Are you tired of picking up fruit in the fall? All those apples or pears ending up in your green bin? We can help. We have a #fruitdonor program where we pay you in cider credits for all of your fruit!
We want your fruit and we are willing to pay you in cider! If you live in or around Calgary we are looking for apples, pears, berries, cherries, crabs or anything other fruit you may have. Do you have plums, grapes, or apricots? We will turn these into one of our small batch, cider club selections. SunnyCider’s goal is to let no piece of Calgary fruit go unused. Get your tree on our registry right away and we can make sure that we can use all this fruit is used in a timely manner, creating delicious, small batch cider.
The best way to know if your apples are ready is to bite into it and look at the pips (seeds) inside. If they are starting to turn brown or have turned brown then they are ready to pick. They should come off the tree fairly easy. If your fruit is starting to fall off the tree, it’s probably time to pick.
Unfortunately we can’t. While we wash every piece of fruit that comes into our cidery, we can’t guarantee there aren’t any other pathogens that may be on the ground. Especially in the case of pet yards. This will save us having to go through every piece of fruit that we get as well for rotten or bruised apples. It’s true what they say, one bad apple can ruin the whole bunch!
We can’t take bruised fruit because as mentioned above, one bad apple spoils the bunch. There is no guarantee we can get to pressing the apples immediately so it could set the whole batch off. If you do have any questions, please email us at info@sunnycider.ca.
These we will take. They do make amazing cider! As long as they haven’t already fallen are become bruised. They can’t be picked up from the ground though.
Yes please! While we don’t typically have good cider apples here in Alberta, crabs add the tannins and the sugar content we need in order to make our amazing Cider. We will take crabs of every colour, shape, and size.
Whatever you have. If you have a big rubbermaid tote, you can use that and when you drop it off we will transfer to one of our larger apple bins. If you have big bags like the Ikea blue ones, these will work. Just don’t fill them to the point of not being able to lift.
Unfortunately no. We have to pay labor in order to get your fruit picked. If you are really after cider credits, please pick the fruit yourself and deliver to our cidery. Will enrol you in our Donor Club in which you’ll receive a donor card which gives you 5% off of any purchase at the cidery.
It is exactly that. A credit towards cider. If you have $50 in cider credits, you may shop and take draught cider or bottled cider up to that value. If you would rather, you can use the credits towards merchandise like shirts, hats, or glassware. 1 pound of apples/pears = $.35 in cider credits. 1 pound of cherries/berries = $3 in credits. You don’t need to use the credit immediately, we will have an account with your information on it.
This is something we’ve talked about within SunnyCider. We would love to be able to prune your tree but we don’t have the arborist expertise in order to do so. We are hoping to add an experienced arborist to our team and then be able to offer this service for a fee. As of right now, the answer is no.
If you are an arborist that would like to partner with us, please reach out at info@sunnycider.ca with your proposal.
Chances are you may have a heritage cider apple tree. True cider apples aren’t very tasty and probably don’t have much use other than juicing and fermenting. Please donate! These are a rarity in Calgary.
Just make a commitment for another year. We need to know how many local trees we have from year to year. We will contact you and make sure that all the information is correct.
If you bite into it and see that the pips (seeds) are starting to turn brown. This is the best way to know if your fruit is ripe. If you wait too long, the fruit tends to get mealy and there isn’t much juice left in them. When the fruit gets to this state, we can’t offer credits.