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.