pressing cider

When these beauties hit the kitchen counter, the cider making season began. My neighbor Professor Evil gave me a grocery sack filled with apples. He called them "drops" from his boss who lives here in the east bay. Before I even saw what variety they were, my nose told me I was in familiar territory. I opened the bag and got hit with the smell of my childhood summers in Sebastopol: Gravensteins.

I immediately ate one. I whacked up a few and dehydrated them for snacks later. Then I gave the rest a pass through the juicer. With a yield near a quart and a half, I poured it into an empty glass milk jug. I added about 3/4 cup of blackberry blossom honey. Shaking vigorously to dissolve the bee love, I put it on the counter and began waiting for the magic to happen. The next day bubbles arrived.

With one little experiment up and running I began thinking about doing a bigger batch. It wasn't looking like Reedley was going to happen this year, so no free Granny Smiths to juice up. That's okay I thought, my friend P told me that "your apples" were looking good and ready any time I wanted to come over and pick.

At the next market my favorite peach farmer Carl asked me "hey, you have any use for hundreds of pounds of apples this year? Like for cider?"
Uhh, sure, like how many?
"Oh, at least 20 boxes, so about 400 pounds or so, but easily more if you think you could use them."
You talking like giving me the apples and I give you cider back?
"We could work it out that way......"
I was already considering renting a press. So, 34 boxes later, it looked like the best idea I'll have all year.

The press came apart somewhat and managed to fit into the back of my wagon. Over at B's (my pressing pal) house reassembled, it looked like something straight out of the middle ages but with an electrical cord at one end. Plug it in, start tossing the apples into the hopper on the upper right, and then keep them coming until the press basket below it is full of pulp. (Make sure to place the basket under it when actually performing this task.) Fold the mesh bag lining the basket over itself on top and insert the pressing plate (not easy to see but being used under the auger press on the left). Crank away and watch nearly a gallon per basket flow down and into your carefully positioned, non-breakable vessel.

The juice from this ancient technology was clear and pretty much pulp free. Five gallons into it and I was impressed. At 10 gallons I was considering a way to build one. Nearing 15 gallons and I wanted to go buy one. By 20 gallons I thought it the best invention since liquid soap. 25 gallons and I was convinced a genius designed it. 30 gallons and I was glad we ran out of glass carboys to fill before we ran out of apples.

Now, what did we do with 30 some odd gallons of cider? We decided to split up the fermenting task and each claimed responsibility for roughly half. Then we used different yeasts in different containers and let the microrganisms get to work. Three short weeks later and I have now completed the first racking of my portion. Rumor has it B is working on his. I bottled a sample of each of the three kinds I have going.

Now, I'd write more, but after sampling a touch while performing the aforementioned tasks, I'm feeling rather spent. Also, I'll have to wait a week or two and try the bottled samples before deciding on how to proceed. Still or sparkling? Blended or not? Only time can tell. I'll give a bottling update when it happens.

Go press some juice, would you?

local apple cider

Yapple-dy dapple-dy it's that time of year again! Time to get out the juicer or cider press and get mashin'. Time to preserve some apples. You can sauce them, bake them, boil them and such, but why? Juice them, add some yeast and let it do most of the work. In about two months time you will be drinking one of the most satisfying refreshments to ever touch your lips, because whether your friends drink it or not, you made it. And should it suck, chances have it that some time "cellaring" might take care of the offensive character. I've heard some take a year or more. Well, call it beginners luck but my experiments last year, overall, tasted good right away and only got better. Wish I'd made more.........

Step one: Find a source of apples that need picking. Get a ladder. Or better yet find a friend with a ladder and an apple tree. Bring boxes, bags and buckets. Start picking. I recommend starting with at least a target size of between a three and five gallon batch. Use the rough guestimate of 5lbs of apples equals 1 quart of juice and pick an appropriate amount. (Thanks Paul!) Stop picking when either you have enough or realize that no one has gotten hurt. Remember to put the ladder away and promise to give your friend some cider when the time comes.

Step two: Load all the apples into the ride home. Looking at this now, I think I could have gotten it home on my bike, but I didn't know how many pounds I would pick (about 60 it turns out) so I brought the car. Please make sure to keep all apples securely fastened while driving home for in the case of an accident, well over two hundred fist sized pieces will be flying about the inside of your vehicle. I don't speak from experience, but I do have an active imagination and a deep appreciation for simple physics.

Step three: Juice the apples to a pulp. Or rather, separate the pulp from the juice. Grind them, mash them, spin them amongst countless blades, whatever method you use make sure to extract as much juice as you can. In this case, I filled a container with everything that came out of the juicer and let bouyancy and time do the work. It is amazing what just sitting around can accomplish. Choose the yeast you need that will get the job done.

