Boston Area Cider Makers

Anyone on here from the Boston Area? Might be nice to know who is in the neighborhood. Maybe we can compare notes locally!

im in rhode island.. but i dont have many hard ciders under my belt im in the process of putting my frist hard cider in a keg in the next day or so

I'm new to the craft too! Only been at it for 3 years. Probably have 40 gallons under my belt with wildly variable results.

Brandon O's graff is a great one though. I have my 4th batch in the primary now.

I'm local. I tried fermenting some store-bought ciders last year with a variety of yeasts. This year I got 4 gallons of fresh, unpasteurized cider from Carlton Orchards in Harvard, MA, but to be honest, it tastes a bit watery.

Results of my experiments from last year are here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/results-juice-yeast-sugar-experiments-83060/index55.html#post3351114

I've made a bunch and I'm north shore too.

I'm on my first, so I'm pretty useless. Glad to see I'm not the only one that thought the Carlton batch is kinda blah.

I'm in the Worcester area. I've done 1 batch so far which came out ok I guess. I did 5g from davidson farms with 2lbs of organic brown sugar added with lavin d40? yeast. It came out tasting a bit vinegary.

I'm planning on doing another 5g batch before the season is over. I'm going to look for more fresh cider this weekend as I'm sure it will be depleted soon. This time I don't know if I want to add any sugar. I got some wyeast cider yeast from northern brewer so I need to get it done soon. I plan on making a starter as well for this one. Hopefully it comes out better. I'm going to try a long primary this time as well.

I still don't know if I'm doing this "right" but it was drinkable and some people even liked it.

I did 3 gallons of cider from Carlson's Orchards (they were selling it at Whole Foods) with 1 lb. of MA honey, used one of English cider yeasts. Took it's sweet @ss time conditioning out the sulphur but I tasted a couple of the sample bottles and it's quite good - very dry with nice sparkling wine quality about it. I'm going to bring the other test bottles to my dry cider-loving friend for Thanksgiving.

The remaining 2 gallons are going to be back sweetened just a wee bit, spiced with cinnamon and vanilla, and then when carbed up I will pasteurize them.

I'm also sitting on 3 gallons of cyser (3 ga. cider + 3 lbs honey) from the same source, except I'm fermenting this with champagne yeast. It's chugging along, and after 2 weeks it's already starting to settle a bit. I'll check it next weekend to see how it's coming, I'll be racking it to a secondary on top of some lady apples that I chopped up and tucked in the freezer (lady apples are a small pinkish green apple that are in season now - they look a bit like crabapples) and then tuck it away for another month or two.

I'm making cider now too. My first batch is sitting in the carboy waiting to be put into a keg. I made 3gallons from unpasturized cider from lull farm. I need to figure out how I want to back sweeten, and get it into a keg.
AO

I live in Somerville. I've got my first (non-hobo) batch going in the basement right now. Should be interesting to see how it turns out...

I brew beer, make mead, and have a batch of hard cider carbonating right now (my first batch of hard cider)... I've also done hard lemonade and hard ginger-ale this year.

I might make some more hard cider soon, once I've had a chance to try this first batch. I used Lalvin 71B-1122 for the yeast. I've used both EC-1118 and D47 in my mead batches before, with solid results.

Every year i get fresh pressed cider from Sholan Farms thru my LHBS in leominster. This year thay had fresh cranberries so i figured what the hey making a cran/apple cider. Going to leave it sweet and pasturize the bottles after carbing up for a couple days..

FYI Whole Foods has Carlson Farms (Harvard, MA) cider for sale $2 for a half gallon. It is pasteurized but I've had good success with it in the past.

andy383 said:

FYI Whole Foods has Carlson Farms (Harvard, MA) cider for sale $2 for a half gallon. It is pasteurized but I've had good success with it in the past.

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I know just bought 10 of them

i'm kind of far to be the Boston area but I am just down in CT. I ferment whatever i can i find, and love to brew.

If you want to get some real learning in and make a day trip I would highly recomend Clydes Cider mill in Mystic, CT. They have an old school steam driven press and do probably 12 styles of hard cider.

in Hollis, NH.

Discovered cider brewing after looking for something else to do with produce from inlaws orchard/vineyard in Merrimack. I did about 35 gallons this year, mostly hand pressed and with wild yeast and honey. I have some promising batches with Belgian yeast and graff mixes going.

After finding out what last year's batch tasted after 10 months, will be aging everything much longer this year.

Support local orchards with their good, clean, unadulterated, fresh pressed ciders. Lull, Currier and Brookdale.

In Milford MA here, love making (and drinking) cider!

I got a batch of unpasteurized cider from Phil's Apples in Harvard, MA early in the season this year. Added 6oz light brown sugar, 5tsp fermax, and S-04 yeast and let it ferment out to completion (0.996 I think). I back-sweetened with a little more brown sugar (I like my cider dry but it had a bit too much bite) and kegged it up. It tastes great with a strong aroma still present from the apples. It's the first time I went to Phil's and it's by far my best batch to date.

I have another batch from the late season harvest in process now, no sugar added this time, I'm hoping it turns out as good.

Here's the site for Phil's: Phil's Apples: U-Pick Apple Orchard and Cider in Harvard, Massachusetts

I've found this thread a bit late, I see- I'm in Brighton. I've got a gallon of cider from Carlson Orchards going with a pound of varietal honey from Roche Bros. and EC-1118. It's my first batch with nice cider/honey, so we'll see how it turns out. I've also got five gallons of cider with juice/honey from Shaw's bottled as well, and one gallon of black cherry/apple cider aging in a carboy.

tobrew said:

Every year i get fresh pressed cider from Sholan Farms thru my LHBS in leominster. This year thay had fresh cranberries so i figured what the hey making a cran/apple cider. Going to leave it sweet and pasturize the bottles after carbing up for a couple days..

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NFG is my LHBS of choice. I got the feeling that they didn't do Sholan this year. Usually Carlson does the pressing of Sholan but Fran gave me the impression it was all Carlson. I may be wrong. I did two 5 gallon batches variations of Edwort's cider last year. One of Sholan without sorbate and notingham. Left it on the leese for a while and it had more appley tart twang to it. Good. However, the other was a 5 gallon Carlson with Nothingham and sorbated it. I liked it better. Very clean and crisp.

This year I did two 5 gallons of NFG without the extra dextrose. One was just with Nothingham and the other with tart cherries and WLP Cider yeast. I may stop by carlson and do an extra batch after racking the NFG to see the progress.

I'm in Abington. Made my first 1 gallon test batch this weekend with UV pasteurized I got from CN Smith farms in Bridgewater so I don't really have any notes to share just yet. I did add a full packet of US-04 while not thinking; hoping I don't have any "lessons learned" to share in a few months.

I am definitely thinking of picking up more of the cider from Carlson's while I still can. The extra brut cider (dry to 1.000) I made with it was VERY well received at Thanksgiving dinner (I only had 2 flip top bottles ready and it disappeared among friends very quickly).

That batch was brewed with an English cider yeast. The bottles I've backsweetened have also come into their own and are very good (used a tiny amount of lactose, apple juice, and a small amount of corn sugar).

The 3 gallons of cyser I've got going now is going to take a while to condition (just racked that to a secondary on some of those seasonal "lady apples").

Would love to brew another batch of cider to drink before the cyser is really ready.