Cider time
Pressing apple cider is one of my favorite events of the year.
Timing is crucial, because apples need time to ripen to their full potential and crispness, and they really like to get a nice hard frost to bring out the best flavor notes. Going against that goal of waiting is the fact that apples are dropping every day, and a bruised apple is not going to last sitting around in a bin waiting for pressing day. I strive to pick up all windfalls to reduce future pests in my orchard, since it is never sprayed. I toss the fallen ones over the pasture fence, conveniently located next to the orchard, and our neighbor’s horses and sheep come trotting up to make the unwanted apples disappear.
My trees are late varieties, including a Fireside, a Cortland and three Haralsons. I try to time the sweet spot between waiting for full-flavored apples on the tree, and fewer wasted windfalls.
I treasure picking time—a solitary couple of days spent in the quiet outdoors. I make my way through the limbs of our large thirty year old trees, grasping each apple one at a time, filling my pouch over and over, carefully rolling each load into bins and boxes in the garden cart, moving the ladder to a new spot. Repeat. Repeat. I thoroughly exhaust myself, and relax into a hot bath with epsom salts followed by gentle yoga.
With weather, timing is again everything, though there is nothing to be done about it. I have picked apples on gorgeous crisp fall days with blue sky above. I have picked when the weather was hot and humid, and Asian beetles were chewing into the apples and nipping my neck. I have picked with snow swirling around. And one year I left too much of the picking to the last day, which turned rainy and freezing cold. With raindrops on my glasses and sopping wet gloves I did what I had to do and kept picking. This year brings pleasantly warm weather and cloudy skies, which somehow makes looking up into the trees all day long a little easier.
I consult with a coterie of friends to plan the most auspicious date for pressing. Harvey Stutzman has an excellent pressing facility which he has been improving each year. He presses for many folks on Tuesdays, on his Amish farm between Harmony and Preston.
We arrive early on our date, with some bringing their own apples to add to the batch, while others bring strong backs, and new friends. A few of our group unload apples and sort out any rotten ones. Others feed apples into a motor-driven grinder, which drops the pulp into a drum open on the side. Someone scrapes the pulp into frames prepared by Harvey, which are in turn stacked and pressed. Apple cider pours out into waiting buckets, and transferred into a bulk milk tank.
I like to accumulate all of the cider from the different apple varieties before we start filling containers. They say the blending of apples is what makes the best cider. Our 120 gallons of cider goes into plastic jugs to be divided up and brought home by all, for immediate freezing.
All year long, a thawed jug of cider can be opened up to enjoy exactly the same fresh and wholesome cider as on our chosen October morning.
In case you were wondering, apple juice for sale in a store is made from the same apple liquid, but it turns into a completely different product once filtered of all the natural particles and heated to pasteurize it. Spring for a bottle of fresh cider some time, and you will understand it is well worth the price.
Swedish Apple Pie
This super-simple recipe is really a cake. Peeling apples is optional.
- 1/2 cup flour
- 3/4 cups sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 1 egg beaten
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1-1/2 cups diced apples
- 1/2 cups chopped nuts or almond meal
Blend all ingredients and pour into a buttered 9 inch pie tin. (Optional: arrange thin apple slices in a ring on top.) Bake at 350 degrees for 25-35 minutes. Nice with whipped cream or ice cream.