Pear season at Excelsior Orchards hitting hard right now. Look for those, peaches, and a handful of incredible nectarines from Paul this week.
Also very happy for the start of the chile roasting season. Load up on chile this week as well. Going to be some good flavors to be had. Don’t miss out.
First off this week amigos, hard cider. We just got a new batch of hard cider and I have to say that this is my favorite batch that we have ever made. We are using a new yeast and it has created a cider that is perfectly dry yet keeps the essence of the apples on the tongue and on the nose. A truly exceptional cider. I think that we finally might be hitting our stride here. We have gone from very good to absolutely amazing.
And I am going to take this little break in the action to give you a little history about my love of hard cider. I will bring you back to 2001 when I was living in a teepee and farming with a Norwegian Viking (Farmer Erick) on the banks of the Snoqualmie River at Jubilee Farm.
You see, Farmer Erick had a buddy named Steve who had an orchard for no other reason than he loved trees. He didn’t have a road-side stand, no farmers’ markets, and no grocery connections. He grew fruit for the love of fruit. After the tragedy of 9/11, he let me take a truckload of apples into Seattle to hand out free fruit to help lift peoples’ spirits. He was a real class act.
Anyway, he knew that I liked to make my own beer and so he turned me on to this fermented apple juice. A little stronger than most beers, a little smoother than most wines. It reminded me of a crisp champagne with its dry taste. I had never tasted anything like it.
Additionally, I loved that the juice to make the cider actually came from unusable fruit from the orchard. The ugly or slightly damaged fruit that would have to be thrown to the pigs could actually get pressed into this tasty adult beverage. My mind was absolutely blown. What an incredible way to use every piece of the farm’s bounty. Keep the circle as closed and as tight as possible.
OK, here is a little tangent to my tangent. We all know the name Johnny Appleseed. But most people do not realize that ole Johnny was actually planting hard cider apples. He would go from community to community to help them establish their orchards so that the United States of America could break our dependency on British booze. Johnny realized that as long as we were dependent on British hooch, we would never be a free people. So he helped plant orchards in order for these small communities to grow and manufacture their own booze.
This really stems from the fact that no other alcohol is as easy to produce as cider. You have to boil beer and add several ingredients. You have to distill spirits. And wine you have to keep in air tight containers for months before it is enjoyable to drink. For cider, all you need is one thing: fresh apple juice.
You do not even need to add yeast to the cider because there is enough natural yeast from the skin of the apples to trigger the fermentation magic. I think in most prisons throughout the world they call this process Toilet Wine. But I didn’t even need to go to prison to learn this art form. I just got to work with crazy orchardists!
But then a sad day came; big breweries found cider. And instead of making a quality product, they decided to make the equivalent of a wine cooler. Or Zima. So they took this dry hard apple cider and then they added a squirt of Jolly Rancher apple flavor to it. At least the name is fitting for this swill, Angry Orchard. If I was an orchard, I would be angry too witnessing how folks distorted a perfectly good cider.
So seeing those trends in the cider business forced my hand. I could not sit by and watch the degradation anymore. It was time to make a product that pays homage to the history of cider. And I believe we have. No added sugars. No added flavors. Just apple juice, yeast, and TLC. The way Mother Nature intended. Not that I’m insinuating that Mother Nature has a problem with alcohol, but you know what I mean…she does a lot of work and probably gets a bit thirsty.
And that is the story of how this little farm ended up with a federal wine license (cider is technically considered a wine). Our cider is great because you can enjoy it now or allow the flavors to express themselves a little more over the next 6 months. Let’s have a tasty September.
Farmer Monte