Out Studying Cider

I have been in Mt. Vernon, WA at the Washington State University agriculture research facility studying cider for the past week with Peter Mitchell. I plan on telling you about this class next week.

In the meanwhile, please do look at the WSU cider website, including the annual fruit reports that I have used to help guide me in my selection of cider apple trees.

Cheese Fondue with Cider

I tried a simple Google search for cheese and cider the other day. The top results of my search was a cheese fondue with cider.

I’ve made a few cheese fondues before. Most of them contain dry sherry and dry white wine with a lot of mild melting cheeses like Gruyère and Emmentaler along with a little bit of sharper flavorful cheeses like parmesan. The sherry, dry white wine, and parmesan give it a sharp flavor. So it makes sense to replace at least the dry white wine with a dry apple cider, and the parmesan with cheddar cheese. Maybe even replace the sherry with apple brandy. Hmm.

Admittedly, over the years, I quit making fondue from scratch, as it can take awhile to get the right consistency. A local German restaurant called the Rheinlander has a fondue, whose recipe is apparently not a secret as it was on the local TV in 2004, which they bottle. I find it in the cheese section of the deli in a pint sized jar. I keep one in the back of my fridge for company, in which case I take out and put in a little dipping crock pot. Easy as that. I should try that fondue with a slightly sweet cider to cut though all the sharpness.

The fondue cookbook I have had for years had a simpler recipe, so I decided to give it a try. It called for 2 TBS of lemon juice, 2 cups of hard dry cider, 1 lb 9 oz of shredded cheddar cheese, and 2 TBS of corn starch. The lemon juice and cider are heated, and the cheddar is slowly added as it melts. Cheddar is not really a melting cheese, or rather, it melts, but a lot of oil separates out. Adding corn starch at the end did away with the separating and made the whole thing consistent. It suggested using bread, apples, ham, and pineapple as dippers, all of which were very good. I tried sugar snap peas, but gave up on that. I served it with Red Barn semi-dry Jonagold Cider, but that was a bit of a mistake. Great cider, but the fondue ended up having a slightly sweet taste, and the semi-dry cider did not cut through to be refreshing, nor did it compliment the fondue as a sweet cider might have. Next time, I would go either for a dry cider, or a sweet cider.

Pairing Cheese and Alcohol

First off, my instructor for “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine gave a cautionary piece of advice when pairing cheese and wine, which I think would apply to all cheese and alcohol pairings. He said that when you are trying to taste and evaluate wine, serving cheese is a bad idea because it has oil that coats the mouth and affects how you taste. However, if you are just drinking a wine, cheese is an excellent accompaniment.

That said, I came across this little bit on page 155 in the Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest by Tami Parr, and I felt like I had to share it.

For the uninitiated, pairing cheese and spirits can seem completed; novices often fear that they won’t do it right. In fact, pairing beverages and cheeses is really as simple as being present to the flavors your mouth is experiencing.

Start out with this principle: a good pairing is one where the flavors of both the beverage and the cheese are enhanced by the combination. In the best pairings, you may find that the pairing produces a remarkable transformation on your palate, and a third flavor revelation emerges. Bad pairings are easy to discern and will almost certainly cause your mouth to screw up involuntarily in an odd contortions as a result of the bitter, awkward flavors generated in your mouth. In fact, bad pairings are one easy way to start educating yourself about the ins and outs of pairing cheese and wine. Try a few pairings of wine and cheese, even random ones, and start paying attention to how combinations fit into broad categories.

Wine is the classic beverage for pairing with cheese, but that’s only the beginning. Some find that beer pairs well, if not better, than wine. Other beverages such as sake, cider, and lambic ales can also be nicely paired with cheese. More recently, people are beginning to experiment with pairing coffee and cheese, as well as whiskey and cheese.

Following are a few basic pairing principles to start you on your pairing adventures:

Trust Your Own Palate

Pairings are very subjective, and despite what anyone tells you, there are no right or wrong answers – really…

Pair Like with Like

Pay attention to the relative intensity of flavors you are pairing. Generally speaking, very strong flavored cheeses paired with light, dry libations won’t work because the cheese will overpower the wine. By the same token, a big red wine… will drown out a subtly flavored soft-ripened goat cheese. Pairing this way does neither produce a favor. That being said, see the next rule.

Be Open to the Unexpected

Whatever rules you might have learned may prove false with any given pairing at any given time. Cheese flavors vary throughout the year due to the diet of the animals and seasonal variations in butterfat content of milk; wines and beers also vary by vintage and by batch. In addition, counterintuitive pairs often work very well. For example, ports typically pair well with strongly flavored blue cheeses. You just never know.

