Original subtitles

[upbeat music]

Almost half of all the apples grown in the UK--

Go into making cider.

We drink around 1.3 billion pints of cider every year.

That's nearly 4 million a day.

In fact, we drink more cider than any other country

in the world.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Whether you like classic apple,

pear, or mixed berry--

It's all made here--

At the largest cider factory in the world.

[laughs]

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: I'm Gregg Wallace,

and I'll be following the fruit--

This is a constant avalanche of apples.

- GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: - -on an incredible journey--

We pick from about 600 orchards in total.

- GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: - -from farm to factory.

- 700 million pints? - Correct.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: And finally, to her fizz.

Oh, I love this stuff.

Whoa.

I'm Cherry Healey,

And I'll be finding out how the gas in cider--

CHERRY HEALEY: Oh that is so satisfying.

- -could also save your life.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: And historian Ruth Goodman

reveals why it was British cider makers and scientists--

It's as if NASA had a home brew division.

[laughs]

- GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: - -who put [pops] in champagne.

So the whole history of fizz in champagne

is actually about fizzy cider.

Over the next 24 hours, nearly a million bottles of cider

will come off this production line.

And we're going to reveal just how they do it.

Welcome to "Inside the Factory."

[theme music]

[soft music]

This is the Bulmers cider factory in Herefordshire.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: They've been making cider here

since 1887,

and they manufacture seven of the UK's leading brands.

Tonight, I'm following the production

of one of their best sellers, Bulmers original cider.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Every year,

this massive factory

produces more than 350 million liters of cider.

I'm going to be making a quarter of a million

half liter bottles.

So it looks like I'm going to need a lot of apples.

I've come to the heart of cider country,

to an orchard in Herefordshire.

And for a former fruit and veg man,

this is a little slice of heaven.

It's just one of the local farms that supplies the factory

with 100,000 tons of apples each year.

Gilly Turner is the supply manager.

- GREGG WALLACE: Gilly. - Hello.

GREGG WALLACE: What a lovely day.

It's a glorious day.

Don't you have a beautiful environment to work in?

I do. I'm very lucky.

GREGG WALLACE: I'm very jealous.

Tell me, how many different orchards are you picking from?

So we pick from about 600 orchards in total.

I know, 600.

GREGG WALLACE: An apple is an autumnal fruit.

It's only got a short season.

- What's your harvesting season? - So we have a 12-week period.

A whole year's cider production

relies on 12 weeks of apple harvest.

It absolutely does.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Gilly's sauce is a mix of

20 varieties for the factory.

They're mainly cider apples, which are smaller

and drier than the eating and cooking apples

we buy in the shops.

What apples are we looking at here? Because they're obviously,

these ones, either side of me, are different.

Over there we have Fiona.

And on these trees here, we have Gilly.

- GREGG WALLACE: Gilly. - Gilly.

- Is that a coincidence? - Not at all.

They were named after people within the cider

industry, mainly ladies.

So what characteristic is a Gilly?

Unfortunately for me,

it's slightly acidic and a little bit bitter.

And I'd just like to say, it's nothing like its namesake.

GREGG WALLACE: How do you know when the apples

are ready for harvest?

GILLY TURNER: So one of the tests

is to check the pips within the apple.

When it's not quite ready, the pips will be white.

And when it's ready to harvest, the pips will be brown.

- So they're ready for harvest? - They're ready for harvest.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: To pick this lot in 12 weeks,

we're going to need a long ladder and a very big bucket,

won't we?

[laughs]

That's ridiculous.

That can't be the way you harvest apples.

[laughs]

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: But as bonkers as it looks,

for the last 30 years, this is the way cider apples

have been picked.

The tree shaker clamps the trunk with its hydraulic arm,

shakes energetically for a few seconds,

and 60 kilos of apples tumble to the ground.

I'll tell you what. If I hadn't seen it with me own eyes,

I wouldn't have believed it.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Most eating apples are still

harvested by hand, but this machine can shake down

100 tons of cider apples in a single day

without harming the trees.

Will they let me have a go at it?

GILLY TURNER: I think they will.

GREGG WALLACE: Can I have a go? Can I shake the tree?

Yeah, you can have a go. Yeah, no problem at all.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Tom Skittery's family has been

growing apples here for four generations,

so I'd better not make a mess of this.

