Cider Made Simple: All About Your New Favorite Drink (2015)

You hold in your hand a bottle of cider, autumnal in hue, chill to the touch. You might happen to muse, “I wonder how they made it?” and imagine the answer is straightforward enough. You probably think it’s made the same way, more or less, as any other bottle of cider you might heft, say at the grocery store, for closer inspection.

Well, the truth is more complicated. (By now you saw that coming, didn’t you?)

There are many approaches to making cider, from the incredibly simple to the highly synthesized and many ways in between. The general contours look the same. Cider begins in the orchard; and, for farmer cider-makers, tending the trees is a year-round project. Apples are harvested in the fall and the juice pressed. Technology allows the juice to be stored or concentrated so that the next phase, fermentation, can be done either at the moment of harvest or any time throughout the year. Cideries may ferment pure juice or juice fortified with sugar; they may add ingredients to enhance flavor or not. At any given point along the process, a cidery has to choose which method to use, and by the time you add them all up, it amounts to a dazzling range of possibilities.

But among all these possible variations, four decisions in particular will shape the kind of cider being made: 1) the type of fruit; 2) whether cideries use whole fruit or a combination of fruit and sugar water; 3) the type and length of fermentation; and 4) whether flavor enhancers are used.

If we take these four markers, it’s possible to collapse all ciders into three pretty discrete categories: traditional cider, craft cider, and industrial cider. Traditional cider is made largely or exclusively from cider apples, is typically fermented spontaneously, and never uses flavor enhancers. Craft cideries, especially those in the United States, make cider only from whole fruit. However, because most have access only to dessert fruit (eating and pie apples), they often add other fruit juices or even spices to the blend. Industrial cider is made from juice concentrate augmented by sugar to produce very strong, bland cider that is watered down and enhanced with various extracts and flavorings, a process known as “chaptalization” (see “Whole Fruit or ‘Chaptalization,’” page 40, for more information).

Type of Fruit

Not all apples are built the same. Leaving cider aside, we know that some apples are great for eating, while others are good for pies. Flavor, aroma, consistency, texture—they all differ apple to apple. What makes for a crunchy, juicy, explosively flavorful snacking apple doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a 400°F [200°C] oven. The same is true for cider.

The process of fermentation changes the chemistry of apple juice enormously. What tastes good after yeasts have had their go differs from what tastes good straight off the tree. The main elements are acids and tannins, but flavor and aromatics also play their role. In cider’s long history, makers have identified a group of apples that collectively add different elements to tasty ciders. In addition, apples grown for cider making tend to be fibrous, which makes pressing easier, and have the ability to mature in storage without breaking down while starches turn to sugar. The varieties are different country to country, and their flavors contribute to the national character of English, French, Spanish, and even American ciders.

Over a century ago, the Long Ashton Research Station in Herefordshire created a way to classify apples that is still in use today. Researchers divided apples into four different categories based on their acid (“sharp”) and tannin (“bitter”) levels. Sharp and bittersharp apples have acid levels above 0.45 percent, while bittersharp and bittersweet apples have tannin levels above 0.2 percent. Although we often associate single varietal wines with quality, in cider, blending is the way to get the most complexity and character. Makers select different proportions of each variety for their special qualities and, in a finished cider, they become a rich harmony. There are a few varieties said to possess the acids and tannins to make a balanced cider—Kingston Black is renowned for its complexity—but no single type has as many qualities as a blend.

Following are a few famous cider apples by type.

SHARP

Newtown Pippin, Esopus Spitzenburg, Ashmead’s Kernel, Hewe’s Crab, Granny Smith.

BITTERSHARP

Kingston Black, Foxwhelp, Redstreak, Stoke Red, Mettais, Porter’s Perfection.

BITTERSWEET

Dabinett, Yarlington Mill, Tremlett’s Bitter, Chisel Jersey, Frequin Rouge, Bedan, Michelin.

SWEET

Calville Blanc d’Hiver, Sweet Coppin, Roxbury Russet, Fuji, Gala.

In shorthand, “cider apple” often refers to an apple with pronounced bitterness or sharpness, not sweet eating apples. But this is slightly misleading. Any type of apple can be used in a blend, and while sweet apples must be balanced with tannic and acid apples, they can provide important flavors and aromas.

