A short bike ride to a hard cider pop-up

I’m calling Professor’s Hard Cider a pop-up because it is only open for two weekends this year — this one and next weekend.

The back story to this cidery is fascinating. One married couple. One farm full of apple, peach and Asian pear trees owned by the parents of one of them. Leftover fruit after the pick-your-own season and the harvest.

What to do with all that fruit before it spoils? The idea for cider was born.

The story gets complicated because by the time they had mastered cider-making, the younger couple had moved to the other side of the country. Hence the two-weekend opening in what is their first year.

We followed the farm lane from the road, passing trees groaning with round yellow Asian pears (that harvest season was just beginning) on one side, and a fenced-in area for chickens and geese on the other.

Four of us tried their two ciders: a dry one made with apples and Asian pears, and a rose, fermented with grape skins. The grape skins, it turns out, is not the only way this cider resembles wine.

The fruit is milled and pressed by hand. There’s a two-stage fermentation-and-racking process, longer than I gather what’s typical for cider. The wine resemblance again. And of course it means more cross-country flights for the younger couple.

And when we decide to bring some of the dry cider home, we get a wine-like clear bottle, 0.75 liters, not the cans you’d expect elsewhere.

What about the bike route?

This is a pretty straightforward route through West Windsor. We used Rabbit Hill Road and Lanwin Boulevard, then went past the east entrance to Mercer County Park, across Old Trenton Road and then across U.S. 130 at the traffic light. We took the next left and were soon at Sunrise Farm, the home of the cidery.

15.5 miles round-trip.

We use much of this route to reach the ginormous Hindu temple in Robbinsville, to head to Screamin’ Hill brewery on another farm or to loop through the Assunpink.