Hilltop Orchards is rolling out a sparkling sweet apple cider this weekend

Community Voices Editor

Apples from Hilltop Orchards and from orchards in Berkshire County and beyond are brought in 20-bushel bins then lifted using a fork lift onto a conveyor belt to be washed.

RICHMOND — Jmash Cidery at Hilltop Orchards is preparing this weekend to roll out a sparkling sweet apple cider that will be packaged in 12-ounce cans and sold in stores regionally.

The non-alcoholic fresh cider will be processed in a newly purchased carbonation tank that will also allow the Furnace Brook Winery to make sparkling wines.

The cans will be sold in four packs for less than $10.

David Martell, farm manager and master wine/cider maker, explained the process Hilltop Orchards uses to press cider in a tour of the orchards and the cidery on Monday.

The apples are run through a conveyor belt to be mashed and then pressed using an old fashioned rack and cloth method, where the apples are pressed in a mechanism that resembles a huge vice.

Apples from Hilltop Orchards and from orchards in Berkshire County and beyond arrive in 20-bushel bins. The bins are lifted using a fork lift and then the apples are tipped out, mechanically washed, run through a conveyor belt to be mashed and then pressed. The cider press uses an old fashioned rack and cloth method, where the apples are wrapped in cloth and pressed in a mechanism that resembles a huge vice.

“Now there’s these new presses,” Martell said, “that maybe are a little bit more efficient. But I like to pay our staff instead of paying a big corporation for an expensive piece of equipment. That’s my goal.”

Four people were working on making the cider Monday, with Martell chipping in as time allowed.

The mash is then discarded for use as pig feed and the fresh juice is pumped into a tank to be pasteurized with heat and then cooled in equipment that came from dairy farms.

“A lot of cideries are using UV lighting,” Martell said, referring to ultraviolet lighting as a pasteurization method. “I don’t know anybody around here that uses steam. So we’re using what they used 100 years ago.”

The 500-gallon carbonation tank, which was bought from a brewery in the Keuka Lake region in New York, stands next to the tanks holding unpasteurized and pasteurized cider.

“When I make wine, I wake up in the morning and that’s where I get ideas,” he said. “Two weeks ago I did a green apple Muscato. Last week I woke up and I said I’m going to make a fresh sparkling cider.”

Martell said he’s excited about the potential to make sparkling cider in 100-gallon batches as local grocers request it.

“I can make it on the spot to order,” he said. “I don’t think anybody will find another orchard that has the capability of doing something like that.”

Jane Kaufman is Community Voices Editor at The Berkshire Eagle. She can be reached at [email protected] or 413-496-6125.

This fall, neither Jaeschke’s nor Bartlett’s Orchard in Richmond will offer customers the option of picking their own apples — a must-do fall activity for many in the Berkshires. They simply don’t have enough fruit. Across the state, experts estimate there might have been a 20 percent loss in apples.

Community Voices Editor