#85 Cider

Janne asked me to pick up something she had ordered: an apple mill and a press. She had toyed with the idea of making cider. As usual, I didn’t know what she was planning. My brother, who was visiting, and I went to collect the stuff.

I had bought metal frames to serve as cabinets in our garage. We had a mess and I wanted to organize it. One day, Janne told me that the following day we’d go collect apples from somewhere. She missed the small detail that I needed to organize the garage first. I had to stay up (not happy) until past midnight putting together those frames and organizing the garage.

You should have realized by now that Janne was not into communicating her plans. I was learning to try to predict her next move though.

We collected those apples, ground them and pressed them to get several liters of juice. Janne had gotten some containers to ferment it. She had already learned the cider-making process on her own. Trevor is like this: he doesn’t tell me his plans until one day he calls me to see Saturn in his telescope. I felt and feel dumbfounded.

Janne was the brain and I was the brute force of our cider operation. We did it for several years. Janne tried small batches with different types of sugar or syrup to feed the yeast inside those bottles. She imported professional fermenting containers. I built a wooden rack to store bottles upside down to try to ferment them champagne-style. Janne ordered a bottle capper. Our high point was to bottle a few hundred ciders. We had dreams of getting to a point of doing proper disgorgement to remove sediments.

One year, we just stopped. Trevor and Daniel were old enough to require our total attention. Our kids were always first in our lives. We planned to continue making cider in the future. I still have those devices and containers in the garage. Even though I know the process, I wouldn’t do it without Janne.

We gave away our cider to many people, but I always kept my private batch of bottles. My favorite cider was where she used maple syrup to ferment it. I still have a few from several years ago. They are not good anymore, because cider expires in a couple of years. The love we put into them won’t.