CAPÍTULO X De la Oficialía de Partes
CAPÍTULO ÚNICO
We had unfathomable (to us) fermentation problems, yeast problems, acidity problems, and all manner of other problems, producing a lot of cider that took a lot of self- delusion to like. the main thing we learned in those days was that it’s very easy to persuade yourself that the cider you’ve worked so hard to make must be delicious and to try to choke it down, but that if it’s really worse than a cheap six pack or jug of wine, you should probably admit the truth, dump out the cider, find something else to drink, and try again. that’s as true today as it was then.
happily, after a few years, we began to get the hang of it (with generous help from cidermakers and winemakers around the world). a couple of barrels even tasted genu- inely good to us. In 1995, we finally became a bonded winery and started selling a few cases of cider. the cider we sold in those first years wouldn’t stand up to our standards today. We didn’t yet know what sort of cider we wanted to (or were able to) make from these unfamiliar apples, but at least those early ciders had pleasing bittersweet character and good acid and fruit.
We’ve learned a lot since we put those first carboys in our basement. there’s no reason for you to wander through the same tortuous learning adventure. If you follow the directions in this chapter, your first carboy will be a thousand times better than our first ones were. In the days when we were growers, packers, and shippers
of McIntosh, cortland, and red and Golden delicious, and Farnum hill ciders didn’t even exist, we often put a barrel of cider down to ferment. We did it the way other folks in new england did in those days—we filled a used whiskey barrel with indifferent sweet cider, added a few raisins and some brown sugar, put the barrel somewhere it wouldn’t freeze, and made an airlock with a bung, some wax, a piece of fuel line, and a jug of water. Sometimes it froze, and sometimes it didn’t. So sometimes we made rough hard cider, and other times we inadvertently made apple booze. We usually bottled it in late winter or early spring. It was fun and made for rowdy parties, but was always a reliable headache in a glass.
But, when we started grubbing out our old dessert orchards and replanting them with real cider fruit, we had to get serious about learning to make good cider. We knew we wanted it to be delicious and to reflect the fruit and the land where it grew, but we didn’t know much else. We studied all we could find on the subject, in the United States and in europe. When our orchards finally started to produce a few good cider apples, we filled dozens of carboys and fer- mented them wherever we could (a walk-in cooler in the barn, the basement of a house, and so on). We made hundreds of gallons of perfectly horrid stuff.
NOTES FROM THE CIDERY, STEvE WOOD
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YOUr FIrSt Batch OF cIder | 97
Our First Ciders
We had unfathomable (to us) fermentation problems, yeast problems, acidity problems, and all manner of other problems, producing a lot of cider that took a lot of self- delusion to like. the main thing we learned in those days was that it’s very easy to persuade yourself that the cider you’ve worked so hard to make must be delicious and to try to choke it down, but that if it’s really worse than a cheap six pack or jug of wine, you should probably admit the truth, dump out the cider, find something else to drink, and try again. that’s as true today as it was then.
happily, after a few years, we began to get the hang of it (with generous help from cidermakers and winemakers around the world). a couple of barrels even tasted genu- inely good to us. In 1995, we finally became a bonded winery and started selling a few cases of cider. the cider we sold in those first years wouldn’t stand up to our standards today. We didn’t yet know what sort of cider we wanted to (or were able to) make from these unfamiliar apples, but at least those early ciders had pleasing bittersweet character and good acid and fruit.
We’ve learned a lot since we put those first carboys in our basement. there’s no reason for you to wander through the same tortuous learning adventure. If you follow the directions in this chapter, your first carboy will be a thousand times better than our first ones were.
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96 | aPPLeS tO cIder
Our First Ciders
We had unfathomable (to us) fermentation problems, yeast problems, acidity problems, and all manner of other problems, producing a lot of cider that took a lot of self- delusion to like. the main thing we learned in those days was that it’s very easy to persuade yourself that the cider you’ve worked so hard to make must be delicious and to try to choke it down, but that if it’s really worse than a cheap six pack or jug of wine, you should probably admit the truth, dump out the cider, find something else to drink, and try again. that’s as true today as it was then.
happily, after a few years, we began to get the hang of it (with generous help from cidermakers and winemakers around the world). a couple of barrels even tasted genu- inely good to us. In 1995, we finally became a bonded winery and started selling a few cases of cider. the cider we sold in those first years wouldn’t stand up to our standards today. We didn’t yet know what sort of cider we wanted to (or were able to) make from these unfamiliar apples, but at least those early ciders had pleasing bittersweet character and good acid and fruit.
We’ve learned a lot since we put those first carboys in our basement. there’s no reason for you to wander through the same tortuous learning adventure. If you follow the directions in this chapter, your first carboy will be a thousand times better than our first ones were. In the days when we were growers, packers, and shippers
of McIntosh, cortland, and red and Golden delicious, and Farnum hill ciders didn’t even exist, we often put a barrel of cider down to ferment. We did it the way other folks in new england did in those days—we filled a used whiskey barrel with indifferent sweet cider, added a few raisins and some brown sugar, put the barrel somewhere it wouldn’t freeze, and made an airlock with a bung, some wax, a piece of fuel line, and a jug of water. Sometimes it froze, and sometimes it didn’t. So sometimes we made rough hard cider, and other times we inadvertently made apple booze. We usually bottled it in late winter or early spring. It was fun and made for rowdy parties, but was always a reliable headache in a glass.
But, when we started grubbing out our old dessert orchards and replanting them with real cider fruit, we had to get serious about learning to make good cider. We knew we wanted it to be delicious and to reflect the fruit and the land where it grew, but we didn’t know much else. We studied all we could find on the subject, in the United States and in europe. When our orchards finally started to produce a few good cider apples, we filled dozens of carboys and fer- mented them wherever we could (a walk-in cooler in the barn, the basement of a house, and so on). We made hundreds of gallons of perfectly horrid stuff.
NOTES FROM THE CIDERY, STEvE WOOD
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40712 - Apples to Cider_048-097.indd 96 10/27/14 1:25 PM
(Text)
YOUr FIrSt Batch OF cIder | 97
Our First Ciders
We had unfathomable (to us) fermentation problems, yeast problems, acidity problems, and all manner of other problems, producing a lot of cider that took a lot of self- delusion to like. the main thing we learned in those days was that it’s very easy to persuade yourself that the cider you’ve worked so hard to make must be delicious and to try to choke it down, but that if it’s really worse than a cheap six pack or jug of wine, you should probably admit the truth, dump out the cider, find something else to drink, and try again. that’s as true today as it was then.
happily, after a few years, we began to get the hang of it (with generous help from cidermakers and winemakers around the world). a couple of barrels even tasted genu- inely good to us. In 1995, we finally became a bonded winery and started selling a few cases of cider. the cider we sold in those first years wouldn’t stand up to our standards today. We didn’t yet know what sort of cider we wanted to (or were able to) make from these unfamiliar apples, but at least those early ciders had pleasing bittersweet character and good acid and fruit.
We’ve learned a lot since we put those first carboys in our basement. there’s no reason for you to wander through the same tortuous learning adventure. If you follow the directions in this chapter, your first carboy will be a thousand times better than our first ones were.
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CHAPTER
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