FOOD LOVER'S GUIDE TO PORTLAND

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Buy now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble,Powell's Books, IndieBound or from yourfavorite local bookstore. If you're abookseller check out PGW. Food Lover's Guide to Portland is my2010 book from Sasquatch Books. This blogis a collection of some of the research,recipes, images and culinary adventures thatwent into it. I started the blog in February2009 as a companion piece to the book andto help organize my thoughts whileresearching and writing it. I didn't think I'dlike blogging but it turns out I really do. I'mcurrently working on the Toro BravoCookbook due out in 2013.

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Hard Cider Pressing with NatDecember 27th, 2010

Nat sorting through one of the last Newtown Pippin apple bins.

In early December I got to help out a friend with the last cider press of the appleseason. Our friend Nat West has been crafting his own cider and hard cider for afew years now from gleaned, traded and orchard picked local apples and thisyear was the biggest. He thinks his total apple haul this year clocks in at about5,800 pounds, which translates to roughly 500 gallons of cider.

This year’s apples included a mix of Newtown Pippins, Lady, Jonagold,

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This year’s apples included a mix of Newtown Pippins, Lady, Jonagold,Kingston Black, Yarlington Mill, Brown’s Apple, Hereford Redstreak plusabout 1,000 pounds of mixed varieties gleaned from various local spots. I helpedout with the last of the Newtown Pippins — about 250-300 pounds.

The agreement was (and is with a lot of Nat’s friends) that in exchange forhelping out for a shift of apple milling and pressing I’d get to take home a carboyof that day’s cider. I thought that sounded great and I was really happy to get towork with and learn more about Nat’s awesome set-up.

Basically, Nat mills his apples with a retrofitted garbage disposal and pressesthem with a hydraulic press in his garage. Apples are stored and rinsed in binsand buckets in the driveway and once the juice is pressed it’s kept in 55-gallondrums in the basement during fermentation and then stored largely in kegs. Natlets his cider go anywhere from six to eight months.

Nat doesn’t sell his cider he just drinks it and trades with it. Really good stuff.Here are some photos…

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Nat rinsing the apples before I put them through the apple mill aka retrofittedgarbage disposal in the garage.

I filled bucket after bucket with apple pumace shown here. It oxidizes prettyquickly while in queue for the press.

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Nat's awesome hydraulic cider press.

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Nat's awesome hydraulic cider press.

Hard cider fermenting in the basement in 55-gallon food grade barrel.

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Most of Nat's cider goes directly into kegs but he bottles some for friends.

Read about my cherry wine here.

Ready about my plum wine here.

Read about my dandelion wine here.

2 Responses to “Hard Cider Pressing with Nat”

1. Camp Says: December 29th, 2010 at 1:20 pm

This is Camp West, Nat’s brother in law. Glad I finally got to see how theoperation works. Good job Nat!

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2. Liz Crain Says: December 29th, 2010 at 2:59 pm

Hey Camp. Yeah, it’s pretty dang impressive. We froze our asses off thatday. It’s crazy for me to think that what we did that day was less than 5%of all the cider pressing Nat did this season mostly on his own. Go Nat!

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