Temperatures Dropping, Cider Bottled

Snow storms have been coming through off and on for the last few days. Aries works, so I'm the one out shoveling paths to the chickens, woodpile, cellar, and mailbox. It's supposed to clear up, finally, tonight, but that means it's gonna get COLD! Eleven at night and it's 18F - it could go below zero before morning.

But inside, we're nice and cozy. Between the wood stove and the oven, this house is warm enough for a t-shirt right now. By morning, it will probably drop to the high 50's inside, but that just makes for a nice sleeping temperature. The only possible problem when it gets this cold outside is sometimes the bathtub drain freezes. Bothersome, but not unbearable. But also not something I want to happen with weekend company arriving tomorrow. So Aries poured a quarter-cup of windshield wiper fluid into that drain tonight. It's mostly alcohol, and such a little bit, and done so rarely - messing up the septic system or the chance of anything harmful getting into the leach field is something we do have to keep in mind.

Speaking of alcohol (like that segue-way?), Aries bottled the hard cider this evening while I was out doing some last minute Thanksgiving grocery shopping. Playing with the hydrometer says this batch, made with apples only, no added sugar, is about 7% alcohol (most beers are 4-6, wines around 12). Since it's not as strong as the last stuff we made, he bottled it in pint bottles. When we go to drink it, that should be a nice size for the two of us to split a bottle. The cider yeast didn't settle out like the champagne yeast did previously. That earlier batch is now a very dry, clear bubbly (almost like champagne - duh). This batch looks like mud. It tastes pretty good though, even now. Letting the apples set for a few weeks, to soften and sweeten before grinding, worked well.

As before, Aries mixed in a bit of corn sugar before bottling. I asked why it has to be corn sugar, and he said because it's an inert form of sugar - more easily broken down by fermentation, and the one least likely to affect the taste. Ok. I already knew that this priming sugar, as it ferments in the bottle, forms carbon dioxide; makes bubbles in the cider. So now, the bottles are in our bedroom for a week or two, so the sugar can do its thing in a warmer temperature. Then, we'll move them down into the cellar to mellow (and maybe settle out a bit).

More Autumnal Chores

The cupboards and pantry are filling up with jars containing this year's harvest. One of the pints of yesterday's tomatillo salsa didn't seal, so it went into the refrigerator, joining the jar that wasn't quite full. There was room in a top corner cupboard for the rest.

That top cupboard shelf also holds my apple cider vinegar jar. It had been almost 2 months since I'd fed it, and as long as I had the step-stool right there, I figured I might as well take care of that too. The five gallons of this year's cider are still burbling away, in the fermentation bucket on the counter. It could be a couple more weeks before it's finished. So I went down to the cellar (skimmed the scum off the pickle crock while I was down there) to fetch a bottle of last year's hard cider.

There was a thin fresh layer of mother on top of the vinegar in the jar, plus quite a few layers of dead mother piling up in the bottom. So with well-washed hands, I pulled out the fresh mother plus one more thin one, putting them into a clean bowl, then reached in and pulled out the rest of the dead layers to throw out. I diluted the bottle of hard cider with half again as much water, poured that into the jar, and dropped in the thin pieces of fresh mother. Topped with its cheesecloth lid, the jar went back into the dark cupboard to continue its magical process of turning alcohol into tasty vinegar.

Aries went with me for the drive this morning, up to Tahoe to get the mole-removal stitches out of my arm. Doc said everything looks good and the lab reports say benign, so I'm good.

This afternoon, Aries was once again busy over at the compost bin. He'd cleaned out the chicken coop earlier this fall, and most afternoons has been out there raking leaves as they fall. He still had one last wheelbarrow load of finished compost for me, so this afternoon I dug that into part of next year's "early" bed, and raked it out smooth and level. I set out garlic and shallot cloves, from this summer's harvest, and winnowed, then sowed, spinach and arugula seeds from the dry plants I had hanging in the shed. Everything tamped down and laid over with wire to deter hungry birds, they now wait for winter's snows to water them in.

First Snow

The herbed potato chunks and chicken in the oven were almost done. I needed a quick vegetable dish. Darkness had already fallen (so early now, with the switch back to Standard Time), but there was enough light from the back porch light to let me grab a handful of Tuscan kale out of the garden. It only took a few minutes to saute some garlic and chopped mushrooms, clean the kale, and dump the still-damp leaves into the skillet. Putting the lid on to let it steam-fry 'til done, I went about the house closing up the blinds and shades for the night.

