Oh Hi, it's the crusty plant you never suspected would thrive. Ali Ward, I'm here, I'm here with you. I'm here with us. Let us ologize. Okay, it's September. It's the time of year when people in Los Angeles pray for a day that dips into the sixties. So we can wear a scarf and drive ninety minutes to find an orchard to pretend fall exists. No, I've done it. I've cried looking at gords. So we're getting into the beverage that is the apple of our eyes. Cider. What is it?
How old is it? Which ones are delicious heavenly nectar, and which one's tastes like butts? We have answers for you. So this guest is the leading cider expert on planet Earth,
and he calls himself like accurately, the Ciderologist. He has had his hands in or around cider for over fifteen years, having brewed and judged and championed and even taught cider courses at the Beer Insider Academy of London he has at There are two books on the topic, the twenty eighteen debut Siderology From History and Heritage to the Craft Cider Revolution and just released a week ago a follow
up called Modern British Cider. So he also co hosts a cider podcast, Neutral Cider Hotel, and he is lovely and passionate about cider and speaks of it with such mustachioed enthusiasm. But before we meet him, you can be a patron just fyi at patreon dot com slash Ologies a buck a month. Let's use some bit questions to
experts like this for no money. You can rate us on your podcast app if you don't mind, And for my undying affection, you can leave a review because I read all of them and I prove it with a just juiced, foaming fresh ee. So this week thank you to Mohope sixteen, who wrote, recently I needed to hire an employee. My favorite ending interview question is what are
you a nerd about? One of the candidates began listing topics of the most recent episodes and I asked them if they listen to Ologies and they said it's our favorite podcast. That's all I needed to know in order to hire them. Whoa mo Hope sixteen. I hope you start merch Monday's at the office ologiesmerch dot com, okay, ciderlogy. Cider comes from the Hebrew sekhar for strong drink, and this ologist is the guy When you google cider expert,
he's the dude. His mustache and his book comes up, and he will happily talk to you about cider for as long as you want, which is why this interview was like pulling up to a picnic table with an old friend I had just never met. So please belly up and prepare for a crisp cup of applely knowledge from the history of cider, How wars impacted cider demand, dipping, babies in taboos, frankin trees, glass vessels, what made Queen
Elizabeth scowl at him? How to diy cider, plenty of flipflam, and the best cider We've ever sipped With ciderology author, podcaster and beloved international cider ologist Gabe Cook.
Hi, Hello, how are you?
I am very well, Thanks Sally. How's it going with you?
You sound great. It's almost as if you have your own podcast or something.
That's almost as if I invested in a modest priced mic.
What a professional Well, you're making my job too easy. Hardest question I'm going to ask, can you say your first and last name and then also whatever pronounce use.
Yes, my name is Gabe Cook and I am he him.
Cool Colban's and you're a siderologist.
I am the Siderologist.
Oh I didn't realize the article was so definitive, capital T capital c the siderologist as.
A full time profession a little over four years.
I imagine that you were a very enthusiastic dilettante before that, right I was. I.
I was using siderologist as my email address for about since about oh, I think about two thousand and eight or something like that. So the idea and the concept of the ologist of cider had been around for a while, but it took a while for it to become fully fledged and for actual you know, for it to actually become a career, as it were. The Siderologist is my is my company, it's my brand name. It's trademarked in Europe. Getting hands off, nobody has tested it. That was a waste,
the tune shifted, quid, wasn't it. My role within the cider industry is to be a vocal champion because you know, cider doesn't always get the love or the appreciation or the awareness of other drinks. Agreed, the entire industries based around the specialized knowledge and serving of beer and of wine. We've got Somelia's, We've got fantastic servers, We've got critics, we've got writers. I am, to my knowledge, the world's only full time independent cider advocate.
Just for context, I'm team cider all the way I have been since I turned of cider sipping age, which is a debatable age, as you will find out later in the episode. But despite our twenty eighteen episode on Zimology, which is the science of beer brewing, I have finished exactly one beer in my whole life and I did not like it. I don't like beer. I'm sorry. I would be happy to appear on a debate team or a mock trial tournament representing cider. Fight me. I'm ready.
Cider sits in this really interesting and unique space. First of all, you make cider like you make a wine. You do not brewsider. Brewing is the application of heats to extract something normally like sort of sugars, all these kind of characters. That's why you brew beer. It's while you brew tea and coffee. Et cetera. You make cider, okay, like you're making wine. This is taking a fruit, in this case apples rather than grapes. You're squeezing them, You're
extracting the juice, which is sugar rich. Really really easily readily fermentable sugars yeast, whether they be wild juice or introduce cheese, convert that sugar into alcohol. So in the same way that the selection of the apple variety, the yeast strain, the vessel that you ferment in, how long you mature, under what conditions you you undertake all this process, that is what is going to give you this unique range of different sort of flavors and styles of cider
that can exist. But the fact is that over the course of the last sort of fifty sixty years, cider has been predominantly tweaked and made and certainly packaged and presented considerably more like a beer. You know, the average alcohol content is closer to your average beer, whatever that is. Then, let's say an average wine. It's normally carbonated, it comes you know, on tap, you can have it as a pint,
it comes as a single serve bottle or can. These or cues very readily associated with beer, but it is its own, unique, wonderful and amazing drink, and it's got so many awesome things going for it. Firstly, it's naturally gluten free to anybody who's who's off the gluten, you know, as a lifestyle choice or because it's been really beneficial
for their health, naturally gluten free. Unlike a considerable proportion of beers and wines out there which use animal based finding agents in order to reduce so take that sort of clarity and certain like phonolic and other kind of characters. Cider is very very easily clarified and there's no need for those kind of finding agents. So it's almost to a tea will be vegan friendly as well.
Wait, the stuff they used to clarify beer isn't vegan. I look this up and apparently finding agents can include you're ready for this, egg whites, milk, desicated fish bladders, and blood bottoms up. Perhaps that's a big decider for vegans. You know.
It's just this most amazing drink there is, I say, ali a cider for everybody, and it's just trying to get people knowledgeable and enthused about it. Hello of lost.
Yea so yes a Leprechaun put a curse on me via a loose my cable. So in the lull, Gabe Ciderologist cracked open a cold one as I sorted out my tectiffs. Dude is truly living his best life. Get ready for some ASMR.
Now that's a good sound. Come on, that's awesome. And do you know what, I'm gonna have a sip.
That's good. I think I have a loose cable.
You know, even the microphone is overwhelmed by some power of the cider. Do you see who knew that cider oology was so powerful?
Oh?
My good?
Okay, Mike cable fixed on we go. So to recap, cider is wine. The legal definition of wine is any alcoholic beverage obtained by the fermentation of the natural sugar content of fruits or other agricultural products like honey. So I repeat, cider is wine. Cider's wine. It's a type
of wine. Really. Mc gabe had mentioned that he hails from a part of the UK that has a rich and bubbly cider history, and that geographically cider is cool because it tends to be very location based like wines, whereas beers can have hops and grain from all over the damn world. Also, did he intend to make this a beer versus sider episode. No, but that's just my transparent pro cider agenda seeping through what I love cider. Cider deserves more love.
