Going through my orders, adding up total tree numbers per variety, removing some that have dies and working out where to put the trees.
I have three Antoinette and three Cimetiere de Blangy French cider apples. These are used to make Calvados. But I can add more apples. The two trees are bittersweet apples but a range of types of apples are used, bitter, sharp and sweet. Bitter will be a tree to get next year, there are one or two. Bittersweet—could add some Dabinette (originally from Normandy so appropriate) Brown Snout etc. Sweet—some Golden Harvey but also some aromatic culinary apples. Tart—Granny Smith and Bramley’s Seedling but also Sturmer Pippin.
Some of these not French, oh well, neither am I, but gives a nice range. I found in my reading this morning that they also add or can add pears! Pears in apple brandy! Any ugly looking eating/cooking pears can go into the calvados then.
Growers of eating apples sweat bullets to ensure their apples look nice for the fickle public (more for the bloody supermarket chain buyers) but cider apple producers don’t give a stuff how their apples look as long as there is no rot in any of the fruit.
I can buy an Essencia Still (erk, not how they used to look:
http://www.essencia.co.nz/Downloads/A56.pdf) or other still. I want a pot still to make brandy, maybe a 20L and a 5L one, double distill. Damn, Essencial stills used to come as a reflux still but easy enough to convert to a pot still.) Anyway, can get a pot still, distill the cider (fermented to dryness, natch, let it ferment naturally for max flavor then add say EC1111 yeast to ferment any unfermented sugars.
Rack the fermented-to-dryness cider, let it mature then double distill then age in wooden barrels (I have no idea of volume of brandy I can get, might have to age it in 5L glass carboy or 2L flagon with some oak chips in it.
Do you know brandy, all types, and whiskey, any wood aged spirit has an “angel’s share?” Bit hard to do this in glass! Probably rack to clean carboys once or twice, will add some useful oxygenation and “angel’s share.” Anyway, that is a few years away yet tho will practice with any fruit (incl peach, cherry, red and black currants) that looks yuck but is sound) to get an idea of volume of distilate, how the spirit matures. If it is nasty—reflux distill it to make pure alcohol, useful for cleaning etc.