And was genuinely surprised to see that during that little bit of time from when I'd just been out in the garden, our first snow flurry of the year was now coming down fast and furious. Ah well, it is the middle of November, after all.

Speaking of the garden, I love the Tuscan kale. This is the third year I've grown it, but the first time I've been able to eat any. The past two years Aries had pulled up the plants when he was gathering up spent plants to shred for the compost - his defense, "they didn't look like food." The first time, I figured it was an honest mistake. But twice!? I chewed him out last year, but the damage had been done. So this year, I made sure to set down the rules before he even set foot in the garden. "I don't care that you don't eat salads - don't you DARE touch these kales or those chards! I want them for fresh eating until it finally gets cold enough to kill them." He got the message. And I'm still eating fresh greens, despite temps in the low 20's :-)

I'm happy too, because I scored a sweet deal today. A friend gave me two cases of empty Grolsch beer bottles - the reusable kind that seal with a porcelain top, gasket, and metal bail. Aries had used up all we had when he made a batch of beer a couple of weeks ago, leaving me NONE for my kombucha. We do have the smaller tall-neck reusable beer bottles, but I don't like having to go out to the shed and get the equipment necessary to hand-crimp metal caps onto those (we'll use them for the hard cider when it's ready - 12-ounce bottles are the perfect size for cider). Plus, there were also four glass gallon jugs in the boxes she gave me. They need new stoppers, but will be nice to have for smaller experiments in home brewing and vinegar-making. Besides, I think things just taste better stored in glass.

It's Cider Time Again

The weather is finally feeling more like November. Last night's lows were in the low 20's, and today, all day, was cold, gray, and breezy - not really a good day to be outside much. So I spent the morning on the computer, creating certificates to give to our Soroptimist Girls of the Month and scholarship recipients tomorrow.

We've had the potted fig trees in the big wagon for the last six weeks, so we could move them into the garage when it was really cold, and then back outside when the nights have been more moderate. The trees can take temps down to the mid-20's, but not an entire winter outside. Today, with most of their leaves finally gone, we pulled the last few off and moved the now dormant trees down into the cellar to spend the winter.

Then, this afternoon, it was cider time. We got no fruit at all from our trees this year - what little bit survived the late Spring freezes, Bambi ate. But a month ago, before the first freeze, we gleaned four bushels of apples from a big old heirloom tree on the west side of Carson City. The ones without bird pecks or worm holes I tucked away in the cellar for fresh eating through the winter. I canned enough applesauce for the year, have been baking a batch of apple muffins every week, and we're eating fresh apples every day. Time to get the rest of the apples out of my living room, where they've been ripening, sweetening, and softening so they'll make more juice.

While I set up the grinder and other equipment in the kitchen, Aries got our cider press cleaned up and ready to go outside on the deck (more about our setup and the entire process here). It took us about 3 hours to quarter, grind, and press almost three bushels of apples into six gallons of cider. Five gallons are now in the fermentation bucket on the kitchen counter, the sixth in a gallon jug in the refrigerator to drink fresh.

A couple of years ago, we tried an online hard cider recipe, calling for added tannic and other acids. We ended up with something that tasted more like hard lemonade. It was ok, but not what we were going for. Last year, we tried brown sugar and champagne yeast. That batch tastes like a dry champagne - not bad, but the added sugar increased the alcohol content quite a bit. It's too strong for my taste, so when we split a 12-ounce bottle, I have to mix my half with club soda. This year, we're trying a cider yeast, with the juice alone. And we have a new toy to play with - a hydrometer. We floated it in the fresh juice, and came up with an 8% reading (sugar content, I think - the little measurements are labeled "potential alcohol content"). We're supposed to take another reading after fermentation has finished, subtract the first reading (or is it the other way around?), and that should tell us the alcohol content. Should be interesting.

When I was washing out the gallon jug, prior to filling it with apple juice, I used a neat little trick I learned when I used to work construction. One of my tasks on one job site was filling up the big water coolers strapped to the work trucks using five-gallon water bottles. To quickly and easily get liquid out of a narrow-mouthed bottle without any glugging or splashing, put your hand over the mouth and give the upside down bottle a quick horizontal swirl, to get the water swirling around inside. Take your hand away, and the liquid quickly and smoothly spews out in a circular motion as the air enters through the middle of the spiral. Try it with any round bottle, and see for yourself.

