Apple Press at LostMeadowvt.com

Cider Day!!

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:24:00 +0000

For those in the area, check out Cider Day in Colrain, MA on November 1 and 2 this year. It's a great event for all things cider. For more information go to www.ciderday.org.

Heirloom Fruit Workshop

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:23:00 +0000

Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008
9 a.m - 7 p.m.
Old Sturbridge Village, Mass.

Dear Fruit Growers, Chefs and Food Historians of Massachusetts,

You are invited to attend a workshop on rediscovering forgotten heirloom fruits and restoring historic orchards in Massachusetts. The workshop will take place on November 1, 2008 beginning at 9:00 am at Old Sturbridge Village, with a visit to a local orchard in the afternoon, followed by an heirloom apple tasting event. Co-sponsored by the Renewing America's Food Traditions (RAFT) Alliance and hosted by Old Sturbridge Village, it will feature two heirloom fruit conservationists from Arizona, Kanin Routson and Gary Nabhan, in addition to local experts. The goal of RAFT is to safeguard foods currently at risk in the landscape, and bring a greater diversity of these back to our tables. In the morning, the workshop will highlight the historic loss of fruit diversity; reasons for still maintaining heirlooms; how to begin to identify "unnamed" varieties found in abandoned orchards; historic orchard restoration; and establishing a regional directory of sources of historic scion wood. After lunch, we will journey to an abandoned orchard in Rutland, returning to Old Sturbridge Village for an heirloom apple tasting event. A $25 fee per person includes the costs of materials and lunch. Reservations may be made by contacting Old Sturbridge Village at www.osv.org and must be made by October 22, 2008. We look forward to your involvement; please call Gary Nabhan at 928-225-0293 or email him at gpnabhan@email.arizona.edu if you have questions.

Thank you,
Gary, Suzanne, Christie, Jenny and Leigh

Managed by Slow Food USA, RAFT is an alliance of food, farming, environmental and culinary advocates who have joined together to identify, restore and celebrate America’s biologically and culturally diverse food traditions through conservation, education, promotion and regional networking.

Founding RAFT partners: American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, Chefs Collaborative, The Cultural Conservancy, Native Seeds/SEARCH, Seed Savers Exchange and Slow Food USA

For more information about RAFT visit www.slowfoodusa.org

Simple Steps to a Great Dry Hard Cider:

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:21:00 +0000

1. Use the best juice possible. A blend of high-tannin cider fruits from wild apples, European bittersweets, or some crabapples, mixed with a balanced juice apple like Liberty, Golden Russet, Gala, Golden Delicious, Northern Spy will give a fermenting ‘must’ with good fermentation characteristics. If possible use fruit from low-fertility soils or trees without excess soluble nitrogen. Our cider blends offer these characteristics.

2. Press on a clean press with wooden racks, preferably cultured for a good wild yeast population.

3. Transfer to a sanitized carboy, filling to just below the shoulder.

4. Treat the juice with 50 ppm sulfite to limit growth of wild bacteria.

5. Place the fermenter in a cool area, preferably <60°F. Primary fermentation should begin within a few days. Using wild yeasts you will not tend to get the vigorous foaming found in a cultured yeast ferment, but some froth will be evident. Yopu may want to attach a blowoff tube to the airlock or even leave the fermenter open with a bit of cheesecloth over the top to prevent bugs from getting in. A secondary container such as a bathtub will allow easy cleanup if it does ‘puke out’ a little bit.

6. After the initial froth subsides, top up the carboy to the neck with fresh cider and attach the airlock. Make sure the water level is kept up. For an extra degree of safety a sulfite solution or even vodka can be used in the airlock. Keep the fermenter cool, preferably <50°F.

7. Let her sit for 2-3 months. Rack off the lees in midwinter if desired. Then let her sit some more.

8. Bottle or keg in late winter or early spring. Or let her sit until summer. For a sparkling cider prime with ½ cup cane sugar at bottling time and crown cap. Let the bottles warm to 65-70°F for a day or two, then return to a cool spot for conditioning.

9. Enjoy. When coming for next year’s cider, be sure to bring a sample to swap.

Scott Farm cider apples

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:29:00 +0000

Passing this email on at the request of Zeke, a grower of really interesting apples just outside Brattleboro, VT:

Terry, we have a very good supply of Kingston Black along with several other American and English apples well suited for hard cider if you could pass the word along.
Our price would be $14/bu, $12 for American and some of the other French and English varieties.
Contact Scott Farm at scottfrm@sover.net or 802 254 6868. Thanks and good luck with the season.
Zeke Goodband

Fall is Here: Lost Meadow Cider Mill Opens September 13, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:05:00 +0000

Calais,VT:

Lost Meadow Cider Mill will be open weekends this fall starting September 13 and going until October 26. The mill is located off County Rd in Calais, VT, two miles south of Maple Corner.

Fresh juice will be available for pickup Saturday or Sunday 12:00-6:00 PM or until it's gone. Call or email for directions. Sorry, the mill is not open to the public during operation. If you need juice and can't catch us on weekends or want us to reserve some, call and we'll work something out [(802) 229-2004].

We will also have our own vinegar for sale at the mill as well as the odd bag of apples that we just didn't have the heart to put through the grinder.

Lost Meadow Cider Mill is located on Wheeler Road in Calais, VT; just off County Road a couple miles south of Maple Corner or about seven miles from the Main St rotary in Montpelier. _ Sweet Juice ('Cider')_ Generally we squeeze on Saturday morning and try to be cleaning up by the time we'open' around noon. Sweet juice (unpasteurized 'cider') will be available every weekend until it's gone. The price for all fresh cider on these days is$5 per gallon, in our one-gallon jugs only. We do not fill your containers with fresh juice. _ Fermenting stock ('Cidre') _ We will be making cidremaker's blends on the most weekends of the season, at the end of the squeeze day. Varieties used will change with the season; come a couple different times and compare the ciders you make! Juice blends consist of a base, usually Liberty, Cortland, Gala, or Golden (Delicious and Russet) and a bittersweet/sharp component such as Foxwhelp, Ellis Bitter, Yarlington Mill, Chisel Jersey, Dabinett, and some local crabs. Blended cidre juice is $7 per gallon in your container only. Carboys and other supplies can be had from Vermont Homebrew Supply in Winooski, VT (802) 655-2070. For a basic cider you will only need to bring a clean, sanitized carboy and airlock. We can take care of the rest, including any tips and consultation needed to get things going.We strongly suggest getting reservations in ASAP for your blended juice. While the sweet juice will ferment into cider, the special blends tailored for cidermaking are the reason why we do this, and a much superior product will come from it. And once the barrels are empty, it will be a long wait until next year.