TOM SKITTERY: Press the shake button.

[gregg shouting, laughing]

That's the job. That's the one.

GREGG WALLACE: And you get to do this for a living, do you?

Yeah, that's it, yeah.

Listen. I'll tell you I'll if I've caused any damage.

TOM SKITTERY: All right. That's all right.

My friend, thank you very much.

That has made me ridiculously happy.

You've got loads to do, right? You've only got 12 weeks.

- Thank you. - No problem at all.

GREGG WALLACE: Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: As soon

as the apples hit the deck, my cider production begins.

And young Tom needs to crack on because right

behind him is a tractor, pulling the harvesting machine.

It's the start of a bumpy ride for the apples,

but since they're going to a juicer not a grocer,

a bit of bruising won't hurt.

The harvester scoops up 12 tons of apples per acre.

Tom's dad, James, oversees every load.

How long would it take

to fill up a 4 and 1/2 ton trailer of apples?

10 minutes.

No way.

- No way. - Yep.

So how long would it take them to strip

the whole orchard of apples?

Probably three days.

Wow.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: That's nearly

300 tons of apples from this orchard alone,

enough to fill 60 of these trailers.

And the Skitterys have a total of 14 orchards to harvest.

GREGG WALLACE: Is that it? Are we full up?

Yeah, we're all ready to go.

My apples are going to go and make cider.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Cider's only got

one main ingredient, apples.

But that doesn't mean it's going to be a quick process.

It'll take more than three weeks to turn my apples into cider.

My apples have been shaken and scooped up.

And a whopping 29 tons are on their way

to the apple mill in Ledbury,

just five miles from the orchard.

During harvest time, four of these giant trucks

pull up every hour.

[truck beeps]

GREGG WALLACE: That is a serious amount of apples.

Look at that.

You know, seeing them in an orchard is one thing,

but seeing them all here, together, is huge.

And there's mine, just about to be unloaded.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: There's 100 tons of apples

in this one silo, which is what I need

to make my batch of a quarter of a million bottles of cider.

A torrent of 90 tons of recycled water

sends my apples thundering down four channels

to check in at apple reception,

where I'm meeting shift manager, Simon Stone.

- Simon? - How are you, Gregg?

Mate, I have never, ever been in an environment like this.

The noise is unbelievable, the rumbling of the apples.

It's like of the tube train comes along.

It's actually vibrating through my feet.

- What are you doing? - So we're sorting out

any unwanted debris, leaves, grass,

anything like that that we don't want to get into our mill.

There won't be anything wrong with these, mate.

These are my apples. It might be one of the best

batches you've had in years.

[laughs]

GREGG WALLACE: How fast are they coming through here?

So each table will be processing 25 tons an hour.

Each one of these is a table?

Yeah, so the aim is to get 100 ton an hour through the mill.

- 100 tons an hour? - Yep.

That is incredible numbers.

This is a constant avalanche, wet avalanche of apples.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: But my apples aren't pressed whole.

After sorting, they're fed into the milling machine.

Inside this beast of a blender is a milling plate,

armed with 28 serrated blades,

which churn at 1,500 revolutions a minute,

chopping the fruit into bite-sized pieces.

These apple chunks then pass through 120 meters of pipe

into six 50-ton tanks.

So this is where all the mash gets pumped into the mash tanks

- after milling. - Mash? What mash?

But there hasn't been a single potato in the whole factory.

What are are you talking about?

That's what milled apples is known as.

- It's known as mash. - Right.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: To soften

the mash ready for juicing, the mill adds a natural enzyme

called pectinase, which creates a chemical reaction.

What the enzymes do is they break down the cell structure

of the apple, so that when we press it,

it releases more juice.

- And then what happens to it? - Then we load into the press.

- Is that the press? - That is the press.

GREGG WALLACE: It's looking more and more

like an underground station every time.

[simon laughs]

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: They may

look like a row of train carriages,

but these are the apple presses.

- Mind the gap. - [simon laughs]

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: And the inside isn't

what I was expecting either.

It's a bowl of spaghetti.

It's the filter socks for the presses, Gregg.

GREGG WALLACE: So tell me how this process works, please.

Nine tons of mash will be pumped in.

All of the mash will stay on the outside of the sock.

