Ologies with Alie Ward - Ciderology (DELICIOUS APPLE BEVERAGE) with Gabe Cook

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

How ya like them apples?! Well, liquified. And fermented. Author, podcaster, cider-maker and globally lauded beverage historian Gabe Cook, aka The Ciderologist, is an enthusiastic champion of this tragically overlooked drink, and he joins with a bushel full of facts, well-spun yarns and tasting tips. Belly up for a foaming glass of friendly competition, bucolic farmhouses, DIY cider tips, film flam busters, cider recommendations from a pro, and a little ASMR. Cider: that cool friend in the corner who is too shy to boast about itself, so its wingman speaks up. His website: https://www.theciderologist.com/ Follow him at https://twitter.com/theciderologist and https://www.instagram.com/ciderologist First book, Ciderology: https://www.amazon.com/Ciderology-History-Heritage-Craft-Revolution/dp/1846015650 His NEW book, Modern British Ciders: https://camra.org.uk/modern-british-cider/ A donation went to: https://tinychanges.com/ More links and info at alieward.com/ologies/ciderology Sponsors of Ologies: alieward.com/ologies-sponsors Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and now… MASKS. Hi. Yes. Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Transcripts by Emily White of www.thewordary.com/ Website by https://www.kellyrdwyer.com/Support the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hi. It's the crusty plant you never suspected would thrive. Allie Ward, I'm here. I'm here with you. I'm here with us. Let us apologize. Okay, it's September. It's the time of year when people in Los Angeles pray for a day that dips into the 60s so we can wear a scarf and drive 90 minutes to find an orchard to pretend fall exists. I've know I've done it. I've cried looking at gourds. So we're getting into the beverage that is the apple of our eyes cider. What is it? How old is it? Which ones are delicious?

Heavenly nectar. And which ones taste like butts? We have answers for you. So this guest is the leading cider expert on planet earth. And he calls himself like accurately the ciderologist. He has had his hands in or around cider for over 15 years, having brewed and judged and championed and even taught cider courses at the Beer and Cider Academy of London. He has authored two books on the topic, the 2018 debut Ciderology from History and Heritage to the Craft Cider Revolution

and just released a week ago a follow-up called Modern British Cider. So he also co-hosts a cider podcast, Neutral Cider Hotel. And he is lovely and passionate about cider and speaks of it with such mustachioed enthusiasm. But before we meet him, you can be a patron, just FYI at patreon.com.shologies, a buck a month. Let's use submit questions to experts like this. For no money, you can rate us on your podcast app if you don't mind. And for my undying affection, you can leave a review because I read all of them.

And I prove it with a just juiced foaming fresh. So this week, thank you to Mo Hope 16 who wrote, recently I needed to hire an employee. My favorite ending interview question is, what are you a nerd about? One of the candidates began listing topics of the most recent episodes and I asked them if they listened to oligies and they said it's their favorite podcast. That's all I needed to know in order to hire them. Whoa, Mo Hope 16. I hope you start Merch Mondays at the office.

oligiesmerch.com. Okay, Ciderology. Cider comes from the Hebrew Sekar for strong drink. And this oligist is the guy when you Google Cider Expert. He's the dude. His mustache and his book comes up and he will happily talk to you about Cider for as long as you want, which is why this interview was like pulling up to a picnic table with an old friend I had just never met. So please belly up and prepare for a crisp cup of appley knowledge from the history of Cider, how wars impacted Cider demand, dipping babies into booze, franken trees, glass vessels, what made Queen Elizabeth scowl at him,

how to DIY Cider plenty of flimflam and the best Cider we've ever sipped with Ciderology author, podcaster, and beloved international Ciderologist, Gabe Cook. Hi, hello. How are you? I am very well. Thanks, Ali. How's it going with you? You sound great. It's almost as if you have your own podcast or something. It's almost as if I invested in a modest priced mic. What a professional. Well, you're making my job too easy. Hardest question I'm going to ask. Can you say your first and last name and then also whatever pronouns you use?

Yes. My name is Gabe Cook and I am a heat him. Cool. Cool beans and you're a Ciderologist. I am the Ciderologist. Oh, I didn't realize the article was so definitive. Thank you very much. How long have you been capital T, capital C, the Ciderologist? As a full time profession, a little over four years. I imagine that you were a very enthusiastic dilettante before that, right? I was. I was using Ciderologist as my email address for about, since about, oh, I think about 2008 or something like that.

So the idea and the concept of theologist of Cider had been around for a while, but it took a while for it to become fully fledged and for it to actually become a career as it were. The Ciderologist is my company. It's my brand name. It's trademarked in Europe to get your hands off. Nobody has tested it. That was a waste of 250 quid, wasn't it? My role within the Cider industry is to be a vocal champion because, you know, Cider doesn't always get the love or the appreciation or the awareness of other drinks. Agreed. This entire industry is based around the specialized knowledge and serving of beer

and of wine. We've got sommeliers. We've got fantastic servers. We've got critics. We've got writers. I am, to my knowledge, the world's only full time independent Cider advocate. Just for context, I'm team Cider all the way. I have been since I turned of Cider sipping age, which is a debatable age, as you will find out later in the episode. But despite our 2018 episode on zymology, which is the science of beer brewing, I have finished exactly one beer in my whole life and I did not like it. I don't like beer. I'm sorry. I would be happy to appear on a debate team or a mock trial tournament representing Cider. Fight me. I'm ready.

