History: Cider making in Appleby

After emigrating to New Zealand, Charles Grainger settled at Appleby and erected cool stores in which cases of apples were stored annually for the fruit growers of the district.  

What he observed was that thousands of apples were going to waste each year, allowed to rot on the ground.  

Charles understood that cider making would prevent a great deal of waste. He had no experience in this field and set about learning as much as he could.  

Although handicapped by a lack of capital, he had two things in his favour – his ability to work hard and the cool stores.  In an agreement with the Redwood Valley Fruitgrowers Association it was decided to establish a ‘cider works’ at Charles’s cool stores.  

On the 9th of April 1923 the mill and press were given a trial run using about half a ton of apples.  This being satisfactory, the plant was put into permanent commission on a scale that enabled the finished product to be widely distributed.

Several thousand bushels of apples came to the plant from all over Nelson in one season and several hundred barrels of high-grade cider were produced. Only sound fruit was treated, and the various varieties were blended in the correct proportions.

The fruit was then passed through a power-driven self-feeding mill which reduced it to pomace or pulp. This was then placed in a heavy, power-driven hydraulic press and subjected to a squeeze of some 40 tons, which left the pomace comparatively dry and crumbly.  

The fresh juice when leaving the press was insipid and charged with fine disintegrated apple particles. The juice was immediately chilled, setting up intense precipitation enabling the particles to be separated from the juice prior to fermentation, thus ensuring a perfectly clean ferment.

The cider-making endeavour was very successful with the output at commencement being 500 gallons per day and doubling by 1926.

During the years of work Charles was injured several times, once being hit by a blade from an industrial fan which struck him on the forehead resulting in a fractured skull, another having his forearm caught by a belt and his arm wrapped round a pulley which flung him on to the concrete floor, a distance of six to eight feet and then being cut by a bottle which burst, causing an arterial bleed.

In August of 1927 Charles sold the property at Appleby along with the dwelling house and in 1931 became the Manager of Cider New Zealand Ltd. The old cool stores were purchased by James Wyllie and became ‘Blackbyre Bacon’ factory.