Last night I got my cider fermenting. It is a very rustic recipe – when I spotted that the mash of apples was starting to turn green on the top, I took them off with a slotted spoon, transferred the thin juice underneath into a couple of sterilised 5l water bottles and added about 500g of demerara sugar to each. I’ve got plastic pipes coming out of each lid leading to a third bottle and, if I’ve been lucky, some fermentation will be kicking off.

It is a matter of luck because I’m depending on good natural yeasts to kick in and chew on the sugar, creating a preservative level of alcohol. If the worst comes to the worst, then I’ve got about 9l of liquid to add to my compost heap. A middling result would be cider vinegar (although, actually it was quite useful to have around as an ingredient). It is possible though that we’ll get a decent drinking cider.

Time to wait and see.