All of the juice will filter through the sock.

I've got one if you want have a look at it.

GREGG WALLACE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that is a filter sock.

So you have 10 grooves there,

the sock here.

The juice goes through the sock, runs out of the grooves,

and into the juice bin underneath.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: The press fills up with nine tons

of mash, and a piston forces the juice

out through the 288 filter socks.

It's channeled away through a pipe into storage tanks,

leaving behind the unwanted bits of apple.

And I want to have a look at the leftovers.

SIMON STONE: OK, Gregg, let's open it up.

- Can I do it? - Yeah, carry on.

Let me do it. Let me do it.

Carry on. Yeah, look. I'm an expert now.

Oh, that is not what I expected.

I expected little bits of white apple.

That's apple pomace, Gregg.

- Pomace? - Pomace.

- Am I allowed to touch it? - Yes, carry on.

It's a little bit like modeling clay.

You could make a ball out of it. Look.

Yeah.

So what is it? Is this, like, partly cooked?

No, that's all the leftover mash that's had 85% to 90%

of the juice extracted from it.

You must be producing tons of it.

Thousands of tons of it.

So what do you do? Have to dump it?

- We make electricity with it. - GREGG WALLACE: No way.

Yeah. We send it away to a biodigester,

and it's turned into electricity.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: The pomace, bits of leftover skin

and seeds, is heated to produce methane,

which is turned into cleaner green energy.

Amazingly, the pomace from the mill

can power 1,000 homes every year.

From the apple presses,

my juice is piped to the evaporation hall,

where I'm greeted by something quite incredible.

[foreboding organ music]

GREGG WALLACE: No way.

What on Earth is that? Mate, you're just showing off.

Gregg, that's a falling film evaporator.

- What? - A falling film evaporator.

Seriously, what does it do?

Your raw juice, that came out of the presses.

Yeah.

What we're going to do is take it from

10% to 12% sugar up to 70% sugar.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Pipes inside the 19-meter tall

evaporator are heated by steam to 80 degrees Celsius

to concentrate the sugar in the juice.

And just like making gravy,

the heat causes water to evaporate,

thickening the juice

and turning it into a sticky, sweet syrup.

That's incredible.

Because it's a syrup,

it'll make it really, really good for storage.

That smells like maple syrup.

Mmm.

What's incredible is before the sweetness

is a little bit of sharpness, like a lemon.

That's because we're using cider apples. That's because we're using cider apples.

GREGG WALLACE: So all of this, all of this pipe after pipe

of incredible machinery

is just to turn apple juice into a syrup?

- Correct. - Now what?

[majestic music]

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Just when you think this place can't

get any more epic, the scale of it

blows your mind all over again.

They can't all be full of this syrup.

- Certainly are. - They can't be.

How many of them?

There's 140 tanks, Gregg, in total.

They're all full of that syrup?

And combined, they hold 15,000 tons.

15,000 tons of that stuff I just tasted? 15,000 tons of that stuff I just tasted?

Why so much?

So that we can make cider all year round.

Oh, of course. Of course.

You don't have the apples all year round.

SIMON STONE: Absolutely.

How many pints of cider will this syrup eventually make? How many pints of cider will this syrup eventually make?

About 700 million.

700 million pints.

SIMON STONE: Correct.

That's just astounding.

That's just-- that there's only 60 million people in the UK.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: My apples have been pressed,

and the juice has been turned into

19,500 tons liters of sweet syrup.

From the mega silos, it's pumped into a 29-ton tanker,

which travels 16 miles to the cider factory in Hereford.

And what a factory.

This is the biggest cider plant in the world,

producing 350 million liters of cider a year,

enough to fill 140 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

[truck beeps]

My apple syrup is unloaded, and technical brewer, Dave Doble,

is going to guide me through its transformation.

- GREGG WALLACE: Dave? - Hi, Gregg.

GREGG WALLACE: You're my man, right?

You're going to teach me about cider making.

I am. Follow me.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Dave begins

with an essential ingredient, so precious

it's kept under lock and key in the factory's laboratory.

DAVE DOBLE: This is our special strain of yeast.

We've been using this yeast since 1905.

GREGG WALLACE: So is that a relative of the original one

- from all those years ago? - Absolutely.

Hang on. Explain the part of yeast

for me in cider making.

