Cider trees

Glaucus

Glaucus

Glaucus

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Bit of a long shot but always amazed by variety of knowledge on here.

Thinking about buying sis/brother in law a cider tree or two. they brought a house the other year and it has a massive garden and they won't be moving for agessss.

so anyone know anything about cider tress at all? even basic stuff like how many trees would you need to brew a personal stash, can they grow in pretty much any soil and of course any opinions on variety and how many years to mature and produce fruit.
 
One mature tree produces loads of apples, i'd wager enough to keep someone busy for the year. My parents have an oldish one in their back garden and the lawn is just littered with fruit (they neglected to harvest it this year), it's literally everywhere. Other than that i know little. Their garden is on the side of a valley, fairly sure the soil is largely clay, it's very, very wet (Gower) and the tree is flourishing.

As i side note i did some significant pruning this year, the wood smells amazing when you burn it.
 
There is a big tree in my mate's garden and we got at least 40kg of apples off it during one scrump. That's enough for over 30 litres of apple juice if you press it well. I don't know if you specifically need cider apples though, you can always add yeast. You definitely don't want cooking apples because the cider will be too sharp.
 
(Cider doesn't grow on trees, apples do, you actually have to make the cider from the apples, therefore you're after an apple tree) ;)
 
Jonny69 said:
There is a big tree in my mate's garden and we got at least 40kg of apples off it during one scrump. That's enough for over 30 litres of apple juice if you press it well. I don't know if you specifically need cider apples though, you can always add yeast. You definitely don't want cooking apples because the cider will be too sharp.
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That's good so one tree should be enough to make cider, any ideas on pollination?

xJcBx said:
(Cider doesn't grow on trees, apples do, you actually have to make the cider from the apples, therefore you're after an apple tree) ;)
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Smart ****, Specified cider as not all breeds are good for cider. :p
 
From my experience you have to have a mixture of apples to make a decent cider.
Probably not essential, but single apple ciders don't have the mix of sugar and acid that is required to make the best ciders.
I can't remember the exact apples we used but I think graphenstien (grafenstien?) and granny smith was some of them.
 
If you have a vintage varity (nothing to do with age) you shouldn't need to mix apples, or at least thats what I've read, all though willing to get two trees
 
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This calls for an OCUK (edit: xmas) Bristol meet to drink cider and talk about apples.
Cider boat :D
 
So of i got two apple trees of same type they would pollinate each other?
Or get a crabapple and they coukd make some stuff with that as well.
 
AcidHell2 said:
So of i got two apple trees of same type they would pollinate each other?
Or get a crabapple and they coukd make some stuff with that as well.
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Two trees of the same type could be the same tree grafted onto two different stocks. But if thats not the case it would work, get a crab that blooms at the same time as the cider and you will get good pollination. You could try an eater that matchs the bloom time but you would need to read into it as some don't cross to well.

Edit/ I don't think the pollinater even needs to be that big.
 
I'm fairly sure the pollinator for my parents' cider tree is a tiny crabapple tree about 10m away. Problem is its in the middle of the woods so there could be another apple tree somewhere around there though i doubt it.

Their garden was planted by someone else though, they only recently bought the place, so this is all guess work.
 
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