We should point out that Apple cider is an alcoholic beverage with sparkle in UK/Ireland, but just cloudy apple juice in the US.
Down to prohibition. For a time you couldn’t legally sell alcohol so apple juice was sold under the name cider. Sometimes with handy instructions on how not to store it to avoid it fermenting into alcohol. Then, by the time restrictions were lifted, cider just meant apple juice as far as America was concerned.
(Allegedly)
Yep. Prohibition was also the reason for Americans to be so into fast cars.
Huh, how is that connected? I don’t remember that in high school history.
Bootleggers trying to go fast is what gave birth to NASCAR.
No way
How do you think bootleg whiskey got from a backwoods still in Porksister, West Virginia to a speakeasy on the North side of Chicago? Some good ol’ boys loaded it up in a souped up Model A that looked outwardly like any other ordinary car, but was capable of outrunning the cops for hundreds of miles on end. Some of these bootleggers got so into building and driving these cars that they made their own sport of it: long distance, high speed endurance racing of ordinary factory built automobiles, or “stock cars.” They even organized a league called the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing. NASCAR for short.
That’s interesting! Thanks for sharing!
Ot can’t have been very strong. You need yeast really to make it formant, and I can’t imagine that that was present in the drink.
I used to have a mate that would do this sort of thing, but he also used to argue that if you let cheese go mouldy it’s blue cheese. So I never really used to taste his products.
Step 1 - Do not contaminate with yeast.
Also mouldy cheese is not blue cheese, your friend is a heathen. That said, blue cheese is mouldy but it’s a specific type of mould that isn’t harmful when eaten.
Not just in UK, but literally everywhere in the world. Apart from US.
Nah, US too.
Johnny Appleseed wasn’t planting edible apples, he was sowing seeds for a variety that tasted absolutely terrible, but was the best for alcoholic cider. What other country has a folk hero whose mission in life was making sure the next generation never ran out of alcoholic cider?
sowing seeds for a variety that tasted absolutely terrible
Is it even possible to predict the variety of apple tree grown from seed? I was under the impression that growing apples from seed was essentially a lottery, and all “good” apple varieties are propagated by cloning (cutting and grafting) an original plant that happened to produce tasty apples.
You are correct, and the “Apple-seed” is confusing. He didn’t plant seeds, he started many plant nurseries, and propagated apple trees until the area was established, then moved onto another area. But to the layman, trees come from seeds, hence the name.
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Not quite.
As I expanded on in an post higher up, here in Portugal cider is mainly sweetened apple juice with a little bit of alcohol: basically an alchopop.
It’s probably due to how the local taste in many things tends a lot toward the sweet side (even though coffee here is usually a tiny cup of expresso, it comes with 10g packets of sugar, and unsurprisingly 10% of the population has Type II diabetes) and no tradition at all of brewing cider.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in other countries without a tradition of brewing cider the thing also tends towards being some kind of alcoholic apple juice.
The main point - it’s alcoholic. Cider in the US is non alcoholic.
Yeah, it does indeed sound unusual that something called cider is just apple juice with no alcohol at all.
As a Frenchman from Normandie, and an uncle producing alcoholic cider, I was always very confused when ordering cider at restaurants. Hard cider is the booze one.
I envy you your access to real cider. About 10 years ago we could get it in Denmark, there would be a selection of ciders, next to craft beer in most supermarkets. Now the only cider you can get is the sweet 0.5% alcohol crap that the swedes make or carbonated vodka with fruit flavor.
I can’t even find a can of Strongbow anymore.
But, in this sense, she’s almost certainly referring to mulled cider, which is pretty much exclusively made with the hard stuff, with the some additional flavors and spices, and likely spiked as well.
My personal favorite recipe involves hard cider, cranberry juice, spices, and then spiked with rum.
It’s much more fall feeling and alcoholic than either cider alone.
Mulled cider/wine/Glogg/hot sake are pretty much the only reason I survive the cold months.
The entire West Country is fuming at both the notion of cider being merely an autumn drink and also it being compared to pumpkin spice
This further reinforces Bill Bailey’s assertion that the West Country is full of Hobbits.
Yeah, you’ll usually see that referred to as “hard cider” here. Though, it’s worth pointing out that even American hard ciders are sickeningly sweet. There’s a pub near me that has Strongbow, and I’ve become a big fan.