All cider apples are sourced from Vermont or New Hampshire orchards and are tree picked, whole, sound fruit. The variety mix will change with the season and we use only the freshest fruit available, not cold-storage packing house cast-offs. The orchards we work with all follow modern Integrated Pest Management protocols to ensure that their produce is free of harmful residues and grown in an environmentally responsible manner. Some fruit are sourced from organic or unsprayed trees depending on availability and quality. All juice is unpasteurized. For more information on cider/food safety go to http://www.lostmeadowvt.com/juice/safety.htm/

Lost Meadow Orchard and Cider Mill are run by Terry Bradshaw and his family. Terry has been in the orchard business for fourteen years and has made cider every one of them. His fermented ciders have won national awards in American Homebrew Association-sanctioned events and have developed a local following. These hard ciders are never for sale, but he is always glad to show you how to make your own.

A tale of two ciders

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:36:00 +0000

I've been making cider for a long time, let's say 13 years or so. For a long time I was working solely with 'dessert' apples and some crabs for tannin kick. Now I have/had access to table fruit unlike the average Mac-Delicious-Cortland fruit widely available in New England and elsewhere, and discovered that Liberty, a scab-resistant apple from the Cornell breeding program, makes a decent cider on its own and contributes a lot to a blend as well. After a lot of trial and error I came upon a blend from an unsprayed block I used to manage. At the time the mill I used would not squeeze sprayed fruit, so this was a good block to have. For a number of years my main cider blend consisted of Liberty, Haralson, Nova-Easy-Grow, and some Redfield crab. This made a decent cider, but it tended to be rather sharp, although my tongue got used to it. In 2003 I even did an oak barrel ferment of this blend that turned out well, if not a bit overpowered with oak.
But in the meantime I was just getting it together to grow or source my own 'real' cider fruit, the bittersharps and bittersweets of European ancestry. After reading Proulx and Nichols' cider book, and talking with Steve Wood on the subject, I was convinced that I needed these fruit to make the best cider. In fact I think my infamous statement that I had not yet made a great cider came from that time. So I planted my orchard, and began buying in fruit from Steve. Yes, I was still blending with Liberty most of the time, and starting making good, even great ciders. But I still had not approached the holy grail of ciders, at least according to the books and experts. I'm talking about a varietal Kingston Black cider.
In 2007 I finally had enough KB for a single squeeze. Mind you I was throwing terroir out the window...these fruit came from South Burlington and Calais, Vt as well as Lebanon, NH. But squeeze it I did, and fermented in my usual minimalist style; 50 ppm sulfite at the squeeze, wild yeast, cold fermentation, one racking. In May it was still at a gravity of 1.005 or so, and fairly cloudy, so I hit it with some bentonite, 25 ppm sulfite, and racked. I bottled it two weeks ago.

The verdict? This is a damned good cider, I'd even say excellent (look for it as an entry in the 2008 GLOWS competition). Full bodied, slightly fruity, rich, with just the right acid-tannin balance. It's dry, but that tiniest bit of sweetness carries through with a nice apple character. I call this my Kingston Black Special Reserve, and even state on the label that the drinker should consider themselves lucky to be trying this potion.

So just the other night I was poking around the cider room and came across a bottle of 03 Bar (barrel blend, 2003 harvest). I didn't expect much from this five-year old cider; pulling the cork found a slight effervescent 'pop', maybe not a good thing. It poured into the glass with the most gorgeous trains of bubbles I've seen, the color a nice mild amber. There was still some nice sharp fruit in the aroma, and the flavor? Spectacular! Balanced sharpness, fully dry but fruity, very subdued oak. If I'd known that it would have aged this well I would have saved more than one bottle, and that was probably a mistake.
As for how it matches up to the Kingston Black, I'd put it on equal footing. Once you reach a certain level, particularly with the balance of acid, fruit, and sweetness, they become peers and do not deserve judgment against one another. Am I surprised that 'domestic' apples could make a cider on par with the supposed king of cider apples? Not really, and I have long advocated that the right domestic/crab blends can make decent and even great cider. I just thought it interesting that I got a chance to haphazardly try these two within a couple of days of each other.

Oh, and I no longer say that I haven't ever made a Great Cider.

TB

I'm Back

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:08:00 +0000

From where? Nowhere, I'm just telling myself that it's time to breathe some life into this little cider tale. Expect a few more posts in the coming weeks, and of course details on the 2008 season at Lost Meadow Cidery.

TB

Vermont the #1 cidermaker in US?

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:55:00 +0000

Hi Terry,

SF here--I interviewed you in the fall for an article for the
Montpelier Bridge. Question: someone told me VT is the largest producer
of hard cider in the U.S. True? False? Somewhere in between?
Thanks so much! Hope your workshop at NOFA was a success.

My response:
It's possible that VT is the biggest producer of "hard cider" in the US,
if only because of the presence of Green Mountain Cidery (in
Middlebury), makers of Woodchuck and Cider Jack ciders. They were once
under ownership of Bulmer's UK, the largest cidermakers in the world.
That said, their products are what we call 'industrial ciders'; highly
doctored and not exactly naturally fermented. The process usually is
such: cheap juice (often foreign concentrate) sugared up to double the
alcohol level, ferment fast and dry, water back to 5% abv, add more
apple juice concentrate to sugar it up and replace any flavor or nuance
that were not there after the previous bastardization, pasteurize,
sorbate, sulfite, force carbonate, bottle, and sell on the nearest
alco-pop shelf alongside such concoctions as "Twisted Tea" and "Hard
Lemonade".

Real cider from real juice is probably most made in Oregon, only a guess
but there's a handful of operations out there. NY has a number as well,
as does New England (but only one or maybe two per state it seems).

See my bias?

Thanks for the question...makes me feel like an expert.

OldTimey Dave's Cider Blog

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:30:00 +0000

Check it out here

Gang filters

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:02:00 +0000

Sterile filter setup used for stabilizing sweet ciders. Cleared, cold-shocked, off-dry or sweet ciders are pushed from keg A through two filters, each with two pads apiece. Filter 1 filters down to 2 microns, then filter 2 goes down to 0.5 microns, effectively leaving the cider free of yeast. I generally add 25 ppm sulfite to keg 2 and keep under CO2 pressure to prevent oxidation. Filtering happens at 7-10 psi system pressure.

2007 Great Lakes Olde World Syder Competition

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 03:47:00 +0000

The results are in:

2007 Great Lakes Olde World Syder Competition
Bronze Medal, 'English Cider,' 06 Dry Bittersharp
Silver Medal, 'English Cider,' 06 Dry Bittersweet
Honorable Mention, 'French Cider,' 06 Bittersweet Semisweet

I could say that I'm a little disappointed with the results...what the hell is 'honorable mention'? Sounds like when you say a blind date had a 'good personality'. But really I know that my ciders are pretty good, and I like them. What this really shows is that the quality of cider made by the enthusiasts all over North America who enter this competition is increasing by leaps and bounds over previous years. There's a lot of debate in the cider community over the worth of these competitions, but in the end I feel that it is indicative of better cider produced of late and more of them being made, both commercially and by us home types. Considering that there were over 140 ciders entered into the competition, I'm pretty happy to think that mine were considered good enough for 'honorable mention,' at a minimum (these were the only three ciders I entered).
I would love to see my mill customers enter their own ciders into this and other comps, if only to show that we have the potential to make really nice ciders on a larger scale in this little corner of the world. Hell, I'll even arrange shipping to the venue. Any takers? Green Mountain Homebrew Comp comes May 2008...

