October 18, 2019 • 42 mins
Both unfiltered apple juice and the bubbly alcoholic beverage made from it are fall favorites in places that grow apples. Anney and Lauren explore the history and science of cider.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio
and Stuff Media. I'm Anny Rees and I'm Lauren Vogelbam.
And today we're talking about cider. Yes, yes, because fall
is finally happening in Atlanta. It is the temperatures dropped
below eighty degrees amazing. And as we've said, it's our
favorite season. Helloween's our favorite holiday. And one of the
(00:31):
things that screams fall to me is a cup of
warm cider with booze in it while you're outside telling
scary stories in the fall. Yes. And by and by
cider you mean like unfiltered apple juice. Yes, As we
have some confusion around the term cider here in the
(00:53):
United States, so before you right in, I also like
the crisp, bubbly kind that I think most people outside
out of the US when they think of cider, that's
what it is, That's what it means mostly what we're
going to be talking about today. Yes, Yes, and I
and I do love both of these kinds of cider. Yes.
Um uh. The for hard ciders, I like the super
(01:13):
dry ones um and uh uh. Speaking of that, I
guess the hot cider that you're talking about the warmed
juice um mixed with booze is also one of my
favorite things, but I can have like half of one
every year because they have so much sugar, and sugar
plus booze is not my friend. I pretty much just
kick off all with it. And that's one. And I
(01:36):
feel like until and we're going to talk about this
a little bit later, but I feel like until maybe
five years ago, at least in my experience, there was
kind of just one type of hard cider in the US,
and it was very sweet, and I wasn't a fan
of it. But now recently there has been a beautiful explosion, yes,
of a lot more different types, which I am also
(01:57):
a fan of the dry cider, so very exciting. But
that brings us to our questions cider, what is it? Well, yes,
what we're talking about today is mostly not that first
thing and he mentioned, which is what Americans call cider
(02:18):
and consists of unfiltered apple juice um which has us
some apple pulp and stuff in it, but is not
alcoholic um. And okay, to explain the difference between apple
juice and apple cider, one Will Fulton, writing for Thrillist,
pointed me toward an old episode of The Simpsons for
a basic rundown. So in the episode of The Simpsons,
are at this the sidery and um Homer's board out
(02:42):
of his mind, and all of a sudden, the Flanders
come in wearing giant apple hats and never reveals that
he has a yearly membership, which he says pays for itself.
Within sixteen visits um and and Ned's quote on how
to tell the difference between a cider and apple juices.
If it's clear and yellow, you've got juice there, fella.
(03:04):
If it's tangy brown, you're insider tank. Now there's two exceptions.
A very to the point it memorable. Yeah, good, Ned
Flanders impression. Thank thank It's really just it's all in
the it's all in the gesture of like happy waving
which you can't see, which works so well over in
(03:25):
audio medium. But yes, so thanks Ned Flanders. That pretty
much covers it, Um, but no. The cider that we're
talking about today is mostly what Americans and some Canadians
call hard cider, which is what happens when you use
yeast to ferment fruit juice, often apple juice, into a
lightly alcoholic and carbonated beverage. You know that the yeast
(03:45):
eat the sugars in the juice and they excrete, carbon
dioxide and flavors and alcohol yeast poop. Yeah. The word
cider is thought to derive from ancient Hebrew, meaning strong drink,
and that word itself probably derived from ancient Babylonian. Um.
(04:06):
Some English speaking places will spell cider with a Y.
See why d e r if they mean the non fermented,
unfiltered apple juice. Yeah. And here in the States we
also have products called sparkling ciders that are carbonated but
are non alcoholic and are sold in champagne style bottles.
Just to add to the confusion. That is very confusing. Yes, anyway,
(04:31):
hard apple ciders are the most common and traditional, but
these days other fruit or combinations like like apple pear
are popular. Cider that's made from pears is more properly
called perry, though, and I will note that there's some
serious shade thrown at products incorporating ingredients other than apples
and maybe pears in the cider industry. Um from the
(04:52):
UK cider enthusiast want Andrew Lee or la maybe um
quote cider is made only from apples with a po
possible and mixture of pears. Other so called ciders which
are made or flavored with other fruits and herbs, are
not ciders at all. At best, they are fruit wines
known legally as made wines, and at worst they are
(05:12):
alco pops for indiscriminating and generally young drinkers whoa wow
shade strong being I know, um, but yes. There are
just a lot of styles of alcoholic cider, ranging from
like three to seven percent alcohol bi volume typically, but
but ranging higher. They can be made from from fresh
(05:34):
pressed juice or from juice concentrate. Um. That juice might
be filtered or unfiltered, or the booze might be filtered later,
or it might never be filtered. It could be with
or without added sugars and other flavorings. They can be
fermented entirely in tanks and barrels and then bottled or
partially fermented that way, and then completed in the bottle
the way you would with champagne via the betel champon
(05:56):
wa um hoof and chemistry note in the making of ciders,
so so cider makers have to balance acids and sugars
and tannins carefully to taste um just the way that
wine makers do. The tannins often come from incorporating blends
of apple juices from different varieties of apples. Most tannins
(06:17):
are found in wild or crab apples, and so that's
tannins um. On the acid side, the main acid compound
in apples is malic acid, and makers who want to
curb it's it's got this really like green apple tart flavor,
and so some makers want to curb that. So they
might encourage the growth of lactic acid bacteria in their
(06:38):
brews to to decrease that malic acid and round out
the flavor um. That's called mallow lactic fermentation. The lactic
acid bacteria will eat the sugars and the malic acid
and excrete carbon dioxide and lactic acid, which brings us
to bacteria poop. I love it when it's both um.
(06:59):
But this can create um like smooth or buttery flavors insider,
the same way that lactic asa do in chardonnay um
that some brewers want and some don't. Yeah um. Meanwhile,
on the sugar side, brewers who want to create sweeter
ciders sometimes these days at artificial sweeteners like sucralose. After
fermentation is complete, because adding actual sugar at the end
(07:23):
there could kick off another round of fermentation, which you
don't want. Um. So yeah, if you've ever noticed like
a sort of weird artificial aftertaste to a sweeter cider,
that might be where it comes from. Yeah, and at
any rate, the result of all this might be anywhere
from sweet to tart to dry to juicy, too funky,
probably somewhere in between, um, with a little or a
(07:45):
lot of bubble, and any color from nearly clear too
yellow to amber to a beer like brown. Oh and
I wanted to say, another product with cider in the
name that we're not talking about today is apple cider
vinegar um, which is what you get you ferment apple
juice all the way to the vinegar stage, like right
past the alcohol stage, zoom right by it. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
(08:08):
that is a whole other episode. Oh definitely, we were
talking about it before we started. Yes, I have to
say there, yes, Um, what about some nutrition drink responsibly yeah, um,
but hard ciders are fairly similar to beers nutrition wise. Um.
I mean, of course, individual products from both categories very real, greatly,
but but ciders often contain a handful more calories and
(08:31):
carbs than beers do um and most are all of
the cider's carbohydrates will be sugars though, because apples contain
a bunch of antioxidants, ciders can too. Okay, I wouldn't
say that that's a reason to start drinking alcoholic cider, sure,
but you know it's the thing. It's it's in there,
(08:51):
that's fun. Yeah. Apple cider numbers, numbers, We do have
some numbers, after all, But disappearing cider is making a
comeback year in the United States. As we mentioned, from fifteen,
sales of cider jumped by seventy five percent what in
the American market inteen that came out to three hundred
and sixty six million dollars wow, um yeah, and it
(09:15):
kept growing. By eighteen it was five hundred and ten
million dollars, with the industry employing over a thousand workers
here in the U. S. Alone. Globally, um, the industry
was valued at about one point one billion dollars as
of twenty sixteen, so a little bit earlier, and at
that point was expected to grow to one point six
billion by three UM. Europe accounted for over half of
(09:37):
that market, but the North American market was the fastest growing.