The Wisconsin Milk Marking Board does have a nifty website showing what cheeses go well with what wine, food, spirits, and beers.

Yesterday, I talked about cider black and tans. Today, I will turn my attention to some of the cider cocktail recipes I have managed to collect.

JB Worcester UK posted on the Cider Workshop a calvados brandy and hard cider drink which he called “frogs nose,” and claimed it is better than pommeau.

Crispin Cider, always looking to promote their product, has posted several recipes.

• They have a section called the Lazy Bartender, which are basic drinks in which cider replaced an ingredient.
• They have another section called Creative Cocktails, including an area to submit your own cocktail made with cider.
• On their blog, they posted the Kesler Ginger Crisp, made with gin, Crispin, ginger, ice, and lemon. The blog also is where the recipe for the Eastern Saint Cocktail Recipe, which is ginger flavored vodka, St. Germain, and their artisanal reserve Crispin Cider Saint.

Other sources of cider, both sweet or hard, drink recipes include:

• http://gonewengland.about.com/cs/recipes/a/aaciderdrinks.htm, which includes some non-alcoholic recipes
• Martha Stewart’s Pear and Sparkling Cider Cocktails, made with whiskey
• http://www.sheckys.com/newyorkcity/nightlife/articles/cider_in_the_house_fall_s_cider_cocktails_6567.asp
  
• http://cocktails.about.com/od/cocktailrecipes/a/apple_cocktails.htm , which includes apple spirit cocktails such as apple brandy or apple infusions.

Cider at the Oregon Spring Beer & Wine Fest

Cider had a decent representation at the 16^th Annual Spring Beer & Wine Fest last weekend at the Oregon Convention Center. Wandering Aengus Ciderworks from Salem, OR was there with their new Anthem cider on tap along with pear and cherry. The Anthem, made only with Newtown Pippin and Winesap apples, is probably my new favorite of theirs, though I would probably have to taste them all to make sure. Last time I saw them at their facility, they had been experimenting with cherries and decided it was best to add to fermented apple cider without fermenting the cherries. The result was something semi-dry with a hint of cherry, but something that didn’t wow me, and I love cherries. It could have been because I had been drinking their pear flavored cider previously. Made the same way the cherry cider was, this drink was sweet and more like something I would expect considering the process.

Part of the problem with the cherry cider also could have been that I drank Milton-Freewater, OR Blue Mountain Cider’s version. I would need to compare the these two side by side. These two cider companies are the largest ones in Oregon, with a few others up and coming.

Six pack ciders were also represented with Crispin Cider and Woodchuck Cider. Crispin Cider likes to have a presence in Oregon, and in fact has its own Twitter account @CrispinOregon. They were there with their Natural Cider along with their newly acquired Fox Barrel Pear Cider. In fact, Concordia Ale House is having a Cider Night tonight, but looking at the ciders they are going to use, they are all Crispin or Fox Barrel. Crispin and Fox Barrel is also having a tasting of their limited release Bonnie & Clyde ciders later this month on Thursday, April 29th from 5-8pm at the Belmont Station in Portland, OR.

As far as Woodchuck Draft Cider goes, it was a bit interesting. In the craft cider world, it is a six pack trash. In the beer making world, people want the recipe and hold this up as what cider should be like. It makes the craft cider makers shutter, trying to explain it is the Budweizer of cider. I had their granny smith cider, which is the first time I ever drank it. I get it now – it is sweet yet has some apple flavor, indicating the presence of apple juice added after fermentation. I can see why so many people like it.

While I was talking to Wandering Aengus Ciderworks, he introduced me to Allen Gould of Carlton Cyderworks, who was there tasting like me. I got to talk to them a bit about attending cider classes and how they are currently selling only out of their tasting room. I hope to get down there someday and try their product out.

Oregon Spring Beer & Wine Fest

Last Friday, I took the day off of work and my husband, his brother, and I took a bus to the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, OR to attend the 16^th Annual Spring Beer & Wine Fest with the Tour de Cheese. We got there a little bit before noon due to free admission before 2pm, and we had past experience with the Holiday Ale Festival that being one of the first ones in the door means less lines for trying drinks and food.

For being the 16^th Annual Fest, things were not as organized as one would have thought it to be. With most beer festivals, you have to buy a cup. This year, they had a plastic cup, and a glass beer mug and a glass stemless wine glass. We were told that we needed to purchase at least a plastic mug for serving beer, but that the wine vendors would have small Dixie style cups for serving wine if we did not purchase the wine glass. The first wine producer I went to did not have any glasses and didn’t know that they should have. I had to sweet talk them into pouring to me anyway. Eventually, I did find a wine producer who did, and I kept that glass for a bit. If we bought the wine glass, the beer people would not have served to us. How crazy is all that?

