News 2024 11 11

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Greetings to all, the harvesting season of apples and their transformation is at it's peak. This year came the fall of apples two or three weeks earlier than it's usual. The amount of apples is around half of the last year, which we don't mind so much because we are tuning a new system of organization of our season. Instead of two months in one go, we are trying to organize three ten day harvesting trips. The first one we have described in the last news, the second we will shortly talk about now.

For the start we can say, that for harvesting the weather was really nice. For fermentation it was a disaster, it was even over 15°C, which is very far from the optimal ±8°C. We have managed to do second passing in most of the orchards, we didn't manage all of them. The pressing happen on Friday 1th of November, I would like to thank to Kateřina and Honza for their help. We have pressed around 3.5 tonnes of apples, from which we have gained around 23 hl (2 300 l) of apple juice. The specific density was 1048 at the temperature of 13°C. We have been pressing in six people for two and half hours, with pressing, cleaning and lunch it we took around five hours. All in all I consider the second trip a sucess, it's a pity that we didn't manage to harvest all the orchards. The third harvesting trip shouldn't be so demanding, we will be picking up to seven tonnes of apples maximum. Part of it may be by small semi-automatic machine in the orchard of my formal working colleague Stéphane. The departure for this trip is planned on Monday 18th or latest on Tuesday 19th of November and return on Friday 30th of November. We are still having one or two places, for those who would like to join.

Concerning the events in November, we will be mostly at the Farmer's Market Náplavka (except 23rd of November) and then on the fair at castle Švihov. Concerning our products, we have added non alcoholic mulled cider and we are preparing křížaly. We have also started to sell our apple juice. We are still hesitating, it the time is ripe for introducing our syrups, especially the one from myrobalan (Prunus cerasifera). We are hoping, that before Christmas we will manage to import to Czech our version of pommeau (2022, two years in oak barrel) and calvados (2020, four years in oak barrel). Both products are without appellation. We are now negotiating the import conditions. After several years, we would like to press during the first week of December apples in Czech again. We would do apples juice and cider rather as an experiment for an easy up scaling for the years to come. You can find more information about collective harvest and pressing in Czech Republic here.

Concerning the monthly overview it should do. We hope, that we will with some of you during our trip to Normandie, at the markets or during the apple harvest and processing in the Czech Republic.

Have a great time,

for Kvasírna Jara,

František Apfelbeck