Craft cider & apple juice
How it all happens
Our pressing season will start in mid August, depending on the weather & how ripe the fruit is. But don't miss our other events.
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Pressing service: We can give you all your juice for £2.60 per bottle - this is fully pasteurised, bottled & good for 2 years.
We will drop a png or jpeg (of your house, tree, family...) onto the label so you have a unique label printed, or you can have a standard label. We are pleased to receive dessert and cooking apples. You receive the juice from what you bring in. If you only bring cooking apples, we are not able to add dessert apples.
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Or...
Donation: for every full crate you deliver of good dessert apples & pears (approx 12kgs), we'll give you 1x750ml bottle of apple juice at no charge. An apple-pear mix is available if you bring pears. We can receive up to 2 trays (approx 20kg) of cooking apples per donation.
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Or...
Your own juice: you provide your own containers & take the juice away to drink or ferment - £2.00 per litre, with a minimum charge of £40. As this would not be pasteurised, it would need to be refrigerated and used within 3-4 days, or made into cider. You will receive the juice from what you bring, so dessert and cooking apples can be brought in.​​
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Pressing venue:
Manor Farm, Oakley Road, Horton-cum-Studley, Oxford, OX33 1BG
https://w3w.co/headrest.woven.limes
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Cider & Juice can be bought from:
Stowford Farm, Bayswater Road, Oxford. OX3 9RZ
07941 072071
@oxfordfarmhouse
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If you would like to join in with the pressing, please drop us a line. There are usually spaces on Saturdays, and sometimes during the week.
Step 1: apples & pears are washed & graded.
Step 2: we mill the fruit in the scratter - your batch of fruit is kept separate from other batches.
Step 3: into the press - layers made into 'cheeses'.
Step 4: juice flows! Juice is bottled & pasteurised. Cider goes into vats for fermentation - either with natural or added yeast.
Apples & pears need to be ripe & clean on delivery (if dirty, washed in cold water & no detergent). If in doubt, follow these simple steps:
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Colour - most dessert apples turn yellow/red when ripe. Pears go from green to yellow.
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Taste it - does it taste good? Easy if you’ve got dessert apples. Cooking apples remain sharp when ripe.
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Twist it - ripe fruit should come away from the tree with a twist of the stalk.
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Test it - ripe fruit has dark brown pips - cut a few open to check.
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Please separate any windfall (fallen) fruit - we press that first.
Bring 'tree ripe' fruit rather than 'store ripe', an easy mistake to make. The fruit needs to be fully ripe on the tree before picking - tree ripe. Fruit in the shops is 'store ripe' & has been picked weeks before it is ripe - this doesn't make good juice (or such good eating either).
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If there is soil on the fruit, please wash it in cold water with no detergent or chemical of any kind. Thank you.
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Fresh from the gardens of Oxfordshire
Oxford Farmhouse is a social enterprise - a CIC - Community Interest Company, which is one of the new forms of charity structure. We take unwanted apples & pears to make craft cider & juice with the help of volunteers from many different backgrounds. Give us a call if you'd like to find out about joining in.
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We started with small scale production for our own use, just experimenting to make sure we had a good product. In 2018 we went public and have been excited by the volume of apples that have been donated, the people who've helped, and the delicious apple juice. Typical responses to the juice have been:
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'The best I've ever tasted!'
'Absolutely delicious!'
'Liquid gold'
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The Great Taste Award judges liked it too, awarding us a star for our apple juice in 2019 and 2 stars in 2020 (no one received 3 stars & only 7 others were awarded 2 stars). We've not entered again recently - perhaps we should try it again to get those elusive 3 stars?
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Our ciders are also available - traditional still, medium or medium-dry cider.
'I absolutely loved it!'
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Our craft cider is made using traditional methods & the minimum interruption to the natural process, unlike most mass produced ciders that are reduced to concentrate & then reconstituted using sugar & water.
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From the archives - our old pressing venue in 2022, & a news report from Christmas 2019.
