Carr’s ciderhouse and Preservation Orchard
Ciderhouse Video: The first press of the season and the whole family was there!
Carr’s Ciderhouse is a family-run operation committed to handcrafting small batch, naturally made hard ciders as well as apple cider-based products for the pantry.
We’ve recently named our historic orchard Preservation Orchard - with a commitment to preserving traditional foodways of this area, preserving farmland, and preserving the balance of our ecosystem by never spraying, minimally mowing, practicing silvopasture with goats and sheep, and planting lots and lots of trees! We are located on the northwest slope of Mt. Warner in Massachusetts, overlooking the breathtakingly beautiful Connecticut River valley.
APPLES
Our trees yield an interesting selection of hard cider apples such as White Jersey, Golden Russet, Kingston Black, Goldrush, and Dabinett – cultivars that add a tremendous amount of complexity and richness to our ciders. We also have a wild apple forager among us - Matt Kaminsky (@gnarlypippins) - who brings bushels of wild apples from around New England to our press every autumn.
PRESSING TIME
Apples are pressed in our historic orchard’s restored ciderhouse, on an elegant century-old Mount Gilead cider press (likely one of the oldest working presses in New England) that we lovingly refurbished.
DISTINCTIVE OUTCOMES
We allow natural fermentation - wild fermentation - to transform our fresh pressed cider into a complex and unadulterated hard cider. Ciders flow from the press directly into stainless steel tanks in the uninsulated cellar of our press barn, where it slowly ferments through the freezing New England winter. Generally speaking, our cider take about 6 months to finish fermenting to full dryness and sometimes we allow a couple more months for aging before bottling and selling. We consider our ciders to be traditionally made - nothing added and nothing filtered out - and they are so delicious because they are made from good fruit and lots of time.