Wall Mounted Bottle Opener

We were staying at a little hotel when I discovered it had a wall mounted bottle opener in the bathroom. I loved the idea. I asked the hotel where they had gotten them, but apparently the hotel had changed owners since they were installed and did not know.

When I got home, I was looking at a home brew supply store catalog and noticed they had one of these. Since then, I’ve found out that about all home brew supply stores sell them for $5 each, along with a little bucket to catch the bottle caps in for an additional fee.

I talked my husband into buying two of them, and then proceeded to install one of them in the kitchen next to the refrigerator. You hardly notice it is there, and it is so handy. We were visiting his parents, and his mother was trying to find a bottle opener in her kitchen drawers, and I was thinking, “I don’t have to do that in my home anymore because it is right there on the wall!” My husband can’t believe how lucky he is to have married a woman who has no problem mounting a bottle opener in the kitchen.

We put the second one out in the garage near the door into the house, as we have a small apartment refrigerator out there full of beer and cider. That location would provide us with an opportunity to open our drinks before going inside, or even if we didn’t. However, this location really needs a bucket to catch the caps. Inside, the bucket would have been a little too big, would have stuck out, been noticeable, and possibly even prevent the refrigerator door from opening wide enough. In the house, our trash can is two steps away, so it is very easy to deal with the cap. But out in the garage, the opener is kind of in a bad spot for opening and catching the caps, so the caps get lost in and under the stuff piled by the door, and if you did catch it, the garbage can is a ways away. The wall mounted bucket would look great there and be highly functional for our needs.

Reusing Bottles?

As a home brewer, I have choices when it comes to bottling. I can buy empty bottles from my local homebrew store, fill them, drink them, and have empty bottles to reuse. Actually, my husband recently bought a box of Costco beer because it was just a few dollars more than buying empty bottles, plus he got some beer out of the deal. Now all my family members are saving up bottles for us to use, and it is great.

I had this business idea that if I got my cidery/winery up and running, I would offer my customers a coupon if they brought my bottles back. The coupon would be good towards their next purchase in my store, and I don’t have to pay as much to get bottles.

Problem is, it may not be technically legal. There are worries that the bottles would be chipped and I wouldn’t know it, and therefore put glass into the beverage and hurt the drinker. In this day of paranoia, there is also the worry that some customer would poison the bottle with a chemical that my washing techniques would not be able to get rid of. These are all things that would make it so that I couldn’t offer coupons to reuse bottles.

Or is it? There is a new company in California called Wine Bottle Recycling who are collecting bottles, cleaning them up, and reselling them. Doing their research, they found that seven out of every ten bottles ended up in landfills, and the energy it took to melt the glass and reform it was the same as making a new bottle, just not using any sand, so there was really very little benefit to recycling bottles. However, with their system of making bottles reusable, energy is saved. This program could open the doors for me to act on my coupon idea.

For more information on Wine Bottle Recycling, read: http://www.bohemian.com/bohemian/01.06.10/eats-1001.html

A Cidery's Desire to Distill for Pommeau

Wandering Aengus Ciderworks produces a dessert drink Pommeau. Ben Watson’s Cider Hard and Sweet describes Pommeau as a Calvados or clear apple brandy blended with fresh sweet cider to produce a lightly sweet, reddish amber liqueur around 16-18% alcohol by volume. Wandering Aengus Ciderworks describes their Pommeau as:

“Pommeau is a unique apple dessert wine. Select heirloom cider apple varieties were fermented and then distilled. The resulting apple brandy, after aged 5 years in oak, was expertly blended with fresh juice from cider apples that offer diverse character - those with a wealth of tannins and those with plentiful sugars. Pommeau is a delicately sweet, surprisingly smooth, aromatic wine with an incredible brandy essence. Serve chilled or warm and enjoy as an aperitif, a dessert or with a meal. Production of only 100 cases every other year.”

In a way, this is very much like a Port Wine or Sherry, which is wine fortified with, or has added, grape brandy, but in this case, they are using apple juice and apple brandy.

When I was at Wandering Aengus Ciderworks after Thanksgiving, they were almost sold out. I asked them about Clear Creek Distillery, to which they responded that, yes, they did get the brandy from Clear Creek Distillery. However, it was a small custom batch that they requested, so it was quite expensive, which could help explain the $45 a bottle price tag. Wandering Aengus Ciderworks instead expressed interest in obtaining their own distilling and license. They went on to explain that most large wineries blend all their wine from all the barrels together before bottling, but some barrels may have contained a slightly inferior wine. Rather than toss the wine, the makers blend it in with the other wine to keep the volume up believing that such a small amount would not affect the overall quality. What Wandering Aengus Ciderworks hopes to do is take their slightly inferior batches and distill them to make the Pommeau. This allows them to better control cider quality, find a use for slightly inferior cider, keep all of the production at their facility, and lower costs on the Pommeau. I say it sounds like a good idea.