Cider sits in this really interesting and unique space. First of all, you make Cider like you make a wine. You do not brew Cider. Brewing is the application of heat to extract something. Normally, you sort of sugars all these kind of characters. That's why you brew beer. That's why you brew tea and coffee, et cetera. You make Cider like you're making wine. This is taking a fruit, in this case, apples rather than grapes. You're squeezing them. You're extracting the juice, which is sugar rich, really, really easily readily fermentable sugars, yeast, whether they be wild yeast or introduced yeast, convert that sugar into alcohol. In the same way that the selection of the apple variety, the yeast strain, the vessel that you

ferment in, how long you mature it, under what conditions you undertake all this process, that is what is going to give you this unique range of different flavors and styles of Cider that can exist. The fact is that over the course of the last 50, 60 years, Cider has been predominantly tweaked and made and certainly packaged and presented considerably more like a beer. That average alcohol content is closer to your average beer, whatever that is, than let's say an average wine. It's normally carbonated. It comes on tap. You can have it as a pint. It comes as a single-serve bottle or can. These are all cues very readily associated with beer, but it is its own unique, wonderful and amazing drink and it's got so many awesome things going

for it. Firstly, it's naturally gluten-free. So anybody who's off the gluten as a lifestyle choice or because it's been really beneficial for their health, naturally gluten-free. Unlike a considerable proportion of beers and wines out there which use animal-based finding agents in order to reduce sort of take out sort of clarity and certain like phenolic and other kind of characters, Cider is very, very easily clarified and there's no need for those kind of finding agents. So it's almost to a tea will be vegan-friendly as well. Wait, the stuff they use to clarify beer isn't vegan? I look this up and apparently finding agents can include, you're right for this, egg whites, milk, desiccated fish,

bladders and blood bottoms up. Perhaps that's a big tea cider for vegans. You know, it's just this most amazing drink. There is, I say Ali, a cider for everybody and it's just trying to get people knowledgeable and enthused about it. Hello? I've lost you. So yes, a leprechaun put a curse on me via a loose mic cable. So in the lull, Gabe, Ciderologist cracked open a cold one as I sorted out my tech diffs. Dude is truly living his best life, get ready for some ASMR. Now that's a good sound, right? Come on, that's awesome. And do you know what? I'm going to sip. Ah, that's good. I think I have a loose cable.

You know, even the microphone is overwhelmed by the awesome power of the cider, you see? Who knew that ciderology was so powerful? Fantastic. Okay, mic cable fixed. On we go. So to recap, cider is wine. The legal definition of wine is any alcoholic beverage obtained by the fermentation of the natural sugar content of fruits or other agricultural products like honey. So I repeat, cider is wine. Cider is wine. It's a type of wine, really. But Gabe had mentioned that he hails from a part of the UK that has a rich and bubbly cider history and that geographically, cider is cool because it tends to be very location-based, like wines, whereas beers can have hops and grain from all over the damn world. Also,

did he intend to make this a beer versus cider episode? No, but that's just my transparent pro cider agenda seeping through. What? I love cider. Cider deserves more love. And another really crucial aspect is, from a sustainability point of view, is that the way that you're making cider, in its most basic form, like the fantastic cider that I'm drinking and the ciders that I make and ciders I've been involved with and ciders I champion, you get apples, you squeeze them, it ferments. That's it? That's it? Unlike with the brewing process, where there's a huge amount of energy is needed to heat this liquid to get the enzyme change for the sugars. And then obviously, when you're

boiling it as well, and if you're making a lager, you then need to chill it right down as well. There's a lot of energy, and this is an important thing for consumers increasingly today. And then, when it comes to the orchards, these magical, magical places, even if they are really commercial or commercial orchards, they are still considerably better land uses than monocultures of wheat or maize. They support biodiversity. They are sucking carbon and locking it into the ground. They're fantastic places for people to socialize as well, whether that be for walking the dog or going for a run, or just a bit of mindfulness and peacefulness and tranquility, learning new skills, community cohesion. There's just so much. It's just lush.

Oh, my God. I was just prepared to shit-talk beer because it tastes bad, but you're like, no, those are really valid points. Now, you see, this is a really good point. You know, if we're being really, really stereotypical here, you could say that the attitude, you know, spirits and let's say whiskey become things as sort of, you know, very quite sort of gentrified and set to no wingback chair, and wine comes in or sort of like elegant and kind of fern and beer is kind of like cool and brash cider. We're just the nice people in the corner, actually often quite shy. It's like, yeah, I'm beer. It's like, yeah, hi,

I'm cider as well. And it's because it does sort of sit as this slightly sort of not lost or forgotten drink, but you know, it's just not as broadly understood. And so cider is general way, or maybe that's just my way is that don't need to bad talk. There's other drinks. I like beer. I used to make wine in New Zealand. They're really, really cool drinks. It's just giving cider this platform that it can be an absolute equal to any of those drinks, all of the character, all of the attitude, all of the elegance, all of the finesse. It's, yeah, trying to get past, certainly from a UK point of view, a lot of old stereotypes, which are generally quite negative associated with cider for various reasons. You know, on your side of the pond, it's more

case of, you know, what is cider or the confusion between, you know, unfermented, fresh press sort of farm juice that the cider versus the hard cider, but hard is the, you know, the USA is the only nation in the world that uses the prefix of hard so that you're trying to, yeah, absolutely. This is all a prohibition thing. Oh, I didn't know that. There is a very, very long history of cider associated with the USA. And it generally, you know, it comes with founding fathers, which isn't necessarily something that is always as boldly celebrated as it might have been once before, but it is a fact that cider really was the first commercial drink of, you know, the new colony within the far northeast of the US and huge amounts of cider was made in, you know, in

