the bounty of nature

Today I gathered eight five gallon buckets of apples from our trees. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain, so not a good day for outside work. We will grind and press the apples in the barn, and can some apple juice, and ferment some to make hard cider.

Yield from the apples is quite variable. Some varieties are just juicier than others, and some apples aren't fully ripe, but fall from the tree anyway. We'll be doing a blend from three trees, but I have no idea what the varieties are. A couple of our trees may well be feral, but the apples have been fine for making cider.

Hard cider is easy to make as long as you follow the guidelines, and the alcohol content comes in around 5% or so with the recipe I use. We will also charge the bottles with some dextrose to make sparkling cider. Regular hard cider like this is actually rather dry and crisp, not sweet like some commercial offerings.

I mow under the trees a couple times a year, prune them every other year or so ( still learning) but other than that, we just harvest each late summer/fall. What could be easier?

This photo is from last fall. I promise to take more pictures.

This is a batch fermenting in the utility room last fall. This step takes two or three weeks, then after bottling, wait two weeks to let the remnant yeast convert the dextrose to CO2.

Even if you don't want to mess with fermenting or canning, freezing cider for later use is super easy, and keeps a very fresh taste.