We have gotten a few questions about sediment at the bottom of cans and fill heights. Hopefully I can explain both sufficiently. Feel free to give us a call (207-200-7332) if you have any further questions.
SEDIMENT: When there's some sediment at the bottom of the can, it is
simply apple particles that have fallen out of solution. In looking at
filtered vs unfiltered, we had to weigh two options. Using a filter, we
could have a "perfect" looking cider, where all the small particles
were strained out, although half the flavor would come with those
particles, or, we could leave it unfiltered, and get a full-on flavor
but have to deal with the sediment. We chose the latter, with hopes
that you, the consumer would appreciate the sacrifices that go into leaving a
product unfiltered. Believe me when I say it would be much easier to
use a filter, and not have any questions/concerns regarding sediment
in cans, or the occasional sludge keg. But this, along with our
decision to use real juice, is the reason that many people love Downeast
Cider. Authenticity can not be faked, especially in the mind of a
discerning consumer. We love hearing "this tastes like it came right
off the farm!" rather than "this is some sterile shit!" One day, when
we have (a lot) more money, we can pay a team of food scientists to
solve this problem without harming quality, but that day is still well
ahead of us.
FILL HEIGHT: This is a problem that hopefully we've fixed, although I'm sure
there are still some of the "high fill" cans out there. Our current
canning equipment is VERY low tech, and the fill height is determined by
us and a little knob/stem. The high fills were just a novice move. We
filled those things to the brim and then capped and sealed. After
making a few hundred cases like this, the reports started coming in, so
we brought the fill height down. Those good fill heights should be
hitting the market soon.
--Downeast
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Full Cans and PBR's
First things first, let's address the full cans. We seem to have sparked a new group that I'll call "the fill height is too damn high" party. It's pretty funny, but yes, the fill height for our first cans was too damn high. We've lowered it, so there's no need to worry about cider spraying out any more. But hey, at least the biggest issue right now is that you're getting more than you paid for. That's not so bad...right?
Now to the more important issues...we need a company chef really bad. Or a live-in mom to make us lunches. Tyler's mom bought us 4 huge tubs each of peanut butter, peanuts, jelly (strawberry, not grape bc we're not communists), and Ritz crackers. That's all we eat now. To have the best part of your day be the 15 minutes of eating the same peanut butter and Ritz (PBR) sandwich that you've had all week is not a way to go through life...not a way at all.
On a positive note, people seem to really enjoy our cider, thanks for all the positive feedback!
I'm too tired to be witty or interesting, so here is a big hat. It's funny.
--Downeast
Now to the more important issues...we need a company chef really bad. Or a live-in mom to make us lunches. Tyler's mom bought us 4 huge tubs each of peanut butter, peanuts, jelly (strawberry, not grape bc we're not communists), and Ritz crackers. That's all we eat now. To have the best part of your day be the 15 minutes of eating the same peanut butter and Ritz (PBR) sandwich that you've had all week is not a way to go through life...not a way at all.
On a positive note, people seem to really enjoy our cider, thanks for all the positive feedback!
I'm too tired to be witty or interesting, so here is a big hat. It's funny.
--Downeast
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Awesome Failure
Roller coaster of a day today. Got into the mill before our target 6:30 this morning, which rarely happens thanks to the traffic in Somerville, and partly Cambridge, then we tanked...hard:
15 hours from end to end on the day, 120 cases, new record. Going for 150 cases tomorrow to open up Friday afternoon for golf and shenanigans. Anyone wanna join? Call us. We have a company phone number now. 207 2007 DEC (get it? DownEast Cider).
as some friends once said,
Peace, Love and Cider
--Downeast
- Realized we left our glycol chiller plugged in, condenser is burned out, no chiller.
- Open tank valve, no flow, we realized the condenser has burned out very recently and left behind frozen lines.
- After reconfiguring the tubing, we start canning, making amazing time for our first few cases.
- I believe the last words before the canning machine broke were, "time me on this case, I think we're crushing"
- We spent the next 2.5 hours taking apart the machine (unlike Watchusett, we have no engineers), going to Home Depot, and getting very ornery.