Connecticut and in Maine and in Vermont and in New York and Pennsylvania, lots of cider was made. And it was only really with the introduction, the big wave in the sort of the end of the 18th century and into the 19th century of Czech and German immigrants that beer really started to come in and gain a real stronghold all across the states. And when prohibition came in in 1920, unlike, you know, beer and sort of like moonshine went underground and hid in the sheds and things like that. It's quite hard to hide an orchard. So they, so they got burnt, you know, a lot of them got burnt or chopped or burnt down. And those that were left were eating apples because the, you know, those apples that were being grown then, like the apples that

are grown in the western parts of England, northern parts of France and northern parts of Spain are, would be called cider apples by people in those areas. These are varieties grown specifically for the sole purpose of making cider and have been done so for hundreds of years. So they got rid of all those. What was left were the eating apples, which a bit of juice was made from. And so the term cider got appropriated to mean that sort of fresh pressed juice. So when prohibition came to an end in the 30s and booze and cider, you know, fermented cider was allowed, they needed a new name. So they had the prefix of hard and hard cider. And that's how that has come to pass. But nowhere else in the world needed or had the, you know, the cultural heritage

as to why that was a necessity. So yes, if you clicked on this episode and thought that it would be all about Martinelli's or cloudy apple juice from the farmer's market, blame prohibition, not me. Now in the 1800s, cider was the most popular beverage in the US. The century before that 1700s, people in the colonies drank on average a barrel a year each. So that's a pint a day for everyone. Everyone had a pint a day. And really quick, let's have a rundown of types of cider. So there's farmhouse cider, which is pretty much like what you could make if you were stranded on an island with just apples and jars. It's fermented juice, pretty dry, because the yeast has gobbled up all the sugars and it's not super sparkly. Now you can make a farmhouse cider

with nothing but raw apple juice and about a week or two worth of patience and a lot of thirst. So draft cider is what you're used to seeing on restaurant menus. It's clear, maybe cut with juice to lower a high alcohol content. It's sweet. It's sparkly. It's kind of like a soda pop. And then there's a French seed, which is a little more complex and it involves a process called keving, which we're going to get into in a bit. It has a low alcohol content and you drink it out of a beret. That's not true. But let's back up. Well, what about before that, had cider or fermented apple juice existed long, long before that? I mean, is it called cider if an apple just rots on the ground and it's kind of boozy? At what point did we start understanding what

cider was? It's an interesting one. Apples, as we know them for eating and making cider and cooking and all those kinds of things. The ancestor of that can be traced back to the Tien Shan mountain range, which sort of sits sort of just to the northwest of the Himalayas on the sort of Chinese, Kazakh, Kyrgyzstan-y kind of border. At the end of the ice age, last ice age, 10,000 years ago, in these valleys in the foothills of these incredible mountains, you had then the last sort of refuges of these wild apple forests, which when the ice age came came to an end and everything got a little bit warmer, they started to flourish and grow a little bit. But it also coincided with also humans also flourishing and growing and undertaking this amazing trans-continental

journey from the east to the west along the Silk Road. And so people and animals started to pick up these apples and take them along the way and they'd eat and they'd poop and it would spips would go on the ground and the sort of apples started to get taken west and it underwent this amazing sort of, you know, genetic sort of diversity kind of like journey along the way. Because if you plant the pip of an apple of let's say, what's your favorite eating apple, Ali? Oh my gosh, I would probably say I'm gonna go Granny Smith. I'm just gonna go Super Tart. Don't judge me. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely, lovely and crisp, lovely and zingy, awesome. If you planted a pip from a Granny Smith into the ground, the apple variety that will pop up will be guaranteed

to not be Granny Smith. Right. Okay. So this is grafting? Is this the magic of grafting? Okay. It is. It is. Imagine that the like that you've got the mother tree, that Granny Smith tree gives that fruit and it's got the pip inside, but they're not self fertile. In order to be able to produce that fruit, you have to have pollen from another variety often brought over by pollinating insects like the wonderful bees. That's why we love bees very, very much. They bring over the pollen on their legs, it pollinates the blossom that turns into the apple and the pip inside has got the genetics, the DNA of both the mother tree that Granny Smith and whatever pollinated it. It won't be the variety that you've got. And so this obviously is a little

bit of a problem. Yeah. If you really like Granny Smith, then you want to continue. So this is when the Mesopotamians circa three, something thousand years ago, just somehow worked out that if you snip the end off a growing tip and you know, fuse it onto something that's already into the ground, they will hold it, it will take and you can have one tree, two different varieties or intended variety at the top and the rootstock at the bottom. Can you imagine if you were like, wow, I really like my kid, but who knows what the hell kind of grandkids I might have. So then you just hacked off their limb and sewed it onto another body. Some apple rootstock trees straight up get the chop mid trunk and then they get a new head grafted on, which if that's not horticultural

gore fit for spooky season, I don't know what the hell is. The idea of sort of cultivating apples has been around for a long time, but the evidence of actually making cider probably about 2000 years old. There's first sort of talks in sort of, you know, in the Greek literature and the Roman literature about, about references to cider making or like the wine of apples and pears, things like that. Whereas wine, you know, very strong evidence of that being made considerably further back. The primary difference is around the structure of grapes and apples. They're lovely and small and lovely and soft. And you know, you want to extract the juice and you could literally do that by treading them underfoot and lots of people do still that today. You try treading some

apples and you're going to get some fairly bruised feet quite quickly, aren't you? Yeah, it's this, it's this really strong cell structure. What cider still needs today is it's a two-step pro, so you don't just press apples, you have to mill the apples first. This mill can do the same amount of work that took many nights with my juicer in simply a matter of hours. The crusher works by spinning tines that grab the apples and mashed them through a set of blades. And then you've got to press them. So this extra bit of technology that was needed to turn these solid apples into something mushy enough that you could then easily extract the juice from. That didn't really come around until sort of olive milling technology was also developed around about 2000 years ago and sort

of shared into that sort of Mediterranean area around that time. Just a side note, I looked it up. Milling is just crushing up the apples any which way you can. People do this with various levels of force. Some just smash apples with mallets in what looks like a wooden bathtub, or you can bean apples with a stone wheel dragged by a horse or a donkey or something. There's also mechanical mills and they chew the apples into a really fine pulp. And then all that apple mash has to be squeezed until it cries delicious juice. And sometimes that's done in sacks. It used to be strained through straw. No, thank you. Now what happens to that giant cake of compressed apple pulp? What do you do with it? Can you sit on it like a cushion? Maybe. That's not my business.

