Craft Hard Cider: Recipes, Tips, and Ideas for Making & Enjoying Hard Cider
It might have been a touch early but I was itching to get to the orchard and pick some apples. Here in Arizona, we tend to get our first apples in late July. These are usually a small variety called Earligold. They are a green apple and turns gold as it ripens. The problem is … Continue reading A Day at the Orchard: First Fruits
Grocery shopping during a pandemic requires some meal planning flexibility. However, my wife was determined to find ingredients she needed for her scallops au gratin recipe. The problem was she would get one item but not find another before the one she did find needed to be used. It was becoming quite the scavenger hunt. … Continue reading Seafood, Salad, and Cider
As a home hard cider maker, there are a variety of ways you can package your cider. By package, I mean putting it in a container from which you intend to serve it. Surprisingly, there are a number of ways to actually package your hard cider. They have canning machines now. You can also package … Continue reading Hard Cider Tip #20: Bottle Cappers
Whether you are making your first hard cider or grafting your first scion to a rootstock, everyone who has done it hundreds or even thousands of times had their first attempt at some point. Maybe that attempt resulted in a great outcome but my guess is that nobody, success or failure, is using the same … Continue reading Grafting: Lessons Learned
In the US, there is a small but growing trend called Farm-to-Table. It could also be called eat local or know your farmer. Personally, it speaks to me, and the way it speaks the loudest is through the hard cider that I make. My wife and I love to cook and try new foods and … Continue reading Hard Cider: Think Local
Remember my favorite pairing? It’s pizza and hard cider and COVID-19 hasn’t slowed down our pizza making. In fact, we may be making pizza even more often and that has definitely started pushing our creativity. I’ve been getting more innovative with my sourdough pizza crusts. For example, I have a basil infused sourdough crust and … Continue reading Pizza and Hard Cider – Part II
There can be hundreds of compounds in your hard cider that create aromas and flavors. Esters are one of those. They are generally described as sweet or fruity. For example hexyl acetate is often thought to smell like apple. However, they can also be described as solvent, which could be ethyl acetate. Other esters can … Continue reading Hard Cider Tip #19: Esters
Bitter Orange Hard Cider Label I love citrus adjunct hard ciders. This is because I like the bitters and aroma you can get from the peel. My favorites are pink grapefruit, guava, and orange. I think these tend to have a sweetness in the aroma that provides more balance to the bitter and acidic nature … Continue reading Making Bitter Orange Hard Cider
Earth Log: June 21, 2118 We emerged from our shelter today to a new world. A world filled with empty restaurants and most everyone walking around with masks. We did see some dinosaurs without face coverings but I’m pretty sure they are on their way to extinction in our area of the world. But in … Continue reading A Cider Trip: The New Normal
Have you even heard someone comment about fusel alcohols or higher alcohols and wonder what they were talking about? It’s not the fuel used to power rockets to the moon. That was actually liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen, and kerosene. When yeast convert sugar into alcohol, ethanol is what most of that alcohol is. However, it … Continue reading Hard Cider Tip #18: Fusel Alcohols
