By Gary Ogle
gogle@wbcowqel.com
Cooper’s Mill Apple Butter has that sweet smell of success about it – literally and figuratively. The delicious product made only here in Bucyrus, and those who make it, will be featured on the cable television show Food Factory.
“It’s very exciting,” said Dan Cooper. “It kind of gets our product out there and shows everybody how it’s processed.”
Cooper and everyone associated with Cooper’s Mill, including new owners Jason and Justin McMullen, are all excited about the apple butter getting such recognition.
Taping of the show was a unique experience for those at Cooper’s Mill.
“Oh this is really interesting. The film crew was here all day and they were going over every little detail of how the apple butter is made. These are the things that we know by heart here at Cooper’s Mill, we’ve been doing them for years and years,” Cooper said. “Everybody else can see it – how much trouble you go through to make the apple butter.”
“They contacted us,” said Rhonda Baldwin of Cooper’s Mill about Food Factory producers. “I think they go around and try to do unique things.”
Unique is an appropriate way to describe the apple butter at Cooper’s, from the taste to the way it’s made to its popularity and multiple uses.
“It’s good to have our product out there,” Cooper said. “We’ve had a lot of rich tradition of making apple butter here in Bucyrus for 20-some years.”
That tradition means making apple butter in the traditional, old-fashioned, time-consuming way few still make it. Certainly the difference is in the taste.
“We’re about the one ones left that makes apple butter over a wood fire,” Baldwin said proudly.
That takes a lot of wood, a lot of apples and sugar, and all the good stuff that goes into a batch of Cooper’s Mill Apple Butter. It also takes something else made only in Bucyrus: Picking copper kettles.
Cooper’s has four 50-galloin kettles and all are used on the days apple butter is made.
How much apple butter is that in a year’s time?
“The numbers keep going up year after year,” said Baldwin.
Baldwin and Cooper estimated in 2015 that Cooper’s filled 40,000 half-pint jars, another 25,000 pints and 3,000 quarts.
And that’s not all.
“We use it in our new apple butter barbecue sauce too,” Baldwin said.
One can only imagine the number of apples needed to make that much apple butter.
“All kinds of apples,” Cooper said. “We get most of our apples in Ohio. We use a good variety, some gala, some yellow delicious, honey crisp.”
Apple butter remains one of the top sellers, if not the most sold item, at Cooper’s Mill.
“I think it is the best seller. Right now we’re kind of in stockpile mode,” Cooper said. “Later on in the summer . . . . We’ve got to get while the getting’ is good.”
The episode featuring Cooper’s Mill Apple Butter is titled Butter Up!, and will be broadcast for the first time at 1 o’clock Thursday afternoon on the FYI channel. That is channel 140 in Bucyrus and Galion.