I’ll admit it, I’m on a cider kick. It’s just that time of year. Example given: tonight’s experiment. While hiking last week, we found a wild apple tree, full of small, exceedingly tart apples, almost perfectly ripe, and I happened to have a backpack. Serendipitously, today I found a nice juice extractor for $8 at a thrift store, and thus began my attempt at a wild fermentation. I didn’t have enough apples to make a full gallon of juice (far from it), so I mixed the juice I pulled out with some Simply Apple juice from the local grocery store. Now, we wait. I figure I have a 50% chance at this working, and from what I’ve heard, natural cider fermentations, when they work, give some of the best tasting hard ciders possible. I’m willing to risk vinegar for such a prize.
That being said, I’m risking it because I have 5 gallons of cider bubbling away in primary at the moment. For those of you who don’t want to risk a natural fermentation, let me direct you to two heroes, valiantly experimenting with different combinations of yeasts and sugars in cider.
Link the first. Link the second.
The first link is why I’m using Lavlin 1118 on my current big batch of cider, and the second one… I just envy. If my basement looks like that in five years, I’ll be a happy man.