One more thing I should note is that Watson does say it is easy to produce your own Pommeau by taking some fresh sweet cider, and add either cider brandy or clear apple eau-de-vie. He does caution about adding too much brandy, as the higher alcohol content will mask the fruit flavors, while not enough brandy might allow raw sweet cider to start fermenting unless it is treated.

Making Alcohol Legally

After saying yesterday that it is illegal to distill without a license, I want to clarify the law when it comes to brewing wine, beer, and cider. Cider: Making, Using, & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider by Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols devoted a whole chapter to this topic. Basically, under Federal legislation enacted in 1979:

(A) EXEMPTOIN. – Any adult may, without payment of tax, produce wine for personal or family use and not for sale.

(B) LIMITATION. – The aggregate amount of wine exempt from tax under this paragraph with respect to any household shall not exceed -

(i) 200 gallons per calendar year if there are two or more adults in such household, or

(ii) 100 gallons per calendar year if there is only one adult in such household.

(C) ADULTS. – For purposes of this paragraph, the term ‘adult’ means any individual who has attained eighteen years of age, or the minimum age (if any) established by law applicable in the locality in which the household is situated at which wine may be sold to individuals, whichever is greater.

Proulx and Nichols quoted Jerry Bowerman, chef, Wine, Beer, and Spirits Regulations Branch, Department of Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms as saying, “there are no provisions in law or regulations for a period to cover the production of distilled spirits for personal consumption.” He continues:

“A person who desires to produce distilled spirit must qualify as a distilled spirit plant proprietor prior to commencing actual production. Among the requirements prescribed in Code of Federal Regulations, Title 27 CFR, Part 19, Subparts F, G, and H, qualifications would entail the submission and approval of applications for registration as a distilled spirits plant and for an operating permit to cover the various activities to be conducted, the registration of all stills, preparation of a plat, plans, and flow diagrams, filing of bonds and consent of surety, and installation of security devices such as walls and fences to protect the premises.”

According to Proulx and Nichols, “all distilled spirits produced for consumption are taxed at the rate of $13.50 per proof gallon.”

There are two things I would like to point out about this topic. The first one is that many people do not realize that while it is illegal to distill without jumping though all these hoops, it is legal, assuming you are of age, to purchase a spirit and customize it with fruit, syrups, sugar, and other ingredients to make your own liquor. I would imagine this to be much easier process to go though. In fact, Clear Creek Distillery’s liquiors are brandy with unfermented fruit and maybe sugar added to it, though since they are commercial, they do have to gain federal approval for sale. Someone wishing to do this for personal use or as a gift does not have to worry about federal regulations to do this.

However, for those of you how have their hearts on distilling, Clear Creek Distillery offers a class on the topic. I don’t know if that would meet the criteria set by the government, but I imagine it would be a start. I have also recently stumbled across the Society of Wine Educators, and it appears that they have a Certified Specialists of Spirits Program. Could be worth checking out. So look around - there are classes out there to get one started in distilling legally.

Clear Creek Distillery

Yesterday, I took another tour of Clear Creek Distillery in Portland, OR where they make high quality brandy and are especially known for their Bartlett pear eau de vie, which is a fruit brandy.

Brandy is a distilled product much like other spirits such as rum, whisky, gin, vodka. Clear Creek Distillery takes fresh Oregon grown fruit and crush them, and then allow the fruit to ferment to 5%, skins, stems, seeds and all. The batch is then put into a still and heated. Alcohol boils before water does, so that part becomes steam and rises out of the liquid and goes though long cool metal tubes where it condenses, allowing them to collect the spirit. It is a little more technical than that, as the first part of the steam contains some toxins which smell more like nail polish, and Clear Creek Distillery uses as disinfectant due to the high alcohol content. Next is the drinkable part, which is called the heart. The last part includes some water, which diminishes the scent of the spirit, so they hold that part out as well and call it the tail. Since the alcohol is boiled off, the spirits are bone dry but contain the smell and essence of the original source.

