Ciderfest

Pretty busy today, since I spent all of yesterday getting ready
for and going to the Boston Wort
Processors Ciderfest.

Normally I bottle the cyser from the previous year before the
Ciderfest, but this year I was lazy and didn’t. It isn’t usually
really ready to drink after only a year, anyway. So I have to
bottle that, and then put the cider I bought into carboys for this
year’s strange
fermented fluids.

I ended up roasting vegetables and putting them on a large
platter. I put some herbs and spices in the oil I brushed on them
before roasting. I had said I was bringing potato salad, but then
a lot of other people were saying they were bringing finger food,
and I thought that was a good idea, since most people don’t spend
all afternoon with a plate and fork in their hands, but they do
spend the afternoon with a drink in their hands, so being able to
eat finger food is important. But most people seem to have eaten
them with forks anyway.

Over half of what I brought were potatoes, but there were
slices of turnip, kohlrabi, fennel, daikon radish, and green
pepper, too.

The weather was perfect, and the setting in a field on the edge
of a pond was idyllic. One of the interesting tasting experiences
was that someone else had done what I did with last year’s cider,
and just dumped it in a carboy with a fermentation lock and let
the wild yeasts do their thing. The two beverages tasted
significantly different. Someone suggested the fermentation
temperatures may have been different. Or of course the local wild
yeasts may be different in Jamaica Plain than in Cambridge,
although you would expect the ones from the apple orchard to
overwhelm the interlopers from the apartment.