Type and Length of Fermentation

Next to fruit, the most important contributor to a cider’s flavor comes from the compounds produced during fermentation. The most profound expression comes when a cider is fermented naturally by wild yeasts and bacteria on the fruit and in the cidery. The subsequent slow fermentation, extending a few weeks to several months, is an incubator for flavor. Even when they use domesticated yeasts, though, cideries can still coax a lot of flavor from their ciders. Some craft cideries use different yeast strains for different products, and some even use different strains for different apples—which they then blend together in finished ciders. Slow fermentation is an important consideration. In warmer, faster ferments, the yeasts produce less complexity. Time is money, so letting ciders sit for months in fermentation vessels is a costlier proposition than running it through the system in a short time.

Whole Fruit or “Chaptalization”

In the nineteenth century, it occurred to a French chemist named Jean-Antoine Chaptal that he could help boost the strength of cold-weather wines by adding a bit of sugar—a practice still employed today. Although the technique is mildly controversial, it is designed not to save money but to enhance the flavor. It gives weak wine a richer texture, more alcohol, and is said to increase flavor and aroma. Governments of wine-producing regions regulate how much sugar can be added so that quality is not compromised.

In cider making, the name refers to a different practice that borrows more from beer than wine. As in wines, cider-makers add sugar, but they add a great deal; so much that they need to add water as well. It produces a super-strength cider that takes up less space to ferment, much like the related practice of “high gravity brewing” in beer making where brewers make a very strong beer and water it back down at bottling. Before packaging, the chaptalized cider is watered back down and treated with flavorings. The goal is not to increase flavor, but make it easier to manage gigantic amounts of liquid. In the United States, up to 50 percent of the cider may be made of non-apple ingredients—and almost two-thirds in the United Kingdom.

Back-Sweetening

One technique common to all types of cider making is known as “back-sweetening.” Except in certain instances where yeast is deprived of nutrients, apple juice will ferment to “dry”—that is, yeast will consume all the sugars. To produce sweeter ciders, makers filter and pasteurize the finished, dry cider to remove or neutralize the yeast. Then they add sugar or juice to the cider before packaging. Because no viable yeast cells remain in the cider, the sugars won’t continue to ferment inside the bottle.

Traditional and craft cideries use whole fruit juice. A fairly reliable way to tell whether a cider is made from whole juice is to look at the alcohol percentage. Most non-French ciders will naturally have a strength of 6 percent ABV or higher. Chaptalized ciders are beer-strength at 4.5 to 5.5 percent. It’s especially telling if all the ciders in a company’s line have the same ABV.

Flavor Enhancers

When cideries use many varieties of acidic and tannic fruit, they have lots of flavors to work with. When they begin with dessert apples or juice concentrate—and especially when they chaptalize—they begin and end with fewer flavors. Speedy fermentations add little to the mix, and the results are bland. To add a bit of zip, cider-makers have a tool kit that includes colorings, acids (usually malic, but also citric, lactic, and tartaric), tannins, and aroma essences. These are generally natural extracts, and they are not always listed on a label.

Cider Making at a Glance

The following chapters describe in detail the philosophies and methods of traditional and craft cideries. We’ll tour the orchards and cideries of Europe and North America. Ciders vary, sometimes dramatically, from region to region, and recognizing these differences is the key to understanding the essence of cider. Opposite is a brief chart that distills the process for easy reference.

Everyone has opinions about which of these methods is laudable, acceptable, or condemnable, and each person must choose to draw lines according to individual, subjective criteria. (And lest you think the scorn flows in only one direction, let me assure you that I have heard praise and contempt heaped on examples of each of these kinds of ciders.) Far more important than developing a philosophical (or worse, moral!) code regarding these different kinds of ciders, however, is recognizing the differences.

It makes little sense to judge supermarket cider by the standards of a funky Spanish sidra—they are in important ways entirely distinct beverages. Ciders are made of different fruit using different methods and they definitely taste different. You will probably develop a preference for certain styles along the way, but, more important, you’ll develop the ability to distinguish type from type, and quality within a class of ciders.