Although in Spain alcoholic apple cider is associated with Asturias or the Basque Country, I spent a weekend with my most Galician friends making it like in the days of yore. It was an exhausting weekend-long affair. And it will take a few months before we are able to taste the fruits of our labors. But this month I've been making alcohol faster than I can drink it (
wine harvest earlier this month)!
Friday morning we headed out to my boyfriend's country home. I should add that in Galicia, almost everybody has an ¨aldea,¨ a tiny village their family is from. In some cases their grandparents still live there, but in others the house is empty and used for weekend getaways. (In this case, the latter) Close to our destination, we stopped to pick up the apple equipment. We both got out of the car, but let the cassette keep playing. A few minutes later *click,* the car automatically locked. With the keys in the ignition! Nooooo! It felt like a scene from a movie, with Bob Dylan emanating from inside the locked vehicle. Luckily, a mechanic arrived within an hour. We continued on our way, with some delay.
 |
| Climbing trees |
To make the sidra, B bought about 200 kg of apples from a neighboring farmer. That was just the beginning! The other guy brought another 200 kg from the trees in his yard. And we spent two hours Friday afternoon collecting more. I bet there were close to 1000 kg! My naivete betrayed me as we went to a neighbor's yard to start picking. They talked about who would climb the tree. I, of course, imagined like at home, one would climb the tree to hand pick the higher apples, while the other two of us would reach what we could from the ground. Wrong. He climbed the tree to shake it with all of his might. Dozens of apples fell down. One hit me, as I didn't realize what was happening, haha. We repeated the process over and over again. So the strain of apple-picking here is in constantly crouching down and bending over. Also in sidra, every apple counts. Bruised apples, cherry-sized apples. All in the sack! Afterwards, of course, we had to lug the giant 20kg bags back to the car. I consider myself strong for my size, but after this weekend I realized I am the weakest link. I'm more suited to 10 kg sacks.
 |
| Apples, apples everywhere |
After collecting enough apples, we spent the evening cleaning the apples. In the beginning, I was very picky with which apples passed on to the next phase. I tried to cut out a lot of the bruises, but then as the ¨professionals¨ reminded me, even bruised apples are fine for cider. Not to mention the amount of apples we had to go through before the night's end. Another
chica came to join the fun. Admittedly, she is stronger than I am. But she lives on a farm! After the sun had gone down, we divided into two teams and started the next phase: grinding. This had a machine, but you couldn't just dump a whole box of apples in it, because it would get stuck. You needed to toss about 8 in at a time, and the machine would spit them out into cut up pieces.There was so much that we moved it with a snow shovel. By the end of the night, our assembly line had washed and cut all but 50kg of apples. Hooray!
 |
| To the left: the machine that diced the apples. In the background: apple bits! |
 |
| Note she is actually sitting on the press |
Saturday morning, B ran out to catch the breadman driving by on his rounds. So for breakfast, we had fresh
queique. I write the name because the pronunciation is so similar to cake, it can't be a coincidence! Day two was more washing/grinding, but also pressing. For this we used an old fashioned wooden press. In the early stages when the metal bar is loose, we would swing it around to each other merrily, like a game. But then as the lid lowers and comes into contact with apples, it becomes more difficult. Once it got to a certain point, the guys would have to pull it backward slowly, then push it forward to begin again, like rowing. Of course, they were putting a lot of force into it, so to counteract it the other three would hold it down with all of our weight so the press wouldn't go flying. The other
chica would even sit on the press. And yet, sometimes it would still tip in the opposite direction. Superhuman strength! All the while we whistled (aka sang in Galician and Spanish) while we worked.
On Saturday we pressed all the apple bits for a first time, and on Sunday we did them all a second time. Every drop counts! Surprisingly, there was more juice to be had. Although, obviously on the second day there was less and it was harder to get out. During each pressing, we had to change the small tub collecting juice at the bottom. That juice went into big metal barrels to ferment. We ended with 360 liters!! And it only took us four people and 56 hours!
 |
| Sweet, sweet apple juice! |