And another really crucial aspect is from a sustainability point of view, is that you know the way that you're making cider. It doesn't you know in its most basic not the most basic form, like the fantastic sider that I'm drinking and the siders that I make, insiders I've been involved with and side as I champion. You get apples,
you squeeze them. It ferments, that's it, that's it. Unlike you know with the brewing process, where there's a huge amount of energy is needed to heat this liquid to get you know, the enzyme change for the for the sugars, and then obviously when you're boiling it as well, and if you're making a largae you then need to chill it right down as well. There's a lot of energy and this is an important thing for you know, consumers
increasingly today. And then when it comes to the orchards, these magical, magical places, even if they are really kind of commercial and commercial orchards. They are still considerably better land uses than monocultures of wheat or maize, and they support by diversity. They are sucking carbon and locking it into the ground. They're fantastic places for people to socialize as well, whether that be for walking the dog or going for a run, or just a bit of mindfulness
and peacefulness and tranquility, learning new skills, community cohesion. There's just there's just so much. It's just lush.
Oh my god.
I was just prepared to like shit talk beer because it tastes bad, but you're like, no, those are really bad plight.
See see this is really good. You know, if if if we're being really really stereotypical here, you could say that the attitude you know, spirits and let's say whiskey become things is sort of you know, very quite sort of gentrified and set to their wing back chair and wine comes in or sort of like elegant and kind of fern and beer it's kind of like cool and brash cider. We're just we're just like the we're just the nice people in the corner. Actually often quite it's
like yeah i'm beer. It's like, yeah, I'm cider, and it's because it does sort of sit as this slightly sort of not lost or forgotten drink. But you know it's not. It's just not as broadly understood. And so cider's general way, or maybe that's just my way, is that I don't need to bad talk. There's other drinks. I like beer. I used to make wine in New Zealand.
They're really really cool drinks. It's just it's just giving sider this this platform that it that it can be an absolute equal to any of those drinks, all of the character, all of the attitude, all of the elegants, all of the finesse. It's yeah, trying to get past, certainly from a UK point of view, a lot of old stereotypes which are generally quite negative, associated with cider
for various various reasons. You know, on your side of the pond, it's more a case of you know, what is cider or the confusion between you know, unfermented fresh press sort of farm juice, the sider versus the hard sider. But hard is the you know, the USA is the only nation in the world that uses the prefix of hard, so that, yeah, absolutely, it's all a prohibition thing.
Oh, I didn't know that.
There is a very very long history of cider associated with the USA, and it generally, you know, it comes with founding fathers, which isn't necessarily something that is always as boldly celebrated as it might have been once before. But it is a fact that cider really was the first commercial drink of you know, the new colony within the within the far northeast of the US, and huge amounts of cider was made made in you know, in Connecticut and in Maine and in Vermont, and then in
New York and Pennsylvania. Lots of cider was made. And it was only really with the introduction the big wave in the sort of the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century of Czech and German immigrants to beer really started to come in and gain a real stronghold all across all across the States. And when prohibition came in nineteen twenty, unlike you know, beer and sort of like moonshine went underground and hidden the sheds
and things like that. It's quite hard to hide an orchard. They so they got burnt, you know, a lot of them got burnt, like or chopped or burnt down, and those that were left were eating apples, because you know, those apples that were being grown then, like the apples that are grown in the western parts of England, northern parts of France and northern parts of Spain would be
called cider apples by both people in those areas. These are varieties grown specifically for the sole purpose of making cider and have been done so for hundreds of years. So they got rid of all those. What that was left were there's the eating apples, which a bit of juice was made from, and so the term cider got
appropriated to mean that sort of fresh preas juice. So when probition came to an end in the thirties and booze and sider, you know, fermented cider was allowed, they needed a new name, so they added the prefix of hard and hard cider, and that's how that ha come to pass. But nowhere else in the world needed or had the cultural heritage as to why that was a necessity.
So yes, if you clicked on this episode and thought that it would be all about Martinelli's or cloudy apple juice from the farmer's market, blame prohibition, not me. Now, in the eighteen hundreds, cider was the most popular beverage in the US. The century before that, seventeen hundreds, people in the colonies drank on average a barrel a year each, So that's a pint a day for everyone. Everyone had pint a day, and really quick. Let's have a rundown
of types of cider. So there's farmhouse sider, which is pretty much like what you could make if you were stranded on an island with just apples and jars. It's fermented juice, pretty dry because the yeast has gobbled up all the sugars, and it's not super sparkly. Now you can make a farmhouse sider with nothing but raw apple juice and about a week or two worth of patience and a lot of thirst. So draft cider is what you're used to seeing on restaurant menus. It's clear, maybe
cut with juice to lower high alcohol content. It's sweet, it's sparkley. It's kind of like a soda pup. And then there's a French seed, which is a little more complex and it involves a process called kieving, which we're going to get into in a bit. It has a low alcohol content and you drink it out of a beret. That's not true. But let's back up, Well, what about before that head cider or you know, fermented apple juice
existed long long before that. I mean, is it called cider if an apple just rots on the ground and it's kind of boozy. At what point did we start understanding what cider was.
It's an interesting one. You know, apples as we know them for eating and making cider and cooking and all those kinds of things that the ancestor of that can be traced back to the Tienshan Mountain range, which sort of sits sort of just to the northwest of the Himalayas on the sort of Chinese Kazakh Kyrghyzstani kind of border.
At the end of the ice say, last ice Age ten thousand years ago, in these valleys, in the foothills of these incredible mountains, you had then the last sort of refuges of these wild apple forests, which when the ice Age came to an end and everything got a little bit warmer, they started to flourish and grow a little bit. But it also coincided with also, you know, humans also flourishing and growing, and you know, undertaking this amazing you know, trans continental journey from the east to
the west along the Silk Road. And so people and animals started to pick up these apples and take them along the way, and they'd eat and they'd poop and it would pips would go on the ground, and the sort of the apples started to get taken west and it underwent this amazing sort of you know, genetic sort of diversity, kind of like journey along the way. Because if you plant the pip of an apple of let's say, what's your favorite eating apple.
Alley, Oh my gosh, I would probably say I'm going to go Grannie Smith. I'm just going to go super tart. Don't judge me.
Yeah, yeah, lovely, lovely and crisp, lovely and zingy awesome. If you planted a pip from a Granny Smith into the ground, the apple variety that will pop up will be guaranteed to not be Granny Smith.
Right, Okay, so this is grafting. Is this the magic of grafting? Okay?
It is. It is. Imagine that the like that you've got the mother tree, that Granny Smith tree gives that fruit and it's got the pip inside, but they're not self fertile. In order to be able to produce that fruit, you have to have pollen from another variety, often brought over by pollinating insects like the wonderful bees. That's why
we love bees very very much. They bring over the pollen on there lex it pollinates the blossom that turns into the apple, and the pip inside has got the genetics the DNA of both the mother tree that Granny Smith and whatever pollinated it, it won't be the variety that you've got. And so this obviously is a little bit of a problem. Yeah, if you really like Granny
Smith and you want to continue. So this is when the Mesopotamians circa three something thousand years ago just somehow worked out that if you snip the end off a growing tip and you know, fuse it onto something that's already into the ground, they will hold and it will take and you can have one tree two different varieties or intended variety at the top and the rootstock at the bottom.
Can you imagine if you were like, Wow, I really like my kid, but who knows what the hell kind of grind kids I might have? So then you just hacked off their limb and sewed it onto another body. Some apple rootstock trees straight off at the chopped mid trunk, and then they get a new head grafted on, which, if that's not horticultural gore fit for spooky season, I don't know what the hell is.