I just realized I know nothing at all, Dave.

Well, we add the yeast, Gregg, because that's

where the magic starts.

The yeast consumes the sugar, and it converts it into alcohol.

So without that little thing there, there is no cider?

DAVE DOBLE: Correct

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: This magical process

is called fermentation.

For each batch of cider, the lab mixes

Dave's tiny one-gram pot of yeast

with 20 milliliters of apple syrup.

Then it grows and grows and grows

until it fills a 16-liter container.

How much cider will that amount of yeast How much cider will that amount of yeast

eventually make?

This volume of yeast will eventually make

7,000 hectolitres of cider,

which is 3 and 1/2 million pints.

What?

- What? - Yup. It's amazing.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: The 16 liters

of yeast mix are added to a holding tank containing

my apple syrup before it's piped to the fermentation cellar,

which is where we're heading, to see

where the yeast gets to work.

[laughs] What happens in here?

At the moment, we're underneath our

massive fermentation vessels.

GREGG WALLACE: How many of them?

DAVE DOBLE: We've got 17 in total.

So how much liquid in one fermentation vessel?

Each of these tanks holds up to 3 and 1/2 million pints.

That's just ludicrous amounts.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Inside the vessels are

a blend of apple syrup, sugar, water,

and the all-important yeast mix.

How many of those yeast cells are there now in there?

At the peak cell counts in each vessel,

we'd have around 60 quadrillion yeast cells.

Don't know what that means. I have no idea what that means.

Me neither, Gregg.

[laughs] But that's the number.

DAVE DOBLE: It's a vast amount of yeast cells,

absolutely vast.

They don't actually look that big, Dave.

What we can see here, Gregg,

is only the bottom of the vessels.

If you go outside, you can get

a real feel for how massive they are.

Is there any chance at all.

I can taste a little bit during its process?

There is, Gregg. Follow me.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Now, when Dave says come

for a taste test, what he really means

is a climb up five stories

to the top of these enormous fermentation vessels.

GREGG WALLACE: Wow.

Mate, you suddenly get a proper idea

of how big these things are.

DAVE DOBLE: Yes, you get a much better perspective.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Good job

I've got a head for heights.

GREGG WALLACE: Wait, you've literally

- got a tap here, have you? - Absolutely.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: After 10 days fermentation,

the sugars turn to alcohol, but will it taste like cider yet?

[smacks lips]

It's strong, like a strong pint of bitter,

and then it's acidic, like a vinegar,

like a fruit vinegar on your tongue.

Ah.

So at the moment, that's 13% alcohol.

And it's still what we class green cider.

So this tank will have another two weeks to stand just as it

develops its sort of complex group

of flavors and characteristics.

It's got to kind of smooth out, and it's got to calm

- down a little bit. - Yes.

The purpose of this stand is just to allow the bitterness,

the astringency, the tannins to smooth out

and just give a fully- developed,

most rounded flavor.

13% alcohol.

So what's your bottle of cider, then?

Oh, a bottle of cider would typically be 4 and 1/2%.

Right. Almost 2/3 weaker than that.

DAVE DOBLE: Yeah.

I think I'd rather look at the tank.

- DAVE DOBLE: OK. - In fact any more of that,

and I'll be laying down, looking at the tank.

DAVE DOBLE: [laughs]

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: These massive vessels are turning

sugar into alcohol for my cider,

but this clever chemical reaction

is also producing the gas that will give it its fizz.

So I'm heading to the CO2 recovery plant

to meet engineer Tom Hall.

- GREGG WALLACE: Tom? - Yes. Lovely to meet you.

Good to meet you, my friend.

This is where the CO2,

during fermentation, this is where it comes, right?

That's right. The pressure in the vessel builds up,

and that drives the gas over to this room,

through this big pipe here, to be reused to carbonate

the product, to make it fizzy.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: But when it arrives here,

the CO2 still smells of fermenting cider.

So Tom needs to strip out those unwelcome whiffs.

We use this thing here to clean up the CO2.

So we pass the gas in at the bottom.

And what we do is we spray water in from above,

and the water drops down and absorbs the soluble-impure

AC alcohols and the sugars that come across

with the fermentation gas.

You take the smell out of gas.

Well, actually, I can actually show you, Gregg.