The event had a little bit of everything for everyone: beer, wine, cider, distilled sprits, cheese, chocolate, dipping sauces, olive oil, and even some other miscellaneous vendors like purses, windows, pans, and a chiropractor. Most beverage and cheese samples were $1, with the size dependant on the style of product.

One thing I had learned from previous festivals is to pack some food. Food at the festivals is sometimes scarse, and what is there is usually high quality and expensive. I packed a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which doesn’t not risk food poisoning from not being refrigerated, yet doesn’t require heating. I also packed an apple and an orange. At one festival, we saw a man who had little pretzels on a string tied around his neck. Great idea to keep some food in your system when drinking, and also eat between drinks to help clear the pallet, making it easier to taste the new drink.

I will give a review of the tastings in future posts.

Making Cider at a Winery

Yesterday I mentioned that Heather from The Rusty Grape Vineyard said what really got them going making wine is acquiring their alcohol license. On the Cider Workshop, a similar topic came up, where one member wondered if they could work with a brewery to make their cider.

The group responded that they thought a winery in the United States could make cider under their license, not a brewery. Dick Dunn from Colorado then shared with the group the arrangement he has with a winery to make his cider and offered suggestions about how an agreement could be reached. I encourage you to read the discussion.

This whole topic has me thinking. One of the problems about being licensed for a winery is that this is not something that can be done in your home. Other things like jams can be produced inside the home for sale, but wine cannot. A start up winery colleague of mine if he could make wine at his home, and the TTB responded with this:

“Winery in a residence - Segregation of Operations Required

A winery must be totally segregated from any living space. TTB must be able to directly access the winery without going through personal space and you must be able to directly access your personal living space without going through the winery. The winery premises should be business use only so you cannot be storing bikes, doing laundry etc. on winery premises nor can you cross winery premises to get to an area where you store bikes, do laundry etc. The winery premises must be secure which includes a lock on any door providing direct access from the residence to the winery.”

So when Heather said to get the license, my mind was whirling because I need a separate facility and I hadn’t quite solved that problem. However, Dick does offer a solution, though I see potential problems if I got ambitious and wanted my own label and/or wanted to leave the agreement set up with the winery. Even though I would be the creator, everything is under their name, so I would have very little legal possession of the cider. However, if I chose not to leave my current job, this would allow me to make cider and sell it without giving up my day job.

It gives me something to think about…

Wassailing

There are a lot of wassailing festivals going on this weekend, especially at cideries.

According to Ben Watson in Cider Hard and Sweet, page 137 reads, “… wassail derives from the old Anglo-Saxon toast, Waes haeil, meaning, ‘Be whole’ [well]. It’s like saying, “To your health,” and it gave its name to the custom that took place throughout Britain around Christmastime, when revelers carried a wassail bowl made of ash or maple and festooned with ribbons from house to house, expecting the bowl to be filled with refreshments and in turn blessing the occupants. The traditional wassail punch is made from ale and sherry, sugar and spices….”

However, there is a second definition of wassailing, which is a kind of blessing of the apple trees for the coming year, especially in England, which usually takes place on January 17 as the Old Twelfth Night. Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse on Vancouver Island, BC, describes the core ritual, “Intended to awaken the orchard from its winter slumber, the trees are blessed for an abundant harvest. Cider is poured over the roots of one of the orchard trees, and toast is hung in the branches by a Wassail “King” and “Queen” while traditional songs are sung with much noisemaking and merriment to ward off bad spirits.”

More Information on Wassailing:

• Wassailing
  
• Wassail
  
• History of Wassail dates and other info
• Wassailing Songs
  

Places Participating in Wassailing:

• Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse: January 16, 2010, 11am-6pm, Saanichton, BC.
• Finnriver Farm – Old Time Cider says, “Sunday, January 17th Time: 2:00pm-4:00pm Location: Finnriver Farm Received the above in an email from the Finnriver mailing list.”
• In the UK
  

Ben Watson’s Cider Wassail Bowl (adapted)

½ gallon sweet cider
½ cup dark brown sugar
10 – 15 allspice berries
8-10 whole cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
1 whole nutmeg, cracked in half
Pinch of salt
1 cup dark rum
¼ cup calvados or other apple brandy (optional)
1 lemon, halved and sliced thin
1 or 2 oranges, halved and sliced thin

In a large pot, mix cider and sugar. Place spices in a square cheesecloth and tie up like a tea bag before adding it to the pot with salt. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat and let simmer for 15 minutes, and then remove from heat.

