So what could one possibly do with 300-400lbs of apples from your yard – or perhaps your neighbor’s yard?! How much apple sauce or apple pie does one need? I propose the following solution: wine. My current estimate is that it takes about an hour to convert 100 lbs of apples into a carboy of juice – or about 2 … Read More
Apple Harvest 2010: Round One
Good things come to those who ask. This spring, I was picking up some kijiji-found-cinder-blocks, and the folks who had the blocks happened to have inherited a city lot with an INSANE amount of fruit trees on it. So I asked. And today I received. A few hundred pounds of apples, which dented about 3/4 of one of their trees … Read More
Lawn Converted Into Food
Over the past few years I’ve watched a few hundred episodes of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV, and am a regular commenter there. Recently, I’ve been enamored with Daniel Klein’s ‘Perennial Plate‘ project about eating locally in Minnesota. So recently I had a bit of a ‘duh…’ moment, realizing that I had the gear to do some video blogging myself, … Read More
Apple Wine Vinegar Do-Over
Okay, I got impatient with cider vinegar attempt #1, and am moving on to attempt #2. Attempt 1 ended in a white sludgy deposit a the bottom, with no trace of anything positively vinegar related. This time, I’ve got some help. Bragg sells organic cider vinegar containing mother [says so right on the bottle]. Others have had good success with … Read More
Apple Blossom Time – a new vintage begins
Never in a million years did I think I’d be deeply connected to apples blossoming. Never. But a strange journey happened. My perhaps-slightly-out-of-balance-lust for wine and wine knowledge [I’m moderating out of that phase, honest] led to trying to grow wine grapes in a marginal climate. Which led to lots of research about growing grapes, as that’s how I roll. … Read More
Apple Cider Vinegar, Day 1
One of the benefits of cider making [/winemaking] is the opportunity to produce high-quality, negligible cost and effort vinegar. The last batch of vinegar I made was apparently back in 2007, and I recall it being a painless process. Except for maybe the lingering smell. Now I have more space, so I can choose a more appropriate location for the … Read More