Cider Made Simple: All About Your New Favorite Drink
By Jeff Alworth and Lydia Nichols
()
About this ebook
Jeff Alworth
Jeff Alworth is a beer writer living in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of The Beer Bible, Cider Made Simple, Beer Tasting Tool Kit, and The Secrets of Master Brewers. His books have been honored by the North American Guild of Beer and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. His articles have appeared in several publications, including Draft Magazine and All About Beer. Jeff’s passion for and knowledge of beer has yielded opportunities to teach classes at the Portland Cider Company and the Multnomah Athletic Club. He also cohosts the Beervana Podcast and writes about beer on his Beervana blog.
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Cider Made Simple - Jeff Alworth
For Sally, for everything.
Text copyright © 2015 by Jeff Alworth.
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Chronicle Books LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Alworth, Jeff.
Cider made simple : all about your new favorite drink / Jeff Alworth ; Illustrations by Lydia Nichols.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4521-3445-1 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4521-4391-1 (epub, mobi)
1. Cider. I. Title.
TP563.A62 2015
663'.63—dc23
2014038357
Designed by Ryan Hayes
Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com
CONTENTS
6 Cider Basics: Don’t Call It Hard
8 Why Apples?
9 The Holy Trinity: Acid, Tannin, and Sweetness
10 Acidity
10 Tannins
10 Sweetness
11 Further Layers
11 Effervescence
12 Fullness
12 Alcohol
13 The Subtle Qualities
13 Aromatics
14 Fruitiness
14 Funkiness
14 Spice/Phenols
15 Herbs & Flowers
15 Caramel/Butterscotch
16 Flavor Wheels of Three Ciders
17 Reading a Label: The Taxonomy of Cider
17 Cider by National Tradition
18 England
18 France
19 Spain
20 Cider by Sweetness
20 Natural Cider
20 Cider’s Close Kin
21 Perry
21 Pears Become Perry, Not Cider
21 Brandy/Calvados
22 Pommeau
22 Ice Cider
23 When Cider Is Not Cider
26 Chapter 1
A Is for Apple
28 Almaty: Father of Apples
29 Heterozygosity
30 Applesauce into Juice
31 They Don’t Last Forever
32 The Cider Coasts
36 Chapter 2
Sweating, Grinding, and Fermenting
38 Type of Fruit
39 Sharp
39 Bittersharp
39 Bittersweet
39 Sweet
40 Type and Length of Fermentation
40 Whole Fruit or Chaptalization
41 Back-Sweetening
41 Flavor Enhancers
42 Cider Making at a Glance
44 Chapter 3
Proper English Cider
47 Traditional English Cider
48 The Industrialization of Cider Making
51 Small Farms Make Great Cider
55 English Cider and Perry
56 The Harvest
57 English Apples
58 The Press
59 Wassail
60 Fermentation
63 Scrumpy
66 Perry
68 Finished Cider
72 Chapter 4
Cider Under Cork
75 Cidre Bouché of France
77 Asbestos Sack Filter
80 Terroir
82 French Cider
82 The Art of Défécation (Keeving)
86 The Cider of Brittany
89 Gravity Readings
90 Cider Under Cork
91 Disgorgement
92 En Français
94 Calvados and Pommeau
97 How to Taste Calvados
100 Chapter 5
Breaking the Cider
104 Gernika
106 Celebration of Cider: Txotx Season
107 Tart Spanish Ciders
111 Spanish Cider
112 Breaking the Cider
114 Throwing the Cider
114 Basque Cider Making
117 The Riddle of the Sour
118 Asturian Cider
122 Chapter 6
The American Cider Renaissance
124 Orchard Not Necessary
128 Why Cider Vanished
133 The Three Schools of American Cider
134 The Traditionalists
137 Production
139 The Modernists
142 Production
145 The Experimentalists
147 Hopped Cider
149 Production
151 The Sound of History Rhyming
156 Chapter 7
Winter Harvest in Quebec
158 Quebec’s Cidre de Glace
160 Cooked
by Freezing
163 Refrigeration Prohibited
167 Sources
167 Books
167 Articles
167 Website
168 Tours and Interviews
168 England
168 France
168 Quebec
168 Spain
168 United States
169 Acknowledgments
170 Index
How simple and natural, how elemental is cider? This is how you make it: liberate the juice from the fruit. That’s it—cider makes itself.
