Hard Cider

The fall has always been my favorite season.  I love the cooler weather, the crisp air, cutting firewood, bringing in the year’s harvest and making wine and cider.  This past year we did a few new things in preparation for cider making. 

1.  We went shopping around for apples and got 15 bushels from two different orchards at really good prices.  This is the most ambitious we've been in relation to quantity.  

2.  We bought this amazing apple crusher that does a half ton\hr.  Gone are the days of having to quarter apples one by one before running them through the table-mounted hand crusher that would take all day to do 5 bushels.   Now we can load apples into the top of the apple mil and watch this thing turn them into a mash in a matter of seconds.  It’s the most wonderful thing since we got heat on the 3rd floor.  

3.  For my birthday my wife bought me a #45 press.  I also have a #25 press, which is perfect if you are making 6 gallons of something.    When it comes to cider we make quite a lot more.  In the past with the hand crusher this really wasn’t too much of problem as the bottle neck was during the crush process not the press.  Now that we have the new electric mill the bottle neck would have been the press.  Subsequently, the #45 while very large in comparison and works a lot nicer for the volume of cider we are making now.

This thing is so freaking awesome!

Apples

Pipin, Cameo, Henley Gold, Cripin, Staymen, AK Black and Russet. 

Process

10.25.14	Crush and pressed 15 bushels that yielded 35 gallons of juice. SG 1.051 about 7.5% expected alcohol.
10.27.14	Picked yeast, experimented with two brands of Champagne yeast.  Red Star v. Lavin.  The Lavin created a much slower fermentation.
11.7.14	SG 1.031, taste testing proved to be a nice apple flavor.  Racked off
11.23.14	SG 0.098 Racked & bottled 13 cases of 22 oz bottles

New toys, #45 press and electric crusher.

Sulfite bath prior to the crush.

This is how you make awesome sauce.

The press

After the press.

A reward for the day's hard work - last year's cider.

Almost of cube yard of pomace.

A little experiment with champagne yeast strains.

The rack off 

32 gallons of sweet smelling cider bubbling away in the kitchen.

Result

A still, French style cider with good flavor, very drinkable without being over done in terms of alcohol content that we had achieved in previous iterations.  I do prefer the carbonation that is produced during the secondary fermentation (not malolactic).  I think the only thing that would need to be done differently in this year’s batch is that the cider got chill proofed a little too soon.  Chill proofing stabilizes the cider (or wine) by killing off any lingering yeast or bacteria.  Ostensibly, if we had left it out of the fridge a little longer, we’d have a different result.  Nonetheless, it’s still good and I am working on consistency and perfecting the craft.  

Cabernet Sauvignon 2014

This is the third Cabernet Springs Farm has made from local grapes.  The first Cab Sav we crushed on the day my wife and I got married in 2010.  We now refer to it as the “Wedding Wine’.  We always seem to be making wine on or around our anniversary now, which is not a bad thing at all.  I skipped making wine in 2011 & 2013 due to other farm projects.  In 2012 we made 5 gallons of some beautiful stuff.  I can’t wait to do a vertical tasting of all three. 

2014 was a great year for grapes in Virginia.  It was a mild summer with cool nights and not a lot of rain.  The only thing I noticed in my own vineyard is the Japanese beetles were fierce in numbers.  I feel pretty lucky to get grapes this year as grapes are in big demand these days in VA.

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Notes:

10.11.14	Procured 6 (very full) lugs from local vineyard.  Set up the “crush pad” and prepared for the crush and destem.  Sanitized all equipment and then a quick BRIX check of 23 from refractometer.  After the crush the addition of SO2 is added to kill off any wild yeasts or bacteria.   Let it sit for 24 hours.
10.12.14	Tested must for specific gravity and acid: SG 1.087 Expected Alcohol about 12% Barrel Temp 66* T.A. resulted in the addition of an acid blend Added Pectin Enzyme Expected yield < 10 gallons Created yeast starter and pitched Pasteur yeast
10.13.14	Strong fermentation, punched down twice a day
10.17.14	SG 1.010 temp 66*
10.20.14	SG 1.000 Added malolactic bacteria
10.25.14	SG 0.995 Pressed
10.28.14	Racked off lees
11.23.14	Racked, tart taste, added French oak chips to 9 gallons
12.25.14	Sampled how the oak is coming along, needs a bit more time to mellow. Good bouquet
1.4.14	Racked off oak, it is tasting like it might be a big wine, it has a great bouquet, it’s just starting to round out a little but it is still quite sharp and tight.

