Cider The Basics

• One of humanity's oldest beverages?
  • certainly America's beverage
  • Johnny Appleseed's real mission
• "Hard Cider"
• It's a "session strength" fruit wine
• How it became a brewers thing?
• Had a growth in popularity because
  • It's different
  • It's gluten free
  • the fun fruity flavors

Cider Reputation

• It's had a rowdy reputation for years - particularly in the UK
• Cheap alcohol fuel (3L plastic bottles with a week's recommend allowance)
• Snakebites as fight fuel. 
  • Stone Fence as America's first "cocktail"
• But....
  • proud traditions of farmhouse ciders
  • GBBF Cider bar experience - complex, weird, strange

Making Cider

• The Hard Way
  • Harvest apples - blet depending on variety
  • Grind apples - rough chunks, not apple sauce
  • Press apples - stacks of wood, apples in muslin bags, and a fruit press.
  • Proceed to the next slide

Making Cider

• The Easy Way
  • Start with juice. 
    • The better the juice, the better the product
    • But lots of cider from inexpensive juice.
  • Measure the juice, taste, decide to chaptalize.
  • Ferment - yeast, yeast nutrient, pectin enzyme(?)
    • Wait for wild things from the orchard?
  • Adjust for taste - acids (malic, tartaric, citric), tannin (bitterness), sugar?
  • Package

The Challenge

• How to get sweet sparkling cider.
  • If you add sugar to generate CO2, the yeast will eat the sugar!
  • Kegs make it easy!
    • Add potassium sorbate for 1 day​
    • Add sweetner the next day
    • Keg and carbonate
  • Bottles
    • Pastuerize?
    • Back sweeten
    • Voodoo to stun the yeast when you are carbed?