Tag: cider

Drinking Adventurously – In Meg’s Kitchen

~ Meg ~ 37 Comments

Week 46 In the Year Of Drinking Adventurously. Pickleback – not so much a fail as, ‘eww, who drinks that?’

Briefly, pickleback –just so you know what it is and why I skipped it– is a shot of whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice as a chaser. Not appealing.

Anyway, remember the week we were supposed to drink Spanish Cidre and I ended up with the horrible, pathetic domestic alternative? Well, a fellow blogger kindly offered to help me out. My friend Javier offered to locate and ship a Spanish Cidre to me, and he totally came through. Not just with cidre but with some bonus swag as well:

And yes, my kitchen has a TV facing the bar. The giant inflatable bottle of beer will go out to the pool next summer. And, uh, ignore the mess…

The large bottle in the center is the star of the show, Gurutzeta Cidre from the Basque region of Spain. 

And oh, what a difference from the sickly sweet American imposter. This wasn’t sweet, was slightly tart, but still had a nice apple flavor and it had a ‘tiny bubble’ kind of carbonation, if that makes sense. Lovely, indeed. And in the weeks since cider was the adventure, I’ve done some research and discovered that making hard cider isn’t that much different from home brewing beer which brings me to chapter two of this post.

Last Friday, my girlfriend Cathy acquired six gallons of freshly pressed cider from a local orchard for each of us to convert to an alcoholic version.

I decided to make a traditional hard cider with hints of ginger, cinnamon, and allspice. I added 3 pounds of brown sugar to up the alcohol content. I realize that sounds like the cider will be sweet but that’s not the case. All that sugar will be converted to alcohol by the yeast as it ferments. When it’s finished, the cider should be rather dry and have an ABV of about 9% which is more than twice that of a standard beer. The fresh cider is warmed to about 80-90° F, the sugar and spices stirred in to dissolve, then transferred to the fermenting bucket before adding the yeast.

Cathy added honey and sour cherry concentrate to her batch, for a completely different flavor profile. Sounds amazing, right?  We’ll trade samples when it’s ready. Here’s the bad news – it probably won’t be finished for six months!

I’m going off the map again next week, too. But I haven’t a clue where I will end up! I wonder if Lula tried the pickle back…

The sketch in the header image is my own.

Along came a spider and sat down be-CIDER…

~ Meg ~ 60 Comments

Week 41 in The Year of Drinking Adventurously. Ice Cider.  (*buzzer sound* Fail!)

Ok, not totally. I am going to talk about cider this week. And next week, thanks to a new friend of mine, I am going to revisit Spanish cider. Ice cider is mainly a Canadian product, with a few varieties available from producers close to the Canadian border – like Vermont and New Hampshire. Unfortunately, much like my experience last week, the Fascist liquor store and beer distributor didn’t carry any of these styles of cider, either. However, I picked up a sampler 12-pack of Angry Orchard ciders to try. Although, there are a plethora of other cider producers to choose from, I went with the AO because our guide 51fffcpqPZL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_ recommended their Ice Cider as one of his picks. So in my mind, I am sort of sticking to the plan. I hope that made sense. I’m thinking it didn’t…

In my 12-pack, of which I am currently on bottle 2, are the following types: a dry cider, a light cider, a crisp cider and an apple cinnamon cider. I started with the dry cider. Right out of the gate, I am wishing I bought something else.

My first cider experience was with Bulmer’s Irish cider on my first trip to Ireland. The Bulmer’s brand is available here in the USA but it is marketed under the name Magner’s and I have no idea why. I am rather fond of the Magner’s/Bulmer’s cider, not only because it is delicious and apple-y, it conjures good memories of drinking in the afternoon, whilst sitting outside of The Huntsman Inn at the end of Lough Italia (part of Galway Bay), with the sun setting over the Atlantic Ocean, and dreaming of fairy princes and giants tossing rocks into the sea to make The Aran Islands….

What was I saying? Right. The dry cider, which I think is supposed to be an English style cider was rather flavorless. The second one I tried was the crisp cider. This was better but still… On to the next. The light cider. (I am writing this in real time. Aren’t you the lucky ones? Ha!) The light cider is about as flavorless as the dry cider, but has a little more sweetness. I’m really not impressed. Ah, well, win some, lose some. I think we’re done here. The cinnamon cider can wait. (For my unsuspecting girlfriends upon whom I will foist it.)

I hope Lula found some ice cider in her neck of the woods. Next week, if the postal service doesn’t inspect the package too closely, I’m anticipating a Basque Cidre from my friend Javier.