Remove the spice bag and add rum, optional brandy, and lemon and orange slices. Place over medium heat and stir for 2 to 3 minutes before serving. It is also good with whipped cream.

My Taste

What do I like to drink? Well, it seems when my husband and I go and try cider and wine, we gravitate towards the sweeter stuff. In fact, we toured a brandy distillery, and after sampling their products, we only walked away with a liquor and not the bone dry spirits.

Admittedly, I don’t know much when it comes to grape wines, but I do alright with most, but again, I like it a touch sweet. We served Willamette Valley Vineyard’s Oregon Blossom blush at our wedding, which the winery describes as the local answer to California’s Zinfandel. My husband and I also enjoy an occasional Muscat wine. With a good meal, though, about any grape wine will do.

When it comes to beer, it is an interesting story. My first beer that I ever attempted to drink was a Pyramid Ale. I don’t remember what kind, just that I didn’t like it. In my mind, I knew Pyramid was a good quality beer, but I didn’t like it. Over the years, I tried and tried again, but I always made funny faces. When I started dating my now husband, who is really into beer and loves porters and stouts, he started trying to find something I might like. Frambois worked because of the sugar and fruit juice, but most bars don’t serve it. For his birthday one year, we went to the Rogue in Portland, where they allowed us to custom pick a sampler set. I found two that I liked – one was with honey and mandarin oranges, and the other had flavorings of coriander. Both of them were wheat beers. It was like something was knocked loose, as I’m able to drink wheat beers now, especially if they have fruit in them, and an occasional honey lager such as the one from a Canadian restaurant called Earls. I don’t like hops because they are bitter, and my husband’s favorites taste burnt to me. Actually, a lot of beer tastes burnt to me. I’ll taste every beer he gets, but for me, beer is either drinkable, somewhat drinkable and I’ll need someone to finish it for me, or not drinkable.

Admittedly, I’m a bit scattered at the moment with what I want to make – cider, fruit wine, or mead. Thing is, most people think of all three of these as being sweet, but they don’t have to be. I’ve had an excellent dry cider, a dry blackberry wine you drink like a Merlot, and I know there are dry meads out there. So yes, I like my drinks sweet, but it is honestly easier to make dry alcoholic beverage, which will help strike a balance between what I like best and what others might like to buy. In the meanwhile, I’ll just keep experimenting to develop my skills and attempt to narrow my focus.

Beer makers don’t know how to make cider

My husband showed me this forum called Home Brew Talk. There happens to be a forum on wine, mead, and cider there. I’ve been following all three, learning when I can, and helping others if I know.

What I have learned is that beer makers don’t know how to make cider. Yes, I’ve probably made some enemies stating that, but I have my reasons.

First off, beer makers try to have cider drinkable within weeks because that is how beer is made. Because it is made out of fruit like wine, apple needs to be aged like wine. It is possible with the right materials in the right environment to bottle cider in a month, but it needs time to age.

Secondly, partly because there was an Apple Wine recipe that gained popularity on the site, they think they have to add sugar to make cider. This process is called chaptalising, where sugar is added out of fear there is not enough natural sugar in the grapes or fruit being used. My generic wine recipe calls for it, as wine is at least 10% alcohol. Cider is around 7% naturally, and adding sugar raises the alcohol, and therefore bumps it into the wine category. One person on the forum responded that commercial cider makers do add sugar. My rebuttal is simple – craft cider makers spend soooo much time figuring out what kind of apples to grow, caring for the trees, picking the apples, grinding them, and pressing out the juice that they are not going to add sugar after all that work. They want to taste their labor, not cover it up. It is the ciders who use concentrate juice are the ones that are going to add sugar.

Last of all, there is the idea of cold crashing. It is possible with some strains of beer yeast to kill off all the yeast by cooling the beer in a refrigerator, allowing the brewer to add back sugar without fear of it starting to ferment again. For starters, some craft cider makers working out of their home or sheds or whatever have their tanks outside or in unheated buildings. If it freezes, no big deal – it will start fermenting again when it thaws. In fact, they embrace the lower temperatures, claiming it improves taste. There is even a method called keeving where they strip the juice of its nutrients, and then ferment it at 5⁰C, which is 41⁰ F – about the temperature of a refrigerator. Point to all this is, cider doesn’t cold crash, and so these naïve beer makers attempt it and then wonder why their cider exploded when they added sugar as a sweetener.

Books on making wine or cider

I was on my honeymoon when I started reading about how to make cider. I used to live in a little studio just blocks away from a library. I found that going to the library was free entertainment, and I didn’t have to worry about storing the books that I might never read again. Now I own my house, and I still go to the library to check out books, but sometimes it is to “test drive” a book. I got my hands on every cider and wine making book I could, and then I determined if it was worthy of me purchasing it, or continue to check it out.