Clear Creek Distillery offers their brandy, which is a distilled grape wine product, eau de vie, grappa, and sweetened liqueurs. They even have a brandy made from Douglas fir. They started out making a Bartlett (AKA Williams) pear eau de vie, but they told us it takes 30 lbs of pears to yield one bottle. That’s a lot of fruit!

I mentioned the first time I went to Clear Creek Distillery had an immense affect on me. Granted, at the time, I didn’t completely understand the whole process, especially before stilling, but I think that is the day that started me down the path towards a cidery. I was standing in there thinking, “How cool would if be if I did this,” and because of my roots, I believed that I could.

Well, it turns out that distilling even a drop without being licensed is illegal in the United States, but there was a man in our tour group who started talking about how he makes cider. Before I even knew about the legalities distilling, I thought that cider would be a great place to start. After all, I did have access to apples. Also, some eau de vie, especially Calvados, is made from cider.

Mulled Cider

Wassail is really nothing more than mulled cider. Ben Watson included other recipes in his book Cider Hard and Sweet, including this one that have paraphrased from page 136:

½ gallon sweet cider (not feremented)
4-6 cinnamon sticks
6 cardamom pods, crushed
1 whole nutmeg, cracked open
10-12 whole cloves
6 allspice berries (optional)
4-6 anise pods (optional)
Zest of lemon or orange, cut into thin strips

Put all ingredients in t pot and bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Strain out spices by pouring though a cheesecloth lined colander. Pour into cups and serve hot. Sometimes served with 1 ½ cups of rum or brandy after straining. Serves 8 to 10 people

Or… you can buy mulling spices that are in prepackaged tea bags. It might not be as good of blend, but it would be easier to do, especially if it is your first time making mulled cider. These same spices are wonderful as a mulled wine. Yeilds 15 to 20 servings.

I have my own simple little sweet cider recipe that is quite simple. I place about 3 quarts of apple juice in a cock pot set on low along with 1 quart of cranberry juice and a few cinnamon sticks. I let it cook for a few hours, and I will serve it either warm or chilled. It just gets this wonderful spiced sweetness about it.

Other sweet cider recipes can be found online or in Cider Hard and Sweet by Ben Watson or Cider: Making, Using & Enjoying Sweet and Hard Cider by Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols.

Wassailing

There are a lot of wassailing festivals going on this weekend, especially at cideries.

According to Ben Watson in Cider Hard and Sweet, page 137 reads, “… wassail derives from the old Anglo-Saxon toast, Waes haeil, meaning, ‘Be whole’ [well]. It’s like saying, “To your health,” and it gave its name to the custom that took place throughout Britain around Christmastime, when revelers carried a wassail bowl made of ash or maple and festooned with ribbons from house to house, expecting the bowl to be filled with refreshments and in turn blessing the occupants. The traditional wassail punch is made from ale and sherry, sugar and spices….”

However, there is a second definition of wassailing, which is a kind of blessing of the apple trees for the coming year, especially in England, which usually takes place on January 17 as the Old Twelfth Night. Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse on Vancouver Island, BC, describes the core ritual, “Intended to awaken the orchard from its winter slumber, the trees are blessed for an abundant harvest. Cider is poured over the roots of one of the orchard trees, and toast is hung in the branches by a Wassail “King” and “Queen” while traditional songs are sung with much noisemaking and merriment to ward off bad spirits.”

More Information on Wassailing:

• Wassailing
  
• Wassail
  
• History of Wassail dates and other info
• Wassailing Songs
  

Places Participating in Wassailing:

• Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse: January 16, 2010, 11am-6pm, Saanichton, BC.
• Finnriver Farm – Old Time Cider says, “Sunday, January 17th Time: 2:00pm-4:00pm Location: Finnriver Farm Received the above in an email from the Finnriver mailing list.”
• In the UK
  

Ben Watson’s Cider Wassail Bowl (adapted)

½ gallon sweet cider
½ cup dark brown sugar
10 – 15 allspice berries
8-10 whole cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
1 whole nutmeg, cracked in half
Pinch of salt
1 cup dark rum
¼ cup calvados or other apple brandy (optional)
1 lemon, halved and sliced thin
1 or 2 oranges, halved and sliced thin

In a large pot, mix cider and sugar. Place spices in a square cheesecloth and tie up like a tea bag before adding it to the pot with salt. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat and let simmer for 15 minutes, and then remove from heat.

Remove the spice bag and add rum, optional brandy, and lemon and orange slices. Place over medium heat and stir for 2 to 3 minutes before serving. It is also good with whipped cream.