Makes sense. The rise of gluten free products has boosted
cider sales. Most of them are gluten free. And there
are cider festivals um. One called Pour the Core happens
yearly in Philly and Long Island and includes a cider
donut eating contest, cider donuts, other whole separate episode um,
(10:01):
and a lot of the Apparently it's a good place
to to get a pretzel on a string to wear
around your neck to eat pretzel necklaces. Yeah, I'm a
big fan of those. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah see see
our pretzel episode form law um. And they have a
list of over one hundred and forty hard ciders to
sample at these events. Wow, I love it. Around the world,
(10:23):
there's there's a whole lot of these things and a
lot of good puns. I think my favorite that I
saw was for one festival outside of Bristol every year
called the Outsider Festival. Yes, yeah, yeah, um, which seems
I like really want to go, like to this random
festival that I clicked through from an internet page. They
call themselves an old school, no nonsense weekend, a fantastic
(10:45):
live music, cider and madness, no tribute bands, no X Factor,
no Carling log Er, no tossers, old school, no nonsense madness.
I know. I like whoever these teom Sorry, I want
to hang out with them. Yeah sounds great. It does.
(11:06):
The country with the highest perk aptic consumption is England,
and the world's largest cider producing companies are there, and
we have a couple of cideries in Atlanta, NOL. We
do what we do, and I do feel like that
has been pretty recent mostly. Yeah, well that's about where
we are. But how did we get here? We're going
(11:26):
to find out. But first we're going to take a
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, And we're back with
a disclaimer. Not an apple episode, Nope, nope, nope. One
day we touched on some apple history in our apple
(11:48):
Pie episode. It's just going to be a massive undertaking. Yeah, yeah,
I'm unprepared, but yes, we do have like a brief
right as far back as a third en hundred BC,
apple trees grew along the Nile River in ancient Egypt,
and though there are no records of them making ciders
specifically from these apples, we know that the ancient Egyptians
(12:10):
were super into fermenting things and super into beer, so
it's not outside the remal possibility that they brewed up
some kind of cider. Apple trees themselves most likely originated
in Kazakhstan, and one way or another, those trees made
it to Asia and Europe. Yeah, By around one thousand BC,
ancient Jews and Greeks and Celts were probably fermenting apple juice.
(12:33):
Whoever discovered that apples could be fermented into cider. Once
it was discovered, it was quickly adopted. In b C.
When the first Romans invaded the British Aisles, they found
and fell in love with a cider like drink enjoyed
by the locals. The Romans took it back with them
to their homeland, where it spread within the Roman Empire
and throughout all of Europe. They also brought with them
(12:56):
different varieties of apples and an orchard techniques to the
Celts in Britain. Um. By the third century CE, yes
that spread it happened in cider could be found throughout
the continent. Um Are p Plenty mentioned a drink made
from apple juice, so plenty it was especially cherished among
Germanic tribes and also among the Normans, who probably picked
(13:17):
up cider making from the Spanish. In fact that the
Norman's introduced apple orchards and the word cider to England
after their ninth century conquest. Folks would use these big
circular stones for grinding apples for juice, since early orchards
were a bit of a mix of everything when it
came to apples before grabting was really a thing that
didn't happen at a large scale until the grafting Um.
(13:40):
Farmers never knew what they were going to get. The
apples deemed not sweet enough to eat or turned into cider,
and we did something like this apple grinding on old
fashioned day? Did you have an old fashioned day? No?
What's what's old fashioned day? There? You're all fashioned? And
he addressed in on weird outfit, an old timey out Okay,
(14:00):
when when you when you wrote old fashioned day? I
was like, is this a day about the cocktail? Did
an elementary school? And probably not, now that I understand
it's an elementary school? They probably not. All I wrote
was old fashioned, although we did. I grew up in
the north north north eastern part of Ohio, near where
(14:21):
a bunch of the Shaker settlements used to be, and
we went on a tour of a couple of those
a couple of times, and they had like historical reenactors
doing stuff. And I'm pretty sure that apple presses were involved,
but oh gosh, it's hard to say. I feel confident
that they were. I feel confident in my interpretation of
(14:42):
your memory. You were there. Yeah. My elementary school was
really close to um l J, which is a big
apple growing area in Georgia. And uh so we we
would go visit apple orchards and there would be cider
making demonstrations, although it's not alcoholic cider, right sure, yeah, exactly,
(15:04):
But the same thing with the Shakers, right, if that
makes sense. Um, I remember Old Fashioned Day because, as
I said in our turn Up episode, I'm really good
at guessing the weight of things, so I usually want
to pumpkin every year. Oh yeah, and the Old Fashioned
Day was in Septembers and the pumpkin always went bed
before Halloween. Well, nonetheless, like more pumpkin season is really yeah,
(15:28):
no complaints, Yeah, no complaints. Um, but one other note
before we get back into it. Um, while we were
talking about those orchards, and grafting. Um uh. It's it's
important to note that apples are one of those things
where the genetic material in the seeds will not necessarily
produce the same kind of apple that you're eating. It's
(15:48):
important if you want, like like a standardized crop of apples,
to employ these grafting techniques. And yeah, they hadn't quite
worked them out until at least exactly anyway. Anyway, apples
and or other fruits steeped in water left to ferment
resulted in a drink enjoed in the Middle Ages called
the pens. Early cider makers, unsure of what caused the
fermentation process, might throw things in there like nert are
(16:11):
raw meat. Bacon was a favorite. Okay, I mean bacon
and apple. I can see that. According to the National
Apple Museum, because of its strong bitter taste, some ciders
were called squeal pig ciders because of the sound people
made when they drank it. Oh gosh, okay. In some places,
(16:32):
cider was used as highs or to pay rent and
partially to pay workers. Many farms with enough apple trees
had their own cider press, and a rational cider might
be included in like a wage package. In five. Guille
di guba Ville, a Frenchman, wrote in a diary entry
about a suggestion from a visitor to heat cider into
(16:55):
the alcohol rose up esteem into a copper pot, ready
to bottle or age in an oak barrel. This spirit
was bequeath with the name of the region in Normandy
it was from Calvados. There's even a saying in Normandy
Norman hole refers to Calvados enjoyed it in the middle
of the meal, to make a hole in your appetite,
(17:17):
to make room for more. Essentially, this is also known
as apple brandy or in the US apple jack. More
on that in a minute. European monasteries regularly soul cider,
and it was popular during the wast Sail. It was
featured in drinking songs like this one. I were brought
up on cider, and I'd be a hundred and two.
(17:38):
You still that be nothing when you come to think
me father and mother be still in the peak, and
they were bought up on cider of the rare old
Tavistock brew and me Grantford drinks courts where he's one
of the sports that were brought up on cider too.
Oh man, it's basically, the cider and drinking cider is
(17:59):
going to help you live longer. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Cider
is referred to in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and
in sixty two um experiments with glassmaking and cider bottling
lad one Christopher Merit to submit a paper to the
Royal Society in England that would that would change the
way the carbonated beverages worked forever um how thanks to cider. Yeah.
(18:24):
It was these innovations that gave rise to champagne being
a thing um and other sparkling lines. See our Champaigne
episode for more on that, and it also led to
the spread of cider over the next couple hundred years.
As with all things boozy, popular folklore considered cider healthy,
if not downright in medicinal um. In sixteen sixty four,
(18:46):
John Evelyn wrote in his fruit Fermentation guide pomona Um
quote Generally, all strong and pleasant cider excites and cleanses
the stomach, strengthens digestion and infallibly freeze. The kidneys and
black are from breeding the gravel stone. Reading the gravel stone,
that sounds yeah, don't don't let them do that. Definitely
(19:09):
don't let them do that. Drink some cider. By the
seventeen hundreds, traveling cider makers would take carts to farms
with too small of a crop to justify having a
cider mill all to themselves, and these carts would set
up shop and get to milling and pressing. It was
a very short season of work. But I just love
the idea of these guys like traveling cider cart uh
(19:30):
huh um. In England, some West Country farms were producing
cider commercially as early as seventy seven, and over the
next few decades some of those ciders were exported to
London and beyond and regarded as highly as French wines. Wow.
Also in England cider riots. Yes, it's another tax related
(19:52):
scuffle regarding a food product in the annals of history.
All right. So it was seventeen sixty three and England
and was super in debt due to its involvement in
a number of wars, most recently the Seven Years War.
So lawmakers proposed a new tax on cider production, and
those producers were piste um. First because taxes, you know, um,
(20:15):
and second because the law allowed surveyors to search private
property without a warrant for cider making stuff. There were riots.
There were tales of surveyors kidnapped and only released if
they promised to change professions. Um, it's where we get
the phrase an Englishman's home is his castle. About these
(20:38):
warrantless searches. Uh one William Pitt wrote, the poorest man
may in his cottage been defiance to all the forces
of the crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake,
the wind may blow through it to the storm may enter,
the rain may enter. But the King of England cannot enter.
