It’s always satisfying when one does something for the first time and it goes without a hitch. When it came time to press my apples for juice, I knew I wanted to ferment most of it into cider so it would keep longer. But when I tried to locate the instructions for doing so online, I discovered a lot of websites advising me to wash off all of my apples’ natural yeasts and introduce champagne yeast instead. Given that people were making cider for millennia before fancy packaged yeast became commercially available, I knew that this was both overcomplicated and plain wrong. So I kept searching and eventually found a site written by a woman with a small backyard orchard who gave me what I was looking for: yes, there are already sufficient yeasts on the skin of raw apples to cause fermentation. So after pressing my crop into juice, I simply filtered the debris out and put the juice into a clean glass carboy (like the one in the picture), put in a stopper fitted with an air lock, and placed it in the cool, dark pantry under the stairs. The air lock allows the carbon dioxide produced by fermentation to escape without letting air in, and as the alcohol content of the cider increased it killed off any other bacteria that might be present. After nearly two months, I decided on Thanksgiving that it was time to check out the results; since the foam seemed to have died down, I filtered the cider through cheesecloth to remove the top foam and precipitates, and transferred the result into a clean carboy. The result? A perfect balance of sweet and tart, with an alcohol content so smooth it didn’t even make my nose wrinkle up. I had a big glass with my Thanksgiving dinner, and another the next day with leftovers; there is still some slight fermentation going on, because there’s a satisfying hiss of escaping gas when I unscrew the top. My family likes it so much, I’m afraid it won’t last long. But I bought a set of four carboys, so next year I’ll gather a lot more apples and make four times as much!
Diary #544
December 1, 2020 by Maggie McNeill
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Two things. 1).. If you use the “removed the top foam and precipitates” and place them with water, and sugar in a 2 litre bottle which has a piece of plastic sealed tightly with only a paperclip hole for venting, you will have a starter that can be used to quickly make more cider or probiotic. it can reduce the time to 2 or 3 weeks. 2)… have been reading (&Tedx) more about the plight of sex workers and decriminalization seems like the best answer. and very timely Have you ever considered starting petitions on change.org and send them to state legislatures to make it safer and better for the workers?
Congratulations!
This is something really surprising to me. Instead of actually giving you more and easier access to information, sometimes the whole Internet tells you the same thing and decidedly not the whole story. It cannot be censorship. It seems to be some human limitation in wanting to conform or some effect the search-engines have, maybe both. Fortunately, when you dig you usually find the whole story, but it can take time and it requires you to have a suspicion.
The filter cake (the foam and precipates gathered in the cheesecloth) can be the basis for some tasty fried cakes sometimes called “hushpuppies”. I’ve seen this done after various fermentations, teas, berries, and other fruits. Result will always be different, but tasty.
Take the filter cake (which is sometimes more solid and sometimes more runny or gloppy) and blend with some large granular and inherently tasty form of starch such as corn meal. Blend in starch until you can squeeze a golf ball or slightly larger sized handful and it will hold its form when released.
Too small handful will cook crispy all the way through. Too large a handful will not cook thoroughly at the center. Golf ball is a good size to start with.
Make a bunch of those handfuls and drop them into a deep fryer until browned on the outside. Lift the fryer basket and drain thoroughly. Once cooled to palatable temperature, the hushpuppies are ready to eat.
Variations depend on what happens to be available in the kitchen at the time. Corn meal or oat meal works fine. Throwing one or more eggs into the mix can work well and add more flavor. Just make sure the meal gets soaked well when blending it with the filter cake.