Miracle of Doing Nothing: Making Cider Vinegar

Sometimes it's better to just do nothing at all. That's what I did when a dinner guest commented, "Ew! Gross!"

And when my daughter sneered, "Mama! It's different!"

Friends and family members, including Alex, regarded the open jar of smelly cider with raised eyebrows and pinched noses. I maintained that I was following the vinegar recipe: pour fresh raw apple cider in a jar, cover with an air permeable top, and set it aside for months.

Wouldn't you know, when I pushed the 'mother' aside with a spoon on Sunday, the underlying clear tan liquid smelled and tasted exactly like cider vinegar! What an amazingly simple homesteading success!

Science says that natural yeast in our home pressed cider converted the sugars to alcohol. Natural bacteria then fermented the alcohol to acetic acid, or vinegar.

To store and use the vinegar, I removed the mother and strained out the flocculate, i.e. yeast poopies. I poured the vinegar into a vintage blue Ball jar and it's ready for salad dressing, mayonnaise, soups, and sauces.

Sometimes doing nothing turns into something amazing.

Added to Simple Lives Thursday 27.

Cider Pressing

Our cider press has seen lots of action since we acquired it a month ago. Here is what it produced so far:

October 26 - 1 liter pear cider

November 6 - 1.5 gallons winesap cider, 1 gallon gold rush cider + lots of tastes consumed at our Cider Pressing Party

November 21 - 5.75 gallons winesap cider, 1/2 gallon pomegranate cider

We still have seven bags of winesap apples, some gold rush apples if we aren't able to keep them fresh, and several odds and ends amounts from friends left to press.

Some of the juice, including the four gallons I'm hugging at left, is bubbling away in fermentation vessels to make hard apple cider. The pear cider matched with sierra nevada yeast produced a lovely sweet perry that we shared with family this weekend.

Some people get excited about the stock market or political news or the latest car. We are hot for home pressed cider and the resulting fermented products.

Cider Press!

Meet the newest tool in the hand-powered arsenal at Hounds in the Kitchen:

A cider press!

Charlie of Windy Hill Apple Farm had this press on display with a for-sale sign the last time we visited.  I immediately recognized it as a well maintained machine for a good price.

We debated for a few days about whether we need a press when: 1) we have no apple tress, 2) even if we moved to a farm tomorrow it would be years before we would have producing apple trees and 3) how exactly do you use a cider press?

The debate ended when casual mentions of the press for sale were greeted with friends and family strongly encouraging us to buy it and offering up apples ready for cider-making this season.

Today the cider press is ours.  We immediately tested it with some very squishy pears, yielding a quart of juice.  Not enjoying the taste of the overripe fruit, we poured it into a jug with a fermentation lock to make some pear hooch.  We are determined to master the making of hard cider, as any good pioneer would be.

Soon, bags of apples will be turned into gallons of cider by the power of the screw and our very own hands.  We may host a cider-making day once we figure out what we're doing.  We will definitely accept sharing or renting arrangements for those of you with excess fruit.

"Give me yesterday's Bread, this Day's Flesh, and last Year's Cyder." Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) 'Poor Richard's Almanac'

Added to Hearth and Soul blog hop.