Apple Cider Season!

I've never canned anything in my life, but we went apple picking last weekend and it was so much fun, we started exploring what we could do with lots and lots of apples. We decided to try our hands at making cider- I've been craving it for a month now and couldn't find any of the real stuff at the store, so it seemed perfect.

Today, we went out to our favorite local orchard and ended up picking 32 pounds of sweet, crisp apples- and it only cost us $18! We got a mixture of red delicious, Ida reds and another sweet, tangy variety we couldn't identify. Add those to our honeycrisps from last weekend, and we've got a great mix to play with!

According to several recipes I found online, all it takes is a big pot with about 4 inches of water in the bottom and cored and cut up apples, put on to boil until they're soft. I think we're going to add some spices to make the cider a little more seasonal and festive- maybe cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Then, once the apples are cooked, they are put through a colander to remove any big chunks and filtered (if desired) into jars. Seems simple enough...


Well, what appeared to be a relatively simple project actually turned out to take a few hours. I decided to start with 25 apples, just to get an idea for how much cider I'd get. 


After the apples were all cored and cut up, they filled my big pot about half way. They smelled amazing while they were cooking, especially after the cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves were added. 


The apples cooked for about an hour, which I've come to believe is too long. I ended up with apple mush, and it proved to be challenging to sift through the colander. I got about a gallon of cider from my 25 apples... and about half that amount of yummy-looking apple sauce! 

Next time, I'll be sure to have my canning supplies ready to go. As I said earlier, I've never canned a thing in my life, and I was really unprepared for what had to be done as soon as the cider was ready. 

All in all, I think our attempt at creating apple cider from scratch was successful. The pretty jars of pink beverage we ended up with will make great gifts for our families this Thanksgiving season! 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football Blanket Crochet Chart

Image
Here is the chart I worked off of for the football blanket... it is sized for a baby afghan, about 36 by 48 inches, but the chart can be easily modified to make it bigger. I worked the entire blanket in double crochet, and the white laces in the center were made with the tapestry stitch, in which the color not being used is carried across the top of the work and the stitches are made over it, concealing the color. Here's a pretty good tutorial for the tapestry stitch, although as I stated earlier, I did all double crochet for this project, but the concept is the same. For this particular blanket, I used five balls of Bernat Waverly yarn in brown, and almost a whole skein of Red Heart Super Saver in white for the lines and laces. I believe I used a size J hook, which made the project go nice and quick. Adjust the size of yarn and hook to fit your needs- everyone crochets differently! Happy crocheting! :) Update: if you love this football blanket, check out my football
Read more

Temperature Record Cross Stitch

Image
I tried telling people years ago that cross stitch was cool again... and I WAS RIGHT! Pay no attention to the random pet hairs... I'm in this crazy cross stitch group on Facebook that features non-traditional subject matter, from naughty words to feminist themes to potty humor and beyond. While I don't consider it my style to be crass or subversive, I do appreciate the modern approach to a very old craft that is normally associated with "grannies" (not that there's anything wrong with that, either). This group has introduced me to a variety of interesting new project ideas, including the concept of a temperature stitch. Essentially, each day's high and low temperature are recorded in different colored stitches to provide a really interesting visual of our climate and seasons. This whole idea has my head spinning around ways to physically represent climate change in artsy-crafty form by going through the last hundred years and stitching a huge collecti
Read more

Kaffe Fassett Jelly Roll Jam Quilt

Image
Here it is! I tried something new with this quilt, and I'm not sure I was 100% successful. The binding was unusual for me. I normally do the whole 2.5" strip, hand-sewn binding thing, but I wanted to try using the backing as the binding this time to keep it simple. I LOVE this backing fabric ; it's so soft, and it tied in so nicely with the color scheme of the Kaffe Fassett "Tides" jelly roll. I have noticed though, that this particular fabric shows a lot of poke holes, so be careful with pin placement and try to get your seams right the first time around. I worked really hard to turn my edges under nicely and pin well, at least every 2 inches. Unfortunately, as I kind of  suspected, some of the loose ends bulged out in between the pins as my presser foot went over them. Now that I've washed the quilt, I can see that I need to do some seam ripping to fix a lot of little peeks of batting and frayed edged. Sad face. I also noticed tha
Read more