Laying in Cider

It's done for the year. After months of fermentation, aging, and a bit of procrastination, the cider is bottled. Honesty requires that I admit that the only reason the task is done is that my wife got me going, then did half the work.

Hard cider isn't much appreciated in most of the country. There is at least one commercial variety available in this area, though you have to look hard for it. Last year I bought a bottle, just to compare the commercial product with my home brew. I was astonished at how much better the home brew product was. Unlike beer, making hard cider requires no cooking, no recipe per se. The most important element is the raw material, the unpasteurized apple cider. The hard cider cannot taste better than this raw material. If your experience with cider is limited to the highly clarified, pasteurized product, sometimes available in the supermarket, then you have no experience with a superior product. This superior product is getting more difficult to find; the federal government is making it more difficult to sell. The feds would prefer to see nothing but pasteurized, highly preserved “cider”, with all hazard to the user engineered out, along with all the flavor. Eventually, either the federal government, or the right product liability lawyer, will probably end commercial cider production altogether. Against that day, I've designed my own cider press. In my opinion, the cider we have in my area of Virginia is as good as any I've ever tasted.

In the family of fine alcoholic beverages, I put cider in the wine class. My first year's production tasted like a very dry apple wine. Given how full flavored my raw material was, I was surprised at how light the final product tasted. It was good enough to prompt a change in method this year. We made four batches, some with extra sugar added, to increase the alcohol content, and two different strains of yeast. Preliminary tasting, at bottling, suggests that the results will surpass last year's.

As with any product that must be fermented, then aged, only time will tell the final quality. We'll get our first real look in about six months, just in time for Thanksgiving.