Posted on 09/05/2012 3:10:02 AM PDT by djf
In particular, it is interesting that there is a suggestion that brewing alcoholic beverages was in part a way to fight cholera and other water-born maladies.
Not sure who is running the home brew ping list...
Ping!
Back in the 70’s and early 80’s we made a barrel of it a year. We were forced to quit when the 2nd cider mill closed. Now the wife use’s our 2 oak barrels for house planters.
I’ve been thinking about getting an apple press. But it’s something that you would only use a month or two max per year, so I put it off...
The apples are heavy on the trees out here this year!
There’s a place down the road a bit that makes pasteurized, ZERO PRESERVATIVE cider, so I use that. Now they say it’s pasteurized, but if you leave it on the counter unrefrigerated, it will start to ferment. That was what happened to me and what got me into home brew about 4 yrs ago!
A good, clean, crisp dry hard cider is wonderful. And I doubt I’ve ever done a run that came in less than about 7% ABV, so it’ll put ya on yur lips!
Everyone who has tried it LOVES IT!
Very interesting.
As a teen I made hard cider by adding yeast and sugar to those big glass jugs of apple juice.
“...there is a suggestion that brewing alcoholic beverages was in part a way to fight cholera and other water-born maladies.”
Yes, I thought of that once when I was reading a novel and realized that everyone was drinking “ale” all day, or tea, nobody drank water. Then I realized the water was probably pretty dirty, so you either had to boil it or ferment it to get rid of the germs.
Seems obvious that people got turned off to hard cider because of all the wasps hanging around it.
And, it keeps the doctors away.
I think once you get above about 4 percent alcohol level, almost all natural bacteria are killed.
The guys who made the barrels that held cider and scotch, etc, were not worried about keeping things totally squeaky clean!
Maybe my next project will be learning how to make barrels. I saw a show on PBS about it long ago. Very interesting, but how many barrels can you make before you had enough?
;-)
If that were true wine would not exist. Its 12%
And in other news.. http://www.voanews.com/content/taste-for-hard-cider-grows-in-us/1483936.html
MIDDLEBURY, Vermont — More Americans are quenching their thirst with hard cider. In 2011, U.S. sales of the alcoholic beverage made of fermented apple juice were up 20 percent over the previous year, according to the U.S.-based Beer Institute.
There were about 5.6 million cases of hard cider sold in the U.S. in 2011. At the same time, mainstream beer sales are down.
Huh?
Wine is made by yeast, not bacteria.
Get yur chemistry right!
Some yeasts can tolerate almost 20% (40 proof) before they die.
I was aware that the Colonists drank gallons of the stuff but just recently discovered it for myself and I must say I’m hooked. I love Woodchuck Cider’s Granny Apple (please don’t post if Woodchuck’s a liberal company=-they’re from Vermont so I have my suspicions but they keep it off their Facebook page and they taste good).
My Dad passed a couple of years ago, took his secret recipe for home made applejack with him. My brother and i have tried unsucessfully to make it.
Involves fermenting and freezing , skimming off that which freezes from the top of the barrel.
another lost art.
I don’t remember ever seeing commercial cider but the home made stuff was common when I was a kid back in the ‘50s.
The small town I lived in had Halloween parties, held on our biggest parking lot. Two large wooden barrels were set up, one of apple juice for the kids and one of hard cider for adults. Once the cider took affect no one seemed to notice that kids would draw from the cider barrel.
Wait a second. I'm about as low class as you can get, and my poison of choice is a dry martini, classic, of the Bombay or Bombay Sapphire persuasion...three queen olives, of course.
I ferment up at least one batch a year.
The farm I worked on in upstate NY, the guy every year got 4 or 5 barrels from wherever he got it. Man, that was years ago...
Super dry, but also super flat. I like to get it carbonated like a champagne.
I’ve brewed so much hard cider over the past years that I’m about sick of it...which is good because the apple harvest in NW Ohio was ruined this year by a late frost and generally unfavorable weather so obtaining the base cider is going to be expensive. I’ve got a dozen champagne bottles ready for bottle fermentation though so I may pay the price just to make some good sparkling cider. Oh, and if you haven’t tried Laird’s apple brandy and apple jack you ought to. That’s what cider was always all about. It’s much much tastier than corn liquor IMHO.
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