- Can you? - TOM HALL: Yeah.

So if we take a sample of the water coming out of here,

you should be able to smell. It actually smells quite appley.

A bit appley? That's very appley.

Yeah.

That is like a carton of apple juice.

Exactly. Well, that actually gives

us quite a good indication that this piece of kit is

doing what we think is doing and taking out those odors, doing what we think is doing and taking out those odors,

ready for it to go back into our product.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Until my cider is ready,

the odorless gas needs to be safely stored.

So it's chilled to minus 24 degrees,

which turns it into a liquid,

in a process called condensation,

a bit like when your breath turns to water

droplets on a cold window.

Why bother turning it into a liquid?

The reason we store it as a liquid

is because it takes up far less space.

So we've got some 60-ton CO2 tanks outside,

which actually would have to be 500 times bigger

if we were to store the gas as a gas.

That is why we have to store it as a liquid.

You're turning the gas into a liquid.

- That's right. - But you're going to

put it back in the bottle as a gas.

- That's right. - What an absolutely ingenious,

very clever, and slightly mad process.

Absolutely.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: It takes an unbelievable

500 meters of pipes to clean and store this gas

before it will be needed to put the bubbles in my batch.

CO2 may put the fizz in my cider,

but this versatile gas can also save lives,

as Cherry's been finding out.

[dramatic music]

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: Every year, there are 29,000

domestic fires in the UK.

Amazingly, a byproduct of the brewing industry

powers one of the essential tools to fight these flames. powers one of the essential tools to fight these flames.

It's just extraordinary that he put that huge fire out

with just one extinguisher.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: Foam extinguishers are used

to tackle fires in materials like wood and paper

or liquids like petrol.

To see how carbon dioxide plays its part,

I've come to Norfolk to meet Andy Spence,

whose company has been making extinguishers since the 1970s.

CHERRY HEALEY: Hi, Andy. Lovely to meet you.

- And you. How are you? - Hi.

I love this workshop. It looks so handmade.

ANDY SPENCE: Yeah, absolutely.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: Each extinguisher

is filled with six liters of liquid,

a mix of foam concentrate and water.

At the neck of the extinguisher is the all-important canister

of carbon dioxide.

There's only 55 gram, but it's going to give it

a powerful punch to expel the six liters

of foam that's in there.

Without this, it's just foamy water.

ANDY SPENCE: Yeah. It's just some foamy water.

So how does such a small canister of CO2

force all of this liquid and foam

out so quickly, with so much power?

Once it's activated, it pushes itself out a high velocity,

purely and simply because it's gone from a liquid state

into its gaseous state. And it wants to escape.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: When the handle is squeezed,

the canister is punctured, releasing highly compressed

carbon dioxide liquid into the cylinder.

The liquid CO2 instantly turns back into a gas,

expanding hundreds of times and forcing foam out of the nozzle.

So the CO2 is like the powerhouse

behind the extinguisher. - ANDY SPENCE: Yeah, absolutely.

Where does the life of a fire extinguisher begin?

It starts here, when we take it out

of the washing machine as a sheet of steel,

and then we roll it. Then we have this cylindrical

- shape taking form now. - CHERRY HEALEY: There we go.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: The edges are welded together

at 5,500 degrees Celsius.

Oh, there it goes.

Now we have a welded cylinder.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: Next, our extinguisher

needs a wall bracket.

- CHERRY HEALEY: [gasps] - [laughter]

I knew it was coming, and still, it's scary.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: The top and bottom are added.

These are made of pre-formed steel and are firmly welded on.

Once the CO2 gas cartridge expels,

if this wasn't well done, this would go that way,

and this is going to go that way.

Ooh, what's this contraption called?

So this is called the nodding donkey.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: Nodding donkey?

This sounds fun.

ANDY SPENCE: This has a really, really important job.

We've got to try and stop corrosion

inside the fire extinguisher.

So we put these crystals inside it.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: When heated to 300 degrees Celsius,

the crystals melt, forming a plastic layer

inside the extinguisher to stop it rusting.

What a clever donkey.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: The inside is now sealed,

but the outside needs a visit to the powder room.

CHERRY HEALEY: Is there a knack to it?

The guys who paint them think there is,

- but there isn't, really. - CHERRY HEALEY: [laughs]

Oh, that is so satisfying.