An Email to Mom

I've been busy with lots of stuff lately, and keep thinking "I really need to write about that" but then I get distracted and another day goes by without a post here. To try and get back in the posting mode, I decided to just paste in an email I wrote to my mom earlier today [with a few explanatory edits added]:

Hi Mom,
I canned 16 half-pints of applesauce the other day. I picked through all the apples [she helped me pick when she was visiting a couple of weeks ago, from an antique tree in the old part of town; that's her feeding my chickens below], and put 4 trays of really nice ones into the cellar for fresh eating this winter. I still have almost 3 basketfuls in my living room. [Aries] wants to grind and juice most of them (maybe leave out enough for another pie, or two) for a batch of cider to ferment, as soon as the five gallons of beer he made last week is finished fermenting so we can use that bucket.

He went back to work today, after his last week of vacation. I went up to Tahoe this morning, to the [casino's] Clinic, and had some moles removed. I now have 9 stitches on my arm where a cluster of them were, and just a small bandage on my thigh. I asked about a shingles vaccine [Aries and my mom both have gotten shingles, and both said it's the worst pain they've ever been in - I'm not a big fan of pain, especially if it can be avoided] and I'll get that when I go in to get the stitches removed in about 10 days.

I have a job interview tomorrow, as a favor to a friend, with a CPA in Gardnerville that wants someone for maybe 10 hours/week now, and full-time February to April. I'm going to can a five-pint batch of tomatillo green salsa with the last of my tomatillo and chile harvests. I picked all my green tomatoes, and have them spread out on the table in the guest room to ripen. The garden *finally* froze last week, so [Aries] pulled out the dead plants and shredded them for the compost pile, and now I have to get out there and clean up the rest. I still have to plant my garlic and shallots sometime soon. I also want to transplant some stuff as soon as it goes dormant, but before the snow starts and the ground freezes solid.

I found a guy in Reno that does accordion repair, and took my old white one in to get the strap bracket replaced (it broke on one side, and would swing open - I was afraid the straps would slip through and I'd drop it). He had to open it up and take it apart inside to get to the broken part, so he also blew 60 years worth of dust out of it, tightened everything up, and fixed the one key that sometimes wouldn't sound. He says it's in great shape (and that it's a really good instrument: the old ones are the best, if properly cared for and stored - the new ones now are mostly made in China, even the ones from German companies, and are really cheaply made) [my folks bought me that accordion, second-hand, when I was 8 years old]. He guarantees his work so said just bring it back if I notice any more problems. I played it for a while yesterday when I got it home. I'm a bit rusty but the fingering on some songs came back quite quickly. I'm thinking I'll practice this winter, memorize some songs, and maybe try busking downtown next summer - might even earn myself some traveling money. Later! Love ya!

Goodbye, March

And so, March goes out like a lion this year - a drippy, wet, white lion. Roaring winds the last couple of days brought us snow last night, with a few last flakes still swirling about this morning.

And the start of April, cruel April, isn't supposed to be much better. More snow is expected later on this week. I am happy to see the moisture. I didn't have to water my trees at all this winter - the storms came through pretty regularly. Now, I'm hoping the regular precipitation will strengthen the fruit trees stressed by the droughts of the last few years, and maybe they'll be better able to fight off the borers that plagued them so last summer. I'm still waiting to see before doing any pruning on the peaches, plums, and cherry.

So, with the morning weather still so dreary, I spent my time bottling up a batch of Kombucha, and am now waiting for the new batch to cool. I'm still playing with that whole process, and the results, and will write more about it here eventually.

Making Milk Kefir

My latest kitchen experiment is making milk kefir. Kind of like a liquid yogurt, it's easy to make in a jar on the kitchen counter - no messing with maintaining a constant warmth like with yogurt.

All you need to get started are some kefir grains. I got mine by posting a request on my local Freecycle network, but they're also available via the Internet. Tomorrow, Oz-time, is my day to post on the SGF Co-op blog, so I've written about the kefir-making process. You can read about it here.

Kitchen Alchemy

We've had some cold, drippy weather lately. The overnight snow melts, the ground is sloppy, and then freezes solid the next night. Every three days, repeat. Since I can't get outside much yet, I've been spending my days playing in the kitchen.