TB

I guess my "Bradshaw Fruit Press" ain't the only one around!

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:08:00 +0000

See it here, a whole lot cheaper than my setup!

A little quote I like...

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:21:00 +0000

"Winemaking isn’t a science. It’s just a branch of cooking where we use a calendar instead of a timer – the ultimate Slow Food. Putting something distinctive and visceral on the table is the challenge with which every chef deals daily. As in all cooking, distinctive terroir expression suffers from overspicing. That doesn’t mean all cooking is bad. You just need to have respect for the native flavors of your raw materials."

From Clark Smith, Appellation America

Cidermaking at Woods Cider Mill

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:49:00 +0000

Making Apple Cider, "The Cider House Rules" Cider Mill - Click here for more free videos
A cool video of their water powered mill. How this could be cleaned in this age to sanitary standards I don't know, but I love an operation like this.
Woods Cider Mill

TB

Ham makes cider....

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:24:00 +0000

I think I have a protégé.

Over the past decade I’ve gotten a bit of a reputation for my cider. And of course in the last couple of years I have been helping people make their own through my little garage mill. Well this fall things really took off, and folks seem to be getting into the cider thing, especially my pal Ham Davis.

I first met Ham some three or so years ago, when he called up UVM looking for someone to prune the apple tree in his back yard. So one March day I went to his Burlington Hill Section house and whacked away at his twenty year-old Red Astrachan tree. Ham hung around as I pruned and picked my brain on all things apple, as many do. He mentioned several times that he was a writer, something I admit I brushed off a little bit. So when I was done, he asked what I would charge him. “A good story on the apple industry,” I told him.

So at least two good stories later (pretty good reads on the Darrows of Green Mountain Orchard and the orchard operations at Scott Farm) and many afternoons spent in that orchard and at the farm talking apples, grapes, and cider, Ham made it down my way this fall. But first he published a nice little piece on cider , mainly on Farnum Hill but with a decent bit of my operation in it.

So Ham came by the mill for a good long day this fall, and got a good dose of juice for himself. It’s his first turn at making cider, or even fermenting anything beyond some nasty brew back in his days in the service. I’m helping him along the way, answering any questions he has like the good cidermaker’s assistant I am.

I look forward to his cider, and mine, next spring. And I look forward to that apple/cider book I know he will write one day.

2007 cider season by the numbers

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:22:00 +0000

For six weekends I ran the mill this past season. That’s no days off for six (actually seven) weeks. What came of it all? Here’s 2007 by the numbers:
Four good local news stories, the best and cheapest advertising I could get. An emailed press release is a powerful thing.
About 700 gallons of juice squeezed, half of that fermenting stock. Sold out most weekends.
$1330 net profit.
65 gallons of the good stuff for my own use, 13 gallons of sweet juice frozen or canned.
Met some nice people, and spread the goodness of real cider to ‘the masses’.
Got some nice trades; a belly full of fresh raw oysters, and several folks offering up their own brews.

All sounds like a rousing success, no? Well the mill needs just shy of $1000 in improvements, which I could realistically put into it every year for the next few. Stainless press pan and plastic racks, for starters. Some welding and tweaking to the press itself. Epoxy coating the walls and sealing of the garage. Patching and sealing the concrete floor. Installing hot water. Then of course there’s the grinder which, while it is the most efficient garage-press unit I’ve ever seen, could use a major overhaul. New steel table with stainless top. 35 gallon conical bottom complete drain hopper, direct dumped from the grinder. Then the big kicker, a stainless pomace pump to fill the racks without any buckets. Of course that would also require some electrical work. And finally a washline for incoming fruit would be an excellent addition.

Presently I have the efficiency of the mill dialed in to commercial standards, and no backyard screwbox can touch it in terms of gallons of juice per bushel. I feel very good about mill sanitation when I am using my own fruit, and in the way that I operate it. Still, most of these improvements are geared towards two goals: further improving sanitation, and speeding cleanup time. Once these parts are tweaked I should be able to squeeze more in less time and clean up in an hour, as opposed to the three-plus it takes now. Then I might be able to take a day off in the fall, or squeeze more, including taking in people’s fruit for custom pressing.

So $1300 doesn’t sound like so much now, does it? I would do that in a month of bartending back in the day, and those few customers who always turn out to be pains in the ass at least weren’t standing in my driveway. I also didn’t have to invest almost three grand to get there (not including the real estate of the garage, or even my orchard costs) with continued investment of $500-1000 for each of the foreseeable seasons.

Why do I do this? Maybe Julie’s right, that I’m trying to live out my little orchard/cider dreams. I know that I would be making cider for myself no matter what, so it makes sense to do it right and spread the goodies around. . I’ll go on about those (sweet juice) customers that make me question the worth of it all in another entry. But still I could do this by sticking only to the hard cider end of things, which would be a hell of a lot easierBut then I wouldn’t have the satisfaction of having a stranger call me out of the blue to tell me that my sweet cider is the best stuff they’ve ever tasted. And I wouldn’t have Alice standing next to the press with her cup, catching any drip she can get to, with that big juicy grin on her face.

2007 Cider Mill Notes...Looking for Input

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:14:00 +0000

So harvest is officially over, and the cider mill closed. I need to assess things to see how to tweak it for next year, or if it even makes sense to do so. So, my minimal legion of readers, I will call on you to help me out. In the coming days and weeks I will be bouncing ideas around about how the season went, where I want the mill to go, and how to get there. Any takers? Feel free to post comments through the blog

10/3 Cider Apple Harvest at LostMeadow

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:14:00 +0000

Alice and I harvested cider fruit from the orchard yesterday. We already picked the Kingston Blacks, 1 box from three trees, on Sep 19, along with the St Edmund's Russet (fraction of a box from one tree). The KB's have a nice balanced and intense flavor, the St Ed's Russets have that pear like russet flavor.
As for the 10/3 pick we looked to the cider trees that were showing the most drop. Picked Nehou and Michelin, two boxes total. I'll save those for a keeved cidre doux. We collected drops from th Dabinetts, maybe 1/2 box and stripped one tree that was maturing early due most likely to borer infestation. Then we picked the Chisel Jersey tree, mainly because the fruit were dropping at the slightest nudge (1 box). This high-tannin bitter tastes just like a tea bag, perfect for addition to a low-tannin cider. Next were the Sweet Alfords, one box from two Bud 9 trees. These Alfords have a mild cider apple flavor; not too high in tannin (although it's there), and low in acid. I think they would make a very nice cider mixed 1:1 with Liberty.
Then we snacked on a Sweet 16, nice flavor with hints of vanilla, and an Egremont Russet, low yielding miserable tree habit, fruit has a nice balanced acid/sugar flavor.

Oh, and 10/3 is Ira "Schiffer" Chamber's birthday. Went to school with him and haven't seen him since, but I have a weird knack for remembering the birthdays of people from elementary school. Full Steam Ahead!