The idea of sort of cultivating apples. It's been around for a long time, but the evidence of actually making cider is probably about two thousand years old. There's first sort of talks in sort of, you know, in the Greek literature, in the Roman literature, about about references to cider making or like the wine of apples and pears, things like that, whereas wine and you know, very strong evidence of that being made considerably further back. The primary
difference is around the structure of grapes and apples. My grapes, they're lovely and small and lovely and soft, and you know, you want to extract the juice, and you could literally do that by treading them underfoot, and lots of people do still that today. You try treading some apples, and you're going to get some fairly bruised feet quite quickly, aren't you. Yeah, it's this really strong cell structure what
sider still needs today. Is it's a two step pro so you don't just press apples, you have to mill the apples first.
This mill can do the same amount of work that took many nights with my juicer in simply a matter of hours. The crusher works by spinning times like, grab the apples and mash them through a set of blades.
And then you've got to press them. So this extra bit of technology that is needed to turn these solid apples into something mushy enough that you could then easily extract the juice from that didn't really come around until sort of olive milling technology was also developed right about two thousand years go and sort of shed into that sort of Mediterranean area around that time.
Just a side note, I looked it up. Milling is just crushing up the apples any which way you can. People do this with various levels of force. Some just smash apples with mallets in what looks like a wooden bathtub, or you can bean apples with a stone wheel dragged by a horse or a donkey or something. There's also mechanical mills, and they chew the apples into a really fine pulp, and then all that apple mash has to be squeezed until it cries delicious juice. And sometimes that's
done in sacks. It used to be strained through straw. No thank you. Now what happens to that giant cake of compressed apple pulp? What do you do with it? Can you sit on it like a cushion? Maybe that's not my business, but it gets fed to livestock. You can also do a second wash and make a really weak sider with it, but it's called apple mash. But it's also according to our friend Workipedia, cake math POWs mirror or homage. So who knew cider making came with
such a big, frothy mugga slang? Not me, but back to history. So cider has been around for centuries because yeast and sugar are like, please, let us do our thing. If you just leave us alone for a bit, we'll get you drunk. So written history through the ages is kind of spotty, But there's evidence that Charlemagne was into orcharding as a verb. And by Charlemagne, I mean the King of the Franks and the Dark Ages, not the breakfast club radio host. Charlemagne, the god who was born
Leonard McKelvey. And from what I can tell he does not mill cider apples.
You gotta break it in pieces, bro, Why this.
Is the fruit?
Okay, back to history.
It seems that the first records of sort of making cider come from the eleven hundreds, but it's really not until kind of like the fifteen hundreds and especially the sixteen hundreds, when cider reaches its zenith in the UK as a drink that is heralded as being the equal to wine and as drunk with the aristocracy and indeed at the table of kings and queens.
What happened in the sixteen hundreds was did someone have like a TikTok or viral?
Why?
Well, as sadly not as entertaining, and that it comes down to something that is ever prevalent, which is war. Britain being pretty strong warmongers at the time, you know,
fighting with Europe for basically a millennia. And yeah, in this sort of early part of the seventeenth century, Britain was at war with large parts of Europe and it prevented the importation of wine into the UK, and the aristocracy had got very thirsty and a little bit agitated that they couldn't have their fine wine and so there
was a bit of a movement amongst these. They were called the Ciderists, and these were people of prominence within society, whether they be landowners, MPs, sientists, clergy people, knowledgeable people, and people with money and power basically, and so they identified that cider could be our native wine effectively, which you know it kind of is if you think about it as being something that you make like a wine.
And that coincided with a chap called Lord Skewdamore. He unidentified a particular variety that was growing on as the states. It produced an apple and a cider that was just gorgeous, really intense, and it was really precocious tree and it was amazing, and it was called the Herefordshire Red Streak. And also at the same time what was happening was there was a chap not too many miles away on the banks of the River seven and the Forest of Dean, and he was into glass furnaces and making glass, and
he was interested in making strength and glass. His name was Sir Kenam Digby, and he was using these extra hot furnaces by using charcoal and burning really hot, and he was making these bottles that were really thick and really strong, so strong in fact, that you you could put some of this amazing new sider that was on the scene into there, and as the record books show, adding a walnuts worth of sugar into it, putting a lid on the top, and then putting it somewhere nice
and cool in the cellar, bearing it into sand, even into some little streams running into the estate. And basically what was happening was the secondary fermentation in the bottle. We are talking about the first step of the method trdisjunel,
the Champagne method. Crucially, this a paper. This paper was presented to the Royal Society on the tenth of December sixteen sixty two, and this is about seven years before Don Perignon, who is thought to be, you know, the creator of the godfather of mastering the Champagne process, before he had even started his work at the winery. So what I'm basically saying is that it shouldn't be called the Champagne method. It should be called the English method.
And so that secondary fermentation is you've already got a little bit of alcohol in the cider and then it kind of double ferment, and that's what causes the effervescence and the higher alcohol.
That's right, You've undertaken one fermentation in a tank of barrel, You've placed it into a bottle. You've then added some extra sugar, and there will still be some yeast, you know, live yeast within that cider. Today, those people who are making you know, method traditional style ciders or indeed those wines would add some yeast back as well with the sugar and maybe even some nutrient to ensure that yes, there is indeed a second fermentation in that bottle. But
of course carbon dioxide is the byproduct of fermentation. You know, sugar gets converted by yeast into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Normally, the carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. In this case, it gets trapped into the bottle and that's what provides
the natural sparkle. And that's why, you know, you get these lovely little small fine bubbles, this fine mood, and it gets trapped in there, and depending upon how you're making it, you can either have it just a very light effer vescence, or you can actually create quite a strong pressure in there, which is why you need that cork and that wire to hold to hold the liquid.
In what is the best glass or ball or cup of cider you've ever had in your life.
Oh man, that's that's that's tough. I will certainly say that I went on. It will be nineteen years ago to the to the day almost I So I grew up in this little village called Dimmock. I always got to give a shout out to Dommo go Dimmot and which which is in Gloucestershire, And it's yeah, it's in this amazing old traditional sort of heartland area. And I grew up knowing that there was a sider thing around and it was my first drink and tried some of
the mainstream siders. And then there's a biggish sider maker in the village next door called Westerns in much Mark or just next door, and went and tried their siders and visited and really tasty. And then my eldest brother and I we wanted to go and visit some of the farmhouse makers, the small traditional producers around, and so we looked on the map and there was one just a few miles away, and so we went to visit and he was driving and we turned off the main
road and suddenly we're down a lane. I don't know whether you get them in the USA, but it's one of the great things about about the rural areas of the UK. You've got these old lanes and trackways that have been there for a thousand years, and they're so narrow that you're driving a longer and both wing mirrors are getting whacked by the herge at the same time,
and we're like, where the fuck where are we? This is like we just turned off the main road and we're like, we're expecting Frodo to run across the road.