The gallon of apple cider I had fermenting on the kitchen counter never did settle out much. Weeks later, it was still bubbling away through the fermentation lock, and more than an inch of dead yeast cells had sunk to the bottom. So I siphoned the murky cider off, leaving most of the dead yeasts. After cleaning the gallon jug, I then put the siphoned cider back in and the plug back in the top. After another week, the cider had settled out nicely, and fermentation had finally slowed to a stop.

Up in the top cupboard, my vinegar jar was in fine shape: it smelled vinegary, had a nice healthy layer of mother on top, and a few dead layers had sunk to the bottom. I washed my hands well, then reached in for Jolene, the layer of mother floating on top of the liquid - a somewhat rubbery substance that collapsed into a thick slime when I dropped it into a clean bowl. I pulled a couple of dead layers out of the bottom and tossed them. I strained my fresh vinegar through a coffee filter lining a plastic colander while I sterilized a couple of glass bottles in a big pot of boiling water.

One bottle I've stashed up in the dark cupboard to let it mellow. The vinegar is quite sharp, so I want to see what letting it set does to the taste. The other bottle I started using right away, and I'm very pleased with it. I didn't pasteurize the vinegar before bottling. Mother may still form inside the bottles, but since there isn't much airspace I'm thinking it will take quite a while, if at all. I don't know if using vinegar with the live cultures is beneficial or not, but I kinda like having a backup mother source around in case something happens to this next batch.

After cleaning out the vinegar jar, I poured in the hard cider I'd also strained, then dropped in Jolene. The mother sank to the bottom, but should contain the live cultures needed to start turning this batch of hard cider to vinegar. Covered with cheesecloth to allow for the necessary access to oxygen, I put the fresh jar back up into the cupboard to begin its next transformation. It may not be gold, but it's pretty darn good.

Waiting for Spring

More and more dirt is visible between the shrinking patches of snow - but for how long I don't know. I'm sure winter isn't done with us yet, and I'm glad, too. The last two winters were extremely dry, so it's nice to see these series of storms come through regularly. My fall-seeded arugula has sprouted under the snow, and with a bit of sun the tiny plants are starting to turn green. I've got wire over it, hoping the quail won't find it for a while yet. Last year's leeks are still in fine shape, except that some of the chickens have found them, and have been munching on the tops a bit (more wire keeps them from digging them up completely). The walking onions are starting to send up some green sprouts too, but no garlic, shallots, or spinach visible yet.

I'm sure the stresses of the dry past two winters contributed to my losing a nectarine tree to borers last year. I'm still waiting to see if my pie cherry tree can recover, but haven't had to worry about trying to get water to my trees this winter. Now, if only the cold weather will stay until real spring comes. February warm spells followed by May snowstorms are all too common around here, making a fruit harvest an iffy project every year.

Inside the house, the small batch of apple cider is still fermenting. I didn't add any sugar to this batch, since it's destined for the vinegar jar, but the apples had softened and sweetened in storage - fruit sugars now still feeding the bit of yeast I added.

Outside, a bit of sun this morning and temperatures above freezing led me to think I might be able to get some sheets to dry out on the clothesline. By afternoon, I've lost the sun, but they still might dry. The chickens come running when I step out onto the deck to go see if I can bring the sheets in - she might have food!

The sheets are still damp, but I do throw a few handfuls of corn out for the chickens. More and more of them are starting to resume laying eggs as the days lengthen. Eating corn helps them stay warm at night in our unheated coop, but I want them to start eating more of the laying crumbles. Three eggs in the nest boxes today, plus a fourth they broke. I've got eggshells saved up in a jar in the house - I'll have to get them crushed up and start feeding them back to the birds. Earlier this morning I saw one of Missy's girls standing in the doorway of the old doghouse under the black walnut tree. Missy, now gone, was a notorious nest hider, and passed that trait on to some of her offspring. So I look inside the doghouse, and sure enough, there's a fresh green-shelled egg (we had an Amerucana rooster for a while) lying on the floor. I'll have to start checking in there regularly now too, I guess.

Name That Culture

Pete lives in our refrigerator. Pete came here almost 20 years ago, but I'm sure he's much older than that. As a newlywed, and new to the neighborhood, I frequently saw an elderly neighbor walking her dogs past our house, so introduced myself. She lived in the house down the street with a wonderful garden. Her husband did the gardening, she did the cooking, and although now long retired, used to run a local catering business. We became good friends. She could see me out in my garden from her kitchen window, and when I'd come in for a break and the phone would ring, I could bet it would be Mae.

