Craft Cider

COMMON OPINION DICTATES THAT you need proper cider fruit to make “proper” cider. I’ve talked to hundreds of home cider makers who struggle to find such fruit, especially as the commercial demand increases. Here’s a little secret: while cider fruit is amazing to work with, you do not need it to make cider. If you understand how to blend the apple varieties available in your area, you can make good cider without what purists call “proper” cider fruit. Supporting your local producers – your neighbors – outweighs sourcing fruit or juice from far away, in my opinion.

I’ll get into tips for using dessert fruit (also called table fruit or hand fruit) later, but for now let me share some good ways to get the best fruit you can locally.

Your local farmers’ market can be a good spot to find locally grown apples and – more importantly – to create relationships with local orchardists. The key is to realize that orchardists bring their fruit to market to sell it as dessert apples for eating; therefore, they will expect and deserve a higher price – one that commercial cider makers won’t usually want to pay. So orchardists likely won’t want to negotiate with their prices at first. Talk to them about taking large quantities left over after the market is closed for the season or the day, and also be aware that you may be limited to what they have available at that time.

At the end of the day, orchardists are usually eager to avoid having to pack up a bunch of fruit and store it again. Be respectful of their craft, and you’ll likely be rewarded.

You can save a bundle if you go pick apples yourself, or with friends. I look forward every year to the fall, when I take employees out to the orchard to pick fruit for our house batches. It’s so important to be connected to where your cider comes from – and it’s also a lot of fun! If you’re given free rein in the orchard, apple-picking is also the best way to have ultimate control over the quality of your fruit.

If you don’t know where the orchards are in your area, ask your local home-brew shop. Or you can check online sites like Craigslist, or ask your grocer. Another good resource is your local farm extension office.

Make sure, before you start picking, to get clear instructions on where to pick, how to pick, and what’s allowed in the orchard. For example, don’t assume you can turn someone’s orchard into a party spot, and bring lots of people with food and drink. If you do, it will probably be the last time you visit the orchard.

If you can get a sense of what’s growing in your area, and what the season is, you may be able to do quite well for yourself if you pick near the end of the season. At that point, it’s not usually worth the orchardist’s money to hire a crew to pick for the last of the season. So you could get a screaming deal!

Also, look for “u-pick” orchards, and see when they close the orchard at the end of the season. I once got all the Pippins I could pick for ten cents a pound this way.

Grocery stores are useful if you don’t have access to much else. They have their plusses: they stock apples year-round and they usually offer case discounts.

But they also have their minuses. Grocery store fruit almost always has a sticker on every apple, so that in itself makes it a pain in the rear to deal with. Also, grocery store apples are often large and can be troublesome to grind and press.

Some stores are willing to give deep discounts on apples that are almost ready to be tossed. For dessert fruit, the standards for appearance are high, so they often toss perfectly good apples for home cider making. I have found, however, that larger chain stores have strict rules about selling older fruit deemed “trash,” due to liability issues. If your grocer says no, it’s probably a rule they have to follow so they can keep their job, so try not to be too hard on them. If you can, stake out co-ops, smaller stores, and mom-and-pop shops. They will likely be eager to profit from unattractive fruit, rather than tossing it in the bin.

Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Don’t be turned off to cider making just because you can’t find a good source of apples, or you don’t have room to press them yourself. In the fall, it can be perfectly fine to locate a good source of locally made nonalcoholic cider. If you’re lucky, you should be able to find unpasteurized cider, which is always preferred. However, unpasteurized cider can be hard to find thanks to some pretty strict rules about who can sell unpasteurized products. I know a few orchards that sell it here in Oregon, but don’t assume unpasteurized cider will be common in all parts of the country.

Every book and every purist says not to use pasteurized cider, and to be fair, it does have its issues. But the fact is, you can use pasteurized juice and make perfectly drinkable cider. However, quality varies wildly, so don’t expect amazing results with lackluster or additive-filled juice.

With that said, my first batch ever was made with my buddy Brian in my small apartment. I was nervous to invest a lot of money into this new hobby, so we made a batch from some low-quality store-bought juice. The resulting product was, expectedly, not the best in the world. But it was enough to sew the seed for me to take the next steps. So, if you want to get started, don’t be scared to try whatever fruit or juice you have available.

The point to making cider at home is to have fun!

