Cider rules
Even in our part of the country, where most of the nation’s apples are grown, it’s easy to forget that fall is apple harvest time. After all, apples are always in stock at the grocery store.
But for fresh cider devotees, autumn is a long awaited, briefly satisfying season, as bottles of the rich, dark amber liquid make their fleeting appearance at farmers’ markets and at stores. A visit to an orchard for fresh cider makes a memorable family outing, but if you have a couple of apple trees, you can’t beat the fun of making your own cider.
John Elwood and Sally Burkhart, of rural Garfield, Wash., started making cider more than 30 years ago, using apples they got from friends and an antique, hand-cranked press. They planted a small orchard of about a dozen trees in the 1980s.
“We learned a lot from the Tom and Elizabeth Wahl family – Liz’s father founded the Moscow (Idaho) Presbyterian Church – and their son Dave Wahl still uses their presses every year at the home farm in Genesee, Idaho,” Burkhart said. “Almost every farm had a press in the late 1890s and early 1900s.”
Keeping the tradition alive, Burkhart and Elwood invite a group of friends over every October for a cidering work party. Burkhart picks apples for days ahead of time. One person washes the apples (“preferably in hot water,” said experienced helper Kathy Harrison), another pours the whole apples into the grinding hopper, another turns the crank to grind apples into pomace, and yet another helper squeezes the cider from the pomace with an auger-type press.
Hopefully, somebody also watches the cider pouring out of the tap at the bottom of the press, to make sure the filling bottle doesn’t spill or overflow. This is a good duty for older children as the main danger is stickiness. Turning the grinder crank is by far the most difficult job; only those with healthy backs and hearts need apply.
Whoever is taking a break from cranking is usually drinking cider in one form or another: hot, cold, mulled, spiked with rum, or hard, brewed from last year’s pressing. When the work is all done late in the afternoon, the hungry group gathers near the wood stove in the kitchen for a bowl of Burkhart’s chili, a slice of homemade bread with some Cougar Gold cheese, a piece of apple pie and more cider. Tired guests head home after dark, laden with gallons of cider, and perhaps, a piece of leftover pie.
Elwood and Burkhart found the Hocking Valley press, dating back to the turn of the 20th century or before, in the yard of Helen Woo’s Chinese grocery in Pullman in the mid-1970s. Woo sold it to them for under $25.
“All there was to it, basically, was the crank and grinding mechanism, so it required extensive rebuilding,” Elwood said. Elwood, who makes hand-crafted dulcimers for a living, used his fine woodworking skills to make the press workable. Making an extra barrel, so that one batch of pomace can be squeezed while another one is being ground, required blacksmithing, a self-sufficiency and artisanal challenge Elwood relished.
A quick cider terminology lesson: sweet cider is fresh-pressed, opaque and darkened from oxidation, uncooked and unfiltered. In your mouth, sweet cider has “body” (from the apple solids still suspended in it) and complex flavor. Apple juice is made from apples, too, but seems barely related to cider, as it is transparent, simply sweet, light golden colored, filtered and pasteurized.
Hard dry cider has had its sugar content changed to alcohol by a process of slow fermentation similar to making wine. Adding a little extra sugar to the already potent brew just before bottling causes a secondary fermentation that creates sparkling bubbles – and a taste – much like Champagne.
Hard cider is as complex as wine, but, as the authors of “Sweet and Hard Cider” point out, “Cider lovers, traditionally more of a back-room group than wine aficionados, do not even have the inflated vocabulary of wine to help them describe the flavors and aromatic sensations of their favorite liquid.”
That probably doesn’t bother most hard cider drinkers. And cider has an advantage over wine, in that the fresh-pressed juice tastes lip smacking good right out of the press. Try that with wine grape juice and you’ll be sorry.
Elwood currently has three 5-gallon air-locked carboys of cider sitting in a corner of his workshop, well away from the wood stove’s heat, slowly transforming into the hard stuff. Each year’s batch is ready for bottling in early spring. He’s been perfecting his recipe for decades, but, like making wine or beer, brewing hard cider is as much art as science.
How cider tastes depends a lot on the apple varieties used to make it. Just as there are better apples to use for baking or for applesauce, there are better varieties for cider. The earliest known cider was made from small, wild sour apples, like crab apples, but now that cultivated apples are used, cider benefits from some sharp high-tannin varieties mixed in with sweet varieties. Elwood and Burkhart grow Baldwin, Foxwhelp (high tannin), McIntosh, Jonathan, Caville Blanc, Wealthy, Spitzenburg, Roxbury Russet and Ashmead’s Colonel, along with several others.
“We just have to keep trying the recipe out every year, to make sure we’ve got it right,” Elwood jokes. “We’re up to 15 gallons now, but maybe next year, we’ll do 20.”