TB

Oysters and cider

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:43:00 +0000

This past weekend I had a visitor/customer, Rowan Jacobsen, another Calais resident. This is a funny town I live in; there are still a pretty good number of old-school Vermonters, as well as plenty of new transplants of the past 35 years to now. Being so close to the capitol, as well as in a fairly artistic community, many of these folks, natives and newcomers alike, tend to develop interests and talents that are pretty unique. I guess my little cider operation is a good case in point.
So Rowan came by for some hard cider fixin's. As often happens talk came to my cider, which I informed him wasn't for sale. "You like oysters?" he asked. Turns out Rowan, a young guy about my age, is quite the expert on oysters, and even wrote an excellent book on the subject (The Geography of Oysters). Packed away in a cooler in his car, just drop-shipped from an oyster farmer in Rhode Island, were three varieties of these little bivalves, fresh and ready for snacking. So cider was poured, shucking knife whipped out, and a nice little raw bar set up on the hood of his Subaru in my driveway. Now I'm no expert on oysters, and had only snacked on them once before, but it was really cool to have such a delicacy offered up. Thanks Rowan!

Rowan's website (www.oysterguide.com) is an excellent starting point to learn about these creattures. Or better yet, buy the book!

TB

Cider's turn toward elegance

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:49:00 +0000

Vermont Sunday Magazine
Published September 23, 2007
Cider's turn toward elegance

By Hamilton E. Davis

In the American colonial period, the universal drink, even for children, was apple cider. That's cider as in hard cider, mildly alcoholic, with just a touch of sweetness. President John Adams is said to have had a tankard every day for breakfast.

Hard cider had pretty much disappeared from the American table by the 20th century, the victim of safer water supplies as well as huge increases first in beer and then in wine. Now hard cider is coming back, and just as New England was the focus of early apple growing in this country, it is the epicenter of the cider renaissance.

A clear leader in this development is Farnum Hill of Lebanon, N.H., operated by Steve Wood and his wife, Louisa. Wood has transformed his traditional New England orchard of mostly McIntosh into a fascinating hybrid of antique eating and cooking apples and an array of cider apples from England and France that few in this country have ever encountered — Ashmead's Kernel, Stoke Red, Foxwhelp, Kingston Black and dozens of others. Some of his varieties, such as Golden Russet, Esopus Spitzenberg and Ashmead's Kernel, are good for both eating and cider.

For Wood, the operative word is good: He is aiming at the high end of the market, hoping to inspire the growth of demand for fine cider that would parallel the modern wine market, in which large numbers of producers make excellent wines that differ from one another only slightly, with aficionados debating the nuances of bouquet, taste, color and finish. And paying high prices into the bargain.

At this point, the hard cider market barely qualifies as embryonic, but Wood seems to be meeting the quality challenge. His Farnum Hill ciders have received rave reviews from various food and general publications, including the Wine Enthusiast, Saveur and The Atlantic. Vincent Gasnier, a prominent British sommelier and wine writer, says that he agreed with the company's claim that it produces the best ciders in the United States. "I would even say these ciders are comparable to the best from France," he wrote.

Writing in The New York Times, food writer Amanda Hesser surveyed the hard cider revival in the United States and concluded: "Farnum Hill Ciders stand alone. If you swirl a glass of the sparkling semidry, a waft of citrus blossoms and pear travels up your nose. It is dry and crisp, with a gentle warming quality, like Scotch. … His extra dry has the same kind of vibrancy, with an aroma of cherries and melon that seem to leap from the glass. It is dry and distinct with a pleasant sharpness reminiscent of bitter oranges. Both would be terrific with a meal."

Despite these encomiums, Farnum Hill and other quality cider makers face difficult barriers in penetrating a market dominated by wine and beer. Farnum Hill has succeeded in getting its ciders onto the menu in some high-end restaurants, like Gramercy Tavern in New York City. But you can't find Farnum Hill ciders at the Burlington City Market, or the Hunger Mountain Coop in Montpelier, although buyers at both say they consider hard cider an interesting product.

You can buy them at the Hanover Coop's outlets in Hanover and Lebanon, N.H., which also carries Woodchuck, a commercial variety made in Middlebury, and a hard cider imported from Ireland. Dave Phillips, a beverage buyer at the Hanover Coop, says Farnum Hill represents the high-quality line at his stores. He said he personally likes Farnum Hill's farmhouse and summer ciders, as well as the Kingston Black varietal, but that the extra dry is a little too dry for his palette.

Farnum Hill is more than competitive at the Hanover and Lebanon sites of the Hanover Coop. In 2006, Farnum Hill sold just over 1,700 bottles of its cider, compared to just under 1,000 six packs of Woodchuck, the main low-end cider sold. "It's like drinking Bud Lite versus something like Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout," Phillips said. "I've had many customers come in and say Farnum Hill is the closest thing I've had here to an English cider," Philips said.

The production of fine cider is so new that it is difficult to get figures on its importance in the overall beverage market. A Cornell University study estimated that cider production didn't begin to recover in the United States until the early 1990s, but that it has grown rapidly since then. In 1990, total production amounted to 115,000 cases. By 1995, the total was 1.6 million cases, and by 1997 the number reached 2.7 million cases. The industry target is 75 million cases by 2015.

Much of this is less expensive cider, usually sold in six packs and made from apple juice concentrate, similar to bulk wines made from generic grape juice. A major distributor of six-pack cider is Green Mountain Beverage, which is based in Middlebury. Green Mountain comprises the former Green Mountain Cidery and the American Cider Co. Both were acquired in the late 1990s by Bulmers, a huge British producer and then sold in 2003 to the Vermont group. Green Mountain Beverage (its actual corporate name) distributes several styles of cider, including Woodchuck, Cider Jack, Strongbow (imported from Britain) and Woodpecker, made in Middlebury from a Bulmer's recipe. The firm actually accounts for about half the U.S cider market.

Boston Beer, the maker of Sam Adams, is also now making cider called HardCore, and it has experimented with high-end production. In 1999, for example, it made a limited edition, special batch made from 100 bushels of eight varieties of classic cider apples. The apples are supplied by Farnum Hill.

The ability of boutique cider makers in Northern New England to build a market for their products bears considerable significance for the overall apple industry in the region. For the industry has been under siege for a decade, with costs rising rapidly and prices stagnant, especially for McIntosh, the main mass-market eating apple grown here. Some growers, like Scott farm in Dummerston, and the Steve Wood operation, have been able to get much higher prices for unusual varieties. At Scott Farm, Zeke Goodband, the orchard manager, grows some 70 varieties of apples in a 6,000-tree orchard and gets almost twice as much per pound for his exotic varieties as other growers receive for more traditional mass-market apples, such as McIntosh.

The exotic varieties originally fell out of mass-market favor for many reasons. Some simply didn't look very good. Some were brown, or greenish brown when consumers wanted only bright red. Some tasted bland or even terrible when eaten out of hand, but were much better when cooked in pies, or made into sauce. Others were good mainly for cider. Varieties that were good all around sometimes didn't keep well, or bruised too easily, or had too small a selling window — good for a week or two, then they fade. That's too short a time for them to be transported and sold.