One of the Bushwhacker batches I’m most proud of was a very small batch I made a few years back from only neighborhood-sourced fruit. I literally went and knocked on doors that had visible fruit trees in the neighborhood around our pub. No one wanted money for it, and they were glad to see the apples go to a good use instead of falling and making a “mess.”

Tons of people, even if you don’t realize it, have apple trees on their property. In my experience, they’re usually glad to have the fruit go to a good use. If you’re super lucky, they may even have some “gross” inedible apples, and guess what those could be? Cider apples! Offer to drop off a bottle of your finished batch as a thank you, and obviously don’t go trespassing or sneak picking. For an added trick, a cool experiment is to try wild fermentation, utilizing only the native yeasts on the apples to make a truly local batch.

City parks may also have apple trees you could use. I suggest talking to your local parks department, however, if you plan on getting a lot, and making sure you have permission. Since you’re not doing it at this point to make money, it should be OK. But it’s worth making sure.

For a cider maker, getting to work with cider apples is similar to a woodworker having his choice of the most exotic woods. With a great selection of cider fruit, your job is simply to prevent something going wrong. It is indeed a treat and a pleasure to work with cider apples. Unfortunately, however, the amount of cider fruit available in large quantities to the home cider maker, or even to the commercial producer, is very low.

Cider apples, also know as spitters, usually have an amazing amount of tannin. They’re quite small and, depending on the variety, can be quite finicky to grow.

Cider apples are generally broken down into a few categories:

Sweet: low acid, low tannin • Bittersweet: high tannin, low acid • Sharp: low tannin, high acid • Bitter sharp: high tannin, high acid

When we talk about these categories we’re almost always referring to European varieties, since most American varieties don’t carry any of these characteristics in strength. Knowing these categories, and knowing what apples fit into them, is how a cider maker chooses his blend.

On the other hand, there are a few European varieties, like the Kingston Black and the Stoke Red, that make excellent single varietals. We carry two fine examples in our shop, brewed by the well-respected cider company Burrow Hill in Somerset, United Kingdom.

Volumes of books have been written on apples. There are way too many varieties to list here, but the rule of thumb is that you can indeed use any apple to make cider. The art of cider is in the blending, and experimentation is key to making interesting cider. Red Delicious with champagne yeast not doing it for ya? Try using an ale yeast, and dry oak it! Or do a wild ferment and add some honey for a cyser.

Play with it, and don’t be afraid of making a “bad” batch.

Like I said before, I’m a big fan of being creative with what you have. Depending on where you live, your area dictates what you can find. That being said, there are some pretty easy-to-find apples available almost anywhere.

RED DELICIOUS: The most common apple in America, the Red Delicious, has a negative association among traditional cider makers. While it’s true they don’t have a large amount of complexity, they do offer some great aromatics. So they’re useful in a blend. A cider made from one-hundred percent Red Delicious will likely disappoint you, but it can be a good base if you’re going to add some strong other juice to it, such as a cherry or cranberry. This may also be a difficult apple to find cheap at an orchard, since most get packaged for the trade or sold at farmer’s markets with no problem. Think of this as a good ten- to fifteen-percent addition to a blend.

Crab apples are the cider maker’s little secret, for many reasons.

Most people have no desire to deal with them, as they are small and labor-intensive to pick. Many orchardists have crab apple trees at the end of their rows for pollination purposes, and they usually don’t see any value to them beyond that. They are tannic powerhouses, and a little goes a long way, but crab apples can turn a boring cider into a great one.

I personally love locally sourced Manchurian crab apples, from a great orchardist in Parkdale, Oregon, named Randy Kiyokawa. I pay a premium for these guys since I cannot make it out to pick them personally, and it’s worth every dime. Our yearly batch of Le Grande Pomme – a little inside joke since the apples are the size of grapes – is one-hundred percent Manchurian Crabs, and easily one of my favorite ciders to make, and of course to drink!

They can be a bit tricky to grind and press, however. The trick is to have some bigger apples ready to go, and to toss them into the grinder at the same time. The yield is also not as high, due to their size, but I promise you’ll get results that will keep you searching out these small wonders.

The best, if not the most practical, way to really see what certain apples can do is to ferment them separately and then do tasting and blending trials. Once you do your first press, you’ll realize that the setup, cleaning, and tear-down of the equipment is not really worth it just to try a few gallons. Unless you have ample room, it can be problematic to have four or five carboys going.