Strongbow is basically a piss in the UK. Sorry for you, guys, that you don’t have proper cider over there.
Strongbow, the Budweiser of ciders 🤢
Yeah, Strongbow and Magners are intensely sweet, like the Kool aid of ciders.
Yeah most of the popular brands you see are way too sweet. I do love me a nice dry/crisp hard ciderr though. My all time favorite is Woodchuck’s Granny Smith flavor.
I’ve also had a pear cider which was super light and crisp. I think it was Wyders on draft.
If you can find it, Austin Eastcider is good too!
Blackbird Cider Works in Buffalo, NY makes some good dry & semi-dry ciders. They’re in grocery stores all over western New York, but not elsewhere (too small). There are others who make nice ciders elsewhere, but none of the big national chains do.
The cloudiness is what makes it AMERICAN, you Limey bastard!
French cider is also cloudy. And it contains alcohol.
Don’t forget Basque cider from Spain!
The more Xs in the name, the better.
And not, yet at least, a beverage from the company known as Apple Macintosh.
Yea, I was going to ask about this. I’d heard people mention cider on US TV and it didn’t seem like it was alcoholic, with kids drinking it etc. The non alcoholic version sounds shit tbh.
The kind that’s just heated apple juice is gross but if you throw unfiltered apple juice into a crock pot, toss in half an orange spiked with cloves, and a cinnamon stick or two it becomes delicious pretty quickly. You can always add a shot of rum if you need it to be alcoholic. The citrus really makes it. Pineapple juice is a great addition too.
I lived in the UK for over a decade and really miss the proper British cider, made with the right kind of apple and without added crap.
Were I am now (Portugal) cider is basically an alchopop made of a little bit of fermented apple juice, plain apple juice, water and sugar - so sweet with a bit of alcohol - that that’s including all the international brands like Strongbow (which in their local version are the same crap alcoholic fruit juice as the rest).
Only good cider I can buy around here is french organic cider (the cider from the Asturias in Spain is also the proper stuff, but you can’t really find it here).
Still, I’ll neck Henry Westons Vintage throughout the entire Autumn if that’s what we’re doing now. Absolute tramp fuel, that stuff.
Alcoholic apple juice?? Why that makes about as much sense as alcoholic orange juice which… wait, is actually delicious HMM
Hmm. I’ll have to mull this one over.
Oh bravo.
Haha
Spicy take
Buy a juicer, put a whole-ass bag of apples through that fucker, plus a knob of ginger. Simmer that shit in a pot with a few cinnamon sticks and whole cloves.
You can thank me later.
Also if you do actually do this and its your first experience juicing: clean your juicer immediately! Im serious, clean that shit while the cider is simmering. If you let it sit out 'til the next day you WILL regret it.
I’m not putting my knob any near a juicer. Fool me once…
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The profanity helps me follow along.
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That was a delightful read, thank you for sharing.
Where’s the fermentation step?
After simmering, put it in big jug and let cool down a bit. Pitch some yeasty bois in there and put an airlock on it, then wait.
So pumpkin spice then.
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Apple cider is seasonal because it relies on apple harvesting, but there is no reason to not have pumpkin spice any time of year except for artificial scarcity. The same with eggnog except people don’t like eggnog much to begin with.
Eggnog is delicious, but if I drank it year round I’d put on a hundred pounds
Can confirm, I gain about 10 pounds each December, probably from the eggnog.
But apples are available year round and cider is a great storage method. It is available year round. Preferences and market drivers cause seasonal supply increases.
Actual eggnog is an affront in the fact of god, but the carton of custard flavored milkshake that Southern Comfort sells every year is pretty excellent. I’m led to believe you can even put booze in it.
Those, sir, are fighting words. Eggnog is one of the best parts of the season, and I am willing to die on this hill!
Man your holiday seasons must suck worse than an eye infection if you think eggnog is one of the best parts. Do you need rescue?
Nah. It was just a bit of an exaggeration. In general not really huge into holidays. But I do love eggnog.
Take the nutmeg out of it, that’s what no one likes about it. That’s basically what custard is, and it’s fucking good.
It’s like a drinkable pudding.
What, boo. Nutmeg is great. My experience with people not liking eggnog is that they don’t like the stuff labeled eggnog you get at the supermarket.
The real stuff, made with egg yolks, with lots of booze, left to age a month or two, excellent.