But I was talking about Pete, wasn't I? As a newlywed, my husband used to reminisce about the wonderful sourdough waffles his grandma used to make, asking if maybe I could learn to make them. His grandma was long gone, and his mom didn't bother with sourdough anymore either. But I happened to mention it one day while over visiting with Mae. She pulled out her jar of starter out of her refrigerator then and there, filled up a pint jar, and gave it to me along with instructions and a couple of recipes (I've also found Adventures in Sourdough Cooking & Baking, by Charles Wilford, a great resource for additional recipes). I have no idea how long she'd kept that starter going, but I'm betting it was decades. She also told me that, since the starter needs to be cared for and fed regularly, I should also give it a name just like any other house pet.

And so, Sourdough Pete came to live with us. What got me to thinking about all this, however, was that last night I realized I have another culture living here now that needs to be fed and cared for. There's a gallon jug of apple cider fermenting away on my kitchen counter, destined for my vinegar jar up in the cupboard. And it's the mother of vinegar I got last fall that will make it happen. I've heard about the folklore saying to name your sourdough starter, but never anything about vinegar mother. But I figure it's the same principle, and I certainly don't want to discriminate. So I've decided to name my vinegar mother Jolene, and hope she'll have a long and happy life here with us too.

Just Checking In

Not too much happening outside. The snow finally melted a few days ago - long enough for me to see that some arugula seeded last fall had started to sprout. And then another series of storms moved in. We got about 3 inches of wet sloppy snow yesterday, a bit of blue sky today, and then the clouds moved in again this evening.

I've been checking on the produce in the cellar, and most seems to be keeping quite well. I separated the storage apples last fall by keeping ability and possible damage. Today, we pulled about 1/2 bushel of ones that I didn't think would last very long and crushed them for a small batch of cider. We only had to toss about six of them as complete losses, and do a bit of trimming on a few others, but they had held in amazingly good condition. They'd softened and sweetened quite a bit. Just hand-squeezing the bag of apple mush, we got about 5 quarts of juice, and then the chickens got a real treat.

I've got almost a gallon of the juice in a glass jar with a fermentation lock on it, sitting on the kitchen counter, and it's already started to bubble. My first batch of cider vinegar turned out really good, and as soon as this gallon finishes fermenting I'll bottle what vinegar I have and start another batch. The rest of the apple juice is in the refrigerator for drinking fresh.

I haven't been able to get outside much, with all the storms coming through, so I've been playing inside on the computer. Obviously, though, I haven't been working on my blog posts, although I do still manage to get my contributions onto the SGF Co-op blog whenever it's my turn. Instead, I've been playing on FaceBook - as my sister says, "it's not a social net-working site; it's a social not-working site." Ah, well - what can I say?

A Christmas Pig, and a Batch of Home-Brew

When Aries and I were planning to elope, my co-workers wanted to give me a bridal shower anyway. They asked what we needed for our new home together. Since we were combining the households of two self-sufficient adults, we knew we would be busy getting rid of doubled-up items, and we said we really didn't need anything. When they persisted, we said fruit trees, or maybe a weaner pig.

That second request totally mystified my co-workers. They pictured a weiner-pig - some sort of dachshund/porcine pet. I explained that we meant a weaned piglet, to be raised for food. That was a bit too much for any of them to consider. But tied to the top of the box from Sandee, Maggie, and Betty was a little stuffed pig Christmas ornament, just darling with its beribboned curly tail. It's graced our tree for 20 years now.

During Aries' past "weekend", while I finished up my holiday decorating, he thought the cold and overcast day a perfect time to make a batch of beer. And it was. The humidity from five gallons of water, hops, and malt boiling on the stove warmed up the whole house; the pile of snow off the deck made a perfect spot to cool the wort enough to add the yeast. So now my holiday decor includes a 5-gallon bucket of Irish Brown Ale on the kitchen counter, bubbling merrily up through the fermentation lock.

Finding Mother

Mother of vinegar, that is. I wanted to try making vinegar out of some of our hard apple cider. I've been reading up on it. Susy, over at Chiot's Run, sent me a link to a great tutorial from the Sunset magazine website. Since cider vinegar is made from apple juice that has first been fermented into alcohol, half my work was already done.

