With apples and pears across Perthshire falling off the trees, Wasted Degrees Brewing and The Lass O’Gowrie have teamed up to save them from going to waste.
For the fifth year running, the Blair Atholl brewers are saving fruit from across Perthshire by turning it into cider.
The community cider project started because brothers Jack and Conall Low passed neglected apple trees on their way to work.
Not wanting to see the fruit go to waste, they decided to start collecting surplus crops at the brewery.
Jack says: “It’s slightly tongue in cheek, but people get fed up of apple crumbles. There’s only so much you can do with them, and you got to use them fairly promptly.
“We encourage people to take them to food banks as well, but again, there’s only so much they can take in terms of fresh food.
“So, we wanted to create an opportunity for people to use them. It’s spiralled very happily into quite a large annual community event.”
Since 2019, Wasted Degrees has saved more than 10 and a half tonnes of surplus fruit from going to waste.
Perthshire apples turn into 3,000 litres of cider
Down in Errol, The Lass O’Gowrie owners Ali and Bob Abercrombie have been inundated with requests to take surplus fruits.
Last year, they took in plums and apples for desserts they donated to families in the village. The requests started pouring in again this year, but their freezers are still full from last year.
Therefore, Ali got in touch with the Highland Perthshire brewers to tell them about this “pretty perfect situation”.
“We’re having phone calls from customers asking if we can take extra apples because they’ll go to waste,” says Ali.
“Why don’t we then act as a collection point down here, since they’re all the way up in Blair Atholl?”
Open every day from 10am to 5pm, The Lass O’Gowrie will be collecting apples and pears until October 20.
For every 10 kilograms of fruit donated, Wasted Degrees offers a can of cider when it’s ready or a can of beer right away. The cider left over after rewarding donors is sold to cover electricity and labour costs at the brewery.
Jack is expecting to produce around 3,000 litres of cider this year, ready for early spring next year.
“We’ve got a mix of different views from people in terms of harvest yield this year, that dry period in the early summer probably reduced the potential of the harvest a bit,” he says.
“But because we have more awareness of the project, we’ll have more apples coming in anyway.”
Surplus plums turned into food bank meals
The only ingredient in the community cider is fruit, as the wild yeast on the apple skins ferments the juice. This leads to a traditional dry cider.
After canning and kegging the cider, Wasted Degrees is left with apple pulp. This doesn’t go to waste either, but is donated to a local pig farm as feed.
While apples and pears make their way up to Blair Atholl, The Lass O’Gowrie also collects surplus plums. These are then donated to Signpost International and Transition Dundee who turn them into meals for food banks and homeless people.
Ali says: “It’s the perfect opportunity for us to encourage folk to drop fruit off with us so we can pass it on to somebody else instead of it going to waste.”
As well as saving fruit from going to waste, Wasted Degrees has noticed some apple trees are in better shape than before.
“The project has led to people actually taking an interest in taking care of the trees, and in some cases whole orchards that have been left for years,” says Jack.
“It’s a great result to see these old trees being looked after for the next generation.”
Conversation