ANDY SPENCE: That's a really good job.

CHERRY HEALEY: Is that all right?

Yeah. You could get a job here.

CHERRY HEALEY: Yeah.

- Job done. - OK.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: The polyester powder paint

is baked to an enamel-like finish,

before the instructions are added.

- Just like that? - MAN: Yes. Yep. Go for it.

Hey, hey.

I'm sorry, but that is just perfect.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: Cylinder complete.

It's filled with 150 milliliters of foam concentrate

and six liters of water.

And finally, it's fitted with the essential

carbon dioxide canister.

[dramatic music]

I want to see how effective my fire extinguisher is,

so I've come to the factory's specialist testing facility.

Whoa.

ANDY SPENCE: So now you can see the flame is taking hold.

There we go. The minute it hit the tablecloth,

it just went whoosh.

Aim it at the base of fire, and off you go.

- Can I get quite close? - ANDY SPENCE: Yeah.

CHERRY HEALEY: And it's out.

That was so fast.

CHERRY HEALEY [VOICEOVER]: It's amazing that CO2,

a byproduct of alcohol production,

is such a key weapon in the fight against fire.

CHERRY HEALEY: I cannot believe how quickly the fire spread.

I have to admit, I've never even really considered

having a fire extinguisher at home.

And I think that might need to change.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Back at the factory in Hereford,

my cider has been busy fermenting.

And its CO2 is safely stored.

So I'm heading to the filtration area

to see what cider wizard Dave is doing

with my batch of flat cider.

GREGG WALLACE: That can't have anything

to do with cider making.

That looks like an enormous piano.

DAVE DOBLE: This is our chill haze filter.

- It's freezing. - It is.

That's exactly the point.

We put the cider through this filter

to remove any haze or particles.

- Chill, haze, filter. - Yes.

So what would the particles or the haze be?

In cider, because it's derived from apples,

we get naturally-occurring tannins and polyphenols.

If we were to continue to package our cider

without carrying out this step, when the cider is warm,

it would look perfectly clear,

but the moment you start to chill that cider

in a refrigerator, it will slowly become cloudy.

So to prevent that from happening,

when you're drinking your pints in your local pub,

we perform this important additional filtration step.

So we freeze the cider, then, at zero degrees C.

That brings out these hazy cloudy compounds,

and then this filter filters them out

and removes them from the cider.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Every hour,

35,000 liters of super-chilled cider

pass through these 105 cellulose filter boards.

DAVE DOBLE: It's not easy, cider, is it? DAVE DOBLE: It's not easy, cider, is it?

Best things in life are worth waiting for.

You might be right. I was married four times.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: I'm not bitter, but is my cider?

Can I taste it? Can I sample it at this stage?

DAVE DOBLE: Yes you can, Gregg.

That's smelling more like cider.

It's not quite as sharp, and the color's a lot better.

The bitterness is going from it.

It's most certainly beginning to get fruity.

It's most certainly acidic.

However, it's missing its sweet, and it's missing its fizz.

- It is, Gregg. - So what do we do next?

Next stage, we'll add the sweet apple

to get that perfect blend of bitterness and sweetness.

And then we'll add the fizz.

The fizz is what I want to see. Come on. Take me, Dave.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: So we're leaving

filtration and heading to the bottling hall.

And at last, I'm just moments from meeting my fizzy cider.

- Fizz? - Fizz.

- Is that it? - Yep, that's it.

- And what exactly is the fizz? - The fizz is carbon dioxide.

- That you took off before? - Yes.

- But you put it back in again? - That's it.

- Right. Am I doing it? - Yes.

[triumphant music]

Nothing's happening.

Just wait a couple of seconds, Gregg.

It's a bit underwhelming, mate. I was expecting maybe

a couple of bubbles, a few flashing lights.

Hey!

- Did I just set that off? - DAVE DOBLE: You did.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: 50,000 bottles

are racing every hour to meet my cider,

which is flooding towards them through a network of pipes.

Inside, the liquid is mixed with a sweeter apple juice

and my recaptured CO2 to fill it with fizz.

But who first came up with the sparkling idea

of putting bubbles in a bottle?

Ruth has been in search of the answer.