I’ve found Costco to have decent eggnog, but the regular grocery stores have utter crap. I’ve made it myself, but imo it’s not worth the effort and storage space.
Apple cider can keep for a long time as well. In fact in the 18th century Americans drank it all year round and favoured it over beer.
Asterisk: The beverage you’re talking about (cider) is effectively apple wine and can be stored and maintained in pretty much the exact way any other wine can.
When you hear most modern Americans say “apple cider” they mean unfiltered, unclarified fresh apple juice, which is sold fresh in the mid-fall, kept refrigerated because it isn’t shelf stable, and often served hot and spiced.
You can thank the temperance movement for the confusion.
Damn puritans and removing the alcohol from our cider!
Ok, now same question but for the Christmas lebkuchen and cinnamon stars and all the stuff I would stuff myself with all year round if it was available.
This may just be me being a pedantic little bitch, but I hate when people call it “apple cider” Cider is made from apples, the apple is redundant!
Cider can be made from all kinds of good fruits (maybe things other than fruits can count as cider, I’m cideroligist)
I thought the technical term was ‘In-cider.’
Cider has to be made from apple juice. It can be flavoured with other fruits, but if it’s labeled cider, it has to be apple based.
I guess if a sciencethist says it, it must be true
The type of fruit that you use dictates what you’ve made. There’s no such thing as grape cider.
So the pear cider I have been drinking was a lie?!
It’s only called “poiré” if its made from the poiré région in France duuh
A pear cider is called a “perry”
It’s still got apples in it it’s still cider it’s just also got pears in it.
Just like wild fruit cider isn’t really made from berries. It’s just got berries in
Perry is made from pears, it’s not just pear-flavoured apple cider.
Only if it comes from the cider district of France, else you have to call it cremant
Then wtf is pear cider?
Perry
This is right, I learned this last year and was blown away
by the Platypus? Yeah, they have a way of dropping knowledge like that.
A shame what happened to him, he was great in friends. But don’t change the subject!
Meh, let the apple lovers lean into the fact they are getting the good shit.
Okanagan brand “cider” is vodka, bubbly water, and fruit flavors.
So vodka orange basically? That’s mummy’s special drink.
Yeah, well… I also have a PIN number.
To use at the ATM machine?
I’ll allow it as it implies they mean unfiltered, unfermented apple juice rather than “hard” cider.
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Fun fact. American folk legend Johnny Appleseed was actually a very successful businessman. Rather than planting apple trees randomly, he founded tree nurseries for cider production. He wore pauper’s clothes because he wanted to, not because he was some vagabond.
Another fun fact. Apple seeds are not true to seed. Which means if you plant apple seeds, you will get crab apples.
Fuck that. Put them together and heat it up. Mulled cider is great.
Damn you know how to live
My local grocery store unfortunately has pumpkin spice apple cider this year…
You know what to do https://youtube.com/watch?v=ro2_bQkaG5U&t=83
I picked a half gallon of it up recently. It’s decent and not overpowering but I don’t anticipate picking it up again if regular cider is still available.
Meanwhile, the rest of the planet still has no clue as to what pumpkin spice is.
Well I can kinda figure it out
Pear cider is better than apple cider
I’m not from the US and I gotta ask, wtf is pumpkin spice? Dehydrated pumpkin powder or what?
It’s the spices often used in pumpkin pie and other pumpkin dishes. According to the internet, it’s a combination of “cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves”.
Wait, so it doesn’t include pumpkin itself?
Generally speaking, no
They should call it pumpkin pie spice latte.
Pumpkin cream pie spice latte.
That’s what it was originally called. I assume the pie was dropped from the name because it sounds healthier that way.
Sounds very much like traditional Christmas cookie spices from my part of the world.
Garam Masala latte
Yes! 💯
Terrible/wonderful compromise…Apumpkin Spider blend.
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It’s a pumpkin sized spider, blended
Easier to pour whiskey in, that’s for sure.
Try making a mixed drink with whiskey and the spices that make up the spice blend. It’s the same stuff that most Americans would add to make hot apple cider, so not really all that different except without the sugar from the apple cider.
A little cinnamon, a little allspice, some nutmeg, maybe a little clove… Baby you got yourself a whiskey stew!
Back in the Dakotas I used to buy a spiced whiskey that was great for shots.
I’ve only got two words for you.
Mulling spices
So pumpkin spice.