And suddenly there's a tiny little sign that pointing to the right saying side of it, and so we follow that and we end up going up a driveway and pulling in and there's like this big white farmhouse and we sort of walk up and there's a there's a door sort of like almost like underneath the house, and there's a little chalk written sign a note on there
that says Paul string for cider. And indeed there's a little bit of Baylor twine, you know, a little bit of orange string, which we duly give a bit of a yankon and so leading ling the bell goes and this very cheery, genial sort of looking at chap Pop popes his head and says, hello, I'll come down and serve you now. And his name is Mike, Mike Johnson, the proprietor of the Ross and Weisider and Perry Company.
And he opens the door and we're looking into the old cellar of this seventeenth century farmhouse with giant stone flags on the ground and these barrels racked up, and the smell that comes out is also, you know, earthy and musty, and it feels like it's been there for forever. And we go in and he goes to one of the barrels which has got a tap on it, and he gives it a paw and he hands it to me and goes, here you go. This is a dry cider. Enjoy.
And I can remember the sensation of tasting that, even if I can't quite remember the taste, the sensation of just going I've never tasted anything like this. I like it quite a lot. This is just fermented apple juice, but in this not just formented apple juice. There's care, there's attension. You could almost taste you know, the the age, the antiquity, it was a little bit of the stars of lining moment and realized that cider could brought together
all the things that I was interested in. I was interested in local history, interested in in wildlife, interested in local culture, quite enjoyed booze as well, and that cider was able to just bring all these things together. So that was a that was a pretty critical cider to taste.
I would say, have you been back or is it something that you want to exist only in memory?
No, it was only the start. I actually ended up working there. That was what really kick started by sider journey. I spent about the best part of nine months or so living on the farm quite literally in a shed in the garden. Wow. And and I learned the sort of the craft of making traditional Western County style of
cider and learning about these varieties. I was tak about the different characters, the acidity, the tannin so the astringency, the bitterness, the mouthfield, the texture, the fruitiness, the potential faults that could come through. This was just sort of just learnt through drinking and talking and sharing an amazing and a privileged experience.
Yes, I look this up and I want to live there.
Please.
It's called Broom Farm. And it's this white brick farmhouse in rural England. Is also set up as a bed and breakfast, so you can stay in the orchard Suite or the Cider Suite, and according to their website, they love visitors and they will quote happily take you on a detailed tour of the orchards and then give you a toured cider tasting, introducing you to our enormous range of bottled cider and perry. I'll put a link on my website in case you want to go to heaven without having to die first.
And that I was camping in the orchard there three days ago. So it's still a very important part of my life. And Mike's son, Albert, he's come into the business and he's taking it onto the next step. But they really are one of the they're one of the they're one of the goodies. So so no, it's still very much an important part of my life. And and yeah, it kickstarted my career insider. I went to work for Westerns, who today are the fifth biggest producer in the UK.
So I went from making cider in you know, two hundred liter oak fats to two hundred thousand liters stainless steel tanks, which is terrifying, especially when you know when when you dribble a bit down the side of the barrel, you know no bother when you dribble a bit down the side of a you know, a fifty foot tank and your boss is calling, is like, heay, why is cider, you know, spurting out at the top of this tank in a bit of a fountain fashion. I don't have
such a good reput to that. So I took what I learned from the small farm and applied it to the big scale and it really and it set me fair and I'm really proud of the siders that I made and what I achieved. But I did come to realize I was better at talking aboutsider rather than making it. And so I got a job with the world's biggest sider maker, Bollomers. And yeah, I was there side of communications manager for nih on three years, which was really cool.
I got to do awesome stuff with local community and the highlight was in twenty twelve I got to present a bottle of cider to her majesty.
Come again, what did you wear? Did you wear your mustache? Number one?
It was pre mustache actually I was. I was young and clean shaven back then. I had on I had, I say, the best suit of the only suit that I had. I was quite a count I missed that I'm a bit of a country bunking, but I was especially country bunking, a bit like a shaved monkey in a suit. To be fair, it's a bit awkward. Hello, your majesty, And somebody took some photos very kindly. I gave him my camera and there's that two or three great photos and I literally had about twenty seconds to
present her with a special commemorative bottle of cider. And it was all linked in that it was her diamond jubilee, her sixty years, and it was the Bourneers one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary, and would you believe in the year that the company was started, that was Queen Victoria's golden jubilee as well. And I was telling this story and the photo of me presenting it to her her Majesty's face. I don't know, she looks like I've said something really offensive, or like I've done a poo on
a shoe or something like that. She's not giving me a great look. I think she said thank you, very much, and that was about it. So your majesty, if you're listening, I really apologize. I didn't mean to offend you. I know that you're more of a sort of a mooth than you know, maybe Martini, but you know, give cider her a gho sometimes.
You have it Charlo. Of course I found this photo, and I will confirm she does have an expression as if she has received a poo on her shoe. But being the good little Google gobblin that I am, I found another shot of their encounter, taken probably a millisecond later by the same photographer, and her majesty is smiling grandly. So I am surmising that she was just listening intently.
But yes, she is known to drink Bulmer's cider. In addition, I found this out today she drinks Bacardi, which I hope she enjoys via room temperature shots followed by a diet pepsi chaser or something just equally hideous in appalling. So, speaking of shot glasses, there are very specific glasses for different wines and different martinis and even different beers. And I've always wondered, I think some of my most memorable sider I've had out of bowls in France. I think
was the first time I had a good sider. It tasted like a tiger lily, and I had been up on that. I had just taken a red Eye in to Paris, and then the first and only time I've been and had crepes and a bowl of this really floral tasting cider. But what is the proper vessel? How should we be drinking cider?
That is a bit of a difficult one. There are some traditional vessels very closely linked to those kind of regional things you talked about. The bullet, which is very closely associated with Brittany, especially in the western part of May and Hessen. They use a glass called the gripta, which has got all these sort of criss crosses on them. In in Asturias and in the Basque country northern Spain is that they use particular kind of very broad brimmed glasses.
Forgive me, I've forgotten the name, but there's really really thin glass.
Just look up Spanish cider glass. I think they're just called seed drug glasses. That's Spanish for cider. And in northern Spain they pour the cider from over their heads down into the glass. It's like a human fountain does look a little like p but yes, elegant, wide mouthed, thin walled seed drug glasses, that is.
What they're called.
Well, when you're doing this amazing high side of pouring, side of throwing into the glass is a really important cultural thing in Britain. In certain parts we would have the earthen wear two handled mug. Generally the larger the better. I suspect to you get more cider in, but cider doesn't. It's what this is. One of the challenges and potentially opportunities that sider finds itself in right now is that cider hasn't had any of the lexicon, any of the
language that wine and beer have had. Everyone knows different you know, styles of beer, everyone can talk about ipa or a snout or a sayson or something like that. And in terms of wine, you all know whether it be particular sort of like Regions Bordeaux or Kiante or something like that.
Gabe says that in modern culture it's common to rattle off all kinds of varieties of other beverages and just like how different beers and wines call for different kind of vessels, cider could use those as well, but people don't care, and they should because cider is just sitting in the corner. It's being chill and cool, like your friend who's so awesome but somehow single because they're shy.
Everyone is sleeping on how complex and interesting cider is, and Gabe is its most charming and vocal wing man.
These are all things that are entirely new, and I really hope that somebody sees an opportunity to create these kind of sider glasses and to do that research, because it's just all all adding to the kind of professionalism associated with cider and trying to get it really really well known and respected and loved.