All his force dares not crossed the threshold of the
ruined tenement. Yeah, I'm feeling passionate for this riot that's
(21:03):
over long gone, but I'm riled up right so Yeah.
The law was repealed in seventeen sixty six. Successful. The
first large scale cider manufacturing operations started opening than in
the eighteen eighties, once the Industrial Revolution was in full swing.
(21:24):
By the turn of the twentieth century, though, cider was
on the decline in Europe due to an agricultural depression
and the growing popularity of French wine. When European colonists
began settling in the Americas, Meanwhile, yes, they brought with
them the cider. In the early days for these settlers,
grains and barley for the preferred beverage of beer. We're
not the easiest to grow, especially on the East coast
(21:45):
of the United States or what would become the United States. Um,
but apples were a bit easier, so cider was readily
accepted substitute for a long time. American apples were smallish
and more bitter than what we're familiar with today. They
weren't the established named apple varieties from Europe, and that
meant that people weren't really keen on eating them, but
(22:07):
they were happy and to juice them and allow that
juice to ferments. As early as six three columnists were
planting seeds specifically for cider. So yes, early cider was
generally alcoholic, and yes, became pretty American before American was
really a thing. I saw a lot of I know
we did in our apple pie episode, even though American
(22:29):
is an apple pie is saying it's not quite true,
but it's kind of a similar thing happened here because
they weren't the European apples, they were American apples, and
we were drinking a lot of it because we couldn't
get the beer we wanted, so we were drinking a
lot of cider. And yeah, I remember at this time
boozy drinks were for the most part, safer than drinking water,
(22:50):
and there was a less boozy version for children called
apple kin, or in some places I read it was
called cider kin hard cider. It was also sometimes used
as currency. According to mental Floss, barrels of apple cider
may have even been used to pay for some of
the first roads in the United States. Yeah. On top
of this, colonists realized that yes, if they ferment inside
(23:11):
of even longa, they would arrive at that apple cider
vinegar that we talked about um, which became very significant
as a condiment in the colonies. But perhaps more importantly,
they used apple cider vinegar for pickling, which helped them
get through harsh winters. And cider was believed and or
promoted as having many health benefits, keeping you warm in
(23:34):
the cold, rheumatism prevention, digestive aid, bladderstone prevention, laryngitis, colera, dysentery, typhoid,
colic hank out, all those things that could purportedly help
you out with it. Even supposedly aided in longevity, just
like that song suggested, they were not the first. During
(23:54):
a lull and one of the first battles of the
Revolutionary War, the Battle of Concord, on April nineteen seventeen five,
Elias Brown, a man the locals subscribed as eccentric, Shall
we sell? We went down enemy lines selling hard cider
at both sides, and apparently he made some decent money
doing it. Wow, oh gosh, that's a business. He sees opportunity,
(24:19):
you know, accepts the risk you have to do. You
have to take your shot. You can't throw away your shot,
Hamilton taught us um. After a failed seventeen fifty five
campaign for Virginia's House of Burgesses, George Washington ran again
in seventeen fifty eight. This time he bought voters one
(24:39):
hundred and forty four gowns of cider. And this wasn't
this was kind of a common practice at the time,
handing out free booze or food or etcetera. And the
rest is history, Um, This American President brought to you
by cider. At least two other founding fathers wrote of
their love of cider. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Franklin
(25:01):
said he witnessed a Native Americans say, after hearing a
missionary tell the story of Adam and Eve, it's indeed
bad to eat apples. It's better to turn them all
into cider. That's the takeaway of that story. I have
long thought. Sure. Yeah. He also said he that drinks
his cider alone, let him catch his horse alone. Oh huh.
(25:25):
Parable about about don't don't, don't be greedy share that stuff? Okay, Yeah,
I just can't. I just see the horse running away,
and I'm confused. It's a different times. It's about buy
your body a drink. It's like it's like another round,
I'll get this one. Yeah, okay, totally. Okay, it's a
round amount way we'll say it. We say it differently
(25:45):
these days. Apparently President John Adams liked to start each
day with a jug of cider. M hmmm. And Washington
wasn't the only person who you cider and elect? Total campaign.
Oh I love this, I do too. There's so much
information about this. It made me very happy. In response
(26:09):
to a Richmond editorial reading quote, give him a barrel
of hard cider and a pension of two thousand dollars
a year, and he will sit the remainder of his
days in his log cabin. Eighteen forty week Party presidential
candidate William Henry Harrison took those words and made them
a part of his campaign, which, if you couldn't tell
that was supposed to be an insult, right, yeah, yes,
(26:30):
So he heard that was like, oh, I see you.
Challenge accepted. He became known as the log cabin and
apple cider candidate, basically the you can have a beer
with him working class argument of its time. People indulged
in cider at his rallies. Um. He easily beat his opponent,
(26:53):
Martin van Buren. He went on to give the longest
inauguration speech in history, and then died a month into
his presidency of mona something from the speech because it
was raining. Oh gosh. Um. But this is uh known
as one of the biggest backfires presidential campaign history because
(27:14):
they thought it was this big burn, and it actually
helped him win. And it gifted us with two well
known additions to our American vocabulary. One get the ball
rolling after a ten football bedecked with pro Harris and
slogans and made of tin and paper about about three meters. Um,
I had a handful of Harrison's supporters pushing it for
(27:38):
hundreds of miles. Uh what that is the weirdest campaign? Okay, well,
I mean sure. I mean, you know, we didn't have
like the Internet, we didn't have buses, we didn't have Netflix.
Like people had to make their own fune, make a
big tin, football paper and tin and just push it
for hundreds of miles. It gets a lot of engine,
(28:00):
a lot of it. I have to imagine it gets dirty. Yeah,
I agree. Probably the slogan's got a little and tumble
after after a time. But okay, the second word, we
got a word or phrase booze. Really yes, from these
whiskey filled log cabin shaped bottles provided by the E. C.
(28:22):
Booze Distillery, and these were handed out by Harrison supporters.
Really yeah, that's great. I know I want to like
a log cab and bottle. Oh I feel like I
feel like we saw at least one of those at
the Wild Turkey Distillery, because they have all those very
strange most of them are turkey shaped, perhaps obviously right,
(28:43):
but in their history they have put out some weird bottles.
I mean, we're suckers for some strange bottles apparently helped
this guy with residency. Maybe the whiskey, but I'm sure
the bottle was very memorable. The first stillery license in
the US was issued in seventeen eighty to New Jersey's
(29:04):
Laird and Company Distillery, and according to the families records,
soon after Alexander Laird arrived to the US from Scotland,
he planted apple trees to make cider spirits a k a.
Apple jack. The story goes, according to them, that when
Laird went to serve under George Washington, Laird's family sent
apple jack to the troops, and of course and they're retelling.
(29:28):
Washington loved no copper. Still no problem. Americans figured out
a way to make apple jack without using one, instead
employing freeze distillation. So during the wintertime they leave a
barrel of cider outside the so that the water would
freeze off, leaving the liquid alcohol. Yeah, that which they
(29:52):
would scoop. Oh, that's that's that's a part that doesn't
always work right. It's not without risk. This whole thing
is called jacking, by the way. Uh, And yeah, it
can leave behind some toxins that distillation would typically get
rid of. Right, because when you distill something, you you uh,
(30:12):
you use a you get you get a full run,
and within that run, you really only keep a certain
amount of it. Right, Yeah, exactly, Okay. This gave apple
Jack a bit of a bad reputation for a while.
It was sometimes called essence of lockjaw. Yeah. Article published
in The New York Times read the victim of apple
(30:35):
Jack is capable of blowing up a whole town with
dynamite and of reciting original poetry to every surviving inhabitant.
Original poetry. Oh well, at least that's a silver lackning.
Oh gosh, that's my favorite burn on drunk people that
I've ever heard in my entire life. Like they're gonna
(30:56):
burn some stuff down and they're going to recite poetry
to the survivors. Yeah. I love that. Like I've had
those nights. That's we've all been there. Drink responsibly, Shrink responsibly.
