( Apple blossoms right down the street from me in the Spring. )
Yesterday I offered up a bit of a primer on cider. A little
bit of historical context, characteristics & regional variations, how it's
made and producers you should know. It was a lot of information but I hadn't
covered all the topics that I wanted to. Today I'm back with reviews of recent
tastings, some tips on pairing cider with food and a little bit about my own
experience making cider at home.
Cider Reviews
I try new ciders whenever and wherever I find them. I
developed a taste for cider growing up in New England. Occasionally the fresh
pressed cider from a local farm had gone a little hard and while I don't think
I knew about the potential alcohol in it, I did like the tartness and minor
carbonation. I never got to drink much of it, it was usually spirited away upon
detection that it had gone "hard", but I enjoyed it nonetheless. When
I did begin to drink alcohol, legally of course, I consumed cider frequently.
For me it was a much better alternative to light beer when I had the funds to
buy just for myself.
Samuel Smith Organic Hard Cider
Samuel Smith Organic Hard Cider is medium dry with plenty of sweet & tart apple to go around this is a very enjoyable cider. There is a floral element to this that you will also see mentioned in quite a number of other reviews. Knowing what apple blossoms smell like, I have orchards on my street, I do agree that is what the aroma is most like. At 5% ABV this cider won't do a lot of damage in moderation. To me this is a classic commercial version of English cider.
Angry Orchard Ciders
The ciders from
Angry Orchard are relatively new and until
recently I hadn't tried all the varieties available in 12oz bottles. I haven't yet tried Ice Man or Straw Man from
the Cider House Collection. Both the Crisp and Traditional ciders are
straightforward with the Traditional being the drier, sharper and more tart of
the two. The Crisp tasted too juicy and fruity to me, but it isn't a bad cider
to sit back and enjoy. The Ginger version is more interesting still, but I
found the ginger flavor to be somewhat hidden by the apple aromas and
sweetness. I found the Elderflower to have a skunky nose and it just wasn't a
combination that I enjoyed well enough to want to drink it again.
Sarasola Basque Cider
Pours hazy and with an orange tint. The aromas are tart and
sour which follows through in the mouth. The cider is funky, earthy, acetic,
sour and much more interesting that I expected. The apple aromas and flavors
are there but are very much masked by the Brett and sour elements. This reminds
me of some of the sour Belgian ales and lambics I have had. The reviews at several
of the craft beer sites for this cider were decidedly not positive. It left me
wondering if the reviewers didn't know that Basque cider isn't like American
cider.
Woodchuck Ginger
I've been drinking
Woodchuck ciders for as long as I can remember them being available (1991) but I had never had the ginger which has only been out less than a year. This is the best ginger flavor I have had in a cider, and something I hope to replicate in a cider of my own in the next season. The cider itself is dry so the ginger stands out with a potent spicy character and apples as the backdrop.
Bantam Wunderkind
Bantam Cider Wunderkind is the best new cider I have had in some time. It pours
pale straw in color and crystal clear. The tart apple and floral notes in the
nose drew me in. Flavor wise this cider offers a spectrum and tart and sweet
apple flavors and hints of ginger. I
would highly recommend this to anyone who can find it in or around Massachusetts
where it is made.
Etienne Dupont
Organic Cidre Bouché Brut de Normandie 2009
Ciders made in Normandy, like
Etienne Dupont, are a real treat. In the traditional
style there are unfiltered, barrel aged (fermented in part with native yeasts
and sometimes Brett) and massively carbonated. This one was no slouch on any of
those points. It poured and orange gold color and threw up apples, yeast funk
and barnyard right away. In the mouth the cider apples reign and hints of
spices come and go. There is some residual sweetness but it is kept in check by
the acidity and carbonation. I bought a small bottle of this particular
producer and now I know to buy the big one the next time.
Links to Older Reviews
Pairing Cider with
Food
Food & beverage pairing has become somewhat of a sport
in the United State media, and I’m not sure that has been entirely beneficial.
Matching food & beverages has an immense amount of subjective quality to
it, and while most of the basic rules are valid, the focus on “perfect
pairings” is driving people nuts.
Cider is an old beverage, a rustic beverage, and thus consumers
of it anywhere there is a healthy cider-making tradition have tried it with
absolutely every food-stuff available. This means there should be lots of
experience pairing cider but it also serves to stoke the fires of subjective
judgments of which regional foods & ciders go together best. We've lost a
lot of the cider tradition in the US so our experience with it on the table
isn't as tangible as it could be. It's coming back though. Let’s take a look at
some of the basic rules in terms of cider & food pairing. No matter whether
you are new to cider or not some of these suggestions will open up exciting
possibilities for you to try.
