it cool and do some rigorous testing. Any volunteers? 
This is just the beginning for us, but hopefully, we've made a good start.