Wanted: Ugly Apples for a Good Cause

Making cider brings Jeff and I such joy, and it takes a community to make it possible every day. Our suppliers, local farmers and artisans, our cidermakers and servers and sales team, and everyone else here at Portland Cider Co. help us keep our doors open and the cider flowing. And once a year, we get to expand our Portland Cider team to include the wider community: YOU!

We are collecting your fallen, ugly, and otherwise unwanted (but edible) apples and other fruit to produce the one-of-a-kind PDX Community Cider. You can gather them up from your yard, trees, bushes and vines, and bring them to us to use. We’ll jumble them all together, press them into juice, and make cider out of YOUR fruit! Then, with every pint or can sold, we donate 10% of sales to Hunger-Free Schools to ensure that kids in our community have access to nutritious meals.

This pandemic has made the need greater than ever. In 2019, about 1 in 10 Oregonians were food-insecure, not sure where their next meal would come from. Today, it’s closer to 1 in 4, and we’re grateful to have a platform and facilities that can help support the hunger-free movement in Oregon.

Our annual Fruit Forward Apple & Fruit Drive is a win-win-win: we save unwanted fruit from waste, we make delicious cider, and we help feed kids. But we can’t do it without you and your fruit. So gather up your unwanted apples, pears, berries and other backyard fruit and bring it to us! We’re set up for no-contact collection, and for every bushel you bring us (about 40lbs), we’ll give you a voucher for a free pint of the 2021 PDX Community Cider—another win! 

We’re collecting right now through September 30th at our Clackamas taproom. Please don’t let that less-than-gorgeous fruit go to waste—bring it to us, and enjoy the fruits of your donation in cider form this fall!

Thanks for being a part of the Portland Cider family.

Cheers,

Lynda & Jeff

P.S. We filmed this short video last year, sharing all the information on this important program. Give it a watch to learn more!