What Wood and other growers of the old time varieties have found is that some consumers, although by no means a new mass market, will pay for the virtues of these old varieties. The potential problem, of course, is that many producers can begin to grow them and flood the market, driving down the prices. The virtue of a high-quality cider market is that consumers will pay good prices for the small differences in flavors based on the blending of ciders from different varieties. It all comes down to the skills and tastes of the producer.

Steve Wood, a tall, powerfully built man of 52, got into the apple cider business as a response to market conditions, mediated by serendipity. He grew up in Lebanon, where his father was a family doctor with a penchant for hard work and accumulating land. In the early 1960s, when Doctor Wood had paid off his medical school bills, he began buying land around Farnum Hill; one of the major pieces included an orchard and a sprawling old farm house on Poverty Lane, which runs up Farnum Hill from Route Four. The site looks west to the valley of the Connecticut and the Green Mountains beyond.

As a kid, Steve worked on the farm for his father, who he describes as a slave driver. He mowed, pruned trees, baled hay for mulch, worked on machinery, but he had no intention of getting involved in the farming operation. Both before and after graduating from Harvard, Steve went west, working in hard mining, partly to test himself physically, and partly because his father had done the same thing to finance medical school.

By the 1970s, however, the farm began encountering more and more financial difficulties, in part because of Doctor Wood's appetite for land and his reluctance to develop it. The long and the short of it was that in 1979, Steve decided to take a year to see if he could get the orchard back on its feet. That involved selling some of the land and managing the orchard. In 1984, he and his wife Louisa bought the orchard property outright.

Known as Poverty Lane Orchards, the business was a traditional New England apple operation. They had about 80 plus acres of trees, medium size for an orchard in the region, and they grew and sold mostly McIntosh apples, along with some Cortlands and Golden Delicious, marketing them through a broker.

In the 1980s, however, Wood's orchard – along with every other orchard in New England – began running into serious trouble. The problem was that the market was softening: People were eating fewer apples, and the prices were dropping, while costs were steadily rising. For example, new equipment was needed to pack apples mechanically. Orchard owners felt they had to build controlled-atmosphere storage facilities, so they could hold fall-picked apples for sale in the spring. Supermarkets, meanwhile, were imposing new requirements on growers. The apples had to be absolutely blemish-free; they had to be waxed, and they had to be as big as possible because they were sold by the pound, whereas most consumers purchase a specific number of apples.

And in the early 1970s, a truly nasty challenge in the form of the first Granny Smith apple showed up from the southern hemisphere. "That should have waked up the whole industry to the fact that we were going to receive freshly picked fruit in the spring and it doesn't matter how good a storage operator you are, you can't produce an apple out of CA storage that is in as good condition as an apple that was picked two weeks ago," he says.

What most New England orchard operators did was to keep investing in the machinery and infrastructure they assumed was necessary to stay in business. Wood didn't invest in any of it.

"I just chickened out," he says. "I couldn't imagine spending that huge portion of my equity on those machines, so I just didn't do it."

He continued to grow and sell high-quality fruit, and contracting for packing and other services that he couldn't do himself, but by the mid 1990s, Steve and Louisa realized that they just couldn't make enough money. "I think it was probably five years ago I sent my last trailer-load of fruit off to a packer," he says, "and the return was such a joke that I thought, 'let's never do that again.'"

So they began to shift their focus, which is where the serendipity came in. A decade earlier, Wood and his wife had begun visiting friends and family in Wales, flying to London and driving through southwest England to reach their destination. Southwest England is the home of the British cider industry, and Steve would occasionally pull over to look at what seemed to him very weird apples.

Eventually he began gathering scion wood — twigs clipped from the cider apple trees — and he grafted them onto the old standards in his orchard. In fact, he had two stands of these old standards down the hill from the house; they call those stands "Below the Barn, One and Two." At the same time, he became interested in and began grafting uncommon American apples. Hundreds of these old varieties had been imported to the United States in the 19th century from England, France, Central Europe and Russia; most had failed the test of the modern market place, and had retreated to the fringe of the apple business, surviving in old, abandoned orchards or in museum plantings. Wood grafted dozens of these also, often exchanging scion wood with his friend, Zeke Goodband, who was doing the same thing, first in southern New Hampshire, and now at Scott Farm in southern Vermont. In addition, he made contact in Britain with many cider apple growers and producers and he learned much by talking to them.

"I got the notion that this would be an interesting sideline," he says. "I could conduct a horticultural experiment to see which of these cider apples would grow to a high standard in our growing conditions. Herefordshire and Somerset, the cider districts of England, don't have our extreme cold, and they have longer growing seasons." At the time, he considered neither the cider apple project nor the growing of antique, or uncommon varieties, as any kind of grand business scheme.

"I was treating this as a commercial experiment, but to be honest, it was as much gardening as anything … I was just fooling around with apple trees."

Nevertheless, the flowering of the experiment converged with Wood's growing realization that the traditional business model of the New England apple orchard no longer worked. So the original business has morphed into his Poverty Lane Orchards, which sells antique varieties, such as Esopus Spitzenberg, Hubbardston Nonesuch, Golden Russet and dozens of others, directly to retail outlets both in the region, and in high-end stores in New York and several other major cities. The Woods market their ciders under the name Farnum Hill Ciders, and they have been working hard to get the ciders into the marketplace.

The first part of the cider challenge has been met. Wood has determined which varieties, especially which of his English cider varieties, will do well in Northern New England. He can grow them now reliably, and he has a more than sufficient supply to serve the very small existing market. In fact, he almost certainly has far more of these varieties than anyone else. Many of his friends and colleagues are also growing cider apples, but Wood appears to be the only one who has them in any real volume.

This year, for example, Wood has 4,000 cider apple trees coming into production at a site he calls the Black Hill in Plainfield, N.H., a short drive from Farnum Hill. He has thousands more at three different sites on Farnum Hill itself that are in full production. These are in addition to the uncommon eating varieties that he produces. In fact, Wood has more cider apples than he needs, in the hopes that the market for fine ciders will grow.

Growing the cider apples, however, is just the first step, and for a lifelong apple expert like Wood, the easiest. Producing outstanding cider from those apples is another challenge entirely.

The nerve center of the Farnum Hill operation is a cluster of three high-ceilinged rooms in the basement of an old barn, just off Poverty Lane. Two of the rooms house a couple of dozen storage containers — very tall steel tanks, some squat plastic ones, and an array of classical, old-oak 55-gallon barrels laid horizontally on racks, the contents and year chalked on their ends.

The third room contains some storage facilities, but is devoted primarily to the mechanical ganglia of a fermentation business, including an ancient French device to measure alcohol content. A small lab opens off this room, where Steve and his crew take samples to help determine how to blend the final products.

When Steve shows a visitor through the place, he'll draw off a couple of small glasses from this tank and the other, swirling them, looking at the color, and then musing in an impromptu tasting about the characteristics each might bring to a final blend for the market. How much sweetness, or bitterness does it have? Can you feel the astringency, the drying sensation, of the tannins? How acidic is it? What kind of mouth feel does it have, and what about the finish, the lingering taste notes after it has been swallowed?

