98
After three years in Spain,
we returned to Ontario. With
fresh eyes, we were astonished
by the bounty of local varieties of
Ontario apples. At that time, this
got us thinking: Why isn’t there
more Ontario cider available?
Naturally, this led to our first
attempts at homemade cider
using the simple recipe in Katz’s
book. Basically, this involved
exposing fresh, unpasteurized
apple juice to the air while
placing a piece of cheesecloth
over the opening of the bottle
to keep out unwelcome guests.
To our surprise, after a mere
nine days we had a low-alcohol,
un-carbonated apple cider that
tasted great.
Our backgrounds in science—
microbiolog y and cell biolog y—
helped in our quest to improve
the recipe through one key aspect
of the “experimental method”:
make one change at a time so that
you know whether it helped or
hindered the final product.
Along the way, there were a few
missteps, including one when
our friend invited us to scavenge
grounders (ripe apples that have
fallen) from abandoned apple
orchards. Excited to use these
heritage apples, we spent hours
juicing them; then, out of the
excitement or exhaustion, we
decided to add brewer’s yeast
rather than rely on wild yeast.
Can you spot the mistake? Yes,
too many changes at once. The
result? A sour, mouth-puckering
apple cider vinegar. While we did
bottle some, going forward we
focused on making smaller, more
measured improvements while
reading more advanced cider-
making guides.Sampling their creation at the source, Craig Daniels and Ben Pakuts crack
open a freshly fermented bottle of cherry chocolate bourbon cider.