Apple cider is a pure drink that has only one thing listed on the ingredient label: apples.
Lots of apples.
It takes a full bushel of apples to make three gallons of cider.
Lots of different kinds of apples.
Each apple variety lends its own special characteristic and flavor to the cider. At least three different types of apples are needed to get a good tasting blend.
The apple cider making process begins in the orchard, of course. Apples for cider are usually the ones that are not "pretty" enough or large enough to sell for eating/baking/cooking. After picking apples, we sort the ones for cider into old-fashioned wood crates, which we are slowly replacing with modern plastic crates as we find them at reasonable costs.
Why? After all, the wood crates work just fine and lend a traditional touch to this very traditional practice of making cider. Plastic crates are lighter weight, which is a huge plus for the person loading 30 or more crates of apples. The plastic crates are much easier to clean, and they stack perfectly on each other. And, the big bonus is that the plastic crates are standardized to hold four 1 gallon jugs or nine 1/2 gallon jugs. These factors add up to making transport and delivery much easier. Who wouldn't go for that? But still, I do like our wooden crates...some have been in service to us for 40 years. Can you believe that? I am amazed each time that I realized that 40 decades have passed since Jim and I said "I do" on September 22, 1973!
On a brisk September morning under a brilliant blue sky, Jim and I loaded up a pick-up truck with 30 bushels of apples, using both wooden and plastic crates as well as a few bushel baskets and even several feed sacks stuffed full of apples. Folks, let me tell you, that is a job in itself, apples not exactly being light-weight :)
The apples that went into this batch of cider were Cortland, Jonathan, Golden Delicious, and Red Delicious.
The next step in the process is the drive to the cider mill. State requirements for selling apple cider have resulted in many small cider mills going out of business. To sell cider, it has to either be pasteurized or treated with UV light, which kills e-coli and 5 other pathogens by skipping the boiling process. Boiling does affect the taste of cider, so we opt for UV, which keeps the cider "alive".
Gone are the days when we could have several choices of having the apples "pressed" at mills within a few miles of our orchard. Now we must venture to Huron County, Ohio, to a state approved facility owned by the Meyer family. The drive takes a little over an hour through scenic Ohio countryside, so I don't mind it too much.
By the time we arrived a the mill, the sky was filling up with clouds and the air took a turn for the colder, which is perfect for making cider, as heat is its enemy.
We backed our truck to the receiving area, where our apples were off-loaded from our truck and put in huge bins fitted for fork-lift machines. The one used for our cider was man-powered.
In this picture, Jim and Anthony Meyers, owner of the mill, move our apples into the massive crate.
Already a lot of work (months of taking care of the orchard, picking, and sorting apples, loading them and trucking to the mill, unloading the multi-colored fruit into the huge bin) has gone into making the cider. But the journey has just begun. Stay tuned to this blog for Part II tomorrow's juicy details :)
Marcheta *detailer
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