A tale of two ciders

I've been making cider for a long time, let's say 13 years or so. For a long time I was working solely with 'dessert' apples and some crabs for tannin kick. Now I have/had access to table fruit unlike the average Mac-Delicious-Cortland fruit widely available in New England and elsewhere, and discovered that Liberty, a scab-resistant apple from the Cornell breeding program, makes a decent cider on its own and contributes a lot to a blend as well. After a lot of trial and error I came upon a blend from an unsprayed block I used to manage. At the time the mill I used would not squeeze sprayed fruit, so this was a good block to have. For a number of years my main cider blend consisted of Liberty, Haralson, Nova-Easy-Grow, and some Redfield crab. This made a decent cider, but it tended to be rather sharp, although my tongue got used to it. In 2003 I even did an oak barrel ferment of this blend that turned out well, if not a bit overpowered with oak.
But in the meantime I was just getting it together to grow or source my own 'real' cider fruit, the bittersharps and bittersweets of European ancestry. After reading Proulx and Nichols' cider book, and talking with Steve Wood on the subject, I was convinced that I needed these fruit to make the best cider. In fact I think my infamous statement that I had not yet made a great cider came from that time. So I planted my orchard, and began buying in fruit from Steve. Yes, I was still blending with Liberty most of the time, and starting making good, even great ciders. But I still had not approached the holy grail of ciders, at least according to the books and experts. I'm talking about a varietal Kingston Black cider.
In 2007 I finally had enough KB for a single squeeze. Mind you I was throwing terroir out the window...these fruit came from South Burlington and Calais, Vt as well as Lebanon, NH. But squeeze it I did, and fermented in my usual minimalist style; 50 ppm sulfite at the squeeze, wild yeast, cold fermentation, one racking. In May it was still at a gravity of 1.005 or so, and fairly cloudy, so I hit it with some bentonite, 25 ppm sulfite, and racked. I bottled it two weeks ago.

The verdict? This is a damned good cider, I'd even say excellent (look for it as an entry in the 2008 GLOWS competition). Full bodied, slightly fruity, rich, with just the right acid-tannin balance. It's dry, but that tiniest bit of sweetness carries through with a nice apple character. I call this my Kingston Black Special Reserve, and even state on the label that the drinker should consider themselves lucky to be trying this potion.

So just the other night I was poking around the cider room and came across a bottle of 03 Bar (barrel blend, 2003 harvest). I didn't expect much from this five-year old cider; pulling the cork found a slight effervescent 'pop', maybe not a good thing. It poured into the glass with the most gorgeous trains of bubbles I've seen, the color a nice mild amber. There was still some nice sharp fruit in the aroma, and the flavor? Spectacular! Balanced sharpness, fully dry but fruity, very subdued oak. If I'd known that it would have aged this well I would have saved more than one bottle, and that was probably a mistake.
As for how it matches up to the Kingston Black, I'd put it on equal footing. Once you reach a certain level, particularly with the balance of acid, fruit, and sweetness, they become peers and do not deserve judgment against one another. Am I surprised that 'domestic' apples could make a cider on par with the supposed king of cider apples? Not really, and I have long advocated that the right domestic/crab blends can make decent and even great cider. I just thought it interesting that I got a chance to haphazardly try these two within a couple of days of each other.


Oh, and I no longer say that I haven't ever made a Great Cider.

TB

I'm Back

From where? Nowhere, I'm just telling myself that it's time to breathe some life into this little cider tale. Expect a few more posts in the coming weeks, and of course details on the 2008 season at Lost Meadow Cidery.

TB

Vermont the #1 cidermaker in US?

Hi Terry,

SF here--I interviewed you in the fall for an article for the
Montpelier Bridge. Question: someone told me VT is the largest producer
of hard cider in the U.S. True? False? Somewhere in between?
Thanks so much! Hope your workshop at NOFA was a success.

My response:
It's possible that VT is the biggest producer of "hard cider" in the US,
if only because of the presence of Green Mountain Cidery (in
Middlebury), makers of Woodchuck and Cider Jack ciders. They were once
under ownership of Bulmer's UK, the largest cidermakers in the world.
That said, their products are what we call 'industrial ciders'; highly
doctored and not exactly naturally fermented. The process usually is
such: cheap juice (often foreign concentrate) sugared up to double the
alcohol level, ferment fast and dry, water back to 5% abv, add more
apple juice concentrate to sugar it up and replace any flavor or nuance
that were not there after the previous bastardization, pasteurize,
sorbate, sulfite, force carbonate, bottle, and sell on the nearest
alco-pop shelf alongside such concoctions as "Twisted Tea" and "Hard
Lemonade".

Real cider from real juice is probably most made in Oregon, only a guess
but there's a handful of operations out there. NY has a number as well,
as does New England (but only one or maybe two per state it seems).

See my bias?

Thanks for the question...makes me feel like an expert.

TB

OldTimey Dave's Cider Blog

Check it out here

Gang filters

Sterile filter setup used for stabilizing sweet ciders. Cleared, cold-shocked, off-dry or sweet ciders are pushed from keg A through two filters, each with two pads apiece. Filter 1 filters down to 2 microns, then filter 2 goes down to 0.5 microns, effectively leaving the cider free of yeast. I generally add 25 ppm sulfite to keg 2 and keep under CO2 pressure to prevent oxidation. Filtering happens at 7-10 psi system pressure.

2007 Great Lakes Olde World Syder Competition

The results are in:

2007 Great Lakes Olde World Syder Competition
Bronze Medal, 'English Cider,' 06 Dry Bittersharp
Silver Medal, 'English Cider,' 06 Dry Bittersweet
Honorable Mention, 'French Cider,' 06 Bittersweet Semisweet

I could say that I'm a little disappointed with the results...what the hell is 'honorable mention'? Sounds like when you say a blind date had a 'good personality'. But really I know that my ciders are pretty good, and I like them. What this really shows is that the quality of cider made by the enthusiasts all over North America who enter this competition is increasing by leaps and bounds over previous years. There's a lot of debate in the cider community over the worth of these competitions, but in the end I feel that it is indicative of better cider produced of late and more of them being made, both commercially and by us home types. Considering that there were over 140 ciders entered into the competition, I'm pretty happy to think that mine were considered good enough for 'honorable mention,' at a minimum (these were the only three ciders I entered).
I would love to see my mill customers enter their own ciders into this and other comps, if only to show that we have the potential to make really nice ciders on a larger scale in this little corner of the world. Hell, I'll even arrange shipping to the venue. Any takers? Green Mountain Homebrew Comp comes May 2008...

TB

I guess my "Bradshaw Fruit Press" ain't the only one around!

See it here, a whole lot cheaper than my setup!

A little quote I like...

"Winemaking isn’t a science. It’s just a branch of cooking where we use a calendar instead of a timer – the ultimate Slow Food. Putting something distinctive and visceral on the table is the challenge with which every chef deals daily. As in all cooking, distinctive terroir expression suffers from overspicing. That doesn’t mean all cooking is bad. You just need to have respect for the native flavors of your raw materials."

From Clark Smith, Appellation America