For people who didn't want to play around with apple
Jack but did want a boozier version of cider, they
might add a liquor into the ciders. So one of
the popular renditions was half cider and half rum. It
(31:17):
was called stone wall because it was like running into one. Yeah,
there was another one with a very similar name, and
I couldn't forget if they have the same thing, are
just like a different, very close thing anyway, like running
into a wall. A sevent nineties survey out of Massachusetts
found that every citizen over fifteen down a yearly average
(31:41):
of thirty four gallons of beer insider, five gallons of
distilled spirits, and a gallon of wine. For reference, today,
the average American consumes about four gallons of alcohol a year.
Everything everything, Times have changed. Speaking of time changing, cider's
(32:03):
popularity did take a hit once Eastern European and German
immigrants began settling in the Midwestern US, where it was
easier to grow barley and grain, and they brought with
them their love and knowledge of beer. Still before the
twentieth century, people were drinking a pint of cider a
day in apple growing regions. The Industrial Revolution impacted cider
(32:23):
production as well as more farmers moved to working in
factories in cities. Cider, unpasteurized and unfiltered at this time,
did not transfer it well, and beer you can make
in the city. It's hard to kind of pick up
a whole apple orchard and Yeah, more difficult, Yeah, yeah,
a little bit. Still, fifty five million gallons were being
produced in in nineteen nineteen, that number was thirteen million gallons.
(32:47):
And that brings us to the biggest blow to American cider.
Prohibition Yes obviously perhaps, yes, I mean it affected a
number of things. Is about American alcohol production. Definitely did
American cider. He's almost went extinct during this period. Some
(33:07):
hardcore prohibitionist burned apple orchards to prevent the production of
cider dudes, and by the time prohibition was overturned, people
had pivoted to beer and viewed apples was primarily for eating.
Not only that, wine and beer were not subject to
the same restrictions post prohibition that cider was. When it
(33:28):
came to added preservatives. Yeah, cider wasn't allowed to have
any where. It was fine for wine and beer. This
seems to be due to attempts by the beer and
possibly wine industry or industries to prevent cider from getting
back in the game the very least slow it down.
The vol Said Act outlawed alcoholic cider and allowed the
(33:50):
production of only an annual two gallons of sweet cider
per orchard. Also soft drinks didn't help because they filled
the role long held by cider um. In ninety six,
the UK instated a new cider tax. No no riots
this time. I think, I think it's okay, okay, we're
(34:11):
getting We're getting fine, we're getting through just fine. Okay. Good. Well,
there's another thing to be in the UK. Very funny
headline from the Daily Mail, and that I stumbled on
cobwebs tangles cider maker? What what? What kind of cobwebs
did he get tangled in? Apparently he had it was
(34:31):
part of a tourist attraction. He had these big cobwebs
in his cider seller. But uh, this fellow Roger Wilkins
uh was told he had the quote wrong kind of
cobwebs from the EU, and Mr Wilkins commented on the
whole thing. This is bureaucracy gone mad. He had to
(34:55):
get rid of the cobwebs. They said he could have
newer cobwebs. Oh but it wasn't wasn't It wasn't like
sanitary or something. I don't know. Maybe the spiders involved
were like poisonous or something, or venomous. What a spiders
get up to? I don't remember maybe they work spiders
there you go. I don't know. It's all like they
(35:15):
were just saying, these are old cobwebs. You need new cobbs.
Nothing but the freshest cobwebs. Otherwise get out of town. Well,
it was a tourist attraction. Yeah. In Congress here in
the US past regulations to bring American cider onto the
same page as the rest of the world, increasing the
(35:37):
permitted alcohol content and the carbonation and adding pairs as
an allowable fruit, which, as we said, yeah, it's you know,
pairs are maybe okay, may be okay. Yeah, if y'all
have a stronger opinion about it than I do. I'm
only reporting what I've found on the internet. Yes, Um,
(35:59):
that's the best we can do. Yes, Oh and yeah,
that but pretty much that pretty much brings us to today. Ish,
i'd I'd say right around two thousand six was the boom,
the beginnings of the boom of of a resurgence of ciders.
And and it's a lot and it is exciting. Oh.
(36:21):
I love that it's a that it's a wide option
at a lot of the brew pubs that I go to. Yeah,
because I have a lot of friends who don't like
pure not much, but they do really like cider. Yeah.
And whereas the wine selection at a lot of beer
and like booze focused places, it is kind of not
(36:43):
a selection um the cider selection that those places could
be quite rebust. It can be time to get some cider.
But first we do have a little bit more left.
We do. But first we've got one more quick break
for a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
(37:08):
you sponsored, Yes, thank you, And we're back with listener.
I don't know a drinking song. I only know the
one from Lord of the Ring. Fake drinking song. Well,
you can turn it into what does the Dumbledore say?
Of course it's all in your head, Harry, But who's
(37:30):
to say it's not real. I'm always ready to go,
always ready. I like how seamlessly slipped from a Lord
of the Rings reference into a Harry Potter reference. That's good. Yes,
I'm available for parties, very specific type of parties, but
I'm available for them. Rebecca wrote. The reason I'm writing
(37:53):
to you is twofold one because of the Bidders episode
just playing in my ear right now, and too because
you two entertain my office, the whole office doesn't listen
to the show directly, but I listen and then bring
in the crazy and fun food facts I learned through
your show. I've been listening since Champagne and love the show.
That's awesome. In between my employment, I got deployed and
my co worker would frequently message me to tell me
(38:15):
how much he misses my fun food facts. Now that
I'm back, he doesn't work in the same office about
another building, and I try to share only the most
interesting and crazy facts that I hear. Otherwise I would
bore my co workers to tears. And for the bidders,
I'm a bar tender. In the bar I work at
is rather posh. It has at least four different types
of bidders for all of our cocktails. And since I'm
(38:36):
not a soda while we call it pop here in Ohio,
drinker and mostly drink water. On the days I want flavor,
I'll throw some bidders in a glass of sparkling water
to spruce up my beverage. It's lovely and if you
haven't tried it, I do suggest it. Oh gosh, that
is one of my favorite things to do. I absolutely
suggested as well. Yes, I tried it after doing this.
I was like, yep, yeah, it's just refreshing and lovely.
(38:58):
It tricks me into hydrating. M hm. I'm so happy
that since that episode I found so many new ways
to use bitters. Oh I haven't put them in my
coffee yet. Okay, that's good. Alright, alright mental note. Uh
Tara messaged us on Facebook to say, hi, ladies, I'm
just listening to the food Waste episode and want to
let you know of a pop up restaurant we had
here in London that my company worked with last year
(39:20):
at Selfridges. It was called waste Ed, and each day
there was a well known or celebrity chef heading the kitchen.
All of their food came from grocery stores and other
restaurants that were going to throw it out is waste.
The food was still fine and safe to be consumed,
but for whatever reason they were going to throw it
or it was waste in terms of unused cuts of meat, fish,
et cetera. So the menu changed each day and there
(39:41):
were no choices. It was a set price and set
menu based on the supplies received. It was basically fully
booked each night it was open. I just thought you
would find that interesting oh indeed, Yeah, that's great. I
know I'd love to check something out like that. Yeah.
And then um and on Facebook shared at the Onion
(40:01):
headline new Helmets theme park to feature world's longest Lazy
Mayo river, and uh, I didn't realize it was an
Onion headline at first, and the drop in my heart
into my stomach, the nausea, and then I realized, like,
no way, and then you checked and then I saw
(40:22):
the link It was an Onion lack longest Lazy Mayo river. No. Oh,
I can feel it the back of my throat. Also,
I'm really bad at lazy rivers, as uh Lauren and
I discovered when we were in Orlando recently. Apparently I
can't relax. I was just tensil well. They were also
(40:46):
like surprise, like like fountains spurting and stuff like that,
Like it wasn't it wasn't the laziest of lazy rivers.
And at one part I was going backwards and I
wasn't sure why I was having at and then I
was too embarrassed to it out at the end because
I thought I was trapped in the tube, so I
went around a second loop. Not good at lazy rivers.
(41:08):
It's not in my skill set. Okay, Well, I mean
you know you can. You can get better and anything.
You're capable of improving any skill with practice. I love
the idea of a montage scene with lazy rivers, like
the rocky music in the background, and I'm like putting
on the swim girls settling into the tube. I'd watch
(41:30):
something like that. That would be delightful. I think so too. Yeah,
and hearing from these listeners was delighted. Yes, thank you
so much for writing in Yes, and if you would
like to write to us, you can. Our email is
Hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram.
All at savor Pod. We do hope to hear from you.
(41:52):
Savor is a production of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media.
