Ten Years of a Little Apple Cyder

This fall is Pommel Cyder’s tenth year of adventures in cider research and experiments in cidermaking. In honor of this aluminum anniversary, here are highlights from each of the last ten years.

2012 First Ciders In the Bathroom

I walked in the front door carrying five gallons of fresh-pressed, unpasteurized juice and gleefully told my wife I was going to make hard cider. Concerned that I was going to create bottle bombs, she asked that I do everything in the downstairs bathroom. It was also made clear that when they exploded, I would be cleaning it up. So with three gallons of juice, I made an 18th-century-inspired cider, a clover honey cyser, and an ale yeast-fermented cider. I am happy to report nothing exploded (then or ever).

Which is to say, Pommel Cyder was literally born in a bathroom.

2013 The Pommel Cyder Blog Launches

Dave Barry once said, “there is a very fine line between ‘hobby’ and ‘mental illness.’” It was clear, to me anyway, that cider was going to straddle that line for me. It combined many of my historical interests, including researching, writing, and recreating. A blog seemed like a good way to share those efforts. Besides, there was a chance that somebody other than me might find all of this interesting. The first post was published on September 1st, detailing a cyser that failed to ferment. Happily, this was not a harbinger of things to come.

2014 First Post About Cider History, Not Historical Cider

After several months of posts focused on recreating historical cider, I shared my first history-focused post. The story that John Adams drank cider every morning was (and still is) often repeated in cider circles, but it struck me as questionable. So I spent a little time looking into it. As with most such stories, there was a kernel of truth there, but many retellings had blown it out of proportion. As you might imagine, trying to correct this story made me popular amongst some cider storytellers.

2015 A Working Ciderist

I had been thinking that maybe I might, one day, perhaps, want to try selling cider. Although I figured it was years away, an acquaintance reached out to me in 2014 and said he was about to launch a “research winery” focused on early wines. Would I like to come make historically-inspired cider? I said yes and jumped right in. I developed the juice blend, wrote and designed the labels (like the one above), and identified historical recipes. Our first release came out at the end of the year. Thanks to the winery, my ciders made it to bars, restaurants, and throughout the living history world. I made cider there through 2018, when I stepped away.

2016 Last-Minute Addition to the First Pennsylvania Cider Fest

I was surprised when eleven days before the first annual Pennsylvania Cider Fest, I was invited to speak. I quickly wrote a talk, “Old Cider in New Bottles,” focused on researching and recreating historically-inspired ciders. I had no idea if anyone would be interested in hearing this talk. After all, people were coming for cider, not cider history. While it wasn’t standing room only, there was a good crowd who were interested and asked fantastic questions. I am honored to say that some of those attendees remain good friends.

2017 First Time Asking “Did Prohibition Prohibit Cider?”

Temperance and Prohibition are thought to be the villains of America’s cider story. But were they really? I had begun researching this question, again, because it sounded like too good a story, but I didn’t really have a plan for the research. Then the Northampton County Historical Society asked if I could do something about cider and Prohibition. I wrote “Did Prohibition Prohibit Cider?” to show that the reality of Prohibition and cider is stranger and more interesting than the oft-told tale.

2018 A Cider History Timeline For the PA Cider Guild

I had been contributing small bits to the PA Cider Guild since 2016. Mostly talks and a little research. So I was honored when they asked me to write a timeline of American and Pennsylvania cider history. Naturally, I took a shot at the Prohibition story in the 1920 entry.

2019 Ireland and Irish Cidermaking

My wife and I took a belated honeymoon to Ireland. Before we went, she reached out to the staff at Longueville House to see about a tour. They graciously agreed. Their manager spent a good part of the day with us. He showed us their orchards, their cider house, and their distillery. Afterwards, we tasted their ciders and brandy. It was an inspiring day for me. They made wonderful ciders with a very stripped-down process. I continue to think a lot about their cidermaking and ciders (occasionally while nipping at the remaining brandy bottle).

2020 Locked Down and World Wide

When the pandemic abruptly ended in-person gatherings, I thought it was going to be a while before I got to give another cider talk. But the world pivoted quickly and I had an opportunity to come along. That May, Cider Culture reached out to ask if I would be interested in offering a virtual program for their new “Cider School” program. It was a wonderful opportunity to reach a national audience. Plus, it was a lovely bit of contact at a moment when we had no idea how long the stay-at-home directives would last.

