My Bramley cider was made from too-early Bramleys + eating apples. I knew it was going to be sharp and I was right! Everyone knows how sour a Bramley is, but it's actually got a lot of sugar in it too - I couldn't see much difference in the sugar levels of the Bramleys compared to the eaters.

When you ferment the sugars out you are left with the same sourness but with no sweetness to balance it and it tastes very sour indeed. However, some of the CiderPunks like an acid cider and subsequently the Bramley cider went down very well indeed, with one complaint that I'd sweetened with it too much sugar (trying to offset the incredible sourness).

Bramleys are a bit thin in flavour apart from the sourness and I didn't have any other apples than the early eaters to blend with them. I might sweeten the next lot with brown sugar or molasses to get a bit of depth in there, or just blend it with a cider fermented from different apples.

Speaking of which, I joined my local FreeCycle specifically to find surplus apples and it definitely yielded great results. Tonight we got about 50 kilos of apples and pears which we plan to press at the weekend.

I've also got another couple of trees to pick next week, and I'm going out picking with a few volunteers at the weekend on Saturday, followed by pressing the juice on Sunday! Should make a few gallons of cider. I've bought plenty containers suitable for fermenting in, so as far as I'm concerned we can't have too many apples and pears right now. I suspect we might overflow my friend's compost bin with the pressed pomace, however.

I'll have my camera at hand over the weekend to take some pictures, too.