- Finally got going just before 11.
- Canning line breaks again, 30 min. delay
- All 4.5 CO2 tanks run out at once, have to go to gas store, 45 min. delay.
- When we eventually got going, we invented a new technique for canning, saving 1-2 seconds per can, which is a couple hours per session...
15 hours from end to end on the day, 120 cases, new record. Going for 150 cases tomorrow to open up Friday afternoon for golf and shenanigans. Anyone wanna join? Call us. We have a company phone number now. 207 2007 DEC (get it? DownEast Cider).
as some friends once said,
Peace, Love and Cider
--Downeast
Friday, August 17, 2012
Can Update
Remember when we said we were going to have cider in cans in June? Very naive. Big swing and miss. Not even close. Let's chalk that one up as lesson # 324 on over-promising and under-delivering. Message received: when planning any project, triple the cost, quadruple the time, raise the number of expected headaches to the power of 10, and then count yourself lucky if you can even hit that mark.
Our current status is:
We have our new canning line (VERY, VERY, and I cannot express enough how VERY underwhelming our output efficiency will be with this bad boy, but we still have a little drool going when we look at it).
We have our new keg filler/cleaner, which should cut a 12 hour fill session down to 2. Words don't begin to explain how much of an improvement this is.
We have a massive pile of cans (that's less than half of them).
We have a fresh batch of cider just dying to suit up and get in the game.
The last step is having a rep from our can supplier come by (Monday or Tuesday) to make sure everything goes smooth with the seaming (If you don't know, the can comes in two parts, body, and end, with the end being the top of the can. The can is filled, the end is put on, and the two are seamed together). If that is successful, we will spend the next week doing nothing but canning cider. Just writing that makes me giddy.
We hope you're thirsty, because it's coming...
-Downeast
Our current status is:
We have our new canning line (VERY, VERY, and I cannot express enough how VERY underwhelming our output efficiency will be with this bad boy, but we still have a little drool going when we look at it).
We have our new keg filler/cleaner, which should cut a 12 hour fill session down to 2. Words don't begin to explain how much of an improvement this is.
We have a massive pile of cans (that's less than half of them).
We have a fresh batch of cider just dying to suit up and get in the game.
The last step is having a rep from our can supplier come by (Monday or Tuesday) to make sure everything goes smooth with the seaming (If you don't know, the can comes in two parts, body, and end, with the end being the top of the can. The can is filled, the end is put on, and the two are seamed together). If that is successful, we will spend the next week doing nothing but canning cider. Just writing that makes me giddy.
We hope you're thirsty, because it's coming...
-Downeast
Monday, August 13, 2012
Kegging: The Extinct Method
I was just writing an update of our can situation, and I got really sidetracked explaining our process for kegging up to this point (hopefully it's been replaced by our new keg filler/cleaner). It got really long, so I figured I'd give it its own section. Without further ado, this is the story of our stupid, disorganized, poorly thought-out, ill-put-together, and all-around terribly constructed method for cleaning and filling kegs:
1: fill a small tank with water
2: hook up a large hose through a pump, and down an absurd number of (very slightly) incrementally smaller hosing to eventually pump into a keg through a sort of broken (just broken enough to make you swear at it, but not enough to buy a new one) coupler. *Note: make sure the hoses are attached ever so delicately, so the slightest brush or kick knocks one of the peices apart, sending whatever is in the hose flying around the room like an angry snake. One person will jump on the hose, the other will panic uncontrollably before figuring out how to shut off the pump.
3: Shake now-heavy keg violently. *Note: make sure to use a lot of back, as everyone knows a strong core is key to a fit body.
4: repeat with 100 kegs
5: Attach hose to carbon dioxide tank, fit kinda broken coupler onto keg, flip heavy keg upside down onto a couple of wobbling standing kegs (note* make sure to let the 50 lb keg fall on your fingers every now and again so as to keep your senses sharp), turn on CO2, wait a couple minutes for keg to drain, turn off CO2, flip over again, remove coupler, grab new keg, reattach coupler, repeat.