2021 Guest Lecturer With the Alcohol Professor

Andrew Tobia of the Alcohol Professor website reached out to see if I wanted to talk about cider and Prohibition, which of course I did. We had a wide-ranging conversation, talking about everything from Temperance and Prohibition to why the story is popular today. Despite the number of people who told me they read it and it changed their mind, the story that Prohibition killed cider is, like an off-flavor we can’t seem to get rid of, still there. It’s job security, I guess.

2022 In the Pink at Philly Cider Week

Having survived the pandemic (so far), this year saw a huge increase in in-person talks. Among them was an invitation to share some thoughts on historic ciders and cider tastes with restaurant owners, cidermakers, and cider enthusiasts at this year’s Philly Cider Week. The venue offered this Pepto pink restaurant trash can as my lectern. I’m still disappointed that I wasn’t the one who joked that I gave a trash talk.

Not captured in everything above are the real highlights of the last ten years – the friends, old and new, who have been so supportive with their time, talent, and interest. It turns out, there are people besides me interested in all this. They have helped shape my view of cider history and its connections to today. More importantly, so many have taken time to just sit, drink, and chat. Precious gifts in a hectic world.

Thank You All!

Whether it’s on the blog, in a lecture hall, in an open field, or in a barroom, I’m looking forward to another ten years of learning, sharing, and chatting about cider and cider history.

Cheers, to ten years!

Cider Talk at Manoff Market & Cidery

On December 6th, I’ll be at Manoff Market and Cidery outside of New Hope, PA sharing my talk “Cider: Pennsylvania’s Once (and Future?) Favorite.” Come for the talk and stay for their wide-range of ciders. The event is free, but they are asking for RSVPs. For more info and to register, see their event page.

Hope to see you there!

The “Cider Question,” or Saving “the Liquid of Our Boyhood” — by Mark A. Turdo

In 1881 the “Alphabet of Intemperance” said 

C is for Customs, which bind us in chains,

Destroying our reason, debasing our brains,

From which all should break without waiting a day – 

There’s danger in waiting, there’s death in delay.1

Although this “C” was not for cider, it was certainly about it.

By the 1880s, cider had been a part of American culture for centuries. Its long presence in American life meant many, including some Temperance followers, never saw it as a temptation, much less a danger. Why, they wondered, would Temperance ban something that had always been there and was, anyway, mostly harmless? Shouldn’t cider get a pass?

This debate over whether cider should be an exception (or a loophole) was called the “cider question.” It began shortly after Temperance targeted cider in the 1830s and continued through Prohibition in the early twentieth century. While the “cider question” was intended to moderate Temperance’s reactions, it had the reverse effect, and made Temperance leaders more severe. For the rest of the 1800s and into the early 1900s, leaders answered the “cider question” by saying that cider in every form, alcoholic and sweet, should be banned.

Temperance leaders did not always consider cider a problem. As Temperance writer James Black put it in 1869, “In the infancy of the Temperance reform, say from 1826 to 1832, a pledge, including spiritous or distilled liquors, was the only pledge in force, so that a man could be an active member of a temperance society and yet use and dispense in his household, wine, beer, or cider.” When Temperance began targeting cider, many members, who had grown up with it as part of their daily life, were at a loss to understand why and began asking the “cider question.” Black noted that “this cider question has at various times created great trouble in all temperance organizations…”²

_{Temperance tried to “start ’em when they’re young.” This English kids magazine included this illustration, ironically stating it’s, “only a glass of cider.” The accompanying poem, echoing similar arguments in American publications, says, “It was only a glass of cider / But it kindled anew the flame / Which had burned up his noble manhood. / And left him in grief and shame. From The Chatterbox (1885).}

From the leadership’s perspective, part of the trouble was that some members held, “the erroneous idea that [wine, beer, cider and malted drinks] are harmless if not beneficial.”³ In 1840, just a few years after Temperance turned against cider, one member objected to the expanded list of prohibited drinks, claiming, “that wine, beer, and cider are not distilled spirits, and should therefore escape denunciation.”⁴ Another Temperance writer observed that “Many persons have no idea that cider and perry are inebriating.”⁵ This last one was either a dubious statement or that was weak cider. In 1881 the rhetorical question was asked and rather condescendingly answered: “Shall cider come under the ban of the pledge? That it must, is almost too evident to admit of discussion…”⁶ As late as 1915, one writer noted that cider was thought to be “harmless and necessary” in many places.⁷ And five years later, as Prohibition was about to take effect, it was noted that “some people seem to still wonder why cider is included in the list of intoxicating liquors.”⁸