So there's glassmakers out there, come on, do it. I love the I also love the idea of an earthenware mug, I mean, come on. But I have also some questions about just the tech specs, right, So what are the tech specs of cider? Does it have to be apple or can it be pear or raspberry or whatever? And also how much alcohol by volume does it have to be to be a cider versus a pressed or a fresh squeezed apple juice that you might get, you know, on a crisp fall day at an orchard.
Yeah, so cider really is the where, you know, a drink that is where the alcohol is derived from the fermentation of apple juice. In terms of the fermented pair that the traditional name for that where I'm from it is called perry, or if you're in France it would be poire No pear cider as a term in the UK that is a synonym for perry in the USA, that is a fermented apple drink with pear juice added as a flavoring. So there we go. But like a fermented pair drink really should be kind of could be
called perry in the UK, pair siders used. Some people like it, some people don't. I'm not too kind of hung up on it. The most important thing is that you've got to have this fermented apple or potentially fermented pair. You can't ferment a raspberry and call it a raspberry cider. You can't ferment a rhubarb or a potato or bark and you know, call it anything X cider that isn't cider. And it is one of the things that sider needs
to kind of try and protect. You know, there's been an incredible proliferation of flavored ciders over the course of the last fifteen years in the UK, but that they are fermented apple juice with the addition of flavors of other things, predominantly fruits, you know, berries, especially hopped siders is definitely something that is growing in popularity and in the in the USA, especially where it's been driven from, you know, sort of Pacific Northwest beer scene that you
can put like elder flowers and the kind of things in there in there too. A lot of people are really anti flavored cider because they don't think them that they're real or proper, or it doesn't sit into like an old cultural heritage. I don't hold the same opinion as people. I'm not anti flavored sider. I'm anti shit sider. And it's just that the majority of flavored sider is available. Certainly in a UK very broad commercially. Aren't great siders.
They're just not kind of great drinks and they don't uphold the integrity for me of what kind of sider it is. There are some spectacular siders being made with the addition of other things to them in the UK and in the USA. Some of the best drinks you can get and they're fun and they're playful and they're creative. But the fermination of apple juice is at the absolute heart of this. And this I think goes on to and see the second point about you know, when what's
the average alcohol content? I mean, the average alcohol content is determined by how much sugar there is within the apples in the first place, which is determined by the variety where you are in the world, and you know what's happening with the weather that kind of year as well. So the sugar that can build up with an apple, depending upon those three factors, generally is somewhere between about four and a half percent alcohol and about eight and
a half percent alcohol. That's the broader kind of range.
Okay, So side note, the higher the alcohol, usually the drier the sider, because the yeast has just gone to town eating the sugar and leaving you with alcohol as a metabolite. So sweet cider tends to be less than three percent alcohol. There's semi dry, and then there's fruit or dry, which is four percent alcohol or higher. But of course more sugar can be added for a second fermentation, or it can be made pretty strong and then diluted with more juice. Now, what about hot spiked cider?
Is that a thing?
Sure, it's just called whatsiale and it's a spicy, appley, boozy winter beverage. Also, it's not coincidentally what you are to exclaim during a toast. But just don't call cider cider if it's not a little boozy. That's literally just apple juice falst up.
In order for something called it a non alcoholic cider. Cider is a fermented drink, so there has to be some form of fermented character in there, so you know, low alcohol siders are achieved normally by like diluting a fully formed cider with water and juice to take the alcohol level back down, or you can use clever technology such as reverse osmosis or cool distillation to take away the alcohol kind of content. But they started their life as a cider. Apple juice is a great drink, but
it is kind of juice. That's sort of the the sure content and the aromatic and flavor characters that you get from juice. So it's something that you don't get insider because those sugars and those characters have been converted to alcohol.
Well, what then is apple cider vinegar. Is that apple cider that has just gone past the sippy stage or is that a completely different beast altogether.
No, absolutely right, So it's the it's the potential next stage of kind of cider, I suppose, and is the logical journey that, if just completely left to its own devices, what the juice would want to do. So you start off with unfermented juice, you've pressed it. Yeast will convert those sugars into alcohol once that fermentation has finished, if
you kind of leave it and allow air exposure. There's all sorts of different kinds of bacteria that live all around, and one of them is called Aceta bacter and it
converts the alcohol into acetic acid into vinegar. This may or may not be something that you desire, although there are some sort of traditional parts of the Southwest whereby that old farmerhouse heritage, there was no sort of great care and attention, you know, put onto these kind of drinks, and they they would be referred to as scrumpy sort of rough, raw, scratchy at the back of your throat
kind of cider. But if you do just allow all the air to get to your cider, eventually the considerable majority of the alcohol that was in there does get converted into a seated acid into vinegar and it takes on a whole, you know, new life of its own. And you know, certainly it is. It's a massively popular thing from having all the health benefits and how you use it within sort of cooking and cuisine as well, and it's it's brilliant. I've got a Google alert for
the word cider. I like to keep up to date what's happening in the world of cider, and what generally happens is about five hundred apple cider vinegar kind of articles come up, and then right down the bottom will be you know, a headline from a local newspaper, you know, the Southampton Chronicles saying, you know, man arrested for drinking nineteen liters of cider and trying to drive tractor into football stadium or something like that. You know, it's like, ah, come on, sider, you can do this.
You definitely need to Google alert for scrumpy because there can't be too many articles with that work.
I do not. I'm going to try it, and I will let you know. I'll give you an update. I'll also do siderology and see what crops up as well.
Please do I have a feeling that just you will come up for both of those things? Maybe I have so many questions from patrons. Can I lightning around you? But before we strike gold with a lightning round, we will quickly give away some money to a cause of
the ologist choosing. And this week Gabe asked that it'd be made to Tiny Changes Foundation, and he says this was set up in memory of Scott Hutchinson, brother of my friend and fellow podcast host Grant, who sadly took his life three years ago, so that would mean a lot. Thank you, Gabe said. Tiny Changes is a mental health charity started in memory of the Frightened Rabbit musician Scott Hutches and it aims to offer mental health resources and support.
So we're happy to make that donation in your name, Gabe. That donation was made possible by sponsors on the show, who you may hear about. Now, Okay, let's stop milling about and press on with your questions.
Let's go.
Okay, we're going to answer as many of these as possible. All Right, I'm ready, you got this, Okay. Maria Joroveva Catherine Gilbert and Celia Labant all wanted to know. Are ice sighters or sighters made from the apple picked in winter a true thing or is it just marketing?
No, it's absolutely a true thing. It was originated in Quebec in about nineteen eighty eight nineteen eighty nine and
takes its influence from the German ice wine making. And yeah, you take frozen fruit, or in sort of warmer places thankfully like the UK, you freeze the juice and what happens is when you thaw the juice or when you when you press those frozen apples, the majority of the water component is bound up as ice crystals and this hyper sugar concentrated liquid that comes off, which you then ferment up to ten eleven twelve percent alcohol, but there's
still huge amounts of unfermented sugar. So it's a really rich, viscous drink, just like an ice wine, just like a dessert wine. Absolutely amazing as a djsdef poured all over your chocolate pudding.
Oh okay, that's so good to know. I will have to get them so many patrons. I will list their name in an aside. Oh hey, Claire Casticky Bonnie page, Alan Cohn, Earl ofve Gramalkin, Miranda Panda, Dean Dryden, Jackie Silverman, and R. J. Deutsche want to know what is the best kind of apple to make cider from.