Step four: Siphon the juice into a large, sterilized glass vessel and pitch your yeast. Affix a one way valve to the top to allow exhaust only. Place a more or less sterile liquid like whiskey into the air lock (and yourself should you care) and then give the contents a mix. Make sure to keep the experiment near 70 degrees until you see some vigorous bubbling and sure signs of fermentation. Make sure to not let monkeys pull the valve off of the container. Should this happen, immediately clean the valve and perhaps monkey and place (valve not monkey) onto the carboy again. Put in a higher location.

Step five: Keep the foamy goodness from coming out the air-lock. Or be prepared to keep cleaning up a sticky mess. Maintain the carboy at nice ambient home temps of around 65. Watch and wonder. Well, especially wonder since this is a lager yeast and I've yet to hear of someone trying such. Last year I used English ale yeast, this year I'm giving a California Common yeast a try. So far, so good, but we'll have to wait about a month before we do some bottling and have a better idea.

Give me a shout if any of this interests you and you have the time!

BOTTLING UPDATE (11/27/08): So, on Turkey day we tasted some from a bit that I stashed in a bottle right before fermentation shut down completely, with the hopes of some completely natural carbonation. The suspense was high as I cracked the seal, but a fine foamy effervescence was what greeted us. Nice crisp apple, but supremely dry. It was a fitting libation to start the thanksgiving feast, a common homemade cider, that was truly from this years local harvest. Thanks once again Paul. We will share one soon.....

And for the few homebrewers who might be wondering:

Does a California common yeast work well for making apple cider? Answer: yes. Very well in fact. Makes for a nice dry product, much like using a dry english ale yeast like Danstar's Windsor or Nottingham. A starting gravity of 1.058 took a month (like the other yeasts) and finished at 0.998, packing an alcohol content of near 8%! Now that, is a merry x-mas.......

apple cider is preservation, right?

I'm gonna sound like a bit of a lush here, but when I first read about the september focus of food preservation, brewing was one of the first things that came to mind. I figure, alcohol is a fine and dandy way to preserve things without having to cook the bejesus out of it. Besides, it warms the tummy. Come on now, that's a win-win situation.

Since it's coming on fall in this here northern part of the globe, apples are falling off the trees about now. This past weekend we were at H's folks' house and I had access to several hundred pounds of granny smiths. Time for juicing, for tis the season huh? Or, will be that is, so with september drawing to a close I've begun fermenting apple juice in hopes of hard cider by christmas. It was time to put up some alcohol for warming the belly come winter.

This is about two thirds of what was eventually picked on mid-saturday after a light rain had kissed the parched central valley loam. Reedley has fantastic soil, but it's hard and baked for at least half of the year so its a real treat when you get a whiff of it after a bit of rain. I walked out back and went to the cluster of apples in the orchard. The granny's are loaded with fruit but a bit wormy. Being selective somewhat and picking without a ladder I collected 13 buckets of apples with each weighing nearly 20 pounds in under two hours. I washed and cut up a few buckets worth and put the juicer I borrowed from my sis to the test. It appeared that a quart could be done before needing to disassemble and clean it. Hmm, seems like this is gonna take longer than anticipated. A bit of kitchen math revealed I would be doing this some thirty times or so. It was time to get more efficient.

So, fill the bowl on the left with hunks of apples. Feed these into the juicer. Strain the juice into the white stock pot for some settling before being decanted into the carboy for storage. Basically, the apples came in off the tree and sat near the juicer for a second before getting a quick scrub and cleave. Then they made a trip through the juicer, hang a u-turn and proceed back to the biggest glass vessel we have.

All finished and decanted on the average of twice a quart, we had near 6 & 1/2 gallons of apple juice. A quick trip to the oak barrel and we were in business for making some cider. A packet of ale yeast and a packet of potassium metabisulfite and we had our bases covered. Treat the juice to get rid of any unwanted nasties that have popped up in the few days since juicing and be prepared with a fresh batch of known yeast to innoculate it with. Considering the apples were free for the picking, that makes it about 6 gallons of cider for about 5 bucks of materials. I'm sure running the juicer intermittently for some 6 hours costs a penny or two on the utility bill, but I know it ain't no twenty bucks. It's all about them cheap apples.

Taking a gravity reading indicates that if all goes well with fermentation, we should have about 7-8 points of alcohol in the end. That will definately be warming to the belly on a cold winter day. This is surely cause for a big smile. Or in another scenario, a few weeks go by, I crack open the carboy and discover that everyone is getting organic apple cider vinegar for the holidays. We'll just have to wait and see.

I just love ol' granny smith. Pick her when her fruit starts dropping, twirl her around, sprinkle with pixie dust and let her sit for a bit in the shade. When she's done breathing hard, give her a taste of sugar and some time to mellow. Come the holidays she'll be ringin' yer bell, or puckering your mouth. Doesn't everyone need a granny like that?