Main squeeze
Sep. 10th, 2020 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrIt's been a bumper year for apples, in our neighborhood. While our Gravenstein wasn't terribly productive, the Pippin was loaded, as was the big mystery early red apple tree next door in the Lutheran church's lawn. The one that nobody prunes, nobody tends, nobody picks. The apples are lovely and tart, bake up nicely or cook to a pretty pink applesauce (I leave the skins in, run 'em through a food mill later.) We ate a lot, made pies and crisps and strudel, cooked a little applesauce. Froze a lot of pie apples.
And still had three five-gallon buckets of Cox's Orange Pippins to deal with. I picked 'em a bit over a week ago, before our last bout of blistering weather, before everything caught fire. They've been in the relative coolth of my studio, waiting for me to figure out what to do with them.
Cox's are an English dessert apple, a lovely mixture of crisp and sweet and tart, with a little acid. Almost like biting into a glass of cider.
Hold that thought.
I actually went online, pricing small cider presses, before Denise reminded me of the Eugene Toolbox Project. They're a member-supported tool library. You can borrow or rent what you need for your home project. And their website said they have two cider presses available.
I had to wait a week to get the small press, and pay $5/night rental ($20 total). And then almost didn't get it, as they had to close Wednesday because smoke. I whined (well, emailed) at the director, who I know through Saturday Market (her folks sell cheesecake) and she came down to meet me and bring out the press.
It's an adorable little thing, each drum a little bigger than a coffee can. Two drums, a power apple chopper, filter bags. Denise and I spent a couple of hours this morning butchering out apples, removing worms and rot, then went to town pressing.
By the time we ran out of steam at 3 pm, we'd gone through two five gallon buckets of apples, plus a couple of big bowls in the fridge, and ended up with just under 2 gallons of cider. We'll tackle the third bucket tomorrow.
Not quite sure how to preserve it--it'd probably can all right, plenty of acid, but I'm afraid it would change the flavor. Not really wanting it to ferment, nor make into vinegar. Think we'll portion up what we can't drink right away into half-gallon tubs and pop 'em in the freezer, next to all the pie apples.
How's it taste? Well, a traditional cider-maker uses a mix of apples, some sweet, some tart, acid, astringent, to get a balanced flavor. We mostly used one apple--the pippins--with maybe two quarts of windfall Gravensteins from a nearby lot.
It tastes fabulous.
And still had three five-gallon buckets of Cox's Orange Pippins to deal with. I picked 'em a bit over a week ago, before our last bout of blistering weather, before everything caught fire. They've been in the relative coolth of my studio, waiting for me to figure out what to do with them.
Cox's are an English dessert apple, a lovely mixture of crisp and sweet and tart, with a little acid. Almost like biting into a glass of cider.
Hold that thought.
I actually went online, pricing small cider presses, before Denise reminded me of the Eugene Toolbox Project. They're a member-supported tool library. You can borrow or rent what you need for your home project. And their website said they have two cider presses available.
I had to wait a week to get the small press, and pay $5/night rental ($20 total). And then almost didn't get it, as they had to close Wednesday because smoke. I whined (well, emailed) at the director, who I know through Saturday Market (her folks sell cheesecake) and she came down to meet me and bring out the press.
It's an adorable little thing, each drum a little bigger than a coffee can. Two drums, a power apple chopper, filter bags. Denise and I spent a couple of hours this morning butchering out apples, removing worms and rot, then went to town pressing.
By the time we ran out of steam at 3 pm, we'd gone through two five gallon buckets of apples, plus a couple of big bowls in the fridge, and ended up with just under 2 gallons of cider. We'll tackle the third bucket tomorrow.
Not quite sure how to preserve it--it'd probably can all right, plenty of acid, but I'm afraid it would change the flavor. Not really wanting it to ferment, nor make into vinegar. Think we'll portion up what we can't drink right away into half-gallon tubs and pop 'em in the freezer, next to all the pie apples.
How's it taste? Well, a traditional cider-maker uses a mix of apples, some sweet, some tart, acid, astringent, to get a balanced flavor. We mostly used one apple--the pippins--with maybe two quarts of windfall Gravensteins from a nearby lot.
It tastes fabulous.
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Date: 2020-09-10 11:50 pm (UTC)