Turns out, there aren’t a whole lot of books written about making cider, and I pretty much ended up purchasing near all of them, including:

• Cider: Making, Using & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider, Third Edition by Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols
  
• Cider, Hard and Sweet: History, Traditions, and Making Your Own, Second Edition by Ben Watson
  
• Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale by Michael Pooley and John Lomax
  
• Craft Cider Making by Andrew Lea

I have to say out of those books, I tend to use Craft Cider Making by Andrew Lea the most. Some of that is because I accidentally stumbled on a cider group based out of the UK which Andrew is very much a part of, so I’ve had opportunities to chat with Andrew. However, even Andrew admits that the biggest flaw of his book was that the publisher did not put an index in it, but his website seems to kind of make up for the flaw. http://www.cider.org.uk/

I’ll admit, the process of making cider really didn’t click until I probably read my first wine book. I think it was because it was more tangible. The Encycolpedia of Home Winemaking – Fermentation and Winemaking Methods by Pierre Drapeau and Andre Vanasse (translated into English) had some flow charts of how to make different styles of wine (sparkling or still) out of different materials (grapes, juice, wine concentrate kits, etc). That’s when it clicked. I haven’t bought this book yet as some of the reviews on Amazon weren’t very impressed with this book for advanced users, and I was afraid I would outgrow it very quickly. Our local beer and wine supply store uses Home Wine Making Step by Step by Jon Iverson, which I put on my Christmas list. There are many more books on making grape wines that I barely even glanced at.

I did buy The Joy of Home Wine Making by Terry A Garey, which has been my go to book for wine so far, but I’ll be trying things out of Making Wild Wines & Meads: 125 Unusual Recipes Using Herbs, Fruits, Flowers & More by Pattie Vargas and Rich Gulling soon. There are other books out there, as I currently have from the library The Complete Meadmaker: Home Production of Honey Wine From Your First Batch to Award-Winning Fruit and Herb Variations by Ken Schramm. I also see that just this month, a book called 101 Recipes for Making Wild Wines at Home: A Step-by-step Guide to Using Herbs, Fruits, and Flowers by John Peragine was released. Thing is, I was looking at the non-grape wines and realized that there is a pretty simple formula in which one can swap ingredients, but rarely change the amounts. Once you see the pattern, one can be as creative as they want to without trying to hunt down the recipe. I have yet to try making a mead, but I did recently buy the honey I would need for it.

I realize that I should warn my readers that when I say “cider”, I mean “hard cider.” This is the British definition of the word, but Prohibition seemed to make us Americans morph the term into meaning either hard cider or sweet cider, as in something very similar to apple juice. What is the difference between sweet apple cider and apple juice? Well, sweet apple cider is unfiltered, so it is a cloudy dark brown color, where as apple juice is filtered into a clear yellow-orange colored juice.

The Beginning

What am I going to blog about? I am planning on documenting what I hope is a beginning of starting my own business of selling fruit wine and cider.

The idea was a slow growing one. I was raised on a farm, but live and work in the city. The recession was coming on, and I'm always looking for ways to do things myself to save a buck. You know, go back to the basics. I moved in with my boyfriend in a house in the suburbs, and finally got to grow a garden. After my boyfriend was upgraded to fiancé, we went to a local distillery, and I was really impressed, thinking, this would be awesome to do myself, but I didn't really do anything about it. However, there was a man in our tour group who said he had brewed cider, and I thought that would be a better starting point since my parents have about six apple trees on their property. Free material source!

I got a hold of some books on cider and started reading them on my honeymoon since I now had time with the wedding being over. I was strictly thinking of doing it as a hobby at this point. There was one day, however, where I was jealous of my husband's summers off from teaching, and the increased recession fears that my new boss didn't know what to do with me and was going to let me go. This idea of having a winery suddenly popped into my head, and I've kind of obsessed with the idea since, knowing that I wouldn't get summers off.

My winery would not sell grape wine because that can be found anywhere. Instead, I draw my inspiration from Shallon Winery in Astoria, OR. It is run by an old gentleman who makes the most wonderful fruit wines, including a cranberry whey wine and a chocolate orange wine. Last time I was there, before I had my idea, I asked what would happen upon his death, as it would be a terrible thing to lose his recipes. Now I hope that I could purchase at least the cranberry whey wine recipe from him.

It has been about four months since I began my hobby research, and now I am beginning to blog about it. I hope you will watch as I try to turn this little hobby into a business.