For more podcast from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thank you, as always towards
super producers Andrew Howard and Dylan Fagan. Thanks to you
for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio
and Stuff Media. I'm Anny Rees and I'm Lauren Vogelbam.
And today we're talking about cider. Yes, yes, because fall
is finally happening in Atlanta. It is the temperatures dropped
below eighty degrees amazing. And as we've said, it's our
favorite season. Helloween's our favorite holiday. And one of the
(00:31):
things that screams fall to me is a cup of
warm cider with booze in it while you're outside telling
scary stories in the fall. Yes. And by and by
cider you mean like unfiltered apple juice. Yes, As we
have some confusion around the term cider here in the
(00:53):
United States, so before you right in, I also like
the crisp, bubbly kind that I think most people outside
out of the US when they think of cider, that's
what it is, That's what it means mostly what we're
going to be talking about today. Yes, Yes, and I
and I do love both of these kinds of cider. Yes.
Um uh. The for hard ciders, I like the super
(01:13):
dry ones um and uh uh. Speaking of that, I
guess the hot cider that you're talking about the warmed
juice um mixed with booze is also one of my
favorite things, but I can have like half of one
every year because they have so much sugar, and sugar
plus booze is not my friend. I pretty much just
kick off all with it. And that's one. And I
(01:36):
feel like until and we're going to talk about this
a little bit later, but I feel like until maybe
five years ago, at least in my experience, there was
kind of just one type of hard cider in the US,
and it was very sweet, and I wasn't a fan
of it. But now recently there has been a beautiful explosion, yes,
of a lot more different types, which I am also
(01:57):
a fan of the dry cider, so very exciting. But
that brings us to our questions cider, what is it? Well, yes,
what we're talking about today is mostly not that first
thing and he mentioned, which is what Americans call cider
(02:18):
and consists of unfiltered apple juice um which has us
some apple pulp and stuff in it, but is not
alcoholic um. And okay, to explain the difference between apple
juice and apple cider, one Will Fulton, writing for Thrillist,
pointed me toward an old episode of The Simpsons for
a basic rundown. So in the episode of The Simpsons,
are at this the sidery and um Homer's board out
(02:42):
of his mind, and all of a sudden, the Flanders
come in wearing giant apple hats and never reveals that
he has a yearly membership, which he says pays for itself.
Within sixteen visits um and and Ned's quote on how
to tell the difference between a cider and apple juices.
If it's clear and yellow, you've got juice there, fella.
(03:04):
If it's tangy brown, you're insider tank. Now there's two exceptions.
A very to the point it memorable. Yeah, good, Ned
Flanders impression. Thank thank It's really just it's all in
the it's all in the gesture of like happy waving
which you can't see, which works so well over in
(03:25):
audio medium. But yes, so thanks Ned Flanders. That pretty
much covers it, Um, but no. The cider that we're
talking about today is mostly what Americans and some Canadians
call hard cider, which is what happens when you use
yeast to ferment fruit juice, often apple juice, into a
lightly alcoholic and carbonated beverage. You know that the yeast
(03:45):
eat the sugars in the juice and they excrete, carbon
dioxide and flavors and alcohol yeast poop. Yeah. The word
cider is thought to derive from ancient Hebrew, meaning strong drink,
and that word itself probably derived from ancient Babylonian. Um.
(04:06):
Some English speaking places will spell cider with a Y.
See why d e r if they mean the non fermented,
unfiltered apple juice. Yeah. And here in the States we
also have products called sparkling ciders that are carbonated but
are non alcoholic and are sold in champagne style bottles.
Just to add to the confusion. That is very confusing. Yes, anyway,
(04:31):
hard apple ciders are the most common and traditional, but
these days other fruit or combinations like like apple pear
are popular. Cider that's made from pears is more properly
called perry, though, and I will note that there's some
serious shade thrown at products incorporating ingredients other than apples
and maybe pears in the cider industry. Um from the
(04:52):
UK cider enthusiast want Andrew Lee or la maybe um
quote cider is made only from apples with a po
possible and mixture of pears. Other so called ciders which
are made or flavored with other fruits and herbs, are
not ciders at all. At best, they are fruit wines
known legally as made wines, and at worst they are
(05:12):
alco pops for indiscriminating and generally young drinkers whoa wow
shade strong being I know, um, but yes. There are
just a lot of styles of alcoholic cider, ranging from
like three to seven percent alcohol bi volume typically, but
but ranging higher. They can be made from from fresh
(05:34):
pressed juice or from juice concentrate. Um. That juice might
be filtered or unfiltered, or the booze might be filtered later,
or it might never be filtered. It could be with
or without added sugars and other flavorings. They can be
fermented entirely in tanks and barrels and then bottled or
partially fermented that way, and then completed in the bottle
the way you would with champagne via the betel champon
(05:56):
wa um hoof and chemistry note in the making of ciders,
so so cider makers have to balance acids and sugars
and tannins carefully to taste um just the way that
wine makers do. The tannins often come from incorporating blends
of apple juices from different varieties of apples. Most tannins
(06:17):
are found in wild or crab apples, and so that's
tannins um. On the acid side, the main acid compound
in apples is malic acid, and makers who want to
curb it's it's got this really like green apple tart flavor,
and so some makers want to curb that. So they
might encourage the growth of lactic acid bacteria in their
(06:38):
brews to to decrease that malic acid and round out
the flavor um. That's called mallow lactic fermentation. The lactic
acid bacteria will eat the sugars and the malic acid
and excrete carbon dioxide and lactic acid, which brings us
to bacteria poop. I love it when it's both um.
(06:59):
But this can create um like smooth or buttery flavors insider,
the same way that lactic asa do in chardonnay um
that some brewers want and some don't. Yeah um. Meanwhile,
on the sugar side, brewers who want to create sweeter
ciders sometimes these days at artificial sweeteners like sucralose. After
fermentation is complete, because adding actual sugar at the end
(07:23):
there could kick off another round of fermentation, which you
don't want. Um. So yeah, if you've ever noticed like
a sort of weird artificial aftertaste to a sweeter cider,
that might be where it comes from. Yeah, and at
any rate, the result of all this might be anywhere
from sweet to tart to dry to juicy, too funky,
probably somewhere in between, um, with a little or a
(07:45):
lot of bubble, and any color from nearly clear too
yellow to amber to a beer like brown. Oh and
I wanted to say, another product with cider in the
name that we're not talking about today is apple cider
vinegar um, which is what you get you ferment apple
juice all the way to the vinegar stage, like right
past the alcohol stage, zoom right by it. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
(08:08):
that is a whole other episode. Oh definitely, we were
talking about it before we started. Yes, I have to
say there, yes, Um, what about some nutrition drink responsibly yeah, um,
but hard ciders are fairly similar to beers nutrition wise. Um.
I mean, of course, individual products from both categories very real, greatly,
but but ciders often contain a handful more calories and
(08:31):
carbs than beers do um and most are all of
the cider's carbohydrates will be sugars though, because apples contain
a bunch of antioxidants, ciders can too. Okay, I wouldn't
say that that's a reason to start drinking alcoholic cider, sure,
but you know it's the thing. It's it's in there,
(08:51):
that's fun. Yeah. Apple cider numbers, numbers, We do have
some numbers, after all, But disappearing cider is making a
comeback year in the United States. As we mentioned, from fifteen,
sales of cider jumped by seventy five percent what in
the American market inteen that came out to three hundred
and sixty six million dollars wow, um yeah, and it
(09:15):
kept growing. By eighteen it was five hundred and ten
million dollars, with the industry employing over a thousand workers
here in the U. S. Alone. Globally, um, the industry
was valued at about one point one billion dollars as
of twenty sixteen, so a little bit earlier, and at
that point was expected to grow to one point six
billion by three UM. Europe accounted for over half of
(09:37):
that market, but the North American market was the fastest growing.
Makes sense. The rise of gluten free products has boosted
cider sales. Most of them are gluten free. And there
are cider festivals um. One called Pour the Core happens
yearly in Philly and Long Island and includes a cider
donut eating contest, cider donuts, other whole separate episode um,
(10:01):
and a lot of the Apparently it's a good place
to to get a pretzel on a string to wear
around your neck to eat pretzel necklaces. Yeah, I'm a
big fan of those. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah see see
our pretzel episode form law um. And they have a
list of over one hundred and forty hard ciders to
sample at these events. Wow, I love it. Around the world,
(10:23):
there's there's a whole lot of these things and a
lot of good puns. I think my favorite that I
saw was for one festival outside of Bristol every year
called the Outsider Festival. Yes, yeah, yeah, um, which seems
I like really want to go, like to this random
festival that I clicked through from an internet page. They
call themselves an old school, no nonsense weekend, a fantastic
(10:45):
live music, cider and madness, no tribute bands, no X Factor,
no Carling log Er, no tossers, old school, no nonsense madness.