[classic music]

RUTH GOODMAN: You may be forgiven for thinking that fizz

is a French invention,

but in fact, the history of bubbly starts

much closer to home, due to a crisis

caused by Oliver Cromwell.

In the 1640s parliamentarian and soldier, Oliver Cromwell,

led an army against King Charles I,

deposing him and establishing a British Republic.

The ruling classes were in turmoil.

After years of bitter Civil War,

Charles I had had his head cut off.

His son and heir, Charles II, was away in exile in France,

but now, the aristocracy and Gentry

faced a whole new challenge.

They were in danger of running out of wine.

It was the Dutch who controlled the lucrative trade

in wine at this time.

In 1651, Cromwell passed a law called the Navigation Act,

effectively blocking the Dutch trading ships

and causing a severe shortage of sauvignon.

I've come to Chastleton House in the Cotswolds

to meet wine writer Henry Jeffries,

to find out how the biggest brains in Britain

overcame the crisis

by giving a much more modest drink a makeover.

So this was the sort of Bible of English cider making,

by a chap called John Evelyn.

He's quite a famous name.

I mean, we're talking right at the top there

of the sort of scientific elite.

HENRY JEFFRIES: He was. And his thing that

he said was he would

"relieve the wont of wine by a succadaneum of cider."

What a phrase. [laughs]

Which means a substitute.

It's a medical term for a substitute of cider.

RUTH GOODMAN [VOICEOVER]: But cider had an image problem.

It was considered a working-class drink.

It was stored in wooden casks, and the natural bubbles

produced during fermentation leaked out of the bottles

and evaporated away.

How to refine the cider and keep hold of those bubbles

became a pressing question for Evelyn

and other great men of the time, who wanted to elevate

cider beyond its humble roots.

There's people like Newton, and they were delivering papers

on making cider.

It's as if NASA had a home brew division.

[laughs] HENRY JEFFRIES: That that's

how clever these people were.

RUTH GOODMAN: And they want to make a sparkling cider.

It sounds quite straightforward, but actually,

it required high technology in the 17th century.

RUTH GOODMAN [VOICEOVER]: The biggest problem

was the fragile bottles of the time.

To retain the fizz, cider makers needed glass

that could withstand the pressure of the bubbles.

As luck would have it, scientist Sir Kenelm Digby

was already working on a new method of glass production.

Henry and I have come to a glassworks in Bath

to see this groundbreaking method in action.

[laughs] Boy, this is a bit different, isn't it?

Look at that.

Oh, it's hot in here, isn't it?

RUTH GOODMAN [VOICEOVER]: Digby built on existing technology,

using a hotter furnace to make stronger glass,

improving airflow, and burning coal instead of wood.

So you ended up with a bottle which was much, much stronger.

So stronger is resisting pressure.

HENRY JEFFRIES: Yes, it was much less brittle, much thicker,

so it could take the pressure of fermentation.

RUTH GOODMAN [VOICEOVER]: Digby used

this stronger glass to create a more robust bottle design.

RUTH GOODMAN: Move back, move back. [laughs]

HENRY JEFFRIES: Out of your way.

And this is the shape of bottle that he was coming up with?

HENRY JEFFRIES: Exactly. It was known as a

shaft and globe bottle. So it had a globe and a shaft.

And they were very, very strong.

The globe, especially, was very, very thick glass.

RUTH GOODMAN: Right. So it's all sorts of

things happening.

He's inventing new sorts of furnaces, new sorts of glass,

a new shape to make it into?

Exactly, yeah. He's doing all this,

and the result is something like a modern wine bottle.

And here's the finished bottle.

Oh, right.

HENRY JEFFRIES: They're beautiful.

RUTH GOODMAN: And this is the technology

that allowed us to have a fizzy alcoholic drink.

HENRY JEFFRIES: Yeah.

And then the bottle moves over to France,

where they put fizzy wine in it.

This type of thick glass in France,

they still call it [verre anglais.

RUTH GOODMAN: The English glass.

HENRY JEFFRIES: Yeah.

So the whole history of fizz in champagne

is actually about fizzy cider.

It began with cider.

RUTH GOODMAN: Fizzy cider in Britain.

Yeah, it's strange but true.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: After 29 days and 6 and 1/2 hours,

the sparkle has finally been put into my cider.

And thousands of bottles are on their way to be filled.