As these observations demonstrate, Temperance leaders grew exasperated with the “cider question.” When members continued to ask it, leadership doubled down, saying that not only was alcoholic cider a problem, so was sweet cider. Although some of the more moderate (and accurate) among them observed that, “cider is not intoxicating before it ferments,” more strident leaders said that, “Sweet cider is the bone of contention. Do not all our members know that cider in any form or shape, as a beverage, is a violation of our pledge? Never could a question be plainer than is this.”⁹

Temperance writers began using a “slippery-slope” argument. One writer noted that “the friends of total abstinence must discard the use of cider as a beverage, whether sweet or sour. True, there is no intoxicating element in unfermented cider; but then fermentation begins much sooner than people suppose.” He explained that “it is impossible for drinkers to tell when new cider becomes intoxicating…” and so it’s safest to simply avoid it altogether. The writer went further, saying, “If you have any regard for us, for Heaven’s sake don’t set the example of drinking even sweet cider.”¹⁰

In 1859, the Independent Order of Good Templars tried to make Temperance’s anti-sweet cider stance clear. They laid out seven violations of the Temperance pledge incurred by drinking sweet cider. These included:

1. Drinking of sweet cider is a violation of the Good Templar’s pledge.

2. The use of expressed juice of the apple as a beverage is a violation of our pledge.

3. It is a violation of the spirit and intent of the obligation of the Order of Good Templars to imbibe unfermented wine or cider.

4. In the opinion of this Grand Lodge, the juice of the grape is wine, and the juice of the apple is cider, whether in a fermented or unfermented state, and consequently the use of either as a beverage is a violation of the pledge.

5. To drink cider in any state as an article of food is decidedly a violation of the pledge, for in such cases it becomes a beverage.

6. Drinking the juice of the grape or apple, in any state as a beverage, is a violation of our obligation.

7. The use of currant wine or expressed juice of the apple, as a beverage, is a violation of the pledge.¹¹

Although they attempted clarity with this list, all they achieved was redundancy. These seven violations could have stopped at #1 and it would say the same thing as all seven.¹²

Though they went to extreme lengths to answer it, Temperance leaders were always stumped by the “cider question,” focusing on the slippery-slope arguments of drinking cider in any form. Cider supporters, on the other hand, focused on the feelings of health, home, and history it engendered. Missouri Senator George Graham Vest summed up this view on the floor of Congress in his arguments on June 16, 1897. Arguing against including cider in the Dingley Tariff bill, Vest said he did not, “…propose to open up the temperance question, but I am defending cider, the liquid of our boyhood, the beverage that “cheers but not inebriates,” that sparkles at every New England festival and in every New England home and in the West and South wherever the apple is raised and used.” And that, “If whiskey could have an advocate, how many advocates ought cider to have, the beverage of sobriety, the beverage of home?”¹³

Though they agreed on little else, both Temperance leaders and cider supporters agreed on one thing: the “cider question” was not always about cider’s present, but America’s past. For cider supporters the answer was because it was always here, it always should be. For Temperance leaders it was a false-friend, familiar but dangerous.

No matter how one answered it, the “cider question” demonstrated that though cider was no longer the common American drink, it had become the customary drink of America.

*************************

1. Ebenezer Bowman, “Alphabet of Intemperance, No. 171” in Temperance Tracts Issued by the National Temperance Society (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1881), 1; https://books.google.com/books?id=wkQ2AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%22cider%20question%22&pg=RA106-PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false.

2. James Black, “The Cider Question” in The Cider Question and Its Relations to the Temperance Cause, (Boston: J.M. Usher, 1869), 3; https://archive.org/details/ciderquestionits00unse/mode/1up.

3. “The Cider Question,” 3.

4.  “What Shall Be the Drink of Reformed Men?” in Permanent Temperance Documents (1840), 262; https://books.google.com/books?id=DNsXAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA262#v=onepage&q&f=false.

5. “English Cider” in The Cider Question, 10.

6. William M. Thayer, “Cider in the Pledge, No. 66” in Permanent Temperance Documents Annual Report of the American Temperance Society (1881), 1; https://books.google.com/books?id=wkQ2AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%22cider%20question%22&pg=RA35-PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false .

