Wagner Ciders
We have a small kitchen orchard of 20 fruit trees at our small K-Hill farm - 15 apple, 3 pear and 2 cherry that Kristin planted some 25 years ago with the help of Lance, Tess and some neightbor kids. We share the orchard with our local deer population and we both seem to be comfortable with the arrangement. The deer get many of the apples that are less than about 8 feet off the ground, I get the ones higher. We both don't seem bothered by my decision to avoid spraying and to let the crop come as it may.
This orchard is the source of the apples we use in our cider making. Our ciders include:
Pressing Cider.
Once we pick the apples we create raw cider using our cider press - and I just love our little cider press. It is a hand-made Correll press that we purchased a number of years ago. It is portable, well-made and is capable of fairly high-velocity cider production when you have 3-4 people working it, but still very manageable for just one person.
There are two stations that can work simultaneously (see pic at left). The station on the right is for grinding. You put whole apples in the top and an electric motor drives a grinder that quickly turns the apples into a mash of skins, seeds and pulp. As fast as you can put the apples in the top, they are ground up and fall out the bottom of the grinder into the awaiting mesh bag inside a cylindrical compression housing.
When the cylinder is filled with pulp, we move it over to the pressing station station on the left. Here, a short cylindrical block of wood is placed on the mesh bag and the hand screw is used to press the block of wood down onto the mesh bag containing the apple goodness. This compresses the mash causing juice to seep through slots in the wooden cylinder and also through the bottom. The juice flows into and across the large tray under the mash cylinders and is collected in an awaiting bucket.
If we plan on drinking it quickly, we simply put it in jugs and we are done. If we plan on keeping the cider longer without fermenting it, we will pasturize it (bringing up to about 160 degrees F). This kills the bacteria that might be in the cider.
Fermenting cider.
To make hard cider, you follow the same basic fermentation process used for beer and wine. You put the cider in glass jugs (near left) or carboys (far left) or plastic buckets.
To this you add yeast and then let the yeast turn the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide (which is expelled out through an air lock at the top).
The advantage of using using multiple smaller jugs is that it allows you to experiment creating a variety of different cider styles - for instance adding ginger to one jug to see what it tastes like.
The fermentation process takes perhaps a week. When the yeast is done, it will have gobbled up all of the sugar. The taste of the cider has therefore gone from sweet to very "dry" - something like the taste of a dry white wine, except more tart. You can drink it now as "still" cider, or carbonate it for sparkling cider. Like beer, you can carbonate cider either in the bottle or in kegs.
The K-Hill orchard yields cider in the range 1.045-1.050 range (first pickings) which yields ABVs of 5.7%-6.4%. If I wait later in the fall to pick, I can likely get higher sugar content and higher ABV.
Back-sweetening cider.
Most people like their hard ciders with a bit of sweetness. Typically this is done by fermenting the cider "dry" then adding a small amount of sugar, honey, or other sweetness into the dry cider. If the cider is to be stored at room temperature (a comfortable temperature for yeast to thrive), then either the yeast must be killed off before back-sweetening, or non-fermentable sugars are used (e.g. lactose). Both avoid having the fermentation restart which can cause exploding bottles.
I prefer to add organic agave syrup to back-sweeten - it reminds me of my daughter, Tess, and her efforts to organize school kids to plant agave in Arizona. Alternatively, I'll use honey, seeking the bounty of small local bee keepers. I keg all of my cider and keep it in the Craigerator. If the cider is unfermented, the coldness inhibits yeast from starting fermentation.
Instead of back-sweetening, some people prefer to keep tasting their cider as it ferments. It will start very sweet (as raw cider) and slowly become more dry. When it arrives at what you think is the right sweetness, you can immediately stop the fermentation and retain the sweetness profile at that moment. This can be done in two ways. The first is to add a natural chemical that nukes the yeast. The second is to rapidly chill the cider forcing all yeast into hibernation. Either way avoids the need to back-sweetening.
I usually kill off the yeast prior to back-sweetening my cider (with Potassium metbisulfite and Potassium sorbate). This ensures that I can bottle from my kegs and avoid the possibility of exploding bottles.
Cider additions.
One nice thing about cider is that it offers nearly endless possibilities for creativity. One way is to add in additional fruit flavorings. I put my toe in the water with my Wruby Red Apple Blackcherry Cider. I suspect black currant would also be wonderful and perhaps blueberries or raisins!
Herbs and spices can also be added. I'm thinking ginger, rosemary, cloves, wormwood, cinnamon, vanilla, perhaps lavender and others.
Adding extra sugar (as sugar, honey, or syrups) prior to fermentation can raise the alcohol content. By adding some form of sugar, you can create a drink more in the wine ABV of 12%.
