A dog’s breakfast of Skywater fruit.
We’ve had several forays into the wonderful world of DIY fermented beverages since we arrived here, and all of them have been inspired by our best friends of the furry variety. First was our 2015 vintage of Good Golly, a mixed breed dry rosé named for our new puppy Molly. Every kind of grape we could rescue from the raccoons is in this one, and it’s a fun and friendly sort of drink.
Next came our Nocturnal IPA, a hoppy homebrew bottled on a full moon. We named it for Merlin, the shapeshifting black cat that adopted us shortly after we moved into our house. This mysterious fermentation began as a good and solid dark ale, and then morphed into a deep and funky kind of slug bait.
Our most recent effort though, has hit it out of the park. We collected a variety of late summer fruit at the end of our 2016 season and froze it for off-season fermenting. Using grapes, black Italian plums and green apples, we created a sparkling hard cider that has just the right amount of sweetness to offset the tartness of the fruit, and the sparkling bubbles and peachy rose colour are perfect. Because it was a tiny but fantastic batch, we decided to name it after the World’s Best Chihuahua. Introducing…2017 Itsy Bitsy Cider, a tiny batch of hard cider made from a dog’s breakfast of Skywater fruit.
And much like our Fico, it has way more power than you’d think just by looking at it. At 7.5% it has a big dog inside!