In fact, anyone with an apple tree knows you don’t even have to liberate the juice. I’ve watched it happen in my front yard. In the late summer, tart little seedling apples begin to make a carpet under the gnarled tree out there. A scent rises from them, heady and sharp. This is an ancient aroma, and for millions of years, creatures like me have been drawn to it. On each of my apples’ stippled red skins is a film of natural yeast, and every time this protective coating tears or ruptures—thanks to the violence brought by insects and gravity—millions of tiny creatures pour in to snack on the sugars inside and work their fermentation magic.
In the United States, we’re a little confused about what cider is. We think of it as that sweet, cloudy stuff that comes in large glass jugs. Thanks to Prohibition, Americans developed a taste for what should properly be called sweet cider, which is really just apple juice. Once temperance kicked in, farmers began selling the juice from their orchards immediately after pressing and it became a seasonal treat. In the centuries before that, they would let the juice rest in casks and naturally ferment, preserving their bounty to be consumed slowly, over the cold winter months—a fermented beverage everyone else in the world calls cider (or cidre [French], sagardoa [Basque], or sidra [Spanish]).
In the United States, fermented cider is often called hard,
a designation that carries two separate judgments. If cider
is the sweet stuff and hard cider
the fermented, our naming schemes suggest that the sweet juice is the natural, unqualified state. But anyone who has allowed a jug of farm-fresh juice to sit too long in their fridge knows this isn’t true. In New England, where my wife grew up drinking sweet cider in mid-autumn, jugs are emptied speedily, lest the cider develop a spiky, tingling quality usually described as off.
Cider is the final state, the completed state; juice is an embryonic phase early in a natural process.
Don’t call it hard.
Fermented apple juice is cider, just cider.
Why Apples?
If fruit naturally transforms itself into alcohol, why do people make cider from apples? The reason has to do with all the stuff that doesn’t ferment. Sugar becomes alcohol, but what gives good fruit wines their flavor and balance are other compounds, particularly acids and tannins. Grapes have them, as do pears (which can be made into a cider-like drink called perry), but not strawberries or lychees. Indeed, unlike sweet eating fruits such as cherries, peaches, and oranges, apples come in different types that accentuate these qualities: sweet eating apples like Red Delicious, tart apples like Granny Smith, and bitter apples used only in cider—with names like Yarlington Mill, Michelin, and Frequin Rouge. Other apples may be used to round out a cider by adding aroma or other flavor notes, especially those tart ones, but the most complex ciders begin with bitter apples. Except for the grape, no fruit takes to fermentation so well as the humble apple.
Blended together and fermented, these different apple varieties have the capacity to produce a beverage that is crisp and complex, full of flavors we never associate with the fresh fruit: pepper, lemon, elderflower, cedar, and soil. A cider may be delicate and vinous or have a touch of funkiness with flavors like cheese, vinegar, or Band-Aid.
The Holy Trinity: Acid, Tannin, and Sweetness
To the extent philosophers have deigned to direct their attention to the aesthetics of flavor (yes, there are such people), their gaze has settled on wine, not cider. They use words like hitherto
and focus on elements like expressiveness
as the key to vinous aesthetics. Cider contains many of the same elements wine does, but I would argue for a more grounded basis for judgment: Balance. Humans love flavor—our prefrontal cortex developed to appreciate it—and we can fall into a sensual frenzy over tastes as seemingly offensive as pungent fish eggs, fiery habaneros, or stinky cheese. What we look for in any food or drink, no matter how potent any single quality, is balance—the harmony of contrasting or complementary flavors. The most prized foods and drinks are those that use layers of flavor together to create a single, lush impression, like a note sung by a choir.
In cider, this balance is achieved with acidity, tannins, and sweetness. A cider doesn’t have to contain all three nor must they be present in equal intensity. But to create a complexity of the palate (enough flavor) on the one hand yet avoiding falling into imbalance (too much flavor), these basic elements must create a structure for the cider.
ACIDITY
Apples get their tart zip from malic acid. All ciders need acid to create a sense of crisp liveliness; acids brighten flavor and provide a sense of mouthfeel. Without acid, a cider will taste dull and flabby.
Some ciders, like English scrumpy and those made in Spain, develop additional acid during fermentation. In terms of balancing cider, acid cuts through sugar and heightens tannin.
TANNINS
In chemical terms, tannins are polyphenols and associated phenolic acids, but to the tongue they are the quality of bitterness and astringency of a kind found in oversteeped tea. Tannins also give the impression of dryness. Many ciders are low in tannins, but they can help provide a contrasting depth in the way hops offset malt in beer.