That's an impossible question to ask because every single apple, every single apple has its own unique flavors, properties, and characteristics. The thing is to understand what kind of flavor profile do you want? You know, if you're going to be a wine maker, it's like, I really like big chewy wines. You should be planting, you know, malbek or something like that. If you plant Suvinion blanc, you're going to be really
really disappointed. And it's the same. It's like, if you want to have a lovely, fresh and crisp cider, then make it from Granny Smith. If if you want to have something that's really sort of rich and texted, use a classic English variety like Yarhlasin ta mill. If you want to have something that is amazingly you know, herbal and aromatic, use like a Golden Russet or something like that, or a Newtown Pippot and these amazing apples from from
the northeast of the US. So you kind of work backwards as to like what kind of drink do I want to have, and therefore try to seek you know what kind of apple variety and makers, especially in the USA or you know, you're ahead of the game compared to where they are in the UK celebrating the variety and celebrating the process they're putting it on the packaging. So the opportunity to be a more discerning consumer is better than it's ever been before.
Ah okay, I love the notion of like reverse engineering based on what you want. Absolutely, Alexandra and Castro Navara wants you know it's the strangest tasting sider you've ever had, And Kelly Pavlovitch asked, what's the weirdest cider flavor or ingredient that you've tried or made or used? Any weird ones that stick out in your ciderology brain.
Yeah, the weirdest one is actually a perry that I made a few years ago, absolutely not by design, but by bad perry making. Tasted like sausages. Tasted it tasted like sausages, and it also had a little bit of like a sort of sulfidey thing, which is like an egg character. I basically had like sausages and eggs. I had a fried breakfast in liquid.
Form meat farts.
It wasn't as pleasant as I had endeavored to achieve. So that was probably like the weirdest sort of just no natural flavors that came out of something. In terms of like an actual intended flavored cider, there's a USA producer who recently made a tom Yum soup flavored cider. I think they had gone they'd gone to Thailand, they'd had all the good food and they and they'd come back and they put that in the cider. Now, my
my co host of a podcast that I run. I should probably name at this point the neutral Cider Hotel. Go check it out, available on all good platforms. Do you check out neutral side hotel dot com? Thank you very much, Lovely Grant, he's he's less of a fan of the flavored ciders. He gets in a bit of a rage whenever he and he nearly sort of flew off.
He nearly flew off the handle on this one. He was he was human, but then he gets a bit grumpy back things like that anyway, So so yeah, the Tommyum flavored sider the most amazing and lovely experience I ever had was that I lived in I lived in New Zealand for a bit and an in Wellington, capital city. I lived in an area called Mount Victoria and just
behind there's all these woodlands. Fact, it was one of the places where they filmed for Lord of the Rings when in the first movie when all the little Hobbits are having to hide from the Ring Wraith and they're hiding underneath the roots of the tree for the Lord of the Rings nerds out there, and so I used to go like walk around there and run around there.
And when I left, but then I came back to New Zealand for to go to a festival and the cider maker gave me a cider and I smelt it and I was like, oh my god, I've got the sensation of being back in that city and that time in that place. And I didn't realize that the cider had been flavored with maple and pine needles, and the pine needles had come from those trees on Mount Victoria. Wow, And it was a direct line to that time in that place. You know, these these sensory characters they tap
into into our limbic system. It's all about memory formation, and like a motive state. And yeah, that just took me straight back to that time in place, So that was pretty cool.
Ah.
Okay, So if you'd like to hear someone who really knows noses, there is a rhinology episode which I will link on my website. But just to recap it, a lot of your taste is actually smells traveling up your snooter, which leads to your olfactory bulb in the front of your brain, which takes that information and sends it just directly to your olympic system, including parts of it called
the hippocampus and the amygdala. They deal with memory and emotions, which is why I think about a bowl of cider I had a few decades ago, and I still want to cry bittersweet tears.
Oh.
On that topic, a lot of people, Diana Burgess and MOFO, they both wanted to know, how are some ciders dry versus sweet? Why is there such a wide variety, and what's the process to get a sweet versus a dry cider.
That's a really good question, and this is one of the big misnomers about cider is that you know, cider is a sweet drink and the fundamental nature of it is that ostensibly, every single cider in the world will start its life as a bone dry cider, no sugar left at all, because the fermentation process is the yease converting that sugar into alcohol, and the cider will stop fermenting when there is no more sugar for the yeast to ferment. So that's that's how cider starts its life.
It's just that the majority of consumers don't want dry cider and in condition that they don't want that, so sugar, generally sugar sometimes it could be juice is added back post fermentation and then the cider is stabilized via pasteurization or you know, a sterile filtration process that removes all the yeast, so there's no opportunity for that sugar to be re fermented. And that's the sweetness that you've got, So you can have bone dry cider because that's how
that's how patro Mamma wanted it intended. That is nature
taking its course. If you want to have a fermented sider that is that has some sugar in there, you've either got an added pack or you can do a couple of really fiddly processes to try and retain a residual natural sweetness, the primary one being called key, which is what the French classically do, and there's lots of history of it happening in the UK as well, which is a slightly convoluted process whereby you remove the yeast and the nutrient from the juice at the beginning of
the process, and the resultant sider ferments very kind of slowly and develops quite rich flavors, and then you can sort of control it and place it into a bottle
where it finishes a little bit of fermentation. But the yeast is so weak and there's so little of it, and it's so hungry because there's no nutrient that that little bit of carbon dioxide that's built up in the bottle is enough to sort of, you know, make the yeast wave a little white flag, and it stops fermenting before all of the sugar has been converted into alcohols, so you get a naturally sweeter, naturally lower ABV, and naturally sparkling drink.
Ah.
That's how they do it, That's how did it. So that's why you said that the cider that you had in the Bodley in Paris it smelted. What did you.
Say it kind of like tiger lilies.
Oddly tiger lilies amazing but really rich, oily intent and serrematic, some sort of spicy characters, some really juicy Just yeah, they're wonderful drinks. And you know, if you have the opportunity to see any sort of classic Breton and Norman Duas cidro, you should give it a go. There are a number of producers, especially in the Pacific Northwest, who did like a like a research trip over to over
to Brittainy and Normandy a few years ago. You know that there are producers in the USA who are making who are making keef drinks. And also a big shout out to the Waldensider House in the Hudson Valley, which is where Angry Orchard, who are the USA's largest producer. This is where they get to make all their amazing, fun, creative, experimentational stuff. My friend Ryan Burke is the headsider maker, and you know they've produced sensational key siders over the
years that have been of one competitions. I'm a big fan of us Sider. I'm drinking one right now. It's called It's from the Artifact Sider Project, who are in Massachusetts. It's called wolf at the Door, which is a really mega kind of hazy juice bomb with some sort of character in there.
So yes, this French style side aka cedra bouchet is sold in corked bottles like champagne is, and it's the result of kieving allowing the cider's pectins and calcium to form a brown cap at the top and that clarifies the juice and develops a nice slow fermentation and a sparkle. The process in French, by the way, is known as defecation, which, let me tell you, do not google French defecation no matter how any accents you copy and paste over the ease,
just don't google it. Don't google it. Keieving's fine, let's change the subject. Can I toss a couple more questions at you?
Keep them coming?