6: Once all 100 kegs are filled and drained, repeat entire fill, shake, drain process with caustic cleaning solution that you have mixed up in another tank (note* the caustic solution is like soap on steroids, and will slowly eat through your skin, so make sure to wear gloves to trap the caustic water in your marinating mitts so as to be sure you are getting full chemical exposure all the time)
7: Now you're done
8: Just kidding, do the whole thing over again with water. Every damn keg
9: NOW you're done
10: Just kidding, do the whole thing over again with sanitizer. Every damn keg. Also, make sure that every once in a while you accidentally put your head over the concentrated sanitizing solution and take a big, hearty breath. This way you'll have a rough approximation of what it might feel like to suck a balloon full of glass shards into your skull.
11: Enough's enough, you're done
12: Nope. Do that whole thing again with water.
13: Now you're fingers are bruised, your hands are oddly slippery and feel like they're covered in soap (don't worry, they're not, it only feels that way because the caustic has burned through your dead skin...and live skin), your back is as strong as Larry Legend's, you've sweat through your clothes, and you're covered with all sorts of cleaning chemicals because the hose fell apart 10 times. You're ready to fill!
Without going into detail, filling is slightly less frustrating (you're covered in delicious hard cider instead of cleaner), takes just as long (6-8 mins per fill for 100 kegs), and while your fingers get a break, your back just picked up landscaping duty because a full keg weighs more than Tyler. Try picking up Tyler 40 times, moving him across the room, flipping him upside down, and balancing him on a pallet.
Who wants an unpaid internship!
1: fill a small tank with water
2: hook up a large hose through a pump, and down an absurd number of (very slightly) incrementally smaller hosing to eventually pump into a keg through a sort of broken (just broken enough to make you swear at it, but not enough to buy a new one) coupler. *Note: make sure the hoses are attached ever so delicately, so the slightest brush or kick knocks one of the peices apart, sending whatever is in the hose flying around the room like an angry snake. One person will jump on the hose, the other will panic uncontrollably before figuring out how to shut off the pump.
3: Shake now-heavy keg violently. *Note: make sure to use a lot of back, as everyone knows a strong core is key to a fit body.
4: repeat with 100 kegs
5: Attach hose to carbon dioxide tank, fit kinda broken coupler onto keg, flip heavy keg upside down onto a couple of wobbling standing kegs (note* make sure to let the 50 lb keg fall on your fingers every now and again so as to keep your senses sharp), turn on CO2, wait a couple minutes for keg to drain, turn off CO2, flip over again, remove coupler, grab new keg, reattach coupler, repeat.
6: Once all 100 kegs are filled and drained, repeat entire fill, shake, drain process with caustic cleaning solution that you have mixed up in another tank (note* the caustic solution is like soap on steroids, and will slowly eat through your skin, so make sure to wear gloves to trap the caustic water in your marinating mitts so as to be sure you are getting full chemical exposure all the time)
7: Now you're done
8: Just kidding, do the whole thing over again with water. Every damn keg
9: NOW you're done
10: Just kidding, do the whole thing over again with sanitizer. Every damn keg. Also, make sure that every once in a while you accidentally put your head over the concentrated sanitizing solution and take a big, hearty breath. This way you'll have a rough approximation of what it might feel like to suck a balloon full of glass shards into your skull.
11: Enough's enough, you're done
12: Nope. Do that whole thing again with water.
13: Now you're fingers are bruised, your hands are oddly slippery and feel like they're covered in soap (don't worry, they're not, it only feels that way because the caustic has burned through your dead skin...and live skin), your back is as strong as Larry Legend's, you've sweat through your clothes, and you're covered with all sorts of cleaning chemicals because the hose fell apart 10 times. You're ready to fill!
Without going into detail, filling is slightly less frustrating (you're covered in delicious hard cider instead of cleaner), takes just as long (6-8 mins per fill for 100 kegs), and while your fingers get a break, your back just picked up landscaping duty because a full keg weighs more than Tyler. Try picking up Tyler 40 times, moving him across the room, flipping him upside down, and balancing him on a pallet.
