Backyard Chickens & Bees

The carboy that I set aside for a wild fermentation has finally started, after sitting for about a month (almost to the day!). I’ll probably rack it over quickly, as there was a bit of mold forming. The alcohol should kill that off, but I figure it’s better to be prudent and not get too [...]

In 2010, I made a batch of cider using the “juice apples” available at Kiyokawa Orchard in Parkdale. It was good cider, although a bit bland due to the dryness, mild acidity, and lack of tannins. So I thought I’d make it a bit better with some bottle conditioning to produce a true “sparkling” cider [...]

This coming weekend will be cider-making, round 3. I lent Nat West of Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider my grinder so that he could breeze through several tons of apples for a commercial venture, and in exchange he’s providing me with some apples for another batch of cider. This one will be a blend of 25% [...]

Round two of cider-making took place this past weekend. I learned a lot about buying apples in bulk and what NOT to do! Also, I made use of my new apple grinder from OESCO to replace the garbage disposal one that I had built last year. That was easily one of the best investments I [...]

This is part two of the first chapter in the 2011 cider-making escapades! The last section was more about the new press, the grinder woes, and the HDPE fermenting barrels that I’m using for the larger batches this year. This part will address more of the apples that were used, the yeast strain I pitched [...]

Two Sundays ago (or so, it was on 9/11) was the first day of pressing apples for this year. Of course, it was also about the second hottest day we’ve had in Portland so far (93 °F, or 34 °C if you prefer)! But that didn’t stop us from running 503 lbs of Gravenstein and [...]

In early January I pressed some pears with my neighbor Matt and his brother. I ended up with 5 gallons, and decided to try an experiment of making perry with natural fermentation. Before I get into what I mean by natural fermentation—after all, all fermentation is, in a strict sense, natural—I’ll go through what I [...]

So the cider that we made recently has fermented out to a nice dry drink! Last time I checked it, it was around 6.9% ABV and very dry, so I transferred it into the kegs. I ended up with about 12.5 gallons of that batch (single varietal Gravenstein). Of course, that wasn’t enough, so in [...]

So, a few weekends ago I went to my parent’s house and picked apples off a nice Gravenstein tree at their neighbor’s place. The tree is on a rental property, and has not been cared for or used for anything apple-centric in a long while (or so it seems). So we picked apples, and I [...]

The new apple trees are ordered! I went with Cummins Nursery in New York State, since they have such a wide selection of fruit varieties and are experts with rootstocks (Dr Cummins was a professor emeritus at Cornell University, working on developing new rootstocks for fruit trees). The apples I will get are all dwarf [...]