A Spotlight for Pommel Cyder & Kicking Off Philly Cider

This past Tuesday the PA Cider Guild featured Pommel Cyder in their series spotlighting their associate members. Thanks to the Cider Guild for all of the opportunities they’ve offered and for highlighting Pommel Cyder.

Also this past Tuesday, the first-ever Philly Cider week kicked off. Ironically, it was through my day job that I got to be part of it. The museum hosted several PA cidermakers and Hank Frecon (pronounced fray-con, as I learned) and I co-presented on PA cider then and now. It was a good talk with a very interested audience. I was fortunate to meet or reconnect with several cidermakers whose stuff I enjoy.

Not shown in this photo, all the other people in the room. Courtesy of Olga and Brian Dressler, of Dressler Estate.

With events through Wednesday, October 31st, there’s till time to check out Cider Week

 

Pressing Memories

Source.

In the last few months I’ve given my cider presentation, “Cider: Pennsylvania’s Once (& Future?) Favorite” to several civic and museum groups. I enjoy these talks. I get to share a little cider history with folks, I get ideas for new areas to explore or add to the talk, and I even do a little advertising for the Blackledge ciders. Most importantly though, I learn from the audience.

These public presentations are not the place for intense, academic study. Instead, I try to share a survey of cider history and the current growth of cider. Originally this talk was 45 minutes, with a few minutes left over for questions. Over time, I have added information and shortened the program. This leaves time for the Q&A session to be more conversational. This has been interesting to me since it turns out domestic cider production is not as historic as my early-American focus has led me to think.

Many of my audiences are what demographers call “seniors.” Almost all are from Pennsylvania. It wasn’t that long ago that much of the state was heavily agricultural. Making cider on the farm and at home is still within living memory for many. And boy, do they share their memories.

These stories (oral histories, really) are replete with family and neighbors making cider in their basements, barns, and garages. Sometimes they traded their cider locally, sometimes it was for their own use. The memories of picking and pressing apples as children return and with them a surprise that what they did as kids has been done by kids for centuries. As you might expect, there are occasional misconceptions over what their adult memories of their childhood selves think they saw or heard.

Even so, it’s pleasant for them to remember and for me to listen and realize that for some, the  “back then” of cidermaking wasn’t that long ago.

What Did Historic Cider Taste Like?

Whenever I give someone a bottle of cyder, I ask them to let me know what they think, good, bad, or indifferent. I sincerely want to hear their reactions. Usually I get back the bland, overly-nice, “it was good,” or “I liked it.” If they didn’t like it I usually hear things like “it’s not my taste, but I’m sure it’s good,” or, if it was too sharp or sour for their taste they might say “something must have been wrong with the bottle.”(1)

I gave a bottle of cyder to a casual acquaintance. I expected he and his wife would try it and say something similar to the above. Instead they held an informal tasting with friends. They even made comment cards, which they shared with me when they returned the bottle.

As you can see the general consensus from their tasting is the cyder was somewhere from spicy to sour.

This is not an uncommon reaction to my cyders. Especially since I don’t arrest the fermentation to leave a residual sweetness or back sweeten.  Most modern commercially-produced ciders are heavily back sweetened, which is what most people are used to.

But the charm of historical cider is that it’s generally what nature gives us and nature can be on the tart/sour side. At least that’s what my cidermaking experiments suggest. But what do historic sources say cider tasted like in the past?

Before looking at the records, it’s important to say people back then weren’t asking the same questions we are.(2) To them, cider tasted like cider. They didn’t see the need to parse flavors and there was no flavor wheel to consult.(3) They did refer to ciders as being too acidic or sweet. Common as they were, those are relative terms. For example, today what Americans think of as dry cider is not the same as what the Spanish think of as dry cider.(4)

What I’m looking for is a more direct explanation of cider. The earliest I’ve found is from Ephraim Chamber’s Cyclopædia, or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences (1728), which defines cider as

…a brisk, tart, cool Liquor prepar’d from Apples.

The Cider Makers’ Manual (1869) says

When cider has been properly prepared in this manner, it will possess a pleasant acid, agreeable taste…

Zell’s Popular Encyclopedia, Vol. II (1883) described cider in less glowing terms, calling it

Acid; sour; harsh; rough; austere; as, hard cider…

Later, The Cider Makers’ Hand Book (1890) said cider

…should be tart, like Rhine wine, and by no means sharp or harsh. It should have a pleasant, fruity flavor, with aromatic and vinous blending, as if the fruit had been packed in flowers and spices. It should have mild pungency, and feel warming and grateful to the stomach, the glow diffusing itself gradually and agreeably throughout the whole system, and communicating itself to the spirits. It should have a light body or substance about like milk, with the same softness and smoothness, and it should leave in the mouth an abiding agreeable flavor of some considerable duration, as of rare fruits and flowers.(5)

It seems our pre-Prohibition ancestors enjoyed ciders which were significantly sharper, tarter, or sourer than most modern ciders.

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1. Occasionally comments are much more direct and contradictory. Recently, on social media, within moments of each other, one person said my cider was “undrinkable” and another said, “I love your cider!”
2. For our purposes today “then” is anytime before Prohibition (1920).
3. Some general flavor preferences are known but they’re usually extreme examples.For instance, one cider history stated that, “…Herefordshire labourers preferred cider so sour that it tasted like vinegar to strangers.” R.K. French, The History and Virtues of Cyder (New York: St.Martin’s Press, 1982), 17.
4. There are many seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century sources which compare cider to other alcoholic drinks, most commonly to Rhenish wine (think dry Riesling).
5. Oh,to make cider like this!

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post was updated on 25 February 2017.

The Cydery Blog Blossoms

For those of you who have an interest in historical cider making check out our expanded Historical Cidering page, with cider resources from the seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries.

And for those of you who have more current interests, we now have a Modern Cidering page featuring online and published resources.

It’s our hope that these pages will help you get to your cider interests a little faster and with less confusion.

For instance, despite its title, this is not a cidering how-to.

Bugs In the Works – By Mark A. Turdo

Cider making in art always looks like a pleasant way to pass the time. Although cidering was done outdoors in mid to late- autumn when the weather can be questionable, it’s usually depicted happening during sunny and warm days.

Cider Making. William Sidney Mount, 1840-41. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unless the weather is cool, however, outdoor cider making can also mean bugs. Lots of bugs. Particularly, the stinging kind.

During a recent pressing on a pleasant mid-October day, our press was swarmed with hundreds of yellow jackets. They were everywhere, inside the grinder and the press, which means yellow jacket bits wound up in the juice. Even after everything was strained, a few of the more persistent ones still found their way in.

Floating (and dead) yellow jackets are often ignored by artists.

But it seems yellow jackets are a common part of cider making. Fortunately, some people’s cider memories include the less-than picturesque, as this piece, from the  Pittsburgh Press (October 20, 1991), p. W2., explains:

Click image to enlarge.

Next time you run across a cider or apple wine with a name like Yellow Jacket, or Stinger, or Yellow & Black, you might want to ask where they got the name from. They’ll probably have a story no painter could ever capture.