The wild apple crop this year has been huge in Central New York, and it gave Matt and Juanita Critz, owners of Critz Farm and Harvest Moon Cidery in Cazenovia, an idea: Why not ask community members to bring in their wild apples and use those to make a Cazenovia “community” hard cider? Contributors could help press the apples, receive some free bottles of the finished product and even designate a local charity to receive apportion of the proceeds from bottle sales.
“Wild apples make really good hard ciders,” Matt said. “So we thought, if we can get a bunch of people to bring in a lot of apples from all different locations around the community, we’d get a really good cider.”
So the request is officially out: If you have wild apples on your property, any size, any kind, even those newly fallen to the ground (as long as they are not rotten), the Critzes hope you’ll bring them to their farm and participate in the cider-making process.
The Critzes have been making, bottling and selling their Harvest Moon Cidery label of hard cider for four years at their farm on Rippleton Road. They have thousands of trees growing more than a half-dozen types of apples, from which they currently produce nine different types of hard cider every year, along with their traditional sweet cider.
Harvest Moon makes its cider 300 gallons at a time (about 1,000 bottles), which equals about 100 bushels of apples, so that number is the goal for this community cider project, Matt said. Two five-gallon pails equal one bushel of apples, he said, and for every bushel contributed he will give one bottle of the finished cider.
“Some people just have lots of apples on their property they want to get rid of – we have 20-bushel boxes we’ll give out, along with a pallet, and if people bring them back with a truck we’ll unload them,” he said. There will be an apple bin beside the Critz’s cider mill where people can contribute apples, then sign their name and the amount of apples they brought in.
Since having contributed apples reduces the Critzes’ harvesting time and costs, they decided to donate 50 cents from the sale of every bottle to a local charity as designated by participants. The sign-in sheet will have a place to designate a charity, and the charity with the most votes will be the recipient, he said.
Critz said he hopes he can get at least half of the amount needed to make one batch of cider (50 bushels), but no matter how many contributed apples he gets he is committed to “fill in” the rest of the batch with his own apples and brew this community creation.
The cider “press” date for this project will be Sunday, Oct. 3, and the apple contribution bin will be out beside the cider mill during the previous week – that is when apples should be dropped off. “And anybody who feels so inclined to help us press, we’ll put an apron on them and put them to work,” he said. Even children can help in the process by sorting or raking apples, he said.
The recipe for the community cider will be the same one used for Harvest Moon’s “Four Screw” cider (which is made with a touch of maple syrup), but they will use a different yeast to give the cider its own unique flavor, he said. The finished bottle will have the Four Screw label, along with a secondary label that says, ”Cazenovia Community Cider.”
Making a good hard cider takes six months of fermenting time, so once the community cider is pressed on Oct. 3, it will age over the winter and be ready for release during the Critz Farm Apple Blossom Festival in May, he said.
Critz said he has no idea how this community cider idea will work, but he hopes people will participate. “And if it’s a success this year, we’ll do it again next year,” he said.
For more information about Critz Farms and Harvest Moon Cidery, visit critzfarms.com or harvestmooncidery.com, or call 662-3355.