Who wants an unpaid internship!
Monday, July 30, 2012
We're going to do this more
Sooooo....we completely stopped writing blog posts. Not really sure why, but we just did. I could blame it on being busy, but that's a lame excuse. Unless you are doing essential tasks from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, which no one does, you are saying "everything else in my day is more important, including the good hour spent looking at weird stuff on the internet, like pictures of girls with Steve Buscemi's eyes" So I say to you all, yes, at some point I made the decision to watch this honey badger video rather than tell people what we're doing. I'm sorry.
To catch everyone up on what's been happening with Downeast Cider House would take longer than I'm willing to write, and longer than you're willing to read, so I'll be brief:
Cans
Now that you're caught up, let me give you a sampling of how simple of a task we have in achieving what we have been referring to as our next "platform" of production. We have a certain amount of fermentation capacity. We want to take that cider and put it into kegs and cans. There is more demand than we can supply. We have cider ready to go, 500+ kegs, 130,000+ cans, a keg filler/cleaner, and a canning line. Simple, right? Then why aren't we at the canning line, selling cider, cashing checks, buying more cider, and repeating? At the moment, three simple words: single phase power. Due to power requirements on some of our equipment, we need to adjust some of our electrical work. I won't say how much it costs, but the last time I felt such a swift, symbolic kick to the groin was February 5, 2012.
Anyways, like always, we remain optimistic that we will have cans available in August. We couldn't be more excited to spend 12 hours a day doing this.
Last but not least, I made a very serious promise last night. If at some point in my life my net worth is 7 figures, I promise to drop everything and devote my entire livelihood toward the charitable improvement of what might be the most crucial aspect of quality of life as we know it. I'm talking of course about developing a washer/dryer that does not require a manual switch to the dryer. Over 40 years ago we put people on the moon, but I'm still dropping my clean clothes on the dirty floor during the transfer. If we have this, these, and this*, I think we deserve an all in one washer/dryer. If no one else will do it, I will**.
* - I'm not a hard-boiled egg guy, but I'm not sure how I've made it to this point eating egg-shaped eggs. I'm a cuber from here on out
** - Does it exist, because I can't find it.
UPDATE - http://www.homedepot.com/buy/appliances/laundry/lg-electronics/4-2-cu-ft-iec-capacity-front-load-washer-dryer-combo-24371.html
To catch everyone up on what's been happening with Downeast Cider House would take longer than I'm willing to write, and longer than you're willing to read, so I'll be brief:
Cans
Now that you're caught up, let me give you a sampling of how simple of a task we have in achieving what we have been referring to as our next "platform" of production. We have a certain amount of fermentation capacity. We want to take that cider and put it into kegs and cans. There is more demand than we can supply. We have cider ready to go, 500+ kegs, 130,000+ cans, a keg filler/cleaner, and a canning line. Simple, right? Then why aren't we at the canning line, selling cider, cashing checks, buying more cider, and repeating? At the moment, three simple words: single phase power. Due to power requirements on some of our equipment, we need to adjust some of our electrical work. I won't say how much it costs, but the last time I felt such a swift, symbolic kick to the groin was February 5, 2012.
Anyways, like always, we remain optimistic that we will have cans available in August. We couldn't be more excited to spend 12 hours a day doing this.
Last but not least, I made a very serious promise last night. If at some point in my life my net worth is 7 figures, I promise to drop everything and devote my entire livelihood toward the charitable improvement of what might be the most crucial aspect of quality of life as we know it. I'm talking of course about developing a washer/dryer that does not require a manual switch to the dryer. Over 40 years ago we put people on the moon, but I'm still dropping my clean clothes on the dirty floor during the transfer. If we have this, these, and this*, I think we deserve an all in one washer/dryer. If no one else will do it, I will**.
