Yeah, it was more than I can pay for fresh pressed cider as Fort Wayne has a year-round cider house that makes their own hard ciders, and you can buy fresh pressed cider there too for $7 a gallon. But it was more the experience of it all, and that my dad and I picked several varieties of apples, and the 'deer apples' also had just a huge mix of groundfalls -- honeycrisp, and shit I don't remember all the apple types. We did talk to a farmer who bought into a $10,000 study with the university of Minnesota for a specific growing regime on Tangos. He couldn't sell any yet, he has to participate in the study for 5 years until the trees producing can be brought to market, but he shared an apple with us and it was the best Tango I've had. They have a specific regimen of fertilizing and care that he said is really a pain in the ass, but he's only 2 years in and the apples he's producing are great. It was a Tango that was very much like the best honeycrisps I've had, it was crispy, and juicy, and tart with a kick. At first it had a taste of McIntosh to it, then at the end each bite settled out to be like a more tart honeycrisp. The initial flavor of McIntosh was interesting and great though, it's a flavor I associate with apples that have pink veins running through the flesh. Whatever the UofM study is doing, it's developing some marvelous Sweet Tango's for market.Oldvine Zin wrote:HaHa Dresden and dammit cranky for getting us excited for our once a year fruit season!
So you spent a couple hours picking apples in the freezing rain, spent $12 for deer apples, and $4o to press them. So not counting your time the juice came out to $17ish a gal, it's hard to put a monetary value on what we do to make the best we can in this hobby. Ol Gooseeye was giving me shit for spending $8ish a gal, hard to put a price on homemade quality.
Good luck
OVZ
The cider from the pressing was a LOT sweeter than any 'normal' cider I've had, I think this is due to the windfalls being ripe fallen apples which continue to ripen on the ground, then get bunched and bagged together. The house smells like apple cider and wine, which I attribute to the blueberry backset and the alcohol developing in the wash. I can't wait to run it; I did save 24oz of the fresh wash, prior to yeast pitch, and then microwaved it to kill anything that was there from the groundfalls. This fresh wash will charge my thumper when I do the run; it's a process I had GREAT success with when I did my blueberry wash, the flavor that carries over into the distillate is amazing and so much better than just using fermented wash; I bolster these 'fresh wash' thump runs with 8oz of neutral or flavored vodka where possible (for the blueberry it was 8oz of blueberry Smirnoff). I think I will bolster this apple-blueberry thump charge with some of my blueberry brandy that's just 2 weeks old atm, and some of my apple brandy. Just can't wait to cook this apple-blueberry!
Yeah, Cranky, you got me infected with the bug! I saw the first lone tree with apples still on it and made my dad turn the car around, we have memories though that will be 'distilled' in the final brandy and will make it so much the better because of the story behind it.
Also got a bottle up there, there are LOTS of wineries. One of them makes several brandies, and a hard cider. Well, they had a product that was their oak-aged apple brandy, cut with their hard cider, and blended with their own maple syrup and some ice wine. It is one of the most marvelously delicious 'commercial' products I've ever had!
Cranky - what's going on in that photo of the plum tree??
Laughed reading that, can relate I guess, would have done exactly the same.
I hate that question because I don't like Honeycrisps. I don't think they are very good, they tend to lack flavor, they aren't very sweet, they are too acidic and around here far too big...seriously the smallest one I could find weighed 1/2 a pound 
