As with Aspall Suffolk Cyder, our cyder vinegar is only made from the juice of whole fresh pressed apples. We use different apples to make different base cyders for later acetification.

Once harvested, apples are delivered to the press house at Aspall. They are washed and hand graded to take out any rots and leaf debris and then rinsed 3 times before arriving at the mill. Here they are minced to a pulp and pumped in to one of our Bucher Guyer apple presses. The “mash” is then pressed for two hours to extract pure “single strength” apple juice. 

The fresh juice is then pumped to a fermentation vessel, where our controlled yeast is added to ensure consistent fermentations. The vessel is also temperature controlled for the same reason – fermentation produces a great deal of exothermic heat, and if it gets too hot during the fermentation, the resulting cyder can develop unwanted off flavours such as volatile acidity, and so taste quite coarse. A typical fermentation will take 3 to 4 weeks. 

Once the fermentation has finished, we leave the cyder to stand for 2 weeks to allow dead yeast to drop out. We then transfer or “rack” the cyder in to a clean storage tank for maturation, where it is sealed tight and kept chilled. Maturation periods vary from 6 weeks to 2 years, depending on the requirement for vinegar fermentation.

We have 2 methods of vinegar fermentation at Aspall. The most recent addition to our brewing capacity is a Frings Acetator. Frings is the industry standard acetification technology; however, the vinegar produced is only as good as the “mash” fed in. By using only cyder fermented from fresh apples, all the natural nutrients the acetobacter like are present. Cyder made from high strength concentrate has lost a lot of these nutrients through the concentrating process, and subsequently bacterial fermentations with this type of cyder are much slower, and the resultant vinegar is a lot less fruity and aromatic. We have tried it, but wouldn't put our name to the finished product.

Our longer standing acetifiers are 4 Greenshield Towers. The first 2 were installed in 1974, and the second pair followed in 1976. Greenshields vary from Frings in that they trickle feed the vinegar fermentation. A Frings ferments by batch – cyder in, 24 hours later vinegar out and so the process repeats ad infinitum. The acetobacter in a Greenshields are supplied with just enough cyder to maintain a minimum level of alcohol for them to live off and convert to acetic acid, and as fast as the cyder is fed in, the resulting vinegar runs off. It is a much slower process, and so much gentler on the acetobacter. Whilst the principle of “quality in, quality out” applies to a Greenshield Tower as much as a Frings, the gentler fermentation in a Greenshield Tower produces a vinegar of extreme mellowness, subtlety and quality. All Aspall Organic Cyder Vinegar is only fermented through our Greenshield Towers and we don’t put anyone else’s name to this vinegar.

These Greenshields Towers are utterly unique to Aspall. There are no other working examples in the world.

As with Aspall Suffolk Cyder, all our vinegars are blended, and this is where the skill of the vinegar brewer is carried out. No one variety of apple has all the attributes needed to make a truly well balanced cyder – and so it is with vinegar. It is only by combining different base vinegars that this is achievable.

The different cyders will be acetified separately and matured for 3 – 4 months prior to processing. At this point it is blended and filtered clear and bright for packing.

Unlike many vinegar producers we neither add preservative nor pasteurise our vinegars. Vinegar is nature’s great preservative so should need no external help in this respect. As for pasteurisation, it only has the effect of destroying many of the nutritional and flavour benefits inherent in vinegar, and so it would seem a crying shame to undo all the hard work of getting this far only to dilute the quality at the finishing post. It’s akin to serving cyder over ice – but that’s another story.

Apples used by style in Aspall Suffolk Cyder include the following:

Dessert: Cox, Blenheim Orange, Chivers Delight, Spartan, Crispin, KatyCooker, Bramley, Howgate Wonder, Lord Derby