I know. I like whoever these teom Sorry, I want
to hang out with them. Yeah sounds great. It does.
(11:06):
The country with the highest perk aptic consumption is England,
and the world's largest cider producing companies are there, and
we have a couple of cideries in Atlanta, NOL. We
do what we do, and I do feel like that
has been pretty recent mostly. Yeah, well that's about where
we are. But how did we get here? We're going
(11:26):
to find out. But first we're going to take a
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, And we're back with
a disclaimer. Not an apple episode, Nope, nope, nope. One
day we touched on some apple history in our apple
(11:48):
Pie episode. It's just going to be a massive undertaking. Yeah, yeah,
I'm unprepared, but yes, we do have like a brief
right as far back as a third en hundred BC,
apple trees grew along the Nile River in ancient Egypt,
and though there are no records of them making ciders
specifically from these apples, we know that the ancient Egyptians
(12:10):
were super into fermenting things and super into beer, so
it's not outside the remal possibility that they brewed up
some kind of cider. Apple trees themselves most likely originated
in Kazakhstan, and one way or another, those trees made
it to Asia and Europe. Yeah, By around one thousand BC,
ancient Jews and Greeks and Celts were probably fermenting apple juice.
(12:33):
Whoever discovered that apples could be fermented into cider. Once
it was discovered, it was quickly adopted. In b C.
When the first Romans invaded the British Aisles, they found
and fell in love with a cider like drink enjoyed
by the locals. The Romans took it back with them
to their homeland, where it spread within the Roman Empire
and throughout all of Europe. They also brought with them
(12:56):
different varieties of apples and an orchard techniques to the
Celts in Britain. Um. By the third century CE, yes
that spread it happened in cider could be found throughout
the continent. Um Are p Plenty mentioned a drink made
from apple juice, so plenty it was especially cherished among
Germanic tribes and also among the Normans, who probably picked
(13:17):
up cider making from the Spanish. In fact that the
Norman's introduced apple orchards and the word cider to England
after their ninth century conquest. Folks would use these big
circular stones for grinding apples for juice, since early orchards
were a bit of a mix of everything when it
came to apples before grabting was really a thing that
didn't happen at a large scale until the grafting Um.
(13:40):
Farmers never knew what they were going to get. The
apples deemed not sweet enough to eat or turned into cider,
and we did something like this apple grinding on old
fashioned day? Did you have an old fashioned day? No?
What's what's old fashioned day? There? You're all fashioned? And
he addressed in on weird outfit, an old timey out Okay,
(14:00):
when when you when you wrote old fashioned day? I
was like, is this a day about the cocktail? Did
an elementary school? And probably not, now that I understand
it's an elementary school? They probably not. All I wrote
was old fashioned, although we did. I grew up in
the north north north eastern part of Ohio, near where
(14:21):
a bunch of the Shaker settlements used to be, and
we went on a tour of a couple of those
a couple of times, and they had like historical reenactors
doing stuff. And I'm pretty sure that apple presses were involved,
but oh gosh, it's hard to say. I feel confident
that they were. I feel confident in my interpretation of
(14:42):
your memory. You were there. Yeah. My elementary school was
really close to um l J, which is a big
apple growing area in Georgia. And uh so we we
would go visit apple orchards and there would be cider
making demonstrations, although it's not alcoholic cider, right sure, yeah, exactly,
(15:04):
But the same thing with the Shakers, right, if that
makes sense. Um, I remember Old Fashioned Day because, as
I said in our turn Up episode, I'm really good
at guessing the weight of things, so I usually want
to pumpkin every year. Oh yeah, and the Old Fashioned
Day was in Septembers and the pumpkin always went bed
before Halloween. Well, nonetheless, like more pumpkin season is really yeah,
(15:28):
no complaints, Yeah, no complaints. Um, but one other note
before we get back into it. Um, while we were
talking about those orchards, and grafting. Um uh. It's it's
important to note that apples are one of those things
where the genetic material in the seeds will not necessarily
produce the same kind of apple that you're eating. It's
(15:48):
important if you want, like like a standardized crop of apples,
to employ these grafting techniques. And yeah, they hadn't quite
worked them out until at least exactly anyway. Anyway, apples
and or other fruits steeped in water left to ferment
resulted in a drink enjoed in the Middle Ages called
the pens. Early cider makers, unsure of what caused the
fermentation process, might throw things in there like nert are
(16:11):
raw meat. Bacon was a favorite. Okay, I mean bacon
and apple. I can see that. According to the National
Apple Museum, because of its strong bitter taste, some ciders
were called squeal pig ciders because of the sound people
made when they drank it. Oh gosh, okay. In some places,
(16:32):
cider was used as highs or to pay rent and
partially to pay workers. Many farms with enough apple trees
had their own cider press, and a rational cider might
be included in like a wage package. In five. Guille
di guba Ville, a Frenchman, wrote in a diary entry
about a suggestion from a visitor to heat cider into
(16:55):
the alcohol rose up esteem into a copper pot, ready
to bottle or age in an oak barrel. This spirit
was bequeath with the name of the region in Normandy
it was from Calvados. There's even a saying in Normandy
Norman hole refers to Calvados enjoyed it in the middle
of the meal, to make a hole in your appetite,
(17:17):
to make room for more. Essentially, this is also known
as apple brandy or in the US apple jack. More
on that in a minute. European monasteries regularly soul cider,
and it was popular during the wast Sail. It was
featured in drinking songs like this one. I were brought
up on cider, and I'd be a hundred and two.
(17:38):
You still that be nothing when you come to think
me father and mother be still in the peak, and
they were bought up on cider of the rare old
Tavistock brew and me Grantford drinks courts where he's one
of the sports that were brought up on cider too.
Oh man, it's basically, the cider and drinking cider is
(17:59):
going to help you live longer. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Cider
is referred to in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and
in sixty two um experiments with glassmaking and cider bottling
lad one Christopher Merit to submit a paper to the
Royal Society in England that would that would change the
way the carbonated beverages worked forever um how thanks to cider. Yeah.
(18:24):
It was these innovations that gave rise to champagne being
a thing um and other sparkling lines. See our Champaigne
episode for more on that, and it also led to
the spread of cider over the next couple hundred years.
As with all things boozy, popular folklore considered cider healthy,
if not downright in medicinal um. In sixteen sixty four,
(18:46):
John Evelyn wrote in his fruit Fermentation guide pomona Um
quote Generally, all strong and pleasant cider excites and cleanses
the stomach, strengthens digestion and infallibly freeze. The kidneys and
black are from breeding the gravel stone. Reading the gravel stone,
that sounds yeah, don't don't let them do that. Definitely
(19:09):
don't let them do that. Drink some cider. By the
seventeen hundreds, traveling cider makers would take carts to farms
with too small of a crop to justify having a
cider mill all to themselves, and these carts would set
up shop and get to milling and pressing. It was
a very short season of work. But I just love
the idea of these guys like traveling cider cart uh
(19:30):
huh um. In England, some West Country farms were producing
cider commercially as early as seventy seven, and over the
next few decades some of those ciders were exported to
London and beyond and regarded as highly as French wines. Wow.
Also in England cider riots. Yes, it's another tax related
(19:52):
scuffle regarding a food product in the annals of history.
All right. So it was seventeen sixty three and England
and was super in debt due to its involvement in
a number of wars, most recently the Seven Years War.
So lawmakers proposed a new tax on cider production, and
those producers were piste um. First because taxes, you know, um,
(20:15):
and second because the law allowed surveyors to search private
property without a warrant for cider making stuff. There were riots.
There were tales of surveyors kidnapped and only released if
they promised to change professions. Um, it's where we get
the phrase an Englishman's home is his castle. About these
(20:38):
warrantless searches. Uh one William Pitt wrote, the poorest man
may in his cottage been defiance to all the forces
of the crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake,
the wind may blow through it to the storm may enter,
the rain may enter. But the King of England cannot enter.