SWEETNESS
The final element is often one of the least assertive. Because sugars get converted to alcohol, many ciders have few remaining sugars. They provide a sense of fullness that buffers acid, alcohol, and tannin. The sense of sweetness may also derive from fermentation or be subtly suggested by other aroma or flavor compounds in the apple.
Further Layers
Sweetness, acidity, and tannins are but the skeleton of a cider—to appreciate the fullness of its palate, we must look at the seductive curves of its flesh—the flavors, aromas, and textures that give cider its sensual delights. When you put your nose over the rim of a glass and snuffle, you may inhale the aroma of a forest floor, full of mushrooms and cedar boughs, or perhaps something brighter, more like an ocean breeze filtered through a lemon grove. Cider is made of apples, but it doesn’t always taste like apple, and rarely only like apples. Beyond its flavor and taste, ciders may be coruscating and brilliant, cloudy and still, thin as rainwater or full as a jammy Cabernet. Here are three further qualities key to distinguishing ciders.
EFFERVESCENCE
Grocery-store cider, which makers have positioned as an alternative to beer, tends to have a lager-like level of carbonation. But ciders may be made completely still, like most wines, or with huge effervescence, like champagne. Still ciders seem rounder and more sweet while fizzy ones are brighter and sharper. Even the quality of effervescence can change the profile—artificially carbonated ciders have larger bubbles that spring more readily to the surface while naturally carbonated ciders have a silkier quality.
FULLNESS
All fermented beverages run a continuum from the sweet and wet to the thin and dry. It’s a measure of attenuation
—that is, the degree to which available sugars have been turned into alcohol. When a cider has more residual sugars left over (or sometimes, added back in), it will seem fuller or more viscous on the tongue. When those sugars have been converted to alcohol, the body is thinner, the finish drier.
ALCOHOL
Apples have wide variability in terms of the amount of sugar they contain, and consequently, the alcohol percentage varies in the resulting cider. Production method can play a role in this, too. The keeved ciders of Normandy can be as low as 3 percent alcohol by volume, while some English and American artisanal ciders may range up toward 10 percent. Alcohol itself doesn’t have much of a flavor, but it contributes a volatile, warming note that strongly affects the perception of a cider.
The Subtle Qualities
In assessing a cider, it may well be the most subtle qualities that push an average example into excellence. A cider may exhibit fine balance and structure, have appropriate effervescence and fullness, but nevertheless fail to delight. A cider becomes distinctive when relatively minor notes add layers of complexity to the final product. These are the results of the apple varieties and fruit terroir (regional environmental factors), the cider-maker’s skill and technique, and products of fermentation and aging. They are that ineffable quality that makes certain ciders exceptional. Following are a few examples—but the list could double or triple with ease.
AROMATICS
A number of things contribute to aromas, but the quality and type of the fruit and fermentation characteristics are primary. Together, they are capable of producing a surprising range of scents, from flowers to fruit to cheese. You may also detect mushrooms, caramel, or nuts—or any number of a thousand different subtle smells. Beware, however, the pure note of fresh apple, especially if it wafts through the room; some mass-market ciders use aroma distillates to goose the nose and mask otherwise insipid cider.
FRUITINESS
Made from apples, cider should taste fruity, right? Sort of. Think of wine and how it may have a touch of grape in the palate but mainly reminds you more of other fruit. Cider is just the same. One of the agents of fruitiness is actually not the apple, but a product of fermentation called an ester.
In ciders you may find fruit flavors that remind you of the citrus family, others in the stone fruit family, or still others that are berry-like. Other elements of the cider will enhance these qualities—tartness accelerating citrus fruitiness, sweetness deepening the berry fruitiness.
FUNKINESS
Rustic farmhouse ciders are made without laboratory-pure yeast strains. Instead, cider-makers use what’s already on the fruit skin. Wild yeasts make wild flavors: vinegar, cheese, barnyard. These flavors can be off-putting at first, but let your mind expand and see how they complement the other characteristics of traditional French, Spanish, and English ciders.
SPICE/PHENOLS
Another way fermentation can inflect a cider is by producing a category of compounds called phenolics
that taste peppery and spicy. These emerge from the tannins in the fruit. In large doses, they can even suggest a clove-like or Band-Aid note, much like is found in Islay Scotch whiskies and Bavarian weizenbiers. They are most common in rustic French and English ciders.
HERBS & FLOWERS
These aromas and flavors are delicate and evanescent—they garland the edge of the palate in lacy filigree. You might detect a note of elderflower or lavender or perhaps dried hay,