Last fall, I went apple picking at Morning Shade Farm in Canby and picked hundreds of apples. Some of them had bruises and worm-holes and dirt, and some were so perfect I could picture them sitting on a cartoon teacher’s desk. A few days later, I took a couple sativa hits, blasted a Spotify playlist, and spent a perfect solitary afternoon slicing, dicing, boiling, and making a wonderful mess out of my kitchen.

At the end of the day, I had jugs and jugs of nonalcoholic cider—but I didn’t want to stop there. So I filled a couple of old growlers with the cider, added some wine yeast I found in my garage, and covered the growlers with pieces of foil that I’d poked a few holes in. A couple of weeks later, I poured the growlers’ contents—now a funky, yeasty brew that smelled somewhere between fresh baked bread and rotten apples—into some old Corona bottles. I tucked the bottles away in a corner of my closet and forgot about them until Christmastime, when I threw them in my suitcase before traveling to visit family.

One of the bottles exploded in my suitcase, covering several of the presents I’d packed with a sticky, pulpy goo. Of the cider that survived the trip—well, I suppose the most generous taste descriptor I could use for it would be complex. If I’m being less generous, I’ll say it tasted like an infected canker sore exploded in your mouth at the same time you happened to be eating an apple. What I’m trying to say is: It tasted awful.

Casual brewpub & supply shop features a separate area for guests to brew their own beer. · In-store shopping · Kerbside pickup

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Portland U-Brew & Unicorn Brewing

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Portland U-Brew & Unicorn Brewing

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