News 2022 10 30

End of October is here time for quick evaluation of the 2022 season how the things went so far. The main "social" happening so far was the first pressing which we did on Sunday 23rd of October. Lydia, Bruno and Hugo were helping out, with Benoît in charge of pressing together with Hugo. We went quite slow, it took us several hours to process 178 of 25 kg bags of apples (around four and half tonnes) resulting in 34 hl (3 400 l) of moût/juice, the density was around 1048. Overall effectivity of 74 to 78% which is very good. We had some nice cheeses from la Cave à Fromage, the ones of you coming to cider events know those, I get my stuff there. It seems like this season will be rather shorter one, I've already done first passage and preparation of two orchards and first and last passage of another two, leaving just one orchard to do first and maybe last time. In general there are not too many apples around this year which because of low budget for the season is not such an issue. What is far worse are the temperatures, 18 to 20°C at eight o'clock in the evening at the end of October is absolute killer for cider making. During the first part of the season the cider made is just for distillation but even then. If the temperature doesn't go down during second half of November there will be no cider for bottling again, like in 2021 season (there are thousands of bottles left from 2019 and 2020 so not problem with stocking but it is nice to bottle every year at least a bit).