We are at 10 gallons for the season. I wish I could say they suffice to our yearly consumption.
Cidre
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.
Soft Cider -> Hard Cider
The apples are rolling in and we decided to buy a press to try to make hard cider with them.
And the resulting yumminess. Only a few of our apple trees produce apples that are decent to eat. The rest are small and quite tart, we were surprised to learn they actually make the best cider.
They don’t eat much of it but they are happy to indulge their urge to scratch.
Contemplating our options for turning these 5 gallons into hard cider
We provided sugar for the fermentation in the form of honey & maple syrup