Cooking with cider
Sally Burkhart makes “boiled cider” every year, cooking the fresh cider on the stove on high until it is reduced to a thick, gelled syrup. Sauces made with boiled cider are an excellent accompaniment to meat, especially pork, seafood, poultry and wild game.
Burkhart recommends using cider as sweetener when making apple pie, and in dishes like baked beans, which normally use water and a sweetener of some type. She mixes cider with mustard as a piquant sauce for ham. Hard cider can replace white wine in most recipes.
Vermont Mulled Cider
This 1908 recipe is from “The American Cider Book.”
2 quarts sweet cider
1 tablespoon maple sugar
4 sticks cinnamon
1 teaspoon grated cloves
1 teaspoon allspice
1 cup applejack (apple brandy, such as Calvados)
Tie the cloves and allspice into a cheesecloth bag (or use a tea ball) and drop this into the cider, sugar and cinnamon mixture. Boil for 15 minutes, stirring all the while. Then remove cinnamon sticks and bag of spices, add 1 cup hot applejack, and serve. This is a hot drink in more ways than one.
Yield: 4-6 servings
Approximate nutrition per serving: Unable to calculate.
Cidered Garlic Bread
From “Sweet and Hard Cider”
1 loaf crusty French bread
1/3 cup melted butter
3 cloves pressed garlic
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1/2 cup hard cider
Cut the bread lengthwise in two, but not completely. Mix the melted butter, garlic and parsley, and add the grated cheese. Place the bread on a sheet of aluminum foil and liberally coat the interior with the butter mix. Pour on the cider, which the bread will soak up. Close the foil snugly and heat in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. Open the foil and let the bread dry out in the oven for 5 minutes before serving for a crustier bread.
Yield: 8 servings
Approximate nutrition per serving: Unable to calculate.
Baked Beans in Cider
From “Sweet and Hard Cider”
4 cups dried beans
Cold water (or cider) to cover
3 cups hard cider
1/2 pound salt pork (bacon)
1 large onion, peeled
Dry mustard
1/2 cup molasses
1 tablespoon salt
Pick over, wash and soak the beans in water (or cider) for 12 hours. Add the hard cider to the drained beans, bring to a boil and boil for about half an hour. Garnish the bottom of an earthenware bean pot with pieces of bacon, reserving some strips for the top. Turn the beans and the cider liquid into the bean pot. Roll the whole onion in dry mustard and bury it in the middle of the beans. Pour the molasses over all. Place the rest of the bacon on top of the beans, and add enough hot water to cover. Salt, and cover the bean pot.
Bake for 4 to 6 hours at 300 degrees. An hour before the beans are done, uncover the pot and add water (or cider) if the beans seem too dry.
Yield: 8 to 12 servings
Approximate nutrition per serving: Unable to calculate.
Braised Wild Duck in Cider
From “Sweet and Hard Cider”
1 wild duck, plucked, cleaned and singed
2 tablespoons cream cheese
2 teaspoons heavy cream
Salt and pepper
Thin-sliced salt pork (bacon)
2 pounds cooking apples
10 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 teaspoons Calvados (apple brandy)
2 cups hard cider
1/2 cup heavy cream
Spread the interior of the duck with a mixture of the cream cheese and cream. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Wrap the bird in bacon, which has been rinsed to remove excess salt and patted dry. Bind with kitchen twine. Meanwhile, peel, quarter and core the apples.
Heat the butter in a large pan and brown the duck well on both sides. Pour in the Calvados and touch with a lighted match. When the flames subside, add the apples and let them brown very lightly. Reduce the heat, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and add the cider. Cover and simmer for one hour. Test with the point of a knife to see if it enters easily.
Add the cream and taste for seasoning. Do not crush the apples. They should have retained their shape.
Put the duck on a serving platter. Remove the twine and bacon. Surround with the apples and serve.
Yield: 4 servings
Approximate nutrition per serving: Unable to calculate.
Normandy Pork Chops
From “The American Cider Book”
Either sweet or hard cider will work with this recipe. Make cream gravy or a reduction sauce with the juices left in the casserole after the chops are cooked, to serve over an accompaniment of mashed potatoes.
6 pork chops, 3/4-inch thick
1 teaspoon salt
Flour
4 apples
2 cups cranberries
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups cider
Sprinkle pork chops with salt and dredge with flour. Sauté until golden brown. Slice apples thin, mix with cranberries and brown sugar, and put in the bottom of buttered casserole dish. Lay chops on fruit, add cider. Cook 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees or until pork is tender. Turn chops during cooking so both sides are flavored with the fruit.
Yield: 6 servings
Approximate nutrition per serving: Unable to calculate.