Christopher & Kirsten K. Shockey – Fermentation School & The Big Book of Cidermaking

Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast

Christopher & Kirsten K. Shockey The Big Book Of Cidermaking Christopher Shockey and Kirsten K. Shockey join us again to talk about their new book, The Big Book of Cidermaking. We also talk about an exciting new project they've taken on called, Fermentation School! Fermentation School has online classes from top experts to help you advance your own fermentation skills. For more on Fermentation School, The Big Book of Cidermaking and other Books and information the Shockey's have checkout the links below! Fermentation School - https://www.fermentationschool.com/ Ferment.Works - https://ferment.works/ The Big Book of Cidermaking - https://www.storey.com/books/the-big-book-of-cidermaking/ Transcription Brian: Christopher Shockey and Kirsten K. Shockey are the authors of The Big Book of Cidermaking. And award winning Miso, Tempeh, Natto & Other Tasty Ferments, Fiery Ferments and the best selling Fermented Vegetables books that came from their desires to help people eat in new ways, both for the health of themselves and the planet. They got their start in fermenting foods 20 years ago on a 40 acre hillside smallholding, which grew into their local organic food company, when they realized their passion lay in the wish to both teach people how to ferment and push this culinary art to new flavors. Kirsten and Christopher lead lead experience experiential workshops worldwide and online at FermentationSchool.com. Helping people to make enjoy and connect with their food through fermentation. They can now be found at Ferment.Works. or excuse me, they can also be found at Ferment.Works. Kirsten and Christopher, welcome back to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast. Christopher and Kirsten: Thanks, Brian. Brian: Why don't we just start out by kind of going over your new book, tell us tell us what led you to write this new one on cidermaking. Christopher: Well this is the one I wanted to write from the very beginning, we bought a hand press on the farm 20 some years ago when we moved here. And so we've been making a lot of cider since that time and that's my favorite ferment by far. So we just had to do a few 100,000 other books before we could do this one. Yeah, and it's cider season, we have cider apples on the farm. So all those reasons why. Brian: Was this one of the original fermentation experiments that you guys went with or how did it come about? Christopher: This is one of the ferments that we did for ourselves, we had a lot of apple trees and so we we made cider for ourselves. The Founding Fathers would let you make 200 gallons for yourself and we came darn close nearly every year. Friends and family, I trained as a cider maker. And we were going to do cider instead of fermented vegetables and all that other stuff. When I learned that to run a little cidery, the most important thing is you can repair equipment, used equipment, I can look at a pipe and it'll start to leak. So I'm good with grey tape and after that it falls down. So I said to Kirsten, I love drinking it, I love making it, but I'm not so sure we're going to be a good small cidery. And that's how all the other fermentation stuff started. But in the response back from the book so far, it's been really positive. Kirsten: Yeah, I think this one's much easier lift than the last one. Most people know what cider is. Most people are interested in fermented beverages and are willing to maybe take that on as a first ferment, where as miso or, you know, fermenting a bean or grain eating stringy natto, or growing fungus around a bean, like tempeh is just asking a little more of the American general, American population. So yeah, it's been popular and it came out well, it was supposed to come out in June, but it came out along with Apple season, so I think we've gotten a lot of nice feedback. The other thing is, it's a very beautiful book, it was shot here in three different times of the year, but all on our farm.