Mulled Cider.
Mulled cider is another creative way to use cider. Here is a recipe I want to try that I found in the "Cider, Making, using & enjoying Sweet and Hard Cider" by Annie Proulx & Lew Nichols.
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 2 quarters dry cider
- Dash of orange bitters
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 6 whole cloves
- 1/2 cup of interesting varietal honey (avoid buckwheat or goldenrod honey - too pungent)
- 1/2 cup light rum
Heat all of the ingredients in a pan over low heat. Don't bring to boil. When steaming, rinse out your punch bowl with hot water to warm it, then strain the mixture into the bowl. Add a cinnamon stick into each glass.
Wagner Ciders.
Homestead Hard Cider, Apple. 2013 was the perfect storm for fruit in Michigan. Massive
amounts fruit and virtually no pests to annoy them. Our orchard saw branches laden with fruit and a few of them broke under the huge weight.
Homestead Hard cider is our first hard cider and it came from this 2013 bumper crop. It was produced from the over 50 gallons of cider we pressed in 2013 (while leaving a large number apples on the trees)
For this cider, we fermented it to "dry" in the fall and then aged it in a keg with oak shavings to give it an oak-barrel taste (though I can't say I really notice the oak taste).
We let it sit all winter and spring then back sweetened it with apple juice concentrate in early June It is still a bit on the tart side and I really like that. Since I have the cider kegged and chilled there was no need to add any chemicals to kill the yeast (I don't like adding weird stuff into what I drink).
Magner's Cider (just like Wagner's with the first letter flipped upside down) is a common Irish cider and it is often what I drink when I go to CO's.
Glen's Seisiún Cider. This cider, produced from the bumper crop of the 2013 apple harvest, is
dedicated to our good friend Glen who we met through the traditional Irish music community in Southeastern Michigan. He is a regular at the Conor O'Neil's Sunday music seisiúns (sessions), all variety of Irish/Celtic concerts at the Ark and also is often at our local Comhaltas music get-togethers.
Glen was the person who introduced me to hard cider - a common drink in Ireland. He suggested that I try out the two that are available at Conor O'Neils (Magner's and Strongbow). I followed his suggestion and really enjoyed both. It was a refreshing change from drinking beer and just seemed a more natural drink.
When we had such a good pressing of cider I knew I wanted to craft a cider for Glen. His Seisiún Cider was fermented to "dry" and then I back-sweetened it with unfermented pasturized cider that has been sitting in the kegerators since last fall. In this way, everything in the cider has been grown on our little farm.
This unfermented cider that I added is incredibly good and is carbonated. I think I'll always make a keg or two of that when we have a good harvest.
My cider book says that leaving hard cider sit for 4-6 months is enough to kill the yeast so that I needn't worry about adding fermentable sugar back into my dry cider and restarting fermentation. I hope so - I don't want bottles exploding on Glen. My plan is to bottle enough for Glen and some for us and let it sit at our house for a while to see if I run into bottle-rocket problems.
I bottled and sent Glenn a sampling of my 2017 hard cider in the summer of 2018. At the time, he had been under medical care for quite some time. He died shortly thereafter from complications of his illness. I was never sure whether he received my gift. I'm hoping he did. Rest in Peace, my friend.
Wruby Red Blackcherry Apple Cider. My first venture into cider additions was with black cherry
concentrate. I decided to name it "Wruby Red" in honor of my dear friend, Tom Wruble.
The concentrate gave the cider a wonderful purplish tint and the cherry flavoring shined through. I think the dark fruits are a good addition to cider: black cherry, black currants, and blueberries.
This brew is a variant of a Homestead Blackcherry Apple cider. I relabel my creations often to honor friends.
Homestead Hard Cider, Black Cherry Apple. This cider started in the exact same way as the
apple Homestead cider of 2013. The only variant is that I put a quart of unsweetened black cherry juice into the cider in addition to the apple cider concentrate for sweetening. We don't have any black cherry trees growing on our land so black cherry juice was purchased from our local grocer.
I like the result since it adds an interesting taste to the hard cider. I find that hard cider is a bit like mead in that both in dry fermented form aren't entirely interesting. My palate calls for a bit of an extra boost in taste and thankfully both dry mead and cider don't have too much going on that interferes with some wildly creative addition of fruits and spices. The best mead I ever tasted was a black currant version from a meadery in Ontario. No need to be conservative when it comes to cider.
Although tasty in current form I'm going to push the carbonation of this cider fairly high and see what happens. As a kid we would occasionally get black cherry soda and I'd like to imitate that carbonation in this cider.
