I found a great website from a nursery down in California. They have about 29 European apple trees and bench grafts for anyone who is interested in planting their own trees for experimenting.
Here is a link to the site: http://www.greenmantlenursery.com/fruit/apple-cider.htm
For those interested in experimenting with both sweet and hard apple cider, you can check out another site that offers cider pressing equipment and accessories. Even with homemade cider making equipment you can easily make 25 to 50 gallons of cider in a given day. This tends to be more than enough cider for enjoying right away (sweet) and also using some to ferment for hard cider.
After a successful season of making sweet and hard cider, I have planted six cider trees in our mini-orchard in central Washington State. I purchased these trees from three local nurseries: The Raintree nursery, online at: (http://www.raintreenursery.com/catalog/producttype.cfm?producttype=Apples%2DCider
the Burntridge nursery online at:
http://www.burntridgenursery.com/products.asp?dept=12&pagenumber=1&sort_on=number&sort_by=ASC
and the C & O Nursery online at:
http://www.c-onursery.com/
These trees were: Ashmead’s Kernal, Esopus Spitzenberg, Golden Russet, Harry Master’s Jersey, Muscadet de Dieppe, & Newtown Pippin. It will take a couple of years before I can count on their production in my apple blend. Until then I’ll continue to buy cider apples from a few local orchards.
As you note, I too have found cider making to be fun, participatory and exploratory! Cheers!!
Thanks for the note! I will look these nursery’s up next year when I plant a few trees myself.
Can you give me some guidance on making hard cider? Up until this point I’ve only pressed fresh cider, but am looking to expand. I really enjoy the flavors of a Hornsby hard cider rather than the drier champagne flavors. Any guidance on what sort of cider apples will yield a sweeter and apple flavored hard cider?
While having made wine on and off since 1978, the apple/pear cider (sweet & hard) has only been a focus since 2008. Lucky for us, the Washington State University Research Center in Mount Vernon has been researching which cider apple trees seen to do best in Western Washington since about 2004. The latest copy of their detailed annual reports is available online at: http://maritimefruit.wsu.edu/Cider07.html
And I have found a number of excellent books on cider making. Since all of us learn & interact with different authors, I choose to read all I could get my hands on,….to see what I could learn before launching myself into cider making. If you are interested, send me an email and I’ll send you a list of these books. Also if you could tell me what level of detail would be the most helpful, and I be happy to respond concering what worked for us.
Last fall after several cider squeezing parties at our vacation home near Lake Chelan, my wife and I started 5 gallons of dry and 5 gallons of sweeter hard cider. They both turned out fairly good. Now I have 5 gallons of hard pear cider (“Perry”) working in our shoreline kitchen. And this being the being of cider season, we are hosting several cider squeezes on weekends this month.
Cheers,
Carl
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