Solarization

This past summer we started working on expanding the vineyard.  As part of preparation for this expansion we marked off roughly where the rows would be placed and covered up each row with a tarp to solarize the soil.  This process can help to control not only weeds, but also fungus, nematodes and certain bacteria by heating the soil during the hottest months over the summer.   Additional benefits during the breakdown of the organic material will provide nutrients to include nitrogen, calcium, folic acid, magnesium and potassium to the soil structure.

Watering rows before plastic placement

We got started in late July. The first step after site selection and row placement is to soak each row heavy with water. Then, we rolled the dark plastic tarp out and stapled firmly to the ground.  It wasn’t until after the first soft frost that we then removed the plastic.

I sent a soil sample to Virginia Tech and the results came back good.  All that was needed was the addition of lime.

Sprayed around rows to keep grass back.

Tilled in lime and break up of soil to set up over the winter.

Final result in October

The next steps early this spring before the baby vines arrive is to add a nice layer of compost to the soil and install wooden posts for preliminary trellis prep.

Blueberries!

It doesn’t really look like it, but there’s 5 gallons of blueberries in the freezer.  I’m looking forward to turning them into wine this fall.  We have an old 1850’s farmhouse with no air conditioning.  This leaves us no control over the temperature and we usually end up with a too vigorous fermentation due to a higher temperature.    If a wine ferments at fluctuating or inconsistent temperature it can change the chemical makeup of the wine.   I’ve finally learned to wait until the cooler months to start fermenting.  Three years ago I made a beautiful blueberry wine.  I made it like a red wine.   I adjusted the sugar to give it 14% alcohol content, added tannin and citric acid.  After the primary fermentation I ran it through the malolactic fermentation, chilled proofed and stuck it on oak chips for about three weeks; I bottled it up right away.  It turned out like a cabernet.  Really, it did.   It was way bigger than I thought you get out of blueberries.  The oak chips provided a nice vanilla note and mellowed the wine out, the added tannin and acid balanced out the sugar, and the flavor was not like blueberry at all.  If you blind tested me with this wine, I would have never have guessed.   Well this was in the middle of a hot VA summer and sometime around late August the wine started to re-ferment in the bottle and we had a couple of bottles shoot their corks off in the rack.  This did not bode well for the longevity of this wine.  Even after sticking a few bottles in the wine fridge, it was never really the same. 

There are a few mistakes that I made with this wine.  1) I did not add enough potassium sorbet before bottling.  I had a previous batch where I added a bit too much and it turned out with a rotten egg smell.  I was a little too cautious from the last burn.  2) I probably should have continued to bulk age it in the fridge.  Since then, I’ve been bulk aging my wines for at least 6 months.  3) Of course waiting until the fall when the air cools off.  We’re planning on building a garage with environmental controls where I can have a space to create wine.  Until then, I can’t wait to pull these berries out of the freezer in a couple of months!

GINGER BEER

Earlier this summer a friend introduced me to his homemade ginger beer from a recipe he got out of Imbibe magazine.  I’m not really a huge ginger beer fan but I really like this one and we do enjoy fermenting things so we thought we’d give it a shot. 

Ingredients

4 oz fresh ginger, roughly peeled and coarsely chopped

2 quarts water

1 cup demerara sugar

1 Tbsp. molasses

3/4 cup fresh lime juice

1/2 gram champagne yeast (about 1/4 tsp.)

Directions

1. In a blender, pulse the ginger with 1 quart of water until roughly pureed.
2. Combine the ginger-water, sugar, and molasses in a large pot over medium-high heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and let cool to just slightly warmer than room temperature.
3. Line a funnel with a flour-sack towel or a 4x layer of cheesecloth, and use it to strain the liquid in batches into a plastic 2-liter bottle, squeezing the towel or cloth to extract as much liquid as possible.
4. Add the lime juice and remaining water until the liquid level is about 3 inches from the top (this may not require the full quart). Sprinkle the yeast on top of the liquid in the bottle.
5. Carefully squeeze the bottle until the liquid comes right to the neck, then screw the cap on tightly. Let the bottle sit at room temperature for 12 hours, or until the bottle feels firm when squeezed.
6. Once the bottle is firm, transfer to the refrigerator. Keep the ginger beer refrigerated and drink within 1 week.

We made a few modifications:

• We doubled the recipe to make a gallon in a glass jug rather than filling a plastic liter.
• Used a half packet of Champaign yeast
• Created a yeast starter to kick if off.
• Used an airlock and sanitized equipment and jug per best practices.
• After it fermented for about 2 days I took a reading and tested the sugar and bottled.

The Result

A crisp, semi-sweet, gingerly, effervescent beverage that would go very well with some dark rum.  The alcohol content is about 3.4%.  It turned out quite dark due to the blackstrap molasses used.