But it gets fed to livestock. You can also do a second wash and make a really weak cider with it. But it's called apple mash. But it's also called, according to our friend, work at Pedia, cake, math, pows, mure, or pommage. So who knew cider making came with such a big frothy manga slang? Not me, but back to history. So cider's been around for centuries because yeast and sugar are like, please let us do our thing. If you just leave us alone for a bit, we'll get you drunk. So written history through the ages is kind of spotty, but there's evidence that Charlemagne was into orcharding as a verb. And by Charlemagne, I mean the King of the Franks and the Dark Ages, not the Breakfast Club radio host Charlemagne the God, who was born Leonard McKelvey. And from

what I can tell, he does not mill cider apples. You gotta break it in pieces, bro. Why? This is just a fruit. Okay, back to history. It seems that the first records of sort of making cider come from the 1100s, but it's really not until kind of like the 1500s and especially the 1600s when cider reaches its zenith in the UK as a drink that is heralded as being the equal to wine and is drunk with the aristocracy and indeed at the table of kings and queens. What happened in the 1600s? Did someone have like a tic-tac-co viral? Like why? Well, sadly, not as entertaining as that. It comes down to something that is ever prevalent, which is war. Britain being pretty strong war mongers at the time, you know, fighting with

Europe for basically a millennia. And yeah, in the sort of early part of the 17th century, Britain was at war with large parts of Europe, and it prevented the importation of wine into the UK. And the aristocracy got very thirsty and a little bit agitated that they couldn't have their van wine. And so there was a bit of a movement amongst these, they were called the ciderists. And these were people of prominence within society, whether they be landowners, MPs, scientists, clergy, people, knowledgeable people and people with money and power, basically. And so they identified that cider could be our native wine, effectively, which, you know, it kind of is if you think about it as being something that you make, you know, like a wine.

And that coincided with a chap called Lord Scudamore. He identified a particular variety that was growing on as a state. It produced an apple and a cider that was just gorgeous, really intense and was a really precocious tree. And it was amazing. And it was called the Herefordshire Red Streak. And also, at the same time, what was happening was there was a chap not too many miles away on the banks of the of the River Seven and the Forest of Deem. And he was into glass furnaces and making glass. And he was interested in making strengthened glass, his name was Sir Kenham Digby. And he was using these extra hot furnaces by using charcoal and burning really hot. And he was making these bottles that were really thick and really strong.

So strong, in fact, that you could put some of this amazing new cider that was on the scene into there. And as the record books show, adding a walnuts worth of sugar into it, putting a lid on the top, and then putting it somewhere nice and cool in the cellar, bearing it into sand, even into some little streams running into the estate. And basically, what was happening was a secondary fermentation in the bottle. We are talking about the first step of the method traditionnel, the champagne method. Now, crucially, this paper, this paper was presented to the Royal Society on the 10th of December 1662. And this is about seven years before Don Perignon, who was thought to be the creator, the godfather of mastering the champagne process

before he had even started his work at the winery. So what I'm basically saying is that it shouldn't be called the champagne method. It should be called the English method. Come on, England. And so that secondary fermentation is you've already got a little bit of alcohol in the cider, and then it kind of double ferments. And that's what causes the effervescence and the higher alcohol. That's right. You've undertaken one fermentation in a tank, a barrel. You've placed it into a bottle. You've then added some extra sugar. And there will still be some yeast, you know, live yeast within that cider. Today, those people who are making, you know, method traditionnel style ciders or indeed those wines would add some yeast back as well with the sugar

and maybe even some nutrient to ensure that yes, there is indeed a second fermentation in that bottle. But of course, carbon dioxide is the byproduct of fermentation, you know, sugar gets converted by yeast into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Normally, the carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. In this case, it gets trapped into the bottle. And that's what provides the natural sparkle. That's then that's why you know, you get these lovely little small fine bubbles, this fine mousse, and it gets trapped in there. And depending on how you're making it, you can either have just a very light effervescence, or you can actually create quite a strong pressure in there, which is why you need that cork and that wire to hold to hold the liquid in.

What is the best glass or bowl or cup of cider you've ever had in your life? Oh, man, that's, that's, that's tough. I will certainly say that I went on, it will be 19 years ago to the to the day almost, I, so I grew up in this little village called Dimmock, I always got to give a shout out to Dimmock, go Dimmock. And which, which is in Gloucestershire, and it's yeah, it's in this amazing old traditional sort of heartland area. And I grew up knowing that there was a cider thing around, and it was my first drink, and sort of tried some of the mainstream ciders. And then there's a bigish cider maker in the village next door called Weston's in Muchmark or just next door and went and tried their ciders and visited and really tasty. And

then my, my eldest brother and I, we wanted to go and visit some of the farmhouse makers, the small traditional producers around. And so he looked on the map and there was one just a few miles away. And so we, we went to visit. And he was driving and we, we turned off the main road. And suddenly we're down a lane, I don't know whether you get them in the USA, but it's one of the great things about, about the rural areas of the UK, you've got these old lanes and trackways that have been there for 1000 years. And they're so narrow that you're driving along and both wing mirrors are getting whacked by the hedge at the same time. And we're like, what the fuck? Where are we? This is like, we just turned off the main road and we're like, we're expecting Frodo

to run across the road. Hello, good morning. And suddenly there's a tiny little sign that pointing to the right saying cider. And so we follow that. And we end up going up a driveway pulling in and there's like this big white farmhouse. And we sort of walk up and there's a, there's a door sort of like almost like underneath the house. And there's a little chalk written sign note on there that says pull string for cider. And indeed, there's a little bit of baler twine, you know, a little bit of orange string, which we Julie give a bit of a yank on. And suddenly ding, ding, ding, ding, the bell goes and this very cheery, genial, sort of looking poops his head and says, hello, I'll come down and serve you now. And his name is Mike,

