Manzanita Cider

Joshua and I made manzanita cider over the weekend. We started Thursday by picking berries. Manzanita berries are very sticky and soon our fingers were covered in stickiness and everything was a sticky mess. 

Back at the ranch house, we rinsed the berries, which really didn't do much because they are so sticky, then we poured boiling water over them.

After letting it set for 20 minutes, we mashed the berries. The next step was to let them set for 24 hours.

Friday we strained out the berries, and all the steams, leaves, and other stuff stuck to the berries, and covered the cider to let it stand overnight.

By Saturday, it had settled quite a bit, so we strained the cider through a coffee filter and left the sediment on the bottom of the jar. I should mention that up until this point, the cider smelled pretty bad. By letting it settle and straining it, we removed a lot of the tannins, which is a bitter plant compound. This improved the smell, mostly by making it milder. We decided to let it set overnight again to see if anything more settled out.

By Sunday, it looked about the same. So, after work, we tried some. First, we just drank it straight.

It was, um, refreshing? It really wasn't very good. Drinkable, but rather sour and it had a weird flavor.



We added sugar, but that was worse than plain. Then we heated it with cinnamon and cloves for a hot spiced cider. That smelled really good, but the taste was about the same. That night we tried it again with a couple other girls and added honey. Not that exciting either. So, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good and, other than that we had a fun time experimenting with making it, probably not worth the effort. But the point was to make a batch, and in that we succeeded. We have many more things on our list of stuff to make from the plants around here, so be on the lookout for more posts on that in the weeks and months to come.