Okay? Ali vessels. First time question asker says, can you homebrew apple cider? Is it harder or easier than brewing something like beer or mead? And Celia Labante says, one of my favorite things in the fall is to pick up some local, fresh pressed, unpasteurized, local cider and forget about it in the back of my fridge until it gets fizzy. It always ends up tasting better than anything I can find in stores. Is my fridge magic or is there something about the fermentation process or is there
just something about home fermentation. Can you diy cider or is it best left to professionals?
You can do eyesider. The tricky bit, as we talked about it before, it's the same thing that people had three or four thousand years ago, is converting your apples into the juice. You need this bit of sort of kit and technology, you know, a mill and a press, and you can, and it has been done, basically, whack the apples with a very big pole in a bucket until they kind of go a bit mushy. And then you can buy these little sort of home presses like
you would for making apple juice. And they're good fun, especially if you've got big family or like a little sort of community group or neighborhood kind of thing. They're really really good fun because you get everybody to bring the apples and you do it in one big go
and it's kind of easy. But if you don't want to invest in the equipment, then you know, you do have all these fantastic farms where you can purchase the unpasteurized, the still raw, live juice, which, as your caller Industry described, I don't think it was the magic of the fridge. It's the magic of fermentation converted this juice into cider in maybe not in the most controlled kind of way, but obviously, hey, it kind of works. And you know,
let's talk about juice content. The reason why it tastes amazing probably is because it tasted had a real intensity of flavor profile. Not all ciders that you get around the world are made from just apple juice. The majority of your mainstream siders, big kind of store board siders, they will have you know, there'll be fermented apple juice. But what often happens is that extra sugar gets added into the juice prior to fermentation. Remember it's the sugar
content that equates to the potential alcohol content. If you add some extra sugar into your juice, you're going to get potential higher alcohol let's say ten or twelve percent ABV. And what happens then is you could then dilute that that's base cider with water, and hey, presto, you could double the literal volume of cider that you've produced at the same alcohol level as what you would have had naturally for the sow, some sugar and some water, and
why do that? Of course, it's all about the dollar, right, This is all about This is a very efficient way of making cider and a very cheaper way of making cider. And I'm not puritanical on this. I'm not holding a pitchfork and saying that every single sider must be made from just one hundred percent apples. You know, nothing else could be done. That's not the attitude and approach that
I have. But certainly in the UK, the minimum juice content insider sits at thirty five percent, so the majority of the cider can be water, and for me, that's too far down the line. If the first ingredient on your list is not apple juice, is that a cider and I would say for me, no. In the USA, it's fifty percent, and that's the level that I would advocate it being at. You know that you've got some integrity in there, So it just depends on what your
kind of flavor profile is. For me, the most important thing is enabling the consumer to understand what's in the drink, how's it made, and let them make the decision on what kind of drink they're after.
M hm, that makes tons of sense. Yes or no? Question from m Ross? Are there bug bits in my cider?
Probably bug bits well as in bits of bugs.
Bits of bugs, you know. I'm thinking yes, there's gonna be a couple of little tiny bugs in there.
It depends on whether you're getting from your you know, your your professional cider maker, or you're going to see old farmer Brown down the lane who's making old leg bender you.
Know, hmm, don't worry about it. Gareth ASKI asked, is cloudy apple cider the cider equivalent of orange juice with bits? Different types of bits? But why is some cider cloudy? Is that the mother?
First of all, I want to addres the fact that his name is Gareth Aske. Who's asking a questions. That's a brilliant name, mister ask You keep asking away, ask all the questions. I've thoroughly enjoyed that you've asked. Post fermentation, yeast and large chunks of apple bits will drop to the bottom, but you will still have it within suspension. Some bits of pecked in and some just like natural apply bits, a bit like natural bits from orange juice.
What majority of makers will then do, but they'll put it through a filter, you know, we just put it through something that just like sieves out like the chunkier bits of apple constituents. So the vast majority of side as you get in the marketplace are like crystal clear. It's very easy to put through a filter. I've got nothing wrong with that. I don't think it's a bad thing at all. What I find interesting is when makers
choose not to do that. Again, it's very much a modern thing of the last fifty years, the idea of instilling the clarity in there as a probably as a market of sort of quality and cleanliness and professionalism, moving away from that sort of more rustic and traditional kind of viewpoint. Certainly there's been a bit of a driver again from a sort of commercial point of view, makers using that as a way of bringing like a new
product into the marketplace. Right, we've got a cider which is just you know, fuzzy, and then we've got like the sweeter version. What do we do now, let's do the cloud eversion. Yes, come on, you know, this is all part of the amazing diversity that exists for cider that you know, different ciders, different fruit, different varieties, different filmentation processes, vessels for different consumers on different occasions.
Ah well, I'm hoping from a little bit of filtration to flim flam. Robin Cohen wants to know. I was recently told that in times before refrigeration and indoor water, hard cider was given to the kids to drink. Is this flim flam?
It's true, It is absolutely true, you know, in the in the same way that in various parts of certainly British history, that the beer was considerably safer than the drinking water. You know, we think about the state of the sewerage system or lack of sewage system, especially as the population as cities started to growing. The fermentation process is amazing at killing off bugs and beasts, so even at relatively low alcohol levels. So no, it is genuinely true.
In fact, I'll have to remember the year. I think it's in the fifteenth century, maybe the thirteenth century. There is a record of babies being baptized inside it in the UK because the water quality was so poor. Actually that was from last week now, It's yeah, so you know that's that is absolutely true.
Okay, two more questions Sarah Tully says, I'm a cider girl, born and raised English by birth, and I now live in Canada, where luckily the cider industry has boomed in the last ten years, probably because of video Gabe. She says, I've drank many a can of cider, but once in a blue moon, I get one that well smells like a fart or rotten egg paste, almost as bad and is flat. Why does this happen? What is going on?
So the the egginess is those are those are the characters of these sulfide compounds, and so these these are natural compounds that are released by by yeast when they are not very happy stressed yeast. So this is normally a food issue. So they haven't got so that the yeast is converting the sugar into alcohol. But yeast has got to eat as well, right, so it needs to have these nutrients. It needs to have some nitrogen, It needs to have some B vitamins in order to easily
function properly and convert all that sugar into alcohol. If it hasn't got that, sometimes there's a bit of a break down. Sometimes if if it's too hot and then the process it gets all a bit too much to the yeast and you know, just throws a bit bit of a dirty protest basically, or sometimes if the temperature goes kind of like too cold, like partway through the fermentation, it can stop and these sulfide characters can remain. It is a bit of an issue. It doesn't need to happen.
It's one of those things like like having vinegar. You know, within your side. It's something that is easily averted. It doesn't need to happen. But but but it is something that does that does come around.
Maybe if it happens, you should just treat it like it was supposed to happen, make a wish, crack open a different bottle, you know.
You could do that. You know. One of the things is that if if that was a beer, consumers and the drinks trade have the confidence to know that's not right. Yeah, you know, we'd get in touch with the with the brewery or they take it back to the bar. People don't know like is the cider supposed to and so if they end up thinking, oh, I think that is how it's supposed to taste. Man, cider smells of farts. That's bad. I Therefore I don't like cider. That's a really,
really bad thing. So if you smell that, take it back to it and get another one. But make a wish, and make a wish and make ah.