There are four different classifications of apples, based on different combinations of acid and tannin, and the whole enterprise rests on the ability of Steve and Louisa and the other tasters to blend them into an appealing product. It isn't easy.

"I throw away a lot of cider," Steve says. "One of the biggest mistakes people make when they get into this is to make more cider than they can afford to throw away. It's an intensely competitive market. … People don't come back and try something a second time if they didn't like it the first. I mess around a lot."

At Farnum Hill, the blending of individual ciders is a highly rigorous process. Steve convenes a four-person panel, that includes himself and Louisa and two others. One of the tasters is often one of the Farnum employees, Nicole Leibon, who has what Steve considers a very sensitive and reliable palette. The remaining tasters could include one of the Wood's two sons, Brian Goodwin, a member of the staff; Brenda Bailey, who manages the administrative side of the business, and Fitzgerald Campbell, a transplanted Jamaican who now lives in Lebanon and does the day-to-day management of the apple-growing side of the business.

Steve and Louisa have taken professional tasting courses in Europe, but they and their employees have developed a process of their own that works well. "The idea is to empty your mind," Steve says, "and simply react to the smells and tastes you experience — a peach, leather, dust, the neighbor's dog … we have one we call FYM, for farm yard manure." The Farnum panel tastes the sample, swirls it around, spits it out. Then they discuss their impressions of the various flavors they've sensed, the degree of acid and tannins they perceive, and they speculate about how consumers will react to it. On the basis of this sensory data base, Steve blends and bottles the cider.

At various times, Farnum Hill has had various blended ciders on the market. In July and August, the emphasis was on a summer cider they released in May. The others they regularly make include a Farmhouse cider, semi-dry sparkling and still ciders and extra dry sparkling and still ciders. On the evidence of the written criticism in the foodie press, they've done very well.

The pressure of the market place, however, hangs over the process, and it shows up particularly on the issue of whether Farnum Hill ought to send to market varietal ciders, those made from the juice of a single type of apple. In the past, Steve has bottled and sold a cider from the juice of Kingston Black apples, a particular favorite in Britain and one thought to have enough balance to stand on its own. It brings the highest price of any of his ciders, anywhere from $14 a bottle locally to as much as $30 in New York.

But Steve is scared to death of it. Many people love it, but some don't. The cider is a lovely amber color, and it is smooth and almost rich, but some drinkers sense a slightly musty odor. In the trade they call it butterscotch, but in fact, it very faintly evokes the barnyard. FYM. This bouquet is counted a virtue in Normandy in northern France, the spiritual home of cider. But not necessarily in a country with little to no acquaintance with hard cider.

"Even though we have been able to sell it, and sell it quite profitably, at high prices, it's a terrible introduction to cider," he says. "The worst reviews we have had are from people who go into a New York shop and pick up a bottle of Kingston Black, and don't pick up any of our other ciders. I mean, Kingston Black is just too freaking weird."

And in any case, Wood believes that cider ought to be blended to get the best result. "You get a wider and more pleasing range of flavors and aromas, a more balanced mouth feel, a cleaner, more structured finish than any single variety is likely to give," he says. So when it came time to blend the currently-on-the-market summer cider, he had to decide whether to add in a truly wonderful varietal, Ribston Pippin. Everybody who tried it loved it and urged Steve to release it as a varietal cider. But he tested it with the other components of the prospective summer cider, and it made a real, positive difference.

"So, phttp, in it went … there it goes. It's not Ribston Pippin anymore," he says mournfully. "The goal is to make the regular cider as good as we can make it."

Farnum Hill currently sells about 2,000 cases of cider a year, well below its capacity. Wood has far more cider apples than he needs, partly because doesn't want to run out of raw material if the market develops rapidly. But he has no target volumes for the operation.

"I know that for this to work we need to sell considerably more cider than we are selling right now," he says. "I don't know whether the right number is 8,000 or 20,000. I'm pretty sure it isn't 50."

The marketing end of the business is handled by Louisa Spencer, Steve's wife. It is a hard challenge, and Louisa is looking forward to turning it over to a professional marketing person who will come to work for Farnum Hill this fall. The essential problem, Louisa says, is that most people know nothing about hard cider; in fact, most don't know that it exists. Even the basic name is a problem.

Everywhere else in the world the word "cider" means fermented juice of apples. In the United States, by contrast, cider is considered to be the unfermented, or sweet juice of apples. Fermented apple juice has been known as "hard cider." American (hard) cider makers are trying to persuade people to call their products just plain "cider," but they have a long way to go.

So, Louisa spends much of her time traveling around, talking to retailers and state liquor-control buyers about cider, its long history, the differences between fine and commercial ciders, describing how they are made, and so forth. She often starts with a power point presentation that lays out these issues. This is all before she even gets to actually sell her own ciders.

A second major hurdle is that the sale of any alcoholic beverage is hedged about by a huge web of federal and state regulations. In many states, for example, including Vermont, a producer can't simply approach a retailer to sell his cider, rather he must work through a distributor. The distributor's major lines are likely to be beer and wine, and if he doesn't pay much attention to cider, there isn't much you can do about it.

And even if you get a retailer to market your cider, the lack of a big customer base is a tremendous drag on sales. "We can get into a fancy wine shop in New York," Steve Wood says, "and they taste the cider and they love it; but they don't have any place to put it. Where do you put it? … They don't have a cider section. So it winds up on the dusty back shelf with the fruit wines, where nobody ever goes … with the Slivovitz."

The Woods' response to this is to do whatever they can to encourage competition, to inspire friends in the apple business to make high-quality ciders in hopes that the resulting market would take off, resembling the wine market.

"The wine market is the only agricultural market that not only doesn't punish small differences between similar things, but actually pays for them," Steve says. "Nobody expects a Cabernet Sauvignon, or a Merlot-Cabernet Franc combination grown in Bordeaux to smell and taste like one grown in Western Australia, to smell or taste like one in Willamette Valley, or in Washington, or the Napa Valley, or Long Island.

"What's implicit in this is that if we can develop a market not only can it tolerate a lot of competition, it would welcome it. What I would like to see is a lot more good cider being made from good fruit because at the moment our biggest marketing challenge is the absence of a category of fine cider in the market."

In pursuit of this idea, Wood has urged Evan Darrow at Green Mountain Orchards in Putney to try making cider. Green Mountain is the biggest apple grower in Vermont, and has the capacity to become a major producer. Evan has tried a few batches, but has not pursued it. Wood also hopes that Zeke Goodband at Scott Farm in Dummerston will get into the hard-cider business. Goodband grows an impressive array of excellent cider apples, but Scott Farm currently has no plans to open a cider operation.

There are some other commercial cider makers in the region who make small volumes of hard cider, but the ciders that come closest to the Farnum Hill products have been made by what one might describe as very strong amateurs. One of those is Terry Bradshaw, the chief apple technician at the University of Vermont Horticultural Farm. He has planted a small selection of French and British cider apple trees at the Hort Farm in South Burlington, and a small cider orchard at his home in Calais. He makes very nice cider for himself and his friends, but has no plans to produce cider for the market.