Mike Johnson, the proprietor of the Ross and Y Sider and Perry Company. And he opens the door. And we're looking into the old seller of this 17th century farmhouse with giant stone flags on the ground and these barrels racked up. And the smell that comes out is also, you know, earthy and musty and feels like it's been there for forever. And we go in and he goes to one of the barrels, which has got a tap on it, and he gives it a pour, and he hands it to me and goes, here you go, this is a dry cider. Enjoy. And I can remember the sensation of tasting that even if I can't quite remember the taste, the sensation of just going, I've never tasted anything like this. I like it quite a lot. This is just fermented apple juice, but it's not just fermented apple

juice. There's care, there's attention, you could almost taste, you know, the age, the antiquity. It was a little bit of the stars aligning moment and realized that cider could brought together all the things that I was interested in. I was interested in local history, interested in wildlife, interested in local culture, quite enjoyed booze as well. And that cider was able to just bring all these things together. So that was a pretty critical cider to taste, I would say. Have you been back or is it something that you want to exist only in memory? No, it was only the start. I actually ended up working there. That was what really kick started my cider journey. I spent about best part of nine months or so living on the farm,

quite literally in a shed in the garden. Wow. And I learned the sort of the craft of making traditional Western County style of cider and learning about these varieties. I was taught about the different characters, the acidity, the tannin, so the astringency, the bitterness, the mouthfeel, the texture, the fruitiness, the potential faults that could come through. This was just sort of just learned through drinking and talking and sharing and an amazing and a privileged experience. Yes, I looked this up and I want to live there, please. It's called Broom Farm and it's this white brick farmhouse in rural England. It's also set up as a bed and breakfast so you can stay in the orchard suite or the cider suite. And according to their website,

they love visitors and they will, quote, happily take you on a detailed tour of the orchards and then give you a toured cider tasting, introducing you to our enormous range of bottled cider and parry. I'll put a link on my website in case you want to go to heaven without having to die first. And I was camping in the orchard there three days ago, so it's still a very important part of my life. And Mike's son, Albert, he's come into the business and he's taking it on to the next step. But they really are one of the goodies. So no, it's still very much an important part of my life. And yeah, it kick-started my career in cider. I went to work for Westerns, who today are the fifth biggest producer in the UK. So I went from making cider in 200 litre oak vats to 200,000

litre stainless steel tanks, which is terrifying, especially when, you know, when you dribble a bit down the side of the barrel, you know, no bother. When you dribble a bit down the side of a, you know, a 50-foot tank and your boss is calling you, it's like, hey, why is cider, you know, spurting out at the top of this tank in a bit of a fountain fashion? I don't have such a good repost to that. So I took what I learned from the small farm and applied it to the big scale. And it really, and it set me fair. And I'm really proud of the ciders that I made and what I achieved. But I did come to realise I was better at talking about cider rather than making it. And so I got a job with the world's biggest cider maker, Bournemouths.

And yeah, I was there, cider communications manager for nine on three years, which was really cool. I got to do awesome stuff with local community. And the highlight was in 2012, I got to present a bottle of cider to Her Majesty the Queen. Come again. What did you wear? Did you wear your mustache number one? It was pre-moustache, actually. I was young and clean-shaven back then. I had on, I had, I'd say the best suit, the only suit that I had. I was quite a, I missed that I'm a bit of a country bumpkin, but I was especially country bumpkin. A bit like a shaved monkey in a suit to be fair, but a bit awkward. Hello, Your Majesty. And somebody took some photos, very kindly,

I gave him my camera. And there's two or three great photos. And I literally had about 20 seconds to present her with a special commemorative bottle of cider. And it was all linked in that it was her diamond jubilee, her 60 years. And it was the Bournemouths 125th anniversary. And would you believe in the year that the company was started, that was Queen Victoria's golden jubilee as well. And I was telling this enthralling story. And the photo of me presenting it to her, Her Majesty's face, I don't know, she looks like I've said something really offensive or like I've done a poo on her shoe or something like that. She's not giving me a great look. I think she said, thank you very much. And that was about it. So Your Majesty, if you're listening, I really

apologize. I didn't mean to offend you. I know that you're more of a sort of a mooth than, you know, maybe martini, but you know, give cider or go sometimes. Give it a chance. Of course, I found this photo and I will confirm she does have an expression as if she has received a poo on her shoe. But being the good little Google goblin that I am, I found another shot of their encounter taken probably a millisecond later by the same photographer and Her Majesty is smiling grandly. So I am surmising that she was just listening intently. But yes, she is known to drink Bulmer cider. In addition, I found this out today, she drinks Bacardi, which I hope she enjoys via room temperature shots followed by a diet Pepsi

Chaser or something just equally hideous and appalling. So speaking of shot glasses, there are very specific glasses for different wines and different martinis and even different beers. And I've always wondered, I think some of the my most memorable cider I've had out of bowls in France, I think was the first time I had a good cider. It tasted like a Tiger Lily in it. I had been up all night, I had just taken a red eye in to Paris, the first and only time I've been and had crepes and a bowl of this really floral tasting cider. But what is the proper vessel? How should we be drinking cider? That is a bit of a difficult one. There are some traditional vessels very closely linked to those

kind of regional things. You've talked about the Boulet, which is very closely associated with Brittany, especially in the western part of Germany. In Hessen, they use a glass called the Gerripta, which has got all these sort of criss-crosses on them in Asturias and in the Basque country of northern Spain. There's that they use particular kind of very broad brimmed glasses, forgive me, I've forgotten the name, but there's really, really thin glass. Just look up Spanish cider glass. I think they're just called sidra glasses. That's Spanish for cider. And in northern Spain, they pour the cider from over their heads down into the glass. It's like a human fountain, does look a little like pee. But yes, elegant, wide-mouthed, thin

walled sidra glasses is what they're called. When you're doing this amazing high cider pouring, throwing into the glass is a really important cultural thing. In Britain, in certain parts, we would have the earthenware two-handled mug. Generally, the larger the better, I suspect, so you get more cider in. But cider doesn't, this is one of the challenges and potentially opportunities that cider finds itself in right now, is that cider hasn't had any of the lexicon, any of the language that wine and beer have had. Everyone knows different styles of beer. Everyone can talk about IPA or a stout or a saison or something like that. And in terms of wine, you all know whether it be particular, sort of like regions, so Bordeaux or a Chianti or something

