A few weeks ago I was chatting with a friend about apple-booze-making, something near and dear to my heart, and I learned that he had out-produced me in volume this past year. And I made a lot. It was immediately clear to me that we would have to get together to do a tasting of our products to check them … Read More
Traditional Cider Win
Success, right out of the gates. I’m pleased. It’s probably worth mentioning that I wouldn’t call myself a big cider lover. I haven’t minded the stuff, but it’s taken a while to take a shine to it. So why bother then? I’ve been making apple wines, and although I enjoy them, some variety in the form of carbonation would be … Read More
2011 Traditional Cider Bottling
One of the things that keeps me blogging is the lack of information about certain topics available online – and this is one of those. There is oodles of information, youtube videos, and so on for still cider and even moreso bubbly cider achieved by fermenting dry then priming with sugar for carbonation, none of which I wanted to make. … Read More
I’m So Over You, 2011 Apple Crush.
There has been an inverse relationship between my activity with food and my number of posts lately – ie, I’ve been so busy harvesting and processing fruit and veg that there’s really not much time left to write. But I believe I’ve turned a corner. Apple crush is over. Last year I crushed and pressed about 1000 lbs of urban … Read More
Normandy, Part 2: Apple Booze
[Part 1 is here]. Over lunch yesterday it came up that some of the calvados I was tasting in Normandy was 40 years or older, the oldest specific vintage being a 1969 Dupont. That would be very unusual in the wine world, and highlighted one of the fantastic things about spirits vs. wine: shelf stability. Opening a bottle of 1969 … Read More
Normandy, Part 1: How They Do Things
I’m back. Not surprisingly, Normandy was quite the beautiful adventure. I was there to educate my palate, learn some methodology in cider and calvados production, and most importantly to glean from their centuries-old apple food culture. I live in a place of copious amounts of largely wasted urban apples, with a brand-newly emerging scene surrounding how to save them and … Read More
Frontenac Vintage Update
My relationship with wine grapes is a complex one. I did piles of research a few years ago to be well prepped for the potential day in the future that I would have wine grapes in my very own back yard. I since have become a believer in the apple culture we live in here, and am heading to Normandy … Read More
Cherry Rescue Marathon
Cherries needed rescuing – about 300 lbs of them. So I made it happen. For those of you that don’t know, Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton [OFRE, pronounced ‘offer’] is an organization that aligns folks with a yard full of fruit they can’t use and/or don’t want to pick with volunteers that are willing to pick it and put it to … Read More
Evans Cherries
I’m sorry BC cherry growers, you can keep your bings. I was a newbie to Evans cherries last year when Mary Ellen and Andreas from Green Eggs & Ham mentioned we could help ourselves to their trees after volunteering to do some weeding and carrot harvesting, as they were too slammed with other harvest work to bother getting to them. … Read More