Supposedly, vinegar flies carry the right type of bacteria needed to convert alcohol into vinegar - so you want to get the flies to your cider (or wine) while at the same time keeping all the other airborne wild bacterias out. Mother of vinegar is then produced by the right kind of bacteria. Once you have some mother, you can keep it going just like a sourdough starter. Maybe we don't have vinegar flies in high desert; maybe they die off in the cold; maybe local bad bacterias kill off the good stuff - I don't know. I've tried making vinegar a couple of times before, but I never ended up with anything even remotely edible. I needed some other way of finding my vinegar mother.

When my (actual) mom was visiting, her flight home was out of the San Francisco airport. So after spending time with me in Nevada, the plan was: we'd meet up with my California sister in one of the Sierra foothill towns, halfway between our houses, and then Mom would go home with Sis. We decided to spend the day at Apple Hill, near Placerville, for our meeting place.

So we met for lunch, and then spent the afternoon checking out my favorite Apple Hill vendors. One of them, Denver Dan's, sells lots of flavored cider vinegars. Light bulb moment! I asked to talk to the owner, asking if he would sell me a little bit of vinegar mother. He ended up up just giving me a little jar with about a tablespoon scraped out of the bottom of one of his barrels. That was enough.

Following the directions from the tutorial, I poured three bottles of my hard cider into a glass gallon jar, added half again as much water (since my cider was made with added sugar, I'm sure it has a pretty high alcohol content), stirred in the mother (a rubbery, white goo), topped it off with some cheesecloth (mother needs air), and set it inside a top cupboard, where it would be warm and dark. And it's working! I haven't tasted it yet, but it smells really good. The mother multiplied in the bottom of the jar, and a fresh layer is now starting to form on the top, just like it should, converting the alcohol into vinegar. I'm so excited! I still have lots of apples, so I'm thinking I'll press out some more juice and let it ferment without adding sugar, just so I can keep my vinegar jar going. Maybe I'll start a second jar with leftover red wine too.

Bottling Sparkling Hard Cider

It took about three weeks for our five-gallon batch of apple cider to ferment completely. After our overflow emergency had settled back down, we put the regular airlock back on the fermenter and let it bubble away for a couple more weeks. It eventually slowed, and then finally stopped bubbling. If bottled before the fermentation has stopped, the gases produced are powerful enough to blow the tops off the bottles, or even break the glass. So we always wait another day or two past the last bubbles through the airlock, just to be sure. When the level in the airlock starts to lift backwards, it's time to get the bottles out.

As with the fermenting process, cleanliness is still very important to prevent any off-flavors in the cider (or exploding bottles), so an empty bucket, the tubing, bottle filler, bottles, and caps are all washed, then rinsed with a weak bleach solution to sterilize. The spent yeast has sunk to the bottom of the fermenting bucket, also helping to settle out everything else in the juice. Hooking the tubing to the spout of the fermenting bucket, the clear, fermented cider is transferred to the clean bucket, leaving the bottom dregs behind.

We want a sparkling hard cider, with a bit of carbonation in the bottles. So Aries dissolved 3/4 cup of corn sugar (not cane, beet, nor from any syrup - I don't know why, but he says we need to use only corn sugar) in one cup of boiling water, and then left it to cool earlier. That's enough for the whole 5-gallon batch. He gently stirs that into the bucket of cider (with a sterilized spoon), puts the lid on top loosely, and sets the bucket up on a stool on our counter so the cider will flow out the bottom valve. We're ready to bottle. That little bit of sugar will ferment in the bottles; the little bit of CO2 gas produced is enough to carbonate the cider without (hopefully) blowing the bottles.

My mom was visiting, so she helped Aries bottle the cider. From the valve on the bucket, the cider flows through the tubing to the filler. It's a rigid tube with a spring-loaded valve on the end. When the bottom of the filler is pressed against the bottom of a bottle, the cider flows. When the cider reaches the top of the bottle, lifting up on the filler stops the flow. The filler displaces just enough space in the full bottle so that when it is removed, it lowers the level of the liquid inside just the right amount.

Aries hands clean bottles over to Mom, taking back the filled ones to seal. When making beer, we like to reuse 16-oz Grolsch-type beer bottles, the ones that seal with a gasket, porcelain top, and a metal bale. Since we added extra sugar before fermenting the cider, it has a higher alcohol content than our beer - quite a bit higher, so we want to use smaller bottles. A 12-oz bottle is enough for three, even four, servings (and then I often mix my portion with ice and club soda). We reuse regular beer bottles, sealing by crimping on new metal bottle caps. Domestic bottles with twist-off caps can't be resealed, but we (and our friends) save empty foreign beer bottles that still need a bottle opener for our home brewing endeavors.

