In September, I went out apple picking with the kids, and decided to pick up some cider, to try to ferment it, something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I don’t usually drink hard cider, but I’ve been wanting to try making it ever since reading about the process in Make Magazine years ago.

I ended up following guidance from these sites:
https://www.midwestsupplies.com/blogs/specialty/instructions-on-how-to-make-hard-cider
https://howtomakehardcider.com/

I really like the idea of working at a small scale – it works really well for our apartment, and limits waste while experimenting. Startup costs were really low – apart from the cider, I picked up everything at Toronto Brewing:
– Cider
– Starsan sanitizer
– Lalvin D47 yeast (recommended by store staff for cider)
– Bottles (I re-used Grolsch swing-top bottles I started drinking prior to the exercise for bottling, and a wine bottle for fermenting)
– A food grade hose for decanting
– An airlock and stopper

My first batch was a bust. It turns out Downey’s farm adds potassium sorbate to their cider, and it didn’t ferment.

For my second batch, I went to our local Loblaws grocery store and bought their house brand cider. I added some brown sugar at fermentation time to increase alcohol content, and then added some dextrose at bottling time for carbonation. I fermented for two weeks, bottled, and tried my first bottle two weeks after bottling. The carbonation was perfect – lightly carbonated, tiny bubbles. But the cider was mostly flavorless – it wasn’t terrible, but didn’t taste great. I tried another bottle today, after 4 weeks – it was still flavorless, but somehow much better.

My third batch is currently in a second stage of fermentation. I fermented for two weeks, decanted, and have let it sit for two weeks. I plan to bottle it tomorrow. Should be ready to try around Christmas!

The Hispanic Fiesta Latin-American festival descends on Mel Lastman square in North York every labour day weekend.  The festival has lots of live music, a beer tent, and food vendors.  And every year, I buy a coconut ice pops (“Paletas”/popsicles) from Polar Real Tropical Fruit.  They’re awesome, and I never see them sold anywhere else.  Perhaps its the ambience of the festival, but I prefer them to other coconut ice pops I’ve tried.

So, I decided to try to make my own.  I took a picture of the ingredients and the nutritional information.

Then, looking at the protein, carbohydrate, and fat content of each key ingredients against the nutritional facts of the ice pop, I estimated the proportions of a 150 g serving as follows:

• 15 g of shredded, sweetened coconut
• 70 g of 2% milk
• 2 g of tapioca starch
• 13 g of sugar
• 50 g of water

Here’s how mine turned out:

It looks very much like the ones from Polar Real Tropical, but the texture was a little more ice-crystal-y, and it was less sweet.  For my next batch, I’ll cook the mixture before freezing it.  This should help the sugar dissolve evenly, and allow the tapioca starch to thicken the mixture a bit and improve texture.