Another is Jason MacArthur, a 31-year-old Marlboro, Vt., carpenter, who makes cider with a friend, Forrest Holzapfel, whose day job is Marlboro town lister. MacArthur became interested in wine during a visit to France as a teenager, and when he came back he thought: "Maybe cider is a local alternative."

Their approach has been to mix European cider apples with the best American antique varieties. "It wasn't a scientific thing," MacArthur says.

At the outset they bought most of their apples from Scott Farm, but four years ago Jason planted a 50-tree cider orchard on a side-hill pasture on his grandfather's farm. He got a good crop last year, and this fall will be in full production. The new orchard fulfills Steve Wood's precept that fine cider requires a blend of the best apple varieties. MacArthur has planted the best — Kingston Black, Golden Russet, Ribston Pippen, Esopus Spitzenberg, Wickson.

His ciders are considered very good but might benefit some from more aging. The amateurs generally age their ciders for six months or so, whereas Farnum Hill will often age for a year, or two. MacArthur and Forrest are making 50 to 60 gallons of cider a season in a dozen or so five-gallon carboys, and like Wood, they throw a lot out.

Have they thought about producing cider for the market?

"I don't know," MacArthur says. "I'd love to; it's a great way to make a living, but to get the space you need and the right fruit and the pressing equipment … to put it all together … is a pretty big investment."

There are no hard figures for establishing commercial cidery, but it could run from tens of thousands of dollars to well up into six figures, depending on what one starts with. What's needed is an orchard, a barn with some concrete floors, equipment, plenty of it.

So what is the devotee of fine cider to do? You may stumble upon something from Farnum Hill, but you cannot find it reliably. If you know somebody like Terry Bradshaw or Jason MacArthur, they might give you a bottle, but they can't sell it under the law, and they don't have much. You can pick up what purports to be fine cider from small producers, and some of it is and some of it isn't.

And even the best producers have to suppress their adventuresome instincts in deference to a skittish embryonic market.

One day in July, Steve Wood pointed out a trio of barrels lying against a wall in one of his storage rooms. Two-year-old Ashmead's Kernel. He found a piece of rubber tubing, clambered up onto the rack and siphoned off two glasses. It was terrific, every bit as good as the Kingston Black, but without the barnyard bouquet that offends some consumers.

Is he going to bottle it? Probably not, he says. "It's so risky to release varietals," he says. "I'll probably just dump it into a blend."

After some, well, wheedling, he agreed to siphon off and sell a couple of bottles to his visitor. Would the visitor share?

Don't even ask.

Hamilton E. Davis is a Burlington freelance writer.

His is a pressing business Calais man says making the mash is 'kind of a Zen thing'

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:01:00 +0000

His is a pressing business Calais man says making the mash is 'kind of a Zen thing'

From the Barre Montpelier Times Argus,
September 20, 2007
photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur/Times Argus

By Mel Huff Times Argus Staff

CALAIS – Terry Bradshaw, wearing a neoprene apron over his T-shirt and jeans, dumps a box of apples into the top of his apple grinder and pushes them toward the hopper. When they are all ground, he pours a bucket of the pulp into a press box, lays a cloth over it, fits a wooden rack and cloth on top and adds another bucket of ground apples, layer after layer.

Even before Bradshaw tightens the press, juice begins to bead on the cloth and run into the box.

"Aside from the noise of the grinder, it's kind of a Zen thing," Bradshaw says of the art of cider making.

By profession, Bradshaw is a research specialist for the University of Vermont's "apple team" and assistant director of the UVM Horticultural Research Center. He grew up on a dairy farm in Chelsea.

"I had virtually nothing to do with apples," he says, "but I knew I wanted virtually nothing to do with cows." He started working in the UVM orchard as an undergraduate and found he had a knack for it.

For six weekends this fall, starting Sept. 22, Bradshaw will sell fresh juice from Lost Meadow Cider Mill at his home off County Road in Calais. Although he squeezes a small quantity of sweet juice, his main product – blends of fermenting stock for making hard cider – is the result of a hobby gone wild.

Bradshaw got interested in cider-making a dozen years ago when he read a book by Annie Proulx ("the Annie Proulx") and Lew Nichols called "Sweet and Hard Cider." He says most people think of making cider in the same terms as brewing beer, but Bradshaw maintains the process has more in common with wine-making: "The same rules apply. The best ciders are made in the orchard." He discusses apple varieties in terms of acid balance, tannin and "mouth feel."

Although Bradshaw's hard ciders have won national awards, he doesn't sell them; he just makes them for himself and his friends. What he sells is fermenting stock for the home-brewing market. Bradshaw notes that the market for making hard cider is smaller than that for beer or wine. People have the impression that cider is "sweet, fizzy woodchuck stuff."

Bradshaw blends his fermenting stocks from apples grown specifically for cider-making. To a base of domestic apples, he adds bittersweet or bitter sharp varieties like Foxwhelp, Ellis Bitter, Yarlington Mill, Chisel Jersey and Dabinett. Many of the varieties he uses, like Kingston Black – a dry, sharp, garnet-red British apple – are European.

"Old-timers throw a certain amount of crab apples into the mix," he says. He'll use them this year because the crop is so good. And he might add some wild roadside apples. "I can tell with my palate what's going to make decent cider," he says.

Bradshaw's own orchard, 28 dwarf trees and two rows of nursery stock that he grafted himself, is dedicated to varieties for cider-making, which he says are inedible. They are drier and sharper in flavor than table apples. He supplements the fruit from his orchard, which is just coming into production, with apples he buys from Vermont and New Hampshire growers. He uses only fresh, tree-picked fruit – no falls or fruit that has been in cold storage.

"The hard-cider movement goes back hundreds of years in Europe and even a couple hundred years in North America. My great-grandfather used to make cider and my grandfather used to make a barrel once in a while – he was a teetotaler, but he made it for the farm help," Bradshaw says. But now, "Most people have forgotten what cider is. When they think of cider, they think of something sweet and fizzy that comes in a six-pack and tastes like apple juice."

People ask Bradshaw why, since his work life is filled with apples, he has chosen cider-making as a hobby. He says he likes preserving the history and culture of the craft and, "I found a way to take the science of the thing I know how to do and turn it into an art."

Apple juice flows from the press through clear tubing and swirls around the walls of a 7-gallon glass jug as Bradshaw opens two bottles of fermented cider. "These are two very different styles, both European styles," he says. He pours the first into flute glasses for visitors. "This is a dry, British-style cider, bitter sharp." He aged it in his cellar for two years.

"This is completely different style," he says, pouring a sweet Norman dessert cider.

Bradshaw observes that cider-making is just beginning to find a following in this country; it's where the micro-brew movement was 25 years ago, after Jimmy Carter signed a bill legalizing home-brewing. "This is cheaper and easier than beer," Bradshaw says, watching the glass jug fill. "The home brewer can't make beer as good as you can buy. The cider-maker can make a product that you can't buy."

