Its Cold - Tank Cleaning - Preparing for Summer

Buds are starting to appear on the fruit trees as we finally see an end to winter – although snow still falls around us at the start of this month with an unexpected icy blast from the north – hopefully that wont last too much longer and the sun will once again start the transformation of the orchard from its current form of woody skeletons.

Due to Bignose (Phil) having to take time out for knee surgery last month along with post op recovery - we failed to find time to prune the trees at B&B HQ this winter – March is getting a bit too late for that activity, as the sap starts to rise and valuable energy is being diverted to blossom bud formation. To be honest, we’re not too worried to have missed the opportunity – the trees had a fairly extensive ‘haircut’ in winter of 2022 so it won’t hurt to skip a year – we can always trim back in the summer if any of the trees get a bit too congested and starved of light / air.

We are coming to a conclusion on developing new tank cleaning processes – various pumps, pipes and chemicals have been sourced in order to ensure that fermentation and maturation tanks are thoroughly cleaned and sterilised. We’ve been wanting to change things in this area for a while – tank cleaning has always been hard work and sometimes not as successful as we would like.

Looking forward into 2023, various dates and events are being fixed into the cider festival diary – the first of which is Brewhaven on 28/29th April. This has developed into a great little beer and cider festival – check it out if you fancy an excuse for spring journey to the south coast.