like that. Gabe says that in modern culture, it's common to rattle off all kinds of varieties of other beverages. And just like how different beers and wines call for different kind of vessels, cider could use those as well. But people don't care. And they should, because cider is just sitting in the corner, just being chill and cool, like your friend who's so awesome, but somehow single because they're shy. Everyone is sleeping on how complex and interesting cider is. And Gabe is its most charming and vocal wingman. These are all things that are entirely new. And I really hope that somebody sees an opportunity to create these kinds of cider glasses and to do that research because it's just all adding to the kind of professionalism associated with cider and

trying to get it really, really well-known and respected and loved. So there's glass makers out there. Come on, do it. I also love the idea of an earthenware mug. I mean, come on. But I have also some questions about just the tech specs, right? So what are the tech specs of cider? Does it have to be apple or can it be pear or raspberry or whatever? And also how much alcohol by volume does it have to be to be a cider versus a pressed or a fresh squeezed apple juice that you might get on a crisp fall day at an orchard? Yeah. So cider really is a drink that is where the alcohol is derived from the fermentation of apple juice. In terms of the fermented pear, the traditional name for that where I'm from is called peri. Or if you're in France, it would be poiret.

No, pear cider as a term in the UK, that is a synonym for peri. In the USA, that is a fermented apple drink with pear juice added as a flavoring. So there we go. But like a fermented pear drink, really, it could be called peri. In the UK, pear ciders use some people like it, some people don't. I'm not too hung up on it. The most important thing is that you've got to have this fermented apple or potentially a fermented pear. You can't ferment a raspberry and call it a raspberry cider. You can't ferment a rhubarb or a potato or bark and call it anything X cider. That isn't cider. It is one of the things that cider needs to try and protect. There's been an incredible proliferation of flavored ciders over the course of the last 15 years in the UK, but

they are fermented apple juice with the addition of flavors of other things. Predominantly fruits, berries especially, hopped ciders is definitely something that is growing in popularity and in the USA, especially where it's been driven from sort of Pacific Northwest beer scene. You can put like elderflowers and the kind of things in there too. A lot of people are really anti-flavored cider because they don't think that they're real or proper or it doesn't sit into like an old cultural heritage. I don't hold the same opinion as people. I'm not anti-flavored cider. I'm anti-shit cider and it's just that the majority of flavored ciders available certainly in a UK, very broad commercially aren't great ciders. They're just not kind of great drinks and they

don't uphold the integrity for me of what kind of cider is. There are some spectacular ciders being made with the addition of other things to them in the UK and in the USA. Some of the best drinks you can get and they're fun and they're playful and they're creative, but the fermentation of apple juice is at the absolute heart of this and this I think goes on to and see a second point about what's the average alcohol content. The average alcohol content is determined by how much sugar there is within the apples in the first place, which is determined by the variety, where you are in the world and what's happening with the weather that kind of year as well. The sugar that can build up within an apple, depending upon those three factors, generally is somewhere between about

four and a half percent alcohol and about eight and a half percent alcohol. That's the broader kind of range. Okay, so side note, the higher the alcohol usually the drier the cider because the yeast has just gone to town eating the sugar and leaving you with alcohol as a metabolite. So, sweet cider tends to be less than three percent alcohol. There's semi-dry and then there's brute or dry, which is four percent alcohol or higher, but of course more sugar can be added for a second fermentation or it can be made pretty strong and then diluted with more juice. Now, what about hot spiked cider? Is that a thing? Sure, it's just called wassail and it's a spicy apple-y but boozy winter beverage. Also, it's not coincidentally what you are to exclaim during a

toast, but just don't call cider cider if it's not a little boozy. That's literally just apple juice, full stop. In order for something to call it a non-alcoholic cider, cider is a fermented drink. So, there has to be some form of fermented character in there. So, low alcohol ciders are achieved normally by diluting a fully formed cider with water and juice to take the alcohol level back down or you can use clever technology such as reverse osmosis or cool distillation to take away the alcohol content. But they started their life as a cider. Apple juice is a great drink, but it is kind of juice. That's sort of the sugar content and the aromatic and flavor characters that you get from juice. So, there's something that you don't get inside it because

those sugars and those characters have been converted to alcohol. Well, what then is apple cider vinegar? Is that apple cider that has just gone past the sippy stage or is that a completely different beast altogether? No, absolutely right. So, it's the potential next stage of kind of cider I suppose and is the logical journey that if just completely left to its own devices what the juice would want to do. So, you start off with unfermented juice, you've pressed it, yeast will convert those sugars into alcohol. Once that fermentation has finished, if you kind of leave it and allow air exposure, there's all sorts of different kinds of bacteria that live all around and one of them is called

acetylbacter and it converts the alcohol into acetic acid into vinegar. This may or may not be something that you desire, although there are some sort of traditional parts of the southwest whereby the old farmhouse heritage, there was no sort of great care and attention, you know, but onto these kind of drinks and they would be referred to as scrumpy, sort of rough, raw, scratchy at the back of your throat kind of cider. But if you do just allow all the air to get to your cider, eventually the considerable majority of the alcohol that was in that does get converted into acetic acid into vinegar and it takes on a whole, you know, new life of its own and you know, certainly it's a massively popular thing from having all the health benefits and how you use

it within sort of cooking and cuisine as well. And it's brilliant. I've got a Google alert for the word cider. I'd like to keep up to date what's happening in the world of cider. And what generally happens is about 500 apple cider vinegar kind of articles come up and then right down the bottom will be, you know, a headline from a local newspaper, you know, the Southampton Chronicles saying, you know, man arrested for drinking 19 litres of cider and trying to drive tractor into football stadium or something like that, you know, it's like, oh, come on, cider, you can do this. You definitely need to Google alert for scrumpy because there can't be too many articles with that work. I do not. I'm going to try it and I will let you know, I'll give you an update.

