Turning backyard crabapples & foraged fruit into cider: Q&A with ANXO Cidery
Note: This post was originally published on EatOrToss.com in July of 2018. Please find an excerpt below and head to EatOrToss for the rest! Cheers!
Making cider out of everything from backyard crab apples to foraged fruit, ANXO Cidery & Pintxos Bar crafts some truly local ciders in Washington, DC. Featured as part of the original #RescueDish for using apples that might have otherwise been wasted, the restaurant and cidery has a number of sustainability tricks up its oak barrels. Co-owner Rachel Fitz answered questions from EatOrToss writer and RescueDish organizer Rachael Jackson.
So, people bring you apples from their DC yards and you turn them into cider? They do! There are apple trees all over DC and many of the trees don't produce fruit that people want to eat, so without foraging and making cider the fruit would otherwise go to waste.
Even crab apples? Aren’t those inedible? A lot of people don't realize that culinary apples like what you find in the grocery store don't make great cider because they lack acidity and tannins needed to balance out the sweetness of the fruit. Crab apples tend to be higher in both acidity and tannins so are ideal for cider making.
If I go apple picking and I can’t eat all the apples, can I bring them to you? Absolutely! If you let us know that you have an apple tree that's about ready for picking, we can even come help harvest the fruit.
Tell me about your foraging trips. One of our favorite yearly foraging trips is to nearby National Colonial Farm in Piscataway Park. There is an old orchard there that has five old Hewe's crab apple trees. We now make a cider called NCF (National Colonial Farm) made in part with the juice from the apples we foraged there. For every bottle of NCF sold, a dollar goes back to the orchard to help plant more trees and grow the orchard.