( Up close with some apple blossoms. The smell is so wonderful! )
Dry, highly carbonated ciders can be paired much like
Champagne and sparkling wine. The most significant difference is that the
aromas and flavors are more focused around apples, but in versions that have
balanced flavors it shouldn't cause pairing problems. So this means pairings
with lots of different appetizers, especially fried ones, tapas, oysters and
shellfish.
Cheese is the ultimate pairing tool for me, but I am a
sucker for cheese! Cheddar, especially aged types, pairs well with cider. Dubliner,
an Irish import, is particularly nice with both dry and medium dry ciders. Goat
cheese pairs nicely as well, and even better with added fruit or a chutney.
Funky cheeses can pair well with cider, and if you match some funk with funk
(French & Spanish ciders) you might make magic! Blue cheese is a good match
for sweeter ciders.
Poultry and cider can be paired very well, and I've often
found cider to be the best match for something like Thanksgiving dinner and the
convergence of all those textures and flavors. Roasted chicken with herbs and a
medium dry to dry cider is a combination that I've enjoyed many times.
Desserts and any sweet treats containing apple can be paired
with cider, and the basic rule of matching sweet with sweet does apply. Fresh
baked apple pie with a glass of ice cider is a combination sure to please!
Making Cider At Home
Making cider at home is a straightforward act. I recently wrote
a post about "scrumpy" and I presented a countertop version of it
that only takes a couple weeks to ferment and is consumed before the
fermentation is complete and without any fining or filtering. Check out
Adventures in Fermentation - Scrumpy to see how it's done.
Cider-making at home can be much more elaborate, and if you
ask my wife she'll tell you I've gone there and will likely go even bigger the
next time. I made my first hard cider in 2005. I have access to fresh pressed
cider from several local farms so getting the ingredients has never been a
problem. I've made hard cider from
varietal juice, Mutsu in particular, as well as the "house blends"
from five area farms. The only consideration about the starting product that I
have made up to this point is that it can only be UV treated, but NOT
pasteurized. Living sweet cider makes the best hard cider. The results have
spanned a broad range, from really tart, sour & dry to gently sweet with a
beautiful nose of apples and apple blossoms. Duplicating the best outcomes has
been hard because each new season of apples is different.
In 2009 I embarked on a
big cider project. I was interested
in making several different styles of cider from the same source. I started
with 35 gallons of fresh cider. I used different yeasts and finished some of
the ciders with homemade fruit syrups. All of the cider I made for this project
was still. I had lost a fair bit of cider in 2007 to overcharged bottles and I
was loathe to see that happen again.
( The seven carboys around the outer ring are from the 2009 project. )
The outcome was very educational. The unflavored cider made
with the traditional cider yeast was good, but the least interesting. The
ciders made with a Sweet Mead yeast were naturally a bit sweeter and had a more
complex nose. The ciders made with cherry, strawberry and raspberry fruit
syrups ranged in sweetness with the raspberry one tasting like raspberry/apple
candy. The best outcome was the unflavored cider fermented with Rudesheimer
yeast which is actually a yeast used to make German Riesling wines. The
complexity of the cider was beyond all of my wildest imagination. I named it
"Rudy" and coveted each bottle that I pulled from the cellar to
enjoy. That cider went on to win a first place at a regional homebrew
competition and the feedback from everyone who tried it was overwhelming. If
there is ever a cider I would like to recreate, it would be this one.
( Open apple blossoms. They are nice, but boy do they create a lot of pollen in the neighborhood! )
With the exception of pressing the fruit myself everything
else about cider-making at home has been the same as it would be for a
commercial producer, albeit on a smaller scale. In 2013 I do plan to make a
larger volume than I have made in the past. I plan to blend ciders from
multiple sources, use several different yeasts and even barrel age some. I've
also considered using cryo-extraction to create the base for an ice cider, but that
has to wait until winter comes again in New Hampshire, something I am not
thinking about at all right now! I will likely get the chance to crush and
press my own apples this year too. One of my brew club friends has access to
lots of fruit from a family orchard and with a little bit of elbow grease I
hope to bring home my hand pressed cider and make something delicious with it.
Onward to #ciderchat!
Once again there is a lot of information here. To me cider
is really exciting and sharing all of this information was an exciting task. I
look forward to answering questions and sharing experiences during #winechat
tonight.
So what I am going to be drinking tonight during the cider
conversation #winechat? I have some homemade scrumpy that I will start off with
then I am going to open a bottle from the Dooryard series made by
Farnum Hill
and maybe a bottle of Newtown Pippin from
Original Sin Ciders.
Cheers!
Jason