7. Francis A. Lane, “Brewing Interested and Activities,” The Temperance Cause XXXVII, no. 4 (April 1915), 31; https://books.google.com/books?id=-9OPJDlUL3kC&dq=temperance%20cider&pg=RA1-PA31#v=onepage&q&f=false.

8. “The Cider Question,” The Temperance Cause XLII, no. 4 (April 1920), 25; https://books.google.com/books?id=-9OPJDlUL3kC&dq=temperance%20cider&pg=RA8-PA27-IA10#v=onepage&q&f=false.

9. “Cider in the Pledge,” in Cider Question, National Temperance Society (1881), 12. Cider Question, 1863, 2.

10. William A. Thayer, “New Cider a Dangerous Beverage, No. 5” in Temperance Tracts Issued by the National Temperance Society (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1881), 1-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=wkQ2AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%22cider%20question%22&pg=PA5-IA2#v=onepage&q&f=false.

11. Simeon R. Chase, ed., A Digest of the Laws, Decisions, Rules and Usages of the Independent Order of Good Templars (Pennsylvania, 1859), 41-42; https://books.google.com/books?id=qS9HAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Drinking%20of%20sweet%20cider%20is%20a%20violation%20of%20the%20Good%20Templar%E2%80%99s%20pledge.&pg=PA42#v=onepage&q&f=false.

12. This reminds me of George Carlin’s summation of the ten commandments.

13.  Vest’s argument was that America exported more cider than it imported, and therefore didn’t need protective tariffs. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates, v. 30, Part 2, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1897), 1750; https://books.google.com/books?id=ViJ36PquBcYC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=cider%20question%20temperance&pg=PA1750#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Cider School Event for Philly Cider Week

On October 24th, Amy Hartranft, founder of Philly Cider Week, and I are tag-teaming this Cider Week event. I’m presenting a new talk, “Sweet, Dry, and Mixed: Four Centuries of Pennsylvania’s Changing Cider Tastes,” discussing why people chose cider, what kinds of cider they made and shared, and the trends that brought cider in and out of popularity. Amy will be discussing the current Philly cider market and how people think about it. Ploughman Cider will be there offering tasting of its current lineup. For more information check out the event page.

This is a free event, but you will need to take Monday afternoon off.

18th-Century Cider Demo at Red Bank (NJ), October 23rd

This Sunday, October 23rd, from 10 am to 4 pm I’ll be presenting my cider living history demo at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park, NJ (across the Delaware River from Philadelphia) for the 245th Anniversary of the Battle of Red Bank and their 18th-Century Field Day. There will be archeology presentations on their new discoveries, a battle reenactment, Whitall House Museum tours (pictured below), and kids events. But you should come for the cider talk.

For more information on this free event, see their online schedule.

UPDATED: Weekend of Talks In Gettysburg, PA

This weekend (Saturday & Sunday) I’ll be presenting at the Ploughman Cider Taproom in Gettysburg, PA. If you’re in the area, come for the talk and stay for the Ploughman ciders!

Note: Sunday’s presentation has been moved from 5 to 3 pm.

18th-Century Cidermaking Demo in Delaware

On Saturday, October 15th, I’ll be talking about 18th-century cider at First State Heritage Park in Dover, DE. For more information see their Facebook page. Hope to see you there!

Newlin Grist Mill Event Cancelled Due to Weather

The staff at the Grist Mill has made the difficult choice to cancel this year’s Fall Harvest Festival. We look forward to the return of the event in 2023!

Upcoming Talk at Harriton House

I’m pleased to announce that I am the guest speaker at Harriton House’s annual Heirloom Apple Tasting and Baking Contest on Saturday, October 29, 2022. I’ll be presenting “Cider: Pennsylvania’s Once (and Future?) Favorite. Following the talk, guests will sample heirloom apple varieties gathered from around the region. You can also purchase apples, fresh cider, and baking contest submissions by the slice/serving while supplies last.

I hope you can join us for some cider history, heirloom apples, and pie!

For more information and tickets, check out their Eventbrite page.

Upcoming Event at Newlin Grist Mill

On Saturday, October 1, 2022, I’ll be talking about historic cider at Newlin Grist Mill’s Fall Harvest Festival. This year’s theme “Food Traditions Past and Present” will highlight foods and cooking from the 18th century, along with the trades that made it possible to put food on the table in early America. Modern food trucks will also be on site offering a variety of delicious eats!

For more information, check out their event page.