Re: PRESS RELEASE: Lost Meadow Cider Mill Opens September 22, 2007

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:12:00 +0000

Sylvia:

Thanks for the compliments. The website was initially put together in spare moments on baby leave a couple of winters ago. Anything new is easy to submit/tweak, although I don't do it as often as I should.

As for 'why cider', I guess it has allowed me to develop a unique form of art. My brother is a musician,I have friends who are athletes, and in this I found my thing. As an apple grower/researcher I help mainstream farmers figure out better ways to make a living. As a cidermaker I get to play out my strengths as a grower in a whole new field where my creativity is encouraged and, after a decade of messing around, rewarded. I also feel like I am keeping alive a culture that is all too easily forgotten. That culture includes not only the centuries-old European cider traditions, but also the more recent New England tradition of cidermaking. My great grandfather was known all over West Hill in Chelsea for his cider, even though he was nearly a teetotaler (he made it for friends and the help). Eventually I would like my orchard, when fully folded into the operation, to extend itself as a true community orchard, as we had in the middle of the last century.

So it's a combination of things; art, history, culture, even having a 'knack' for apples. Considering that I had no intention of any farming-type work while I was growing up (on a farm nonetheless) it was pretty cool to find unique trade, and it happened at a time in my life where a direction was needed. So the home cider operation I guess is my personal spin on this little path that life through me on. And I guess that it doesn't hurt that I like cider.

Thanks again, and see you Saturday?

Terry

Sylvia Fagin wrote:

>Hi Terry, thanks a ton for your time last week--I am piecing together the story and I am impressed by your extensive web site! When do you find the time for that, work, and child?
>
>Here's a question: Why the cider? What about making your own cider is so appealing that you've planted an orchard? Inquiring minds want to know.....
>
>Thanks,
>Sylvia
>
>
>

Knowing your 'market'

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:42:00 +0000

Recently the annual discussion of what defines 'real' cider, and
therefore a commercial cidery's target market, has come up on cider
digest. Well I'm not in the commercial (hard) cider business, but my
mill does sell juice. I look at the somewhat stagnant cider market as
similar to the homebrewing (beer) market in the early 80's. At that
time there were folks who wanted something different from what was
available commercially, and they took matters into their own hands to
make great beers and resurrect lost styles or even create new ones. I
aim to provide adventurous folks with the raw materials to do the same
with cider. My cidermaking blends are comprised of varieties
specifically designed to make a great fermented product. and with few
folks out there doing so I guess I am a bit of a pioneer in the field.
Yes, craft cider has has a resurgence in the past ten or so years, but
it's really taking its time due to many factors. One is the passing off
of rather crap industrial cider as the real thing. When a drinker
tastes Woodchuck, expecting a nuanced beverage, they are slapped with
the simplicity you will get when making 'cider' from glucose wine and
back-sweetened concentrate. My cider stock is a different thing, which
leads to another impediment to the development of a large home cider
movement- the quality of juice available to would-be cidermakers. In
this same past ten years the commercial juice scene has declined
dramatically after the Odwalla and other pathogen outbreaks to where
many orchards gave up their cider mills and many that do make juice run
under a separate operation using packinghouse culls of boring (from a
cider standpoint) dessert fruit. Again, I am offering a break from all
of that, and my blends tailored specifically to cidermaking provide the
base ingredients for a great cider. Add to that the seasonal nature of
the business, where if you miss it now you need to wait another full
year for the juice to come around again,and potential cider aficionados
can easily miss out.
So come on down to the mill this fall for your chance to get some juice
that is frankly hard to find and will set you up to make a great cider.
You won't regret it, even if you make a funky batch. Before long you'll
be hooked and will absolutely have to get your juice each fall. Hell,
you may even be crazy enough about to sink your cash into an orchard
and mill of your own, and I'll be begging for your juice.

TB

Vermont Life Plugs LostMeadow

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:53:00 +0000

SO the current issue of Vermont Life (Autumn 2007...who the hell calls it 'Autumn, anyway?) gives my little cider hobby a two-sentence plug, one of which is my recommendations of commercial ciders from Vermont. I guess the cider season, five weeks away now, is officially starting as I hoe through the garage transforming it from a place to park, then to stash stuff all summer, into a sanitary cider mill. Cider hounds go here to get the skinny, then email or call me to set up your squeezin's. 2007 is looking to be a 'vintage' cider year, so this will be a great season to start cidermaking or to continue your tradition. Since things are starting up, I'll be a lot more active on the cider blog as the coming weeks unfold, free time be damned...

Oh, and about those VT (hard) ciders I listed, somehow my mention of Mac Jack from Grandview Winery in my town got left out. My apologies.

TB

2007 Cider Mill Schedule

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:47:00 +0000

Cider Season 2007

All of my juice is unpasteurized. For more information on cider/food
safety go here.

Cider mill open weekends starting September 22 and going until
October 28.

Fresh juice will be available for pickup Saturday or Sunday 12:00-6:00
PM or until it's gone. Call or email for directions. Sorry, the mill is
not open to the public during operation.

I will also have my own vinegar for sale at the mill as well as the odd
bag of apples that I just didn't have the heart to put through the grinder.

Sweet Juice ('Cider')
I will be open six continuous weeks this year. Generally I do my
squeezing on Saturday morning and try to be cleaning up by the time I
'open' around noon. Sweet juice (unpasteurized 'cider') will be
available every weekend until it's gone. If you need juice and can't
catch me on weekends or want me to reserve some, give a shout and we'll
work something out [(802) 229-2004]. The price for all fresh cider on
these days is $5 per gallon, in my one-gallon jugs only. At this time I
will not fill your containers with fresh juice.

Fermenting stock ('Cidre')
I will be making cidremaker's blends on the last five weekends of the
season, at the end of the squeeze day. Varieties used will change with
the season; come a couple different times and compare the ciders you
make! Juice blends consist of a base, usually Liberty, Cortland, Gala,
or Golden (Delicious and Russet) and a bittersweet/sharp component such
as Foxwhelp, Ellis Bitter, Yarlington Mill, Chisel Jersey, Dabinett, and
even some local crabs. Blended cidre juice is $6 per gallon in /your
container only/. Carboys and other supplies can be had from Vermont
Homebrew Supply in Winooski, VT (802) 655-2070.
I strongly suggest getting reservations in to me ASAP for your blended
juice. While my sweet juice will ferment into cider, the special blends
tailored for cidermaking are the reason why I do this, and a much
superior product will come from it. I am sourcing my fruit now and will
need a little time to get everything lined up. And once the barrels are
empty, it will be a long wait until next year.

All cider apples are sourced from Vermont or New Hampshire orchards and
are tree picked, whole, sound fruit. The variety mix will change with
the season and I use only the freshest fruit available, not cold-storage
packing house cast-offs. The orchards I work with all follow modern
Integrated Pest Management protocols to ensure that their produce is
free of harmful residues and grown in an environmentally responsible manner.