I'll also do Ciderology and see what crops up as well. Please do. I have a feeling that just you will come up for both of those things. Maybe. I have so many questions from patrons. Can I lightning round you? But before we strike gold with a lightning round, we will quickly give away some money to a cause of theologist choosing. And this week Gabe asked that it be made to Tiny Changes Foundation. And he says this was set up in memory of Scott Hutchinson, brother of my friend and fellow podcast host Grant, who sadly took his life three years ago. So that would mean a lot. Thank you, Gabe

said. Tiny Changes is a mental health charity started in memory of the frightened rabbit musician Scott Hutchinson. And it aims to offer mental health resources and support. So we're happy to make that donation in your name, Gabe. That donation was made possible by sponsors of the show, who you may hear about now. Okay, let's stop milling about and press on with your questions. Let's go. Okay, we're going to answer as many of these as possible. All right. I'm ready. You got this. Okay, Maria Joroveva, Catherine Gilbert, and Celia LeBont all wanted to know

are ice ciders or ciders made from the apple picked in winter a true thing or is it just marketing? No, it's absolutely a true thing. It was originated in Quebec in about 1988, 1989 and takes its influence from the German ice wine making. And yeah, you take frozen fruit or in sort of warmer places, thankfully, like the UK, you freeze the juice. And what happens is when you when you thaw the juice or when you when you press those frozen apples, the majority of the water component is bound up as ice crystals and you get this hyper sugar concentrated liquid that comes off, which you then ferment up to 10, 11, 12% alcohol, but there's still huge amounts of unfermented sugar. So it's a really rich

viscous drink just like an ice wine, just like a dessert wine, absolutely amazing as a as a DJ Steve poured all over your chocolate pudding. Okay, that's so good to know. I will have to get some. So, so many patrons, I will list their name in an aside. Oh, hey, Claire Kosticki, Bonnie Page, Alan Kahn, Earl of Gremelkin, Miranda Panda, Dean Dryden, Jackie Silberman, and RJ Deutsch want to know what is the best kind of apple to make cider from? That's, that's an impossible question to ask, because every single apple, every single apple has its own unique flavors, properties and characteristics. The thing is to understand what kind of flavor profile do you want? You know, if you're going to be a wine maker,

and it's like, I really like big sort of chewy, tannic wines, you should be planting, you know, Malbec or something like that. If you plant Sauvignon Blanc, you're going to be really, really disappointed. And it's the same. It's like, if you want to have a lovely, fresh and crisp cider, then make it from Granny Smith. If, if you want to have something that's really sort of rich and textured, use a classic English variety like Yardling to Mid, if you want to have something that is amazingly, you know, herbal and aromatic, use like a golden russet or something like that or a Newtown Pippet and these amazing apples from the northeast of the US. So, you kind of work backwards as to like, what kind of drink do I want to have,

and therefore try to seek, you know, what kind of apple variety and makers, especially in the USA, you're, you know, you're ahead of the game compared to where we are in the UK, celebrating the variety and celebrating the process, they're putting it on the packaging. So, the opportunity to be a more discerning consumer is better than it's ever been before. Oh, okay. I love the notion of like reverse engineering based on what you want. Absolutely. Alexandra and Castro Navarro wants to know, what's the strangest tasting cider you've ever had? And Kelly Pavlovich asks, what's the weirdest cider flavor or ingredient that you've tried or made

or used? Any weird ones that stick out in your ciderology brain? Yeah, the weirdest form is actually a peri that I made a few years ago. Absolutely, not by design, but by bad perimaking, tasted like sausages. Tasted, it tasted like sausages. And it also had a little bit of like a sort of sulfide-y thing, which is like an egg character. I basically had like sausages and eggs. I had a fried breakfast in liquid form. Meat farts. It wasn't as pleasant as I had endeavored to achieve. So, that was probably like the weirdest sort of just no natural flavors that came out or something. In terms of like an actual intended flavored cider, there's a USA producer who recently made a Tom Yum Soup flavored cider. I think they had gone to Thailand,

they'd had all the good food, and they'd come back and they put that in the cider. Now, my co-host of a podcast that I run, I should probably name at this point, the Neutral Cider Hotel. You go check it out. Available on all good platforms, do check out NeutralCiderHotel.com. Thank you very much. Lovely Grant. He's less of a fan of the flavored ciders. He gets in a bit of a rage whenever he's talking. And he nearly sort of flew off the handle on this one. He was fuming, but then he gets a bit grumpy about things like that anyway. So, yeah, the Tom Yum flavored cider, the most amazing and lovely experience I ever had was that I lived in New Zealand for a

bit. And in Wellington, capital city, I lived in an area called Mount Victoria. And just behind there's all these woodlands. In fact, it was one of the places where they filmed for Lord of the Rings when in the first movie, when all the little hobbits are having to hide from the ringwraith and they're hiding underneath the roots of the tree for the Lord of the Rings nerds out there. And so I used to go like walk around there and run around there. And I left, but then I came back to New Zealand for to go to a festival and the cider maker gave me a cider and I smelled it and I was like, oh my God, I've got the sensation of being back in that city, in that time, in that place. And I didn't realize that the cider had been flavored with maple and pine needles and the

pine needles had come from those trees on Mount Victoria. And it was a direct line to that time in that place. These sensory characters, they tap into our limbic system. It's all about memory formation and a motive state. And yeah, that just took me straight back to that time in place. So that was pretty cool. Oh, okay. So if you'd like to hear someone who really knows noses, there is a Rhinology episode, which I will link on my website. But just to recap it, a lot of your taste is actually smells traveling up your snooter, which leads to your olfactory bulb in the front of your brain, which takes that information and sends it just directly to your limbic system, including parts of it called the hippocampus and the amygdala. They deal with memory and emotions,

which is why I think about a bowl of cider I had a few decades ago and I still want to cry bitter sweet tears. Oh, on that topic. A lot of people, Diana Burgess and Mofo, they both wanted to know how are some ciders dry versus sweet? Why is there such a wide variety? And what's the process to get a sweet versus a dry cider? That's a really good question. And this is one of the big misnomers about cider is that, you know, cider is a sweet drink. And the fundamental nature of it is that ostensibly every single cider in the world will start its life as a bone, dry cider, no sugar left at all. Because the fermentation process is the yeast converting that sugar into alcohol. And the cider will stop fermenting when there is no more sugar for the yeast to ferment.