All his force dares not crossed the threshold of the
ruined tenement. Yeah, I'm feeling passionate for this riot that's
(21:03):
over long gone, but I'm riled up right so Yeah.
The law was repealed in seventeen sixty six. Successful. The
first large scale cider manufacturing operations started opening than in
the eighteen eighties, once the Industrial Revolution was in full swing.
(21:24):
By the turn of the twentieth century, though, cider was
on the decline in Europe due to an agricultural depression
and the growing popularity of French wine. When European colonists
began settling in the Americas, Meanwhile, yes, they brought with
them the cider. In the early days for these settlers,
grains and barley for the preferred beverage of beer. We're
not the easiest to grow, especially on the East coast
(21:45):
of the United States or what would become the United States. Um,
but apples were a bit easier, so cider was readily
accepted substitute for a long time. American apples were smallish
and more bitter than what we're familiar with today. They
weren't the established named apple varieties from Europe, and that
meant that people weren't really keen on eating them, but
(22:07):
they were happy and to juice them and allow that
juice to ferments. As early as six three columnists were
planting seeds specifically for cider. So yes, early cider was
generally alcoholic, and yes, became pretty American before American was
really a thing. I saw a lot of I know
we did in our apple pie episode, even though American
(22:29):
is an apple pie is saying it's not quite true,
but it's kind of a similar thing happened here because
they weren't the European apples, they were American apples, and
we were drinking a lot of it because we couldn't
get the beer we wanted, so we were drinking a
lot of cider. And yeah, I remember at this time
boozy drinks were for the most part, safer than drinking water,
(22:50):
and there was a less boozy version for children called
apple kin, or in some places I read it was
called cider kin hard cider. It was also sometimes used
as currency. According to mental Floss, barrels of apple cider
may have even been used to pay for some of
the first roads in the United States. Yeah. On top
of this, colonists realized that yes, if they ferment inside
(23:11):
of even longa, they would arrive at that apple cider
vinegar that we talked about um, which became very significant
as a condiment in the colonies. But perhaps more importantly,
they used apple cider vinegar for pickling, which helped them
get through harsh winters. And cider was believed and or
promoted as having many health benefits, keeping you warm in
(23:34):
the cold, rheumatism prevention, digestive aid, bladderstone prevention, laryngitis, colera, dysentery, typhoid,
colic hank out, all those things that could purportedly help
you out with it. Even supposedly aided in longevity, just
like that song suggested, they were not the first. During
(23:54):
a lull and one of the first battles of the
Revolutionary War, the Battle of Concord, on April nineteen seventeen five,
Elias Brown, a man the locals subscribed as eccentric, Shall
we sell? We went down enemy lines selling hard cider
at both sides, and apparently he made some decent money
doing it. Wow, oh gosh, that's a business. He sees opportunity,
(24:19):
you know, accepts the risk you have to do. You
have to take your shot. You can't throw away your shot,
Hamilton taught us um. After a failed seventeen fifty five
campaign for Virginia's House of Burgesses, George Washington ran again
in seventeen fifty eight. This time he bought voters one
(24:39):
hundred and forty four gowns of cider. And this wasn't
this was kind of a common practice at the time,
handing out free booze or food or etcetera. And the
rest is history, Um, This American President brought to you
by cider. At least two other founding fathers wrote of
their love of cider. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Franklin
(25:01):
said he witnessed a Native Americans say, after hearing a
missionary tell the story of Adam and Eve, it's indeed
bad to eat apples. It's better to turn them all
into cider. That's the takeaway of that story. I have
long thought. Sure. Yeah. He also said he that drinks
his cider alone, let him catch his horse alone. Oh huh.
(25:25):
Parable about about don't don't, don't be greedy share that stuff? Okay, Yeah,
I just can't. I just see the horse running away,
and I'm confused. It's a different times. It's about buy
your body a drink. It's like it's like another round,
I'll get this one. Yeah, okay, totally. Okay, it's a
round amount way we'll say it. We say it differently
(25:45):
these days. Apparently President John Adams liked to start each
day with a jug of cider. M hmmm. And Washington
wasn't the only person who you cider and elect? Total campaign.
Oh I love this, I do too. There's so much
information about this. It made me very happy. In response
(26:09):
to a Richmond editorial reading quote, give him a barrel
of hard cider and a pension of two thousand dollars
a year, and he will sit the remainder of his
days in his log cabin. Eighteen forty week Party presidential
candidate William Henry Harrison took those words and made them
a part of his campaign, which, if you couldn't tell
that was supposed to be an insult, right, yeah, yes,
(26:30):
So he heard that was like, oh, I see you.
Challenge accepted. He became known as the log cabin and
apple cider candidate, basically the you can have a beer
with him working class argument of its time. People indulged
in cider at his rallies. Um. He easily beat his opponent,
(26:53):
Martin van Buren. He went on to give the longest
inauguration speech in history, and then died a month into
his presidency of mona something from the speech because it
was raining. Oh gosh. Um. But this is uh known
as one of the biggest backfires presidential campaign history because
(27:14):
they thought it was this big burn, and it actually
helped him win. And it gifted us with two well
known additions to our American vocabulary. One get the ball
rolling after a ten football bedecked with pro Harris and
slogans and made of tin and paper about about three meters. Um,
I had a handful of Harrison's supporters pushing it for
(27:38):
hundreds of miles. Uh what that is the weirdest campaign? Okay, well,
I mean sure. I mean, you know, we didn't have
like the Internet, we didn't have buses, we didn't have Netflix.
Like people had to make their own fune, make a
big tin, football paper and tin and just push it
for hundreds of miles. It gets a lot of engine,
(28:00):
a lot of it. I have to imagine it gets dirty. Yeah,
I agree. Probably the slogan's got a little and tumble
after after a time. But okay, the second word, we
got a word or phrase booze. Really yes, from these
whiskey filled log cabin shaped bottles provided by the E. C.
(28:22):
Booze Distillery, and these were handed out by Harrison supporters.
Really yeah, that's great. I know I want to like
a log cab and bottle. Oh I feel like I
feel like we saw at least one of those at
the Wild Turkey Distillery, because they have all those very
strange most of them are turkey shaped, perhaps obviously right,
(28:43):
but in their history they have put out some weird bottles.
I mean, we're suckers for some strange bottles apparently helped
this guy with residency. Maybe the whiskey, but I'm sure
the bottle was very memorable. The first stillery license in
the US was issued in seventeen eighty to New Jersey's
(29:04):
Laird and Company Distillery, and according to the families records,
soon after Alexander Laird arrived to the US from Scotland,
he planted apple trees to make cider spirits a k a.
Apple jack. The story goes, according to them, that when
Laird went to serve under George Washington, Laird's family sent
apple jack to the troops, and of course and they're retelling.
(29:28):
Washington loved no copper. Still no problem. Americans figured out
a way to make apple jack without using one, instead
employing freeze distillation. So during the wintertime they leave a
barrel of cider outside the so that the water would
freeze off, leaving the liquid alcohol. Yeah, that which they
(29:52):
would scoop. Oh, that's that's that's a part that doesn't
always work right. It's not without risk. This whole thing
is called jacking, by the way. Uh, And yeah, it
can leave behind some toxins that distillation would typically get
rid of. Right, because when you distill something, you you uh,
(30:12):
you use a you get you get a full run,
and within that run, you really only keep a certain
amount of it. Right, Yeah, exactly, Okay. This gave apple
Jack a bit of a bad reputation for a while.
It was sometimes called essence of lockjaw. Yeah. Article published
in The New York Times read the victim of apple
(30:35):
Jack is capable of blowing up a whole town with
dynamite and of reciting original poetry to every surviving inhabitant.
Original poetry. Oh well, at least that's a silver lackning.
Oh gosh, that's my favorite burn on drunk people that
I've ever heard in my entire life. Like they're gonna
(30:56):
burn some stuff down and they're going to recite poetry
to the survivors. Yeah. I love that. Like I've had
those nights. That's we've all been there. Drink responsibly, Shrink responsibly.
For people who didn't want to play around with apple
Jack but did want a boozier version of cider, they
might add a liquor into the ciders. So one of
the popular renditions was half cider and half rum. It
(31:17):
was called stone wall because it was like running into one. Yeah,
there was another one with a very similar name, and
I couldn't forget if they have the same thing, are
just like a different, very close thing anyway, like running
into a wall. A sevent nineties survey out of Massachusetts
found that every citizen over fifteen down a yearly average
(31:41):
of thirty four gallons of beer insider, five gallons of
distilled spirits, and a gallon of wine. For reference, today,
the average American consumes about four gallons of alcohol a year.
