Lauren Justice
Sitting under the state’s oldest tree at Stone Fence Farms in Dousman, newlyweds Bryan and Beth Bingham enjoy their home-brewed cider.
Standing in his narrow kitchen on Madison’s east side, Bryan Bingham is braced for failure.
“I’m flirting with disaster,” he confesses. “Home brewers will tell you, you can’t make good vinegar and good beer [at the same time].”
Bingham, owner of “portable restaurant” The Smokin’ Cantina, is referring to the quart-sized jar of halved hot red peppers pickling on his countertop and to the two 12-gallon glass fermenters taking up real estate in the sunny corner of his breakfast nook.
Keeping the two in close proximity can be problematic, he explains, because vinegar bacteria tends to go everywhere. “It can and will infect beer, turning it sour.”
Technically, Bingham isn’t making beer on this September day — he’s making hard cider. But it’s not just any cider. Bingham’s take on an English-style “scrumpy” hard cider will be on tap for guests when he marries his partner of 13 years, Beth Kuffel, in two weeks. Another 12-gallon jug of hard cider for the wedding, a “faux chardonnay,” is fermenting, appropriately, in their bedroom. The wedding festivities will take place at the 25th anniversary celebration of “Apfelfest,” a Madison Homebrewers and Tasters Guild apple pressing festival that Bingham founded shortly after becoming a member of the group in the early 1990s.
“It was a really easy decision to make,” he says about combining the events. “It is uniquely us; many of our friends are there already, and we love the transition to fall.”
Today, Bingham is adding more unpasteurized cider to his scrumpy. Kneeling next to the fermenters, he shakes the gallon plastic jug of cider vigorously before pouring it all in. Bingham is using a “step fermentation” process. He started with fresh cider and liquid wine yeast culture, agitated them and, 24 hours later, added more cider. He repeats this for four or five days in a row. With an alcohol content between 6% and 7%, Bingham says the cider is “active and alive” and will still be fermenting on his wedding day.
Making cider has been a passion of Bingham’s since he had a revelation while tasting Woodchuck Hard Cider at Star Liquor. Bingham had just joined the Homebrewers Guild (his uncle, Bob Drousth, is one of the founding members).
The sip of cider transported Bingham back to his youth, when he spent fall days squirrel hunting and apple picking outside of Mount Horeb. Bingham remembers thinking, “I’m in this fermentation group. Wouldn’t it be cool if we got a cider press and resurrected a lost art?”
He ran an ad seeking a cider press and was bombarded with offers. He settled on a Buckeye press that was made in 1869. That fall Bingham organized the guild’s first Apfelfest, which took place at his grandparents’ cabin near Merrimac. While camping out on the property, the group pressed 25 bushels of apples for making hard cider.
Twenty-five years later, the harvest-time event has moved to a farm near Dousman, although this will be its final year at that location. The Homebrewers are looking for a new home for next year’s festival.
While celebrating Bingham’s wedding, Guild members will press 150 bushels of apples from Patterson Orchard near New Berlin. Some of those pressed apples will end up back in Bingham’s kitchen, being turned into the “witch’s brew” that Bingham calls his unpasteurized, unfiltered alcoholic cider.
It will be ready in about a year, just in time to celebrate his first wedding anniversary.
Year Bingham opened The Smokin’ Cantina: 2008
Year he met his wife: 2002
Number of gallons he fermented for their wedding: 20
Gallons of cider one bushel of apples will make: 2.5
Apples used for wedding brew: a blend from Ela Orchard near Rochester, Wis., plus some crabapples