But if you have space and you don’t mind the work, try getting several pounds of local apples and pressing them separately. Depending on your press and other revolving factors, plan on twenty to twenty-five pounds a gallon for your experiment. Also, keep in mind that yeast packs are commonly sold for a five gallon batch, so if you do anything smaller than four, remember to do the math and add less yeast.

Once the ferment is done, you can rack it off, and you should already be able to taste subtle differences between your vessels.

GOLDEN DELICIOUS: The state fruit of West Virginia, the Golden Delicious, is a very sweet apple, and it’s easy to find. While it’s fine to use for cider, again, this one goes best in a blend due to its sweet characteristics. Depending on how high you want your ABV and how sweet you want the blend, fifteen percent or so would be about ideal for a blend.

BRAEBURN: A nice sweet-and-tart apple, Braeburns are great to use in ciders. These apples have often been overlooked by traditional cider makers, but I’m starting to see them used a lot in West Coast blends, likely due to the Braeburn’s nice acidity and low cost.

GRANNY SMITH: First grown in Australia, the Granny Smith has emerged as a really fun apple to use in cider. Do Granny Smiths add tartness and acidity? Sure, but some single varietals have started coming out, including our flagship Alice, made from one-hundred percent Oregon-grown Granny Smith apples. Granny Smith apples are grown in abundance, and easy to find from coast to coast.

This is a great example of an apple used in American-style ciders. Often ignored by “traditional” producers, this apple works both in blends and in single varietals. When made correctly, a single varietal Granny Smith cider has the familiar taste of the Granny Smith apples we all ate as kids.

A quick note: when I say an apple makes a great single varietal, I mean the apple itself carries enough characteristics to allow for a fully rounded experience.

JONAGOLD: Developed in 1953 at Cornell University in New York, the Jonagold is a great, flavorful cider apple that can be found at orchards for a good price. It’s a cross between a Golden Delicious and a Jonathan, and it’s used in blends by several commercial producers.

FUJI: A hugely popular Japanese apple, Fuji is the sweeter child of a Red Delicious and the lesser-known Ralls Janet. Fujis are acceptable for cider use, but employ them for sweetness and volume rather than for any distinct flavor.

GALA: A New Zealand-developed apple, Galas are a cross between a Red Delicious and a Kidd’s Orange Red. Galas have a nice flavor, and they’re easy to find year-round. Like the Red Delicious, they’re great to add for aromatic qualities and juice yield.

HONEYCRISP: Honeycrisp apples have exploded in popularity over the last decade or so as dessert fruit. They’re well known at markets for their softball size. So, are they good for cider? Like many other table-apple varieties, they’re all right to put into a blend. But used alone they are very boring and, due to their usual size, a pain to grind. They also command a big price, usually in the two-dollar-a-pound category. With that said, not all Honeycrisp apples are big, and if you get to know an orchardist you might find Honeycrisps for a reasonable price.

NEWTOWN PIPPIN: An heirloom variety, the Newtown Pippin is quickly emerging as a popular single-varietal cider apple. Several commercial producers make a Newtown Pippin cider, and I’ve been impressed by all the ones I’ve tried.

It’s well-known cider-nerd knowledge that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew this apple variety, and Newtown Pippins have been around since the late seventeenth century.

ARKANSAS BLACK: Arkansas Black apples aren’t exactly easy to find at most stores, but I bring them up because the trees are pretty easy to find at big box hardware stores. They’re related to Winesap apples, and they have a very dark appearance when fully ripe. These apples are great for cider, adding a bit of tartness. Think of the Arkansas Black as a more interesting Red Delicious.

GRAVENSTEIN: An apple with a long history, originally from Denmark, the Gravenstein has become a very popular apple for cider makers. One reason is their early season: after a long winter, we’re all anxious to start working with fresh fruit again! The emergence of single-varietal Gravenstein ciders has made this an even more sought-after apple. These are sweet, sharp apples, and they’re often available from an orchardist for a good price.

Ever wonder what a bushel is? Here are some facts to help you sort through the terms:

• BUSHEL OF APPLES: about 45 pounds

• PECK OF APPLES: about 12 pounds

• TOTE OF APPLES: about 650 pounds

• KENNING OF APPLES: half a bushel. Not used anymore, but fun trivia!

On average, one bushel equals about three gallons of juice – depending on your press and fruit selection, of course.

What’s that tree grow?

• DWARF TREE: produces just shy of two bushels

• SEMI DWARF TREE: around five bushels

• STANDARD TREE: a whopping ten bushels!