Everything everything, Times have changed. Speaking of time changing, cider's
(32:03):
popularity did take a hit once Eastern European and German
immigrants began settling in the Midwestern US, where it was
easier to grow barley and grain, and they brought with
them their love and knowledge of beer. Still before the
twentieth century, people were drinking a pint of cider a
day in apple growing regions. The Industrial Revolution impacted cider
(32:23):
production as well as more farmers moved to working in
factories in cities. Cider, unpasteurized and unfiltered at this time,
did not transfer it well, and beer you can make
in the city. It's hard to kind of pick up
a whole apple orchard and Yeah, more difficult, Yeah, yeah,
a little bit. Still, fifty five million gallons were being
produced in in nineteen nineteen, that number was thirteen million gallons.
(32:47):
And that brings us to the biggest blow to American cider.
Prohibition Yes obviously perhaps, yes, I mean it affected a
number of things. Is about American alcohol production. Definitely did
American cider. He's almost went extinct during this period. Some
(33:07):
hardcore prohibitionist burned apple orchards to prevent the production of
cider dudes, and by the time prohibition was overturned, people
had pivoted to beer and viewed apples was primarily for eating.
Not only that, wine and beer were not subject to
the same restrictions post prohibition that cider was. When it
(33:28):
came to added preservatives. Yeah, cider wasn't allowed to have
any where. It was fine for wine and beer. This
seems to be due to attempts by the beer and
possibly wine industry or industries to prevent cider from getting
back in the game the very least slow it down.
The vol Said Act outlawed alcoholic cider and allowed the
(33:50):
production of only an annual two gallons of sweet cider
per orchard. Also soft drinks didn't help because they filled
the role long held by cider um. In ninety six,
the UK instated a new cider tax. No no riots
this time. I think, I think it's okay, okay, we're
(34:11):
getting We're getting fine, we're getting through just fine. Okay. Good. Well,
there's another thing to be in the UK. Very funny
headline from the Daily Mail, and that I stumbled on
cobwebs tangles cider maker? What what? What kind of cobwebs
did he get tangled in? Apparently he had it was
(34:31):
part of a tourist attraction. He had these big cobwebs
in his cider seller. But uh, this fellow Roger Wilkins
uh was told he had the quote wrong kind of
cobwebs from the EU, and Mr Wilkins commented on the
whole thing. This is bureaucracy gone mad. He had to
(34:55):
get rid of the cobwebs. They said he could have
newer cobwebs. Oh but it wasn't wasn't It wasn't like
sanitary or something. I don't know. Maybe the spiders involved
were like poisonous or something, or venomous. What a spiders
get up to? I don't remember maybe they work spiders
there you go. I don't know. It's all like they
(35:15):
were just saying, these are old cobwebs. You need new cobbs.
Nothing but the freshest cobwebs. Otherwise get out of town. Well,
it was a tourist attraction. Yeah. In Congress here in
the US past regulations to bring American cider onto the
same page as the rest of the world, increasing the
(35:37):
permitted alcohol content and the carbonation and adding pairs as
an allowable fruit, which, as we said, yeah, it's you know,
pairs are maybe okay, may be okay. Yeah, if y'all
have a stronger opinion about it than I do. I'm
only reporting what I've found on the internet. Yes, Um,
(35:59):
that's the best we can do. Yes, Oh and yeah,
that but pretty much that pretty much brings us to today. Ish,
i'd I'd say right around two thousand six was the boom,
the beginnings of the boom of of a resurgence of ciders.
And and it's a lot and it is exciting. Oh.
(36:21):
I love that it's a that it's a wide option
at a lot of the brew pubs that I go to. Yeah,
because I have a lot of friends who don't like
pure not much, but they do really like cider. Yeah.
And whereas the wine selection at a lot of beer
and like booze focused places, it is kind of not
(36:43):
a selection um the cider selection that those places could
be quite rebust. It can be time to get some cider.
But first we do have a little bit more left.
We do. But first we've got one more quick break
for a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
(37:08):
you sponsored, Yes, thank you, And we're back with listener.
I don't know a drinking song. I only know the
one from Lord of the Ring. Fake drinking song. Well,
you can turn it into what does the Dumbledore say?
Of course it's all in your head, Harry, But who's
(37:30):
to say it's not real. I'm always ready to go,
always ready. I like how seamlessly slipped from a Lord
of the Rings reference into a Harry Potter reference. That's good. Yes,
I'm available for parties, very specific type of parties, but
I'm available for them. Rebecca wrote. The reason I'm writing
(37:53):
to you is twofold one because of the Bidders episode
just playing in my ear right now, and too because
you two entertain my office, the whole office doesn't listen
to the show directly, but I listen and then bring
in the crazy and fun food facts I learned through
your show. I've been listening since Champagne and love the show.
That's awesome. In between my employment, I got deployed and
my co worker would frequently message me to tell me
(38:15):
how much he misses my fun food facts. Now that
I'm back, he doesn't work in the same office about
another building, and I try to share only the most
interesting and crazy facts that I hear. Otherwise I would
bore my co workers to tears. And for the bidders,
I'm a bar tender. In the bar I work at
is rather posh. It has at least four different types
of bidders for all of our cocktails. And since I'm
(38:36):
not a soda while we call it pop here in Ohio,
drinker and mostly drink water. On the days I want flavor,
I'll throw some bidders in a glass of sparkling water
to spruce up my beverage. It's lovely and if you
haven't tried it, I do suggest it. Oh gosh, that
is one of my favorite things to do. I absolutely
suggested as well. Yes, I tried it after doing this.
I was like, yep, yeah, it's just refreshing and lovely.
(38:58):
It tricks me into hydrating. M hm. I'm so happy
that since that episode I found so many new ways
to use bitters. Oh I haven't put them in my
coffee yet. Okay, that's good. Alright, alright mental note. Uh
Tara messaged us on Facebook to say, hi, ladies, I'm
just listening to the food Waste episode and want to
let you know of a pop up restaurant we had
here in London that my company worked with last year
(39:20):
at Selfridges. It was called waste Ed, and each day
there was a well known or celebrity chef heading the kitchen.
All of their food came from grocery stores and other
restaurants that were going to throw it out is waste.
The food was still fine and safe to be consumed,
but for whatever reason they were going to throw it
or it was waste in terms of unused cuts of meat, fish,
et cetera. So the menu changed each day and there
(39:41):
were no choices. It was a set price and set
menu based on the supplies received. It was basically fully
booked each night it was open. I just thought you
would find that interesting oh indeed, Yeah, that's great. I
know I'd love to check something out like that. Yeah.
And then um and on Facebook shared at the Onion
(40:01):
headline new Helmets theme park to feature world's longest Lazy
Mayo river, and uh, I didn't realize it was an
Onion headline at first, and the drop in my heart
into my stomach, the nausea, and then I realized, like,
no way, and then you checked and then I saw
(40:22):
the link It was an Onion lack longest Lazy Mayo river. No. Oh,
I can feel it the back of my throat. Also,
I'm really bad at lazy rivers, as uh Lauren and
I discovered when we were in Orlando recently. Apparently I
can't relax. I was just tensil well. They were also
(40:46):
like surprise, like like fountains spurting and stuff like that,
Like it wasn't it wasn't the laziest of lazy rivers.
And at one part I was going backwards and I
wasn't sure why I was having at and then I
was too embarrassed to it out at the end because
I thought I was trapped in the tube, so I
went around a second loop. Not good at lazy rivers.
(41:08):
It's not in my skill set. Okay, Well, I mean
you know you can. You can get better and anything.
You're capable of improving any skill with practice. I love
the idea of a montage scene with lazy rivers, like
the rocky music in the background, and I'm like putting
on the swim girls settling into the tube. I'd watch
(41:30):
something like that. That would be delightful. I think so too. Yeah,
and hearing from these listeners was delighted. Yes, thank you
so much for writing in Yes, and if you would
like to write to us, you can. Our email is
Hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram.
All at savor Pod. We do hope to hear from you.
(41:52):
Savor is a production of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media.
For more podcast from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thank you, as always towards
super producers Andrew Howard and Dylan Fagan. Thanks to you
for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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