* - I'm not a hard-boiled egg guy, but I'm not sure how I've made it to this point eating egg-shaped eggs. I'm a cuber from here on out
** - Does it exist, because I can't find it.
UPDATE - http://www.homedepot.com/buy/appliances/laundry/lg-electronics/4-2-cu-ft-iec-capacity-front-load-washer-dryer-combo-24371.html
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Massachusetts
Hey all. Quick update from your local cider makers. I (Ross) can no longer speak for all three of us, as we've no longer been spending 15 hours a day together. I've been in the Boston area doing sales for our Massachusetts "soft launch", while Tyler's on the South Shore, and Ben's rocking Maine. We officially launched in Boston a couple weeks ago, and you can now find Downeast Cider at the following restaurants and bars:
Cambridge Brewing Company, Cambridge
Five Horses Tavern, Somerville
The Muddy Charles, Cambridge
Temple Bar, Cambridge
Christopher's, Cambridge
Picco, South End
The Hill Tavern, Beacon Hill
The Kinsale, Gov't Center
Meadhall, Cambridge
The Independent, Somerville
Bukowski Tavern, Boston & Cambridge
The Asgard, Cambridge
The Publick House, Brookline
Deep Ellum, Allston
Sunset Grill, Allston
Lizzy's, Cambridge
James's Gate, Jamaica Plain
If you go to one of theses locations, and we're not on tap, that is because they have yet to finish the keg that we are replacing, or we're a rotating tap, and we'll be back on soon. Either way, as always, I encourage everyone to whine, moan, kick, and scream if we're not available, because that's the mature thing to do.
I have to wrap this up, because it's Saturday, and golf balls aren't going to ping-pong themselves back and forth across the greens, but I would like to thank everyone who came to support us at The Kinsale last week. I hope you had a good time and enjoyed the cider. We DO have more events planned, and I have a feeling that we're going to have to start giving away more and more free stuff to lure people in, so you have that going for you.
Just know this (friends who are asking for free swag all the time): we still don't make a dime, at least you guys have paying jobs. Yesterday, I went home for dinner, took my dad's leftover pasta home with me, reheated it for breakfast the next day, then, for lunch, cooked pasta I stole from my girlfriend and rolled it around in the faint traces of sauce I still had leftover from breakfast. So if you have faith in Downeast, and are looking to make a good investment, I like breakfast sandwiches, panini's of any kind, and pretty much anything from Anna's Taqueria...
Cambridge Brewing Company, Cambridge
Five Horses Tavern, Somerville
The Muddy Charles, Cambridge
Temple Bar, Cambridge
Christopher's, Cambridge
Picco, South End
The Hill Tavern, Beacon Hill
The Kinsale, Gov't Center
Meadhall, Cambridge
The Independent, Somerville
Bukowski Tavern, Boston & Cambridge
The Asgard, Cambridge
The Publick House, Brookline
Deep Ellum, Allston
Sunset Grill, Allston
Lizzy's, Cambridge
James's Gate, Jamaica Plain
If you go to one of theses locations, and we're not on tap, that is because they have yet to finish the keg that we are replacing, or we're a rotating tap, and we'll be back on soon. Either way, as always, I encourage everyone to whine, moan, kick, and scream if we're not available, because that's the mature thing to do.
I have to wrap this up, because it's Saturday, and golf balls aren't going to ping-pong themselves back and forth across the greens, but I would like to thank everyone who came to support us at The Kinsale last week. I hope you had a good time and enjoyed the cider. We DO have more events planned, and I have a feeling that we're going to have to start giving away more and more free stuff to lure people in, so you have that going for you.
Just know this (friends who are asking for free swag all the time): we still don't make a dime, at least you guys have paying jobs. Yesterday, I went home for dinner, took my dad's leftover pasta home with me, reheated it for breakfast the next day, then, for lunch, cooked pasta I stole from my girlfriend and rolled it around in the faint traces of sauce I still had leftover from breakfast. So if you have faith in Downeast, and are looking to make a good investment, I like breakfast sandwiches, panini's of any kind, and pretty much anything from Anna's Taqueria...
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