White - Apples to Cider

How to make cider at home

APRIL WHITE
with STEPHEN WOOD of Farnum Hill Ciders

2015 by Quarry Books

First published in the United States of America in 2015 by
Quarry Books, a member of
Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.
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Digital edition published in 2015

Digital edition: 978-1-62788-253-8
Softcover edition: 978-1-59253-918-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Cover and Book Design: Laura McFadden
Page Layout: tabula rasa graphic design

In memory of Terry Maloney of West County Cider, Colrain, Massachusetts

Cider is nothing more than apples, fermented. It seems simple, until you taste the end result of the fermentation. Good cider, like good wine, starts with good fruit. The fermentation process brings forward the hidden aromas, tastes, and sensations of those apples. When blended and fermented, the most celebrated cider applesoften called inediblereveal flavors such as apricot, black tea, honey, and pine. These flavors balanced with acidity, astringency, and bitterness, create a combination that has made cider a popular drink for centuries.

Cidermaking, too, seems simple. The basic process is straightforward. It requires minimal ingredients and equipment, most readily available from home wine or brewing supply shops. It requires minimal space, making it a manageable at-home project. But good cidermaking also requires patience, persistence, and practice.

The crew behind Poverty Lane Orchards and Farnum Hill Ciders has been making still and sparkling ciders for two decades. It is a learning process, even after hundreds of batches. In that time, they have also watched the apple and cider industries change, and an interest in well-made cider and home cidermaking grow. In this book, they share their years of experience and the philosophy of cidermaking they have developed: For these cidermakers, the cidermaking process begins with the apple.

The seeds of Farnum Hill Ciders were sown in the 1960s, when Poverty Lane Orchards was planted on the site of a former dairy farm. Its northern New Hampshire hills were planted with McIntosh and Cortland, then two of the leading varieties of wholesale apples. Stephen Wood was introduced to apple farming in 1965. He was eleven years old when his father and a partner purchased the farm. No one was thinking about cidermaking at Poverty Lane Orchards then, at least not beyond the occasional barrel of New Englandstyle cider fermenting haphazardly over the winter.

Few people were thinking about cidermaking anywhere at the time. The popularity of cider in the United States had waned with Prohibition almost five decades earlier, and taste for cider in traditional cidermaking regions throughout Europe was declining, too.

When Wood began to manage the farm in the late 1970s the focus was still on packing classic New England apples for sale throughout the region, but the apple industry was changing rapidly. Imported fruit began to arriveshiny Red Delicious apples from the West Coast and tart Granny Smiths from South Americareducing demand for Cortlands and McIntosh. Wood needed a way to distinguish Poverty Lane Orchards in the now-crowded apple market. In thinking about the future of the orchard, he looked to the past, to many nearly forgotten varieties of heirloom eating apples and to the inedible varieties traditional in Europes main cider apple-growing regions. Those inedible apples were part of the continents long cidermaking tradition.

In travels through England in the 1980s, Wood met the cidermakers behind many of the countrys storied ciders and learned from them. He began experimenting with growing traditional European cider apples in New England, at first dedicating just 5 acres (2 ha) of the then90-acre (36 ha) orchard to the unheard of idea of modern American cider, and he began experimenting with cidermaking techniques. Some of that early cider was tasty. Some was terrible. But by the mid-1990s, Poverty Lane Orchards was turning those inedible European apples with obscure names such as Dabinett, Medaille dOr, Kingston Black, and Stoke Red into delicious Farnum Hill Ciders.

For Wood, cidermaker Nicole LeGrand Leibon, and the rest of the crew behind Farnum Hill Ciders, cider is all about the apple. A cidermakers responsibility is to coax the best from the fruit without unnecessary additives or techniques that would obscure the apple. The Farnum Hill Ciders still cidermaking process, outlined in , is a largely hands-off one. A cidermakers main task is to find the best apple juice available and provide good conditions for fermentation to occur.

Finding high-quality apple juice for cidermaking has long been a challenge, but as more people become cidermakerscommercial or hobbyistmore orchards are cultivating cider apples to meet the demand.

As interest in cidermaking and, even more importantly, cider drinking has increased, Poverty Lane Orchards has found like-minded commercial and home cidermakers in diverse apple-growing regions. Cidermakers such as E.Z. Orchards, Eves Cidery, and Eden Orchards share the Farnum Hill Ciders philosophy, while making very different ciders. (Their cidermaking processes for cidre, mthode champenoise, and ice cider are outlined in .)