For those of you following along you are probably expecting a bit of an update. And rightly so. We've been hard at work pressing apples each weekend and have got a few tanks filled up. Here is your official Whitewood Cider Fall Pressing Update.
As you can see by the photos below we've been hard at work since October. Most of you may know I'm still enjoying the delights my day job at Espresso Parts, which means most of this has been done over the weekends. It's been a chore, and a learning experience, but I wouldn't do it any differently at this point. I also need to see that it would have been very difficult to make things go down like they have without the help of my brother Ryan. Thanks man!
Crushin' and Pressin'. This is the future 300 gallons of our local Olympia apple blend.
Our local apple blend being pressed.
Receiving our cider varieties.
In this picture should be Yarlington Mill, Dabinett, Brown's Apple, and Harry Masters Jersey.
8 of 10 bins snug in their cooler.
Pictured: 2) 300 gallon tanks of cider... At Whitewood Cider Co.
The tank on the left is 300 gallons of Yarlington Mill, Dabinett, and Brown's Apple cider apple varieties. It'll be our cider variety base blend #1 and if all goes well will likely be a pretty fantastic cider as is, no blending required. However we may do some slight blend tweaking between now and late Spring when it is finished. It all depends on what the cider tells us it wants.
The tank on the right is 300 gallons of our local Olympia
blend made from apples within a 20 mile radius of Olympia. Give or
take. Some of these apples came from a ranch in Yelm. I've got my
fingers crossed that this is going to be a great cider without much
tinkering. However should it need a bit of minimal adjustments it might
just get it, but it will be minimal. I'd like to keep this as pure
Olympia as I can. I'll be posting more about where these apples came from is future posts. Stay tuned.
Not Pictured:
240 gallons of pure Gravenstein cider from the Yakima Valley. I'm curious about this cider. In my experience Gravensteins make a terrific cider nearly on their own as a single varietal. So we may release a single varietal Gravenstein cider. However this could end up the base for an American heirloom apple blend using the ciders that follow.
We have a couple remaining smaller batches cooking too. 1) 80 Gallion tank with Macintosh and Jonathan heirloom apple varieties. 2) 80 gallon tank with Jonathans and a smattering of English cider varieties we picked up early.