Day 13: National Gluten-Free Day

How cruel Mother Nature can be. From 60 degree temps to snow and temps closer to zero. Evil! Mean! Thankfully I was off today, so I could sleep in. After a couple of cups of coffee I headed to the apartment where I primed a wall or two and tried my best to scrape crap off the floors. 

Exciting, that's me.

After a few hours I gave up on fixer upping and dragged M to Nine Pin to start on our 26er Challenge. The first cider was Blueberry Pancakes, made with New York State blueberries and maple syrup. Not bad. Followed that up with a flight of all of their ciders, and my gluten free item of the day was complete.

Prison Cider

As a sort of addendum to R's most recent post, I thought I'd mention a little something heard at the National Homebrewers Conference this year, which was held in Philadelphia. Each year homebrewers from around the nation flock to this event (which next year will be held in my motherland -- Grand Rapids, Michigan! Hope to see you there..), to listen to the list of guest speakers and other authorities in the homebrewing world.

This year there was a seminar dedicated to the joys of hard cider in which the host exclaimed "Just get the cheapest, crappiest, clearance cider you can find from Walmart or Sam's Club or whatever and just dump some yeast in there -- and bam, you have an awesome cider."

I may be paraphrasing a bit there, but in essence yes, that's exactly what he said. So as an experiment for this year's Michigan Homebrew Festival (an event lovingly run by my brother-in-law and a small group of good people), my b-law made a keg of this -- henceforth known as Prison Cider -- as a kind of joke.

The results? A pretty decent cider.

Prison Cider

Ingredients:

5 gallons cheap, UV pasteurized cider

2 tbsp baker's yeast (or pick your poison at a homebrew shop**) 

Supplies:

6 gallon fermentation bucket with lid and airlock

(If in an actual prison a Faygo bottle, condom, and spork shiv will do in a pinch.)

Sanitize bucket, lid, and airlock. 

Pour cider into bucket. 

Add yeast.

Put on lid and let ferment for 2 weeks.

** Note: No actual poison is involved. Unless you're that witch from Snow White, in which case there probably is poison involved.


Bottling:
Depending on the cider you're looking for, you should be able to just throw it in a sanitized bottle and be good to go. To really give it that 'prison' feel, you can use old plastic soda bottles.

If you want a sparkling hard cider (ie. you want good carbonation with a decent head), add 3/4c. sugar (be creative -- table sugar works fine, but you can use dextrose, fruit juice concentrate, etc.) to a 5 gallon batch before bottling, then give the bottles another 2 weeks to condition.


Tips:

• If you don't have a capper, use plastic bottles with screw top caps or old wine bottles with corks.
• To aseptically transfer the cider without a bottle filler, use a sanitized length of tubing filled with water. Set the cider on your countertop (or top bunk), place one end in the cider while keeping the other end elevated. Drop the elevated end into a waste bucket (toilet) and wait for the water to be expelled. Once you have cider flowing, fill your bottles. WARNING: This is gonna get messy.
• Baker's yeast doesn't tolerate high levels of alcohol well. After a certain point it will cease fermentation and leave non-metabolized sugars behind. In beer this leaves an undesirable malty taste, but in cider it'll add some extra sweetness.
• Bottle conditioned anything will result in a layer of yeast sediment on the bottom. Carefully pour into a glass to avoid the sediment.

Apple Cider Donuts: DePiero’s Farm

I was looking forward to the Daniel B’s Tour de Donut, but it landed on a weekend that I already had made plans. To make up for the lost donut adventure, I’ve decided to seek out apple cider donuts in the New York/New Jersey area. Specifically, Rockland and North Bergen County.

To start things off, I checked the bakery at DePiero’s in Montvale, NJ.

Warwick Valley Winery & Distillery (Warwick, NY)

 

M surprised me with and visit, and we decided to take a drive up to Warwick. I kept talking about checking out the Renaissance Fair, but changed my mind after I saw the crowd of people going in.

Not sure where to go next, I just kept driving up 17A. I followed the signs toward Warwick and hoped something good would pop up. Sure enough, I spotted a grape sign for the Warwick Valley Winery. I continued to follow the grapes until we came across an even larger sign with an even larger arrow directing us to our destination.




Not exactly sure where to start, we went inside and checked out their selection. Turns out we went straight into the tasting room. Here you can buy their wine, ciders, and other food products. If you’re interested, they also have a wine  tasting which will only set you back five bucks and you get to keep the glass.


 

I’m not sure if they rotate the wines on the tasting list, but these are the ones we tried:

Pinot Gris
Gewurztraminer
Cabernet Franc
Black Dirt Red
Doc’s Draft Hard Pear Cider
Doc’s Draft Framboise Hard Cider
Bartlett Pear Liqueur/Sour Cherry Cordial

 

Most of these were dry, and I guess I could taste the fruit notes that the server kept mentioning… but not the kind of wines I’m into. M and I were more interested in their ciders. The pear was a bit too light, and you could just slightly make it out. The Framboise was my favorite- sweet, but not too overpowering, and you can definitely taste the raspberry in it.

We could only pick one of the liqueurs, and I picked the Pear while M went with the Sour Cherry. He had it on ice, and thought it was pretty good. As for my pear… I had a sip. Strong pear flavor, dry. I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn’t driving, so I gave the rest to M.

M ended up buying two bottles of the Framboise. Twenty-two ounces for $5.99, that doesn’t seem too bad. Definitely something we could give to his homebrewing sister and BIL.

Even though it is a winery, there are other things to do there that do not involve alcohol. There is a bakery and cafe on premises, which is only open on the weekends. According to their website, they strongly support sustainable agriculture and use products that were locally grown as much as possible. The menu is light, and mostly things you pair with a wine or cider.

They also have pick your own apple and pear trees, which is always a fun kid activity. On the weekends there is live music, and monthly evening performances. We didn’t walk around much, but according to their website there is a stage out in their orchard and they hold weekend long music festivals. In fact, this coming weekend (August 14-15) they will be holding a Grateful Dead Tribute Concert.


 

Warwick Valley Winery & Distillery
114 Little York Road
Warwick, NY 10990
(845) 258-4858
wvwinery@warwick.net

Cider Update

So remember not too long ago when I mentioned M trying to make hard cider? And remember when I mentioned that it was a "possible failure?" (I was going to be more negative, but M wants this to be an upbeat update)

I did mention it, didn't I? My mind is in a coffee induced haze at the moment.

Well, turns out everything was okie dokie. A pain in the ass, but okie dokie. M managed to change it from a very sour sparkling cider, into a sweet sparkling cider sweet apple wine.

And how did he do it? Let's hear from M himself:

In order to get rid of the "super fizziness," I used a few Campden pellets. This killed off any little microbes that were still active in the cider. I brought 4 cups of water to a boil and added 4 cups of table sugar. Possibly more, I kept adding until it no longer dissolved. I added that to the 5-gallon batch of cider, covered it up, and allowed it to settle for a few days. This resulted in a marked decrease in fizziness, and increased sweetness to the batch. In tasting, I have found that it more similar to apple wine than hard cider. In fact, it's actually pretty strong. It's not very smooth, but you get used to it... after a couple of glasses.

I might be mildly drunk at the moment. But that's good. Burrrrrrp.

 If you have any questions regarding how to make your own cider, or homebrew things in general, feel free to leave a comment and M will get back to you. However, if you actually know what you're doing (like M's sister for instance) you may think he's way off base. It may be out there, but hey... it worked, didn't it?

So there.