When Matt and Juanita Critz, owners of Critz Farm and the Harvest Moon Cidery on Rippleton Road, decided to invite the public to contribute wild apples to help make a new “Community Cider” by Harvest Moon, they were hoping at least a few people might find it interesting and participate. Their goal was to receive at least 50 bushels of apples, which is half of what is necessary to make one batch of hard cider, and if their collection fell a little — or a lot — short, they would just use their own apples to fill in what was needed.
On Sunday, Oct.4, the final day of the weeklong community apple collection project they were doing, the Critzes were somewhat surprised to find they did not make their goal – they quadrupled it.
“We are thrilled with the success of the Community Cider project,” said Juanita. “The variety of different apples was really interesting and we are very excited to see how the community cider turns out.”
The community cider project, announced in early September, was created due to the unusually large wild apple crop in Central New York this year, according to Matt. The Critzes thought: 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 at the time. “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.”
The Critzes said they had 35 families and groups contributing anywhere from one to 30 bushels of apples for a total of about 200 bushels collected. This should be enough for two, 200-gallon batches of cider, or approximately 2,000 bottles.
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. The finished bottle will have the Four Screw label, along with a secondary label that says, “Cazenovia Community Cider.”
The sales from the Community Cider will benefit not one, but three local charities, Juanita said. Based on the input from the community contributors, half of the 50-cents-per-bottle donation will go to Clear Path for Veterans, and the other half will be split between Friends of Lorenzo and Caz Cares, she said.
Now that the community apples have been received and pressed, the cider will age over the winter and be ready for release during the Critz Farm Apple Blossom Festival in May.
The community cider project received such an overwhelming response that the Critzes have said they will “definitely” do it again.
“We are delighted with how responsive the community was. Depending on what the wild apple crop looks like, we would do it again next year, or wait a year in between.” Juanita said. “In any case, we look forward to bringing the 2015 Community Cider to market in May 2016.”