Obviously consider it lucky. Sarah Hoover wants to know if I were to go to a store looking for the best possible cider. Again, I'm going to editorialize that and say, I know it's objective, but what should Sarah look for? Any hidden info we should know about.
So what I would say is just check out your local producers. There are there is over a thousand makers in the USA today and in being made in basically every single state. Maybe not Alaska, I'm going to say, possibly, but everywhere else you know cider. Please prove me wrong, somebody, there is cider being made everywhere. Just go and seek how go and seek out your local but there are some of the best side of makers in the world within the USA. You're you're based in California, right, alle
Is that correct? So you need to check out you know, people like Tannerky Cider who in Santa Cruz, people like Tilted Shed who are in Sonoma. Absolutely fantastic. You know maker's there. And then as you get into the Pacific Northwest, people like Reverend Nats, and then you sort of get into Michigan or people like Uncle John's Hard Cider. In Pennsylvania,
you've got Big Hills sider Works and Plowman Cider. And you know, New York Eves and Eden, we so Eves are in a sort of fingerlegs area, Eden and Vermont. You know, we're talking about drinks that are exuding all of the quality and elegance of wine. There's just there's just so many fantastic producers out there. So just go to the store and drink loads of cider. I think that's what I'm trying to say.
I will post links on my website, you sweet thirsty people. Or here's an idea. You could put on clothes and you could leave the house.
You've got side of bars. We don't really have side of bars over it, but almost every single city has got a side of bar. And you've got one oh one tap house in LA. You've got the San Francisco Cider House. Portland's got like five sider houses alone. It's crazy. If you're in DC, do head to Ancho. It's one of the best sider experiences that you'll have you know, anywhere anywhere in the world. So it's not just that
sort of at home thing. It's like getting out there and sort of seeking in any city that you are. It's an awesome experience.
What about the last questions? I always ask, what about the worst thing? Ab outsider? It can't all be roses.
What sucks ah that that there is amongst maybe amongst the amongst the community, a feeling of whether it be inferiority to other drinks or maybe in some instance there's a little bit of gatekeeping around, like cider can only be this and we can never kind of change.
It's like, you know, come on, people, like just be open to the opportunity. And I really I use the word opportunity a lot because because I see it and that there are so many consumers today who who are
interested in so many different types of drinks. We're less sort of like siloed in terms of well, I'm just to be a drink or I'm just a one drink, I'm just spirits drinkers, Like I know, you could be interested in interesting drinks, and cider very much sits within that sort of spectrum and with that opportunity, and so the thing that annoys me the most is that sided doesn't have the reputation or the standing that I think it deserves. But I have considerable faith that we will get there.
I think that you are doing all of the work to get us there. I'm Colin and now cider's Cider's it, man.
That's hot.
What about your favorite favorite thing about cider? Can you even name one thing?
I suppose there's two things, which I know is not one thing, but partly it's the it's the people, it's the community element there is that there is a community of cider people. And in the UK context, we got together for the first time just at the weekend for this event called the Bristol Cider Salon, which is which I sort of helped helped the co organized along with the wonderful Martin Barkla from Pilton Cider and Tom Oliver
from Oliver Cider and Perry. And it was in the city of Bristol, which is which I live just outside of in the southwest of England, real Heartland area. And it was yeah, makers, enthusiasts and drinkers all getting together sharing some drinks and it's a really cool thing. It's something that we all sort of share. It's something that we're passionate about inside of people are just like quite
nice people and and interesting people. So there's definitely this there's this community, whether it be side, but also again coming back to the censor place and that the geographical community. I love. I love the fact that there's you know, makers in the area that I'm from, and you know, there's there's a apple variety called the Democrat, a side of apple variety. And you know, I made ten liters of dimmot read not last year, two years ago, and I think it tastes all right, it's a little bit.
It's a little little bit farm me on the nose, entered it into a competition, didn't get a medal. Not not bitter, not bitter much. But you know, ultimately I don't it doesn't matter. I just feel so grateful that here is something that apple variety was being recorded as
being an awesome apple five hundred years ago. And I know that that like my granddad used to make you know, Sid and Perry on on this on this this farm where my mum grew up, and too it's not in the family anymore, but but you know, I made a Perry from the same tree that I know that he would have done, and he died before I was born, And there's nothing sad about this other than just like, it's just awesome that I have this, have this connection
through this, through this action, I feel slightly responsible, but more just kind of celebratory. So it's just it's just something that really gets into your bones.
I think, Wow, that's really amazing. You give so much context to cider, and I love that that is one way for other people to appreciate it as well. It's not just something that tastes good that you sit around a drink, or if you've had a hard day and you absolutely need this too unwind. It's not it's not about that, and I love that That's kind of the message that you're spreading is that cider really is an art to be enjoyed.
You know, absolutely absolutely, So ask dry experts scrumpy questions, because earnestly, they are just bubbly fonts of knowledge and passion, and one day we're all going to be eaten by worms anyway, So do whatever you want, learn what you want.
Find out more about Gabe Cook at the siderologist dot com. Naturally, you can look for him on social media as the Siderologist. Pick up his books. Siderology is his first one and then he just released Modern British Ciders and his podcast is Neutral Cider Hotel. A donation went to Tiny Changes. All those links are in the show notes. If you liked this episode, send it to a friend. There are a bunch more links at aliboard dot com, slash ologies,
slash Siderology. We are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at ali ward just one l in my name on Instagram and Twitter. Come be our friends. Thank you to longtime friend Aaron Talbert, who is the admin on the Ologies podcast Facebook group full of great people. Ologiesmerch dot com is where to go to get t shirts and totes and hoodies and masks and all that stuff. And that is handled by sisters Bondie Dutch and Shannon Faltis of the comedy podcast You Are That. Emily White
of the Wardery makes all of our transcripts. She's great. She's available for hire if you need transcripts or anything. Bleeping is done by Caleb Patten and Bleeped episodes and transcripts are available at aliwar dot com slash ologiestash extras there's no link in the show notes. Thank you, of course to Noel Dilworth and Susan Hale for the Ologies business they do behind the scenes and social media help. And of course to the incomparable Jared Sleeper, who is
both sweet and dry and a bit scrumpy. And to Zeke Rodriguez Thomas and Stephen Ray Morris who both helped with Smologies episodes. More of those are coming soon. Thank you to Nick Thorburn who wrote and performed the theme music. And happy belated birthday to doctor Mike Natter. Also, it was my pop's birthday last week. If you stick around, I burden you with a secret from my dark soul. Okay, this week's secret was I was out of underwear because laundry just does not do itself and it's been a
busy week. And then I found a new pack of undies in the linen closet and I was like, yes, I totally forgot I bought them. And I'm going to tell you something. I don't always wash things before I wear them. Jared is horrified at this. He washes everything before touches his body. But I'm like, it's not like someone in the factory, wore them around all day. I was like, you know, I don't care. I don't care.
I don't know if wearing clothes without washing them first is like cool and chill of me because I don't care, or if it's repulsive. But it hasn't killed me yet, and I've got bigger fish to fry.
Okay for bye.
Pacaderman College, mommeology, crypto zoology, lithology, dechnology, meteorologyology, napology, seriology.
Mmmm it, it's a whiskey drinking.
He needs a longer drinking.
It's a long drinking.
You know, decided to drinking.
You think the songs remind him over the good times, and he sinks the songs that remind him over the best times.