Hey lady! No sampling!

The filled bottles are labeled with item and date (little dot stickers on the caps) and packed away into a couple of boxes (I kept a few out for experiments in vinegar-making). Aries put the cases on the floor of our bedroom for another week or so. The secondary fermentation, the carbonation inside the bottles, gets off to a good start in the warmer environment, and we can keep an eye on the bottles to make sure none break. He just moved the cases down to the cellar yesterday, putting one bottle in the refrigerator for tasting last night. The cider still has quite a sharp taste, but it's not bad, even this early. There was a bit of a hiss when he opened it, but no bubbles yet. By Christmas, it should be mellowed nicely; by next summer, make for some wonderful cocktail hours, out on the deck watching the sunset.

Oh No! Fermentation Overflow

Cider is said to ferment vigorously. There are stories about people finding the sticky stuff spattered across the walls, or bubbled over flooding the floor. But we're making five gallons in a fermenting bucket that holds more than six, so I didn't think we had anything to worry about. I was wrong.

The fermentation lock had been happily gurglely-burgleing since yesterday, just like it's supposed to. We make beer sometimes too - that sound is something you just get used to. I'd even stopped looking at it, sitting there on the kitchen counter.

But then, as I was heading out the kitchen door, it kinda snuffled instead of gurgled. That got my attention. The fermentation lock was completely filled with greenish bubbly apple goo, and there was a puddle growing across the lid. Thankfully, I saw it before it completely blocked the fermentation lock - that's when you could end up with fermenting goo on the ceiling. Aries wasn't home - I was going to have to fix this by myself.

I mopped up the lid before it overflowed, and put a big platter underneath the fermenter, just in case. I didn't want this stuff flowing all over my counter or kitchen floor if I could help it. I know keeping the brew from getting contaminated is important, so I didn't want to take off the lid, but knew I had to do something to allow it to continue outgassing and still contain the overflow. I did a quick online search. I needed to replace the overflowing fermentation lock with a tube running into a container half-full of water. The container would hold the overflow, gases could still escape, but nothing would get in.

The fermentation lock fits into a plug that fits into a hole in the lid of the fermenting bucket. We have plastic tubing for when we're filling beer bottles, but it was too big to fit into the hole in the plug, and too small to fit in the hole in the lid. I needed to figure out how to make an air-tight connection between the tubing and the hole in the fermenter lid.

I thought about cutting a wine cork and hollowing out a hole to make a thin little gasket. That sounded like a good way to cut off a finger. I thought maybe one of the gaskets from the bottle tops might work, but they were too flimsy and didn't fit tight enough. I mopped up more overflow from the lid and kept thinking.

I was going to have to use the plug from the fermentation lock; I just needed some way to join it to the larger-diameter tubing. I went through the bag of beer-making supplies again. Eureka! When filling a bottle of beer, we use a hard plastic tube that fits into the bottle. It has a spring-loaded valve on the bottom to press against the bottom of the bottle - when the bottle is full, you lift up on the tube and the beer stops flowing. It's designed to fit inside the tubing; it looked like the perfect size to fit into the plug too.

I pulled off the valve, and fit the tube into the tubing. I dunked the whole set-up into some weak bleach solution to sterilize it, running some through and out the end of the tubing. I pulled the fermentation lock out of the plug and stuck the hard plastic tube in instead. It fit perfectly. I didn't want the hard tube to fall over, possibly letting it leak, so I tied it up to the towel rack above. Then I stuck the tubing into a carafe partially filled with water, and it worked! Pretty good, don't ya think?

Brewing Hard Apple Cider

Many, many years ago, I took a trip to rural Iowa (where the pigs each had a patio) with a native farm boy. It was in the fall, cider pressing time, something I'd never seen before. I was surprised that they used all the apples - not just the perfect ones plucked right from the tree. They used the bruised windfalls, the bird-damaged, and the wormy ones. Dumped into a washtub for a quick rinse, then into the grinder, down into the big round slatted press, and the cider came pouring out the spout. It was absolutely the best stuff I'd ever tasted.

