Holy Cider…
November 12th, 2006Yeah, 20 gallons is a lot of cider.
Our homebrew club’s cider enabler organizes an annual bulk cider buy and a cider pressing, the only sources of unpasteurized, preservative-free cider I’ve found. The purchased cider was delivered last Saturday, and the pressing was on Sunday. I bought 15 gallons and got another 5-6 at the pressing.
The pressing (pics) was a blast, even/especially for the kids. We had a pretty good assembly line going; a couple parties picking apples, washing, grinding, pressing, and collecting. The kids had lots of apples to munch on, and the adults had a lot of hard cider to sample during the day. Motivation!
Of the purchased cider, 5 gallons each are getting White Labs Cider yeast, Lalvin D-47, and natural yeast (still waiting for this one to ferment… might have to intervene…). I wanted to do the pressing juice natural also, but found some spots of mold on it the other day, so I skimmed them and pitched some Champagne yeast. Of course, the champagne yeast caused it to instantly foam, so it was probably about ready to start a raging ferment on its own. Oh, well…
Also, I recently discovered one of my co-workers keeps bees, and happily shared about a gallon and a half of “the girls’” output. Some of that will go into the cider as a little accent, and the rest will be a mead when I get around to it. Unless I get motivated again on the brewing front, I’ll actually have done more mead and cider than beer this year, a first for me.