Getting these fragile towers of glass

safely onto the production line

is technical operator Sophie Morgan.

Sophie?

I don't want to break your concentration.

I mean, that is a serious stack. How many bottles are on there?

There's 2,376 bottles on a pallet.

But you're going to cut the strings that are

- holding them together, right? - Yes, but they're still safe.

They're stacked nine high,

and they've got the layer pads in between.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: First, the debander

removes the plastic strips.

Then the depalletizer unloads 20 pallets every hour,

sending the empty bottles to the rinsing table,

a super-sized bottle washer.

Oh wow.

Oh, get in.

Oh.

- I love this stuff. - Yeah?

I absolutely love this stuff. Right.

How many bottles are in there?

It does 154 bottles a second.

No way. It can't be.

This is why the bottles behind there

are turning at just a blur, right?

How fast are they going?

50,000 an hour.

No!

Why are they spinning upside down?

So they spin upside down, and they'll

get jetted with water, which will rinse out the bottle.

And then it will just make sure there's no contaminants, dust,

or anything in the bottle.

And where does the cider go in?

So the cider comes in in this big machine here.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: This is it.

These beautiful carousel machines

are filling 833 bottles every minute with my fizzy cider.

Then, a tiny jet of hot, highly pressured water

is sprayed into the top of each bottle,

producing a small head of bubbles called the fob.

This pushes oxygen out of the neck of the bottle,

which, if left in, could cause the cider to spoil.

It's a very small dome of froth on top of the bottle,

and the crown gets clamped shut,

sealing fresh cider in the bottle.

- The crown is the lid. - Yes.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Then the bottles

form an orderly queue into a 22-meter long pasteurizer,

where they're given a hot shower,

warming the cider to 63 degrees Celsius,

to kill off any bacteria.

Then a cold shower takes the cider back down to 28 degrees.

Why do you cool them down?

To make sure the bottles don't burst for safety reasons.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: Squeaky clean and bug-free,

the bottles get their labels at a rate of 25,000 an hour.

And then they're on to boxing up.

Robot arms group the bottles into eights,

and the box is folded and glued around them.

Finally, they're ready to be palleted.

And I'm going to meet the ingenious robot

in charge of the job.

GREGG WALLACE: What is that machine doing?

So this is the robo box.

This is building the layers for the pallets.

So the two robotic arms are forming the pallet

packs into specific patterns,

so they form a safe, sturdy pallet.

But they're not, are they? There's no pattern at all.

They're out of control. They're just doing what they want.

Look, I'm watching these, right, there is no discernible pattern.

SOPHIE MORGAN: They're doing it for a reason, Gregg.

GREGG WALLACE: Oh, I see. Oh, I see.

They're spacing them out so that when they get to the end,

- they form a square. - SOPHIE MORGAN: Yeah.

So they're putting them in a specific pattern

so they all fit in together nicely.

That's crazy. That's brilliant.

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: More than 50,000

bottles of cider are packed every hour

by these robotic arms.

It's been a long journey, but my batch

of 250,000 half-liter bottles of cider

is ready to leave the factory.

There we go. That's my cider, right?

That is your cider, definitely, Gregg.

This lorry will hold up to 24, 000 bottles.

GREGG WALLACE: That's a huge amount.

That's about a million bottles every day, going out.

That is just astounding, isn't it?

GREGG WALLACE [VOICEOVER]: The factory

sells the most cider in Central England, sells the most cider in Central England,

followed by the Southwest, Wales, and Lancashire.

I think that's my last palette, right?

It is. It looks full.

Should we do the old-fashioned bang on the truck?

- SOPHIE MORGAN: Go for it. - Thank, you driver.

[horn honks] There we go.

I haven't scratched it, I promise.

SOPHIE MORGAN: [laughs]

[music playing]

I am seriously impressed with the scale of production here.

GREGG WALLACE: I was blown away by the apple mill,

with its monster tank storing enough syrup

to make 700 million pints.

And here at the factory,

the enormous fermentation vessels,

where quadrillions of yeast cells do their work.

But do you know what I find even more impressive than that

is that it starts with a tiny, 12-week window of opportunity

to harvest 135,000 tons of apples

for a year's worth of cider.

Now, that is a lot of apples.

[laughs]

[music playing]