A bit of Hedging

With a few spare moments of time at the cider mills before we start bottling the '08 ciders, our attention has turned to a bit of orchard management. In particular, the long overdue job of re-laying the south east hedge at our Knowles St Giles Orchard, which had got slightly out of control.

Re-laying a hedge is a skillful job and is one of the vital and often forgotten skills needed in the countryside. We've cheated a little here and employed a couple of local hedge-layers, but hey, if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing properly.

The theory behind hedge laying is really to remove any unwanted growth, which in this case was preventing light and air circulating into the orchard. The re-layed hedge should also encourage new growth, to improve the structure and strength of the hedge. This is done by cutting out much of the high or dense stems of the hedgerow and laying them horizontal, which acts as a kind of frame, holding the hedge into a tighter, more dense shape and guiding new growth.

The re-layed hedge should hopefully not only act as an adequate boundary and provide shelter for the orchard but should also allow more light and airflow to reach the south east corner of the orchard, benefiting our apples trees. This should equate to larger yield of Browns apples next year.

Well-managed hedgerows are also vital to encourage wildlife habits, not only protecting the many creatures which rely on hedgerows but also improving the orchard as a whole. A rich, well-balanced ecosystem should lead to improved pollination of the apple trees, as well as reducing the need for chemical sprays, by naturally combating problem pests.

Racking back the '08 ciders

We’re finally coming to the end of Racking Back our ‘08 ciders. The last of our barrel cellars is full and only thirty or forty 1500 litre tanks remain on the yard ready for pumping back into the remaining space in the cider sheds.

Racking back is simply the process of pumping out the newly fermented ciders into new clean vessels ready for maturation. The process removes the dead yeast cells known as lees left over from the fermentation. This is important as, if the cider is left on its lees for too long, it can be spoiled.

Usually the process of racking back only takes a month or two and should be finished by the beginning of February. Frozen pipes and, believe it or not, cider in January put a stop to it, as well as days lost to snow in February. Luckily the continued cold weather should mean that our ‘08 ciders won’t be adversely affected by the delay.

On the flip side, the cold weather did give us some time to get other much needed jobs done around the cider mills. For me, this meant some free time to get in the office and free up a little space on my desk, as well as giving me some time to plan our ‘09 strategy, which should become clearer over the next few months.

The rest of the cider gang turned their hands to our much anticipated new office and (small) cider lab, which will help us to keep a better check on our ciders. The new lab allows us to test for the main things which determine the quality of our ciders such as alcohol strength, acidity, C02 and S02 contents, as well as pasteurisation records for our bottled ciders.

All in all the ‘08 harvest seems to have produced another good year of ciders despite the lack of a summer. In fact, our earliest cider, the single variety Morgan Sweet bottled just three months after pressing, has gone down a treat with all three thousand bottles sold. Don’t worry, we still have plenty of Morgan Sweet ‘08 left in the cellars, which we hope to bottle in the next few weeks.