Now, I have my own apple trees. Every once in a while, we'll get enough apples to make the bother of pressing cider worthwhile. Just for the record, we're not just making a couple of glasses of juice - we're going for five gallons to ferment into hard cider, plus extra to drink now.

You don't use early summer apples to make cider - they don't have enough sugars. I make applesauce out of my excess early apples. Late apples, the ones that ripen late in the year, the ones otherwise known as storage apples, make the best cider. This year, my Macintosh and Liberty apples set a lot of small fruit, too small to bother peeling and coring, but perfect for cider. We let them set for a week to soften and sweeten a bit - even longer would have been better, but since it's partly an outside activity we watch the weather too. Yesterday, we decided it was cider time.

Aries starts outside, cleaning and setting up our press on the edge of the deck. Basically, it's an open rectangular frame, a small rock underneath the back edge to tip it forward a bit. The bottom plate has ridges that allow the juice to flow beneath. To lessen leaking, he lines the bottom plate with plastic wrap, taped to hold it in place. He sets the plate into place within the frame, a catch bucket underneath the spout with a lid to cover it (to keep the yellowjackets out - they'll be here as soon as the juice starts flowing).

The first step in pressing cider is to grind the apples into little bits. The same old neighbor that gave me my 1970's-era dehydrator also gave me an equally ancient juicer. It weighs a ton, but the metal grinding teeth do an excellent job on the apples. It also has solid plate to use instead of the juice screen across the juice spout, so it will just push all the apple mush out the end spout (or maybe you'd prefer the "bucket & sledge hammer" option, here).

Once I've got the juicer/grinder all put together, I set a bucket on a stool under the spout to catch the ground apples. We also make beer, so I line the catch bucket with a nylon mesh bag normally used for boiling the grain in beer-making (we have two bags, making the process a bit faster). The solid plate leaks a bit, so I put a small bowl underneath that too. The less leaks, the better - apple juice is so sticky, and my kitchen floor is going to be a disaster zone soon enough anyway.

Everything in place, we're ready for the apples. The apples are dumped into the sink full of water for a quick wash, piled into a tub, and then roughly chopped into pieces small enough to fit through the small hopper of the grinder. Aries chops, I feed handfuls at a time into the hopper. A friend, Micah, stops by, so we give him a knife too, and he starts chopping on the other side of the counter.

Once there's quite a bit of crushed apples in the bag, Aries takes the bucket outside. He twists the mesh bag closed and puts it on the press. He dumps any extra juice out of my bucket and gives it back to me. This is where the second bag comes in handy. I can take that bucket back inside, line it with the other bag, and get right back to grinding apples.

Meanwhile, Aries puts the smooth-faced top plate over the bag, topping that with a small jack. As he starts jacking up the jack, it presses against the top of the frame, squeezing the mush between the top and bottom plates. The juice flows through the spout into the catch bucket. When the spout stops flowing, he covers the catch bucket, loosens the jack, and removes the top plate. The bag of almost dry apple mush, now called pomace, is emptied into a waiting wheelbarrow (and later given to the chickens). Aries comes back inside to continue chopping.

Just like when making beer, sanitation while fermenting hard cider is very important. You want only the things you purposely put into the fermenting bucket in there, and everything else kept out. Wild yeasts present in the air can ruin a batch, giving it a bad flavor, as can the bacteria on a dishcloth. Bleach is a good sanitizer, so we previously rinsed the fermenting bucket and lid with a weak bleach solution, then kept it closed up until we're ready to fill it from the catch bucket of cider.

From about two bushels of small, otherwise unusable apples, we get almost six gallons of cider - a little over five in the fermenter, almost a gallon for the refrigerator. For the hard cider, we decide to add only extra sugar and a packet of champagne yeast. I heat up some of the cider and add four pounds dark brown sugar, stirring until it's all dissolved, and then put that back into the fermenter. Stirring with a sterilized spoon to aerate it a bit, Aries adds the yeast then snaps the lid on tight and puts a fermentation lock, filled with a bit of vodka, into the top. By this morning, the escaping gases caused by the yeast turning the sugars into alcohol have started burbling up through the lock. Fermentation has begun.

Oh, and the fresh stuff for drinking now? Aries likes to pour his off the top without disturbing what's settled, but I like to shake it up before I pour a glass. There's so much fiber in unfiltered apple juice I almost feel like I should chew it. And it's so filling - four ounces is almost more than I can drink at one time. It's sooooo good.