Season2019
Campaign status
- Total amount desired: € 6 000.00
- Number of donations: 0
- Total amount received/pledged: € 00.00
- Updated 25/2/2020
Summary
The target of this crowdfunding or rather "friendfunding" campaign is to help me to complete my first commercial cider season, 2019. I've been fermenting for over a decade but this is a first time when I can actually make real money from my beloved activity. I've a bit over 90 hl (9 000 l) of cider fermenting, results of my hard work last autumn. All apples were manually harvested, organic (no certification but no treatments), fermentation with natural yeast on the apples, nothing added during the fermentation, later on fermented naturally in the bottle. I put already over 5 000€ in and things look really good. I need another €6 000 to finish everything properly and by the book. This includes bottles, corks, capsules, muselets for bottling but also importantly costs of distillation because not all the cider will be good enough for bottling. I also need to have ready a special "deposit" for the French government, worth of 10% of value of my products. The list could go on and on. I highly appreciate any support here, it is the 2019 and upcoming 2020 seasons which I will need help with. After that I can start to sell my products and things will get better. Of course I'm offering some cider perks. Please be aware that the cider needs to finish it's fermentation in the bottle, so it will be not ready before August, after than it needs to be stored if possible below 10°C. Many thanks for your support and if you have any further questions, please have a look on "details" below or get in touch. Merci!
Donating
You can donate in the following ways:
- Bank transfer to Frantisek Apfelbeck's (Algoldor's) bank account:
- IBAN : FR76 1660 6100 1084 8435 1462 511
- BIC: AGRIFRPP866
- Please add the description "cidre2019" plus "perk name" if you claim one
- Bitcoin donation receiving address (Algoldor's bitcoin wallet): 1AxX8BMNs4fnZXyCpZURqtMDiP1yGY3YMS
- Please add the description "cidre2019" plus "perk name" if you claim one
- PayPal Send money to: algoldor@yahoo.com - please use the "Send money to a friend" function and include your Name, Nickname and "cidre2019" plus "perk name" if you claim one. Thanks!
Contact: algoldor@foodhackingbase.org
Perks
Here you can soon find list of perks. Please be aware. it is expensive to ship cider. It is possible but the price for one carton (6xbottles) delivered around Europe is around 40€. I'm regularly coming to some events where I bring my cider and I can do some deliveries in France, Germany, Czech Republic and possibly other countries but it needs to be agreed on! Of course you can come and pick it up either in France or Czech Republic.
Details
I've been fermenting variety of things since 2007. I started with cider since I came back to Europe in 2016. This is my fourth season and first commercial one. I aim to do a best product and here I will simply describe how I accomplish that.
I do manual harvest only, therefore selecting the best apples and getting them much cleaner than when using machines. I can do between 500 to 900 kg per day by myself depending on the orchard, weather, my condition and also if I harvest to a trailer or to bags. I let my apples sit for few weeks in general so they can mature a bit more. After that I crash and press the apples with help of local prestataire de service M. Benoit which comes with his mobile press and my friends. If we do well, we can do around three to four tonnes per four hours, with around 70% efficiency, so 700 l of fresh apple juice from 1000 kg of apples. I try to select the apples in a manner that their flavour profile corresponds as much as possible to the final cider flavour which I'm after. I transfer the resulting juice into the fermentation vessels and let them ferment at ambient temperatures over the winter. If all goes well, there is a process called défécation "high clearing" where the pectins clarify the juice. During the subsequent fermentation I'm transferring the cider (soutirage) from vessel to vessel to slow down the fermentation, disposing the sediment therefore getting rid of impurities. I check how is the specific density going slowly down, smelling and tasting if the cider doesn't have any off fragrances or off flavours. If it does I try to work with it or destine it for distillation. I also try to check the pH. Around February I do the final fragrance and flavour tests and check by microscope what is the yeast cell count. Based on that I may do a filtration through cardboard filters but I'm trying to avoid that. When I decide that the cider is ready for bottling I buy bottles, corks, muselets and capsules, get the bottling equipment ready (which I'm borrowing currently) and with help of my friends I start to bottle. The cider continues to ferment in the bottle (just natural yeast which were already present), so called prise de mousse naturelle which takes between two to five months. It should be done below 10°C and should result in pressure of 2-3 bars. If all goes well by the end of the summer or beginning of the autumn the cider is ready to be drunk. However any longer shipment especially at higher temperature just after end of the season is risky, general it is better to wait for some months more or for intercontinental shipping another summer season.