apple – Ben's Blog

Summer Cider

ben — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 02:24:52 +0000

Protected: Hard Cider 2025

ben — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:35:38 +0000

Protected: Cider ’25

ben — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 01:43:40 +0000

7 Gallons Fermented and Bottled up

ben — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 20:38:19 +0000

All routine now :). Looks like only every other year is a (wild) apple year so this will have to last a while. Esther’s been extremely helpful.

Protected: Apple Convoy

ben — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 22:11:30 +0000

Protected: Apple Cider Day

ben — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 02:17:15 +0000

Hard Cider Vintage 2021

ben — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 02:58:29 +0000

Very nice color, I haven’t tried the taste yet.

Fermenting Cider

ben — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 23:50:53 +0000

Hidden in a corner of the house, 11 gallons of apple cider are turning into hard cider. Hopefully this 3rd attempt tastes even yummier than the previous 2.

On this fast-forwarded gif, you can see the different rates of fermentation. Fruit flies are attracted to CO2 (the byproduct of fermentation coming out of the air lock). That’s why I attach an extra piece of paper towel to make sure they don’t find their way into the lock through the tiny holes.

Protected: Round 2 – Another 10 Gallons

ben — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 00:31:32 +0000

14 gallons in 1 day

ben — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 02:08:16 +0000

We’ve been gathering apples for the past few weeks, waiting for a cold day to press outside without yellow jackets. And well, the weather has just been too nice lately, no colder days in sight so we went and pressed it all. We did it inside the sugarhouse, space is a little tight but we can close the doors and that was immensely helpful.

Bins and trailers full of apples

Cider making is another area where we are really starting to know what we’re doing. The day was full of hard work but not stressful at all. We know how to avoid yellow jackets, how to set up and use the press proficiently, we brush hogged bellow the apple trees right before the season, picked apples at more frequent intervals. Everything is better prepared and better handled. And the result is 14 gallons of cider in 1 day, for a lot of work but certainly much less work than previous years. Experience is a very nice thing to have.

After washing the apples, we crush them

Then we press them

8 gallons, more in the fridge.

3 friends stopped by and left with cider, and we gave a half gallon to a neighbor. All vaccinated, all outside, feels nice.

The sugarhouse is very multipurpose, Robin is staining shingles while we get the press ready.

Bad Years & Mast Years

ben — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 10:36:58 +0000

It’s a pretty bad apple year and it’s likely we won’t be making cider. However it is a mast year for acorns, filling up a bag is as easy a taking a walk in the woods. In the spirit of going along with what nature decides, we’re trying acorn flour this year.

In the newly reinstalled greenhouse

Acorns are drying

We have no idea what to expect from this.

Cider in a Bottle

ben — Sun, 16 Feb 2020 02:58:45 +0000

Our 2nd year making hard cider, we skipped one last year when the apple trees didn’t produce anything. Such are the whims of mother nature.

We did this one a little more “right” by transferring to a 2nd fermenter after a couple of months and by letting it age for 5 months total. It definitely helped refine the flavor and remove some of the less desirable tones.

As before we used our maple syrup to fuel the fermentation. It’s kind of a shame because the taste of maple syrup is completely lost in the process, I would love to have something mapley left. At the same time, it’s completely awesome that we are able to make hard cider with 100% local ingredients. And by local I mean right from our backyard. It may seem completely absurd to use maple syrup like this, we could sell it and buy many times its weight in refined cane sugar with the money. This isn’t what we’re after though, closing cycles as locally as possible is the end game, not making money. And so using maple syrup is the most sensical and harmonious thing we can do.

I commissioned labels from Robin, I would like to build up a portfolio of labels made from people I love to satisfy any future circumstances. This year we had deer go through apple trees during a ghost moon, and we had a press day heavy on yellow jackets.

Overall it’s really super nice that all these projects are well established these days. We are so much more relaxed going through the motions with experience under our belt. It’s still a lot of work, but at least we’re no longer worried we’re going to majorly fuck something up and ruin everything.

We’ll be sugaring soon, and we’ll have cider to drink while we boil the maple syrup we’ll use the make the cider. It’s the circle of life or something.

Hard Cider

ben — Sat, 14 Sep 2019 01:45:47 +0000

Rebel without a cause, but with a bin full of apples

Hisse et oh

Using refined cane sugar is not an option

And now we wait

Very bad year for apples :(

ben — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 00:40:15 +0000

All unmanaged trees in the region look something like this:

Apparently a very tough Winter and wet early Summer are to blame and a lot of trees could die if we get another round.

No cider for us this year :(.

Food Pantry Rainbow

ben — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 01:59:25 +0000

2nd cider batch bottled

ben — Sat, 21 Oct 2017 01:45:12 +0000

We are at 10 gallons for the season. I wish I could say they suffice to our yearly consumption.

Cidre

ben — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 21:13:29 +0000

Hard time taking pictures of the process, we’re at 15 gallons of cider, 5 of which are now laced with the inebriating nectar of the gods :). We followed an extremely simple farm recipe, the cider is good but not great. The 2 gallons with honey tasted best, maple syrup left no particular taste but did make the cider a little stronger. Good stuff!

Every batch labeled with a picture for the story of the tree it came from.

“Old man’s arch”, “Maple ghost moon”, Honey third from the left” are all there.

Protected: Soft Cider -> Hard Cider

ben — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 02:17:50 +0000

Apple droppings

ben — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 02:55:37 +0000

Every day we pick up droppings from a tree that is a bit early. We make just enough applesauce for a day, just enough for the house to smell incredible.

the nice ones are saved as they keep really well

the ugly ones are cooked immediately

Apple tree discovery

ben — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 01:38:59 +0000

We thought we were going to have to wait 10 years before we could produce apples but it turns out that our land came with quite a few apple trees. We took a good hike and sampled every tree we found. A good few were tart, some just not usable and a couple yielded good surprises. It also seems to be an excellent year for apples and so we find ourselves with more apple than we’ll know what to do with before we even planted a tree. They need a few more weeks to yield their exact flavor but it was a nice appetizer It’s cool that these trees make apples that are unique to the place. We will graft the couple of good surprises in due time.

Some of them will definitely need more breathing room

Branches falling down under the weight of yumminess