Winnipeg may not be known for its apple trees, but they’re all over the city in people’s yards. When the fruit is ripe, it’s hard to know what to do with it all. That’s where Next Friend Cider comes in. “Next Friend Cider is a food waste initiative masquerading as a cider company,” said owner Jesse Oberman. Like many big ideas, Oberman’s started small. His neighbour had more apples from his tree than he needed. So Oberman took the apples and decided to make some cider. Then the neighbour told their cousin, who told their friend, and so on. “All of a sudden I had a lot of apples on my hands,” Oberman recalled. So, he decided to scale up. Working out of Low Life Barrelhouse, an urban brewery on Daly Street, Oberman now takes excess fruit from backyards across the city and turns it into different varieties of cider. “We use barrels. We use tanks sometimes, like last year when we got more fruit than we knew what to do with,” said Oberman. “It’s all about just finding a place to put the apple juice.” Oberman and his team pick some of the fruit themselves. But demand is so great, many people just drop off the fruit at Next Friend Cider, where he pays commercial rates for it. The idea behind the enterprise is supported by Compost Winnipeg. “I think it’s exceptional because not only is it rescuing that food from becoming waste and producing methane if it were going into a landfill or just even rotting on the ground and creating maybe a mess or an issue with pests, it’s being put to good use,” said Karrie Blackburn. “Also, it provides a little bit of subsidized income to the person with that harvest.” Last year, Next Friend Cider converted 60,000 pounds of excess fruit into cider, and they’re always open for more. Meaning there will be less waste in Winnipeg and more delicious cider. If you have extra apples or cherries you don’t want, you can drop them off at Next Friend Cider’s taproom on Daly Street. The final product is being sold in Manitoba Liquor Marts and some restaurants.
