willis has been talking about re-blogging for awhile now. it's been over a year since our last posting at treestarmansion. we're hoping to share stories about our experiences in home-ownership, experiments in the kitchen, and expeditions in the great outdoors.
i'm dedicating this first post to courtney and nick (our good friends who recently moved to portland from north carolina) and to making hard cider.
it all started a few weeks ago when nick and courtney invited us over for dinner. while touring their new home and garden, we noticed some...ok a lot of apples in the alleyway behind their home. we decided to gather some after dinner. after dinner turned into after dinner plus hours of talking. we ended up in the dark alley with flashlights picking whatever ones we could salvage off the ground and we brainstormed about making hard cider.
within a week, willis and i had gathered more apples from my oldest sister's backyard and courtney and nick gathered whatever they could find from trees they noticed around their neighborhood. they purchased a few supplemental apples and we rented a cider press from let's brew.
last saturday, we met at our house and got to work:
we started by washing, chopping and pureeing all the apples. this took forever. we also realized we needed more than the 50 lbs. we had already gathered, so courtney went to gather more apples from around our neighborhood (and pick up some pizza and beer to keep us going through the evening). after several ours, we finally got through all the apples and began to press.
we ended up with 4.5 gallons of cider.
next, we moved inside to heat the juice, add in the yeast, and secure the airlock.
the cider is patiently waiting in the basement for the next few weeks...
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