So that's, that's how cider starts its life. It's just that the majority of consumers don't want to dry cider and some condition that they don't want that. So sugar, generally sugar, sometimes it could be juice is added back post fermentation. And then the cider is stabilized via pasteurization or a, you know, a sterile filtration process that removes all the yeast. So there's no opportunity for that sugar to be re fermented. And that's the sweetness that you've got. So you can have bone dry cider, because that's how that's how Patrick Mama wanted it intended. That is nature taking its course. If you want to have a fermented cider that is, that has some sugar in there, you've either got an added pack, or you can do a couple of really

fiddly processes to time retain a residual natural sweetness, the primary one being called heaving, which is what the French classically do. And there's lots of history about happening in the UK as well, which is a slightly convoluted process whereby you remove the yeast in the nutrient from the juice at the beginning of the process. And the resultant cider ferments very kind of slowly and develops quite rich flavors. And then you can sort of control it and place it into a bottle where it finishes a little bit of fermentation. But the yeast is so weak, and there's so little of it, and it's so hungry, because there's no nutrient that that little bit of carbon dioxide that's built in the bottle is enough to sort of, you know, make the yeast wave a little white

flag and it stops fermenting before all of the sugar has been converted into alcohol. So you get a naturally sweeter, naturally lower ABV, naturally sparkling drink. That's how they do it. That's how they do it. So that's why you said that the cider that you had in the Bolle in Paris, it's melted. What did you say? It kind of like Tiger Lily's oddly. Tiger Lily's amazing, but really rich, oily, intense, aromatic, some sort of spicy character, some really juicy, just yeah, they're wonderful drinks. And, you know, if you have the opportunity to see any sort of classic Breton and Normandoise Cedro, you should give it a go. There are a number of producers, especially in the Pacific Northwest

who did like a like a research trip over to over to Brittany Normandy a few years ago. You know, that there are producers in the USA who are making who are making keyed drinks and also a big shout out to the Walden Cider House in the Hudson Valley, which is where Angry Orchard, who are the USA's largest producer, this is where they get to make all their amazing, fun, creative, experimental stuff. My friend Ryan Burke is the head cider maker. And, you know, they've produced sensational keyed ciders over the years that have been that have won competitions. I'm a big fan of US cider. I'm drinking one right now. It's called it's from the artifact cider project who are in Massachusetts is called Wolf at the

Door, which is a really mega kind of hazy juice bomb with some sort of character in there. So yes, this French style cider, aka Cider Boucher, is sold in corked bottles like champagne is and it's the result of keving, allowing the cider's pectins and calcium to form a brown cap at the top. And that clarifies the juice and develops a nice slow fermentation and a sparkle. The process in French, by the way, is known as defecation, which let me tell you do not Google French defecation. No matter how many accents you copy and paste over the ease, just don't Google it. Don't Google it. Keving's fine. Let's change the subject. Can I toss a couple more questions at you? Keep them coming. Let's go.

Okay. Ali Vessels, first time question asker says, can you home brew apple cider? Is it harder or easier than brewing something like beer or mead? And Celia LeBont says, one of my favorite things in the fall is to pick up some local fresh pressed unpasteurized local cider and forget about it in the back of my fridge until it gets fizzy. It always ends up tasting better than anything I can find in stores. Is my fridge magic or is there something about the fermentation process or is there just something about home fermentation? Can you DIY cider or is it best left to professionals? You can DIY cider. The tricky bit, as we talked about before, is the same thing that people had three or four thousand years ago is converting your apples into the juice. You need this bit of

sort of kit and technology, you know, a mill and a press. And you can, and it has been done, basically, whack the apples with a very big pole in a bucket until they kind of go a bit mushy. And then you can buy these little sort of home presses like you would for making apple juice. And they're good fun, especially if you've got a big family or like a little sort of community group or neighborhood kind of thing. They're really, really good fun because you get everybody to bring the apples and you do it in one big go and it's kind of easy. But if you don't want to invest in the equipment, then, you know, you do have all these fantastic farms where you can purchase the unpasteurized, the still raw, live juice, which as your, as your caller industry described,

I don't think it was the magic of the fridge. It's the magic of fermentation has converted this juice into cider and maybe not in the most controlled kind of way, but obviously, hey, it kind of works. And, you know, let's talk about juice content. The reason why it tastes amazing probably is because it tasted, had a real intensity of flavor profile. Not all ciders that you get around the world are made from just apple juice. The majority of your mainstream ciders, big kind of store bought ciders, they will have, you know, they'll be fermented apple juice. But what often happens is that extra sugar gets added into the juice prior to fermentation. Remember, it's the sugar content that equates to the potential alcohol

content. If you add some extra sugar into your juice, you're going to get potential higher alcohol, let's say 10 or 12% ABV. And what happens then is you could then dilute that base cider with water. And hey, Presto, you could double the literal volume of cider that you've produced at the same alcohol level as what you would have had naturally for the price of some sugar and some water. And why do that? Of course, it's all about the dollar, right? This is all about, this is a very efficient way of making cider and a very, you know, a cheaper way of making cider. And I'm not, I'm not puritanical on this. I'm not holding a pitchfork and saying that every single cider must be made from just 100% apples, you know, nothing else can be done.

That's, that's not the attitude and approach that I have. But certainly, in the UK, the minimum juice content in cider sits at 35%. So the majority of the cider can be water. And for me, that's too far down the line. If the first ingredient on your list is not apple juice, is that a cider? And I would say for me, no. In the USA, it's 50%. And that's the level that I would advocate it being at. You know that you've got some integrity in there. So it just depends on what your kind of flavor profile is. For me, the most important thing is enabling the consumer to understand what's in the drink, how's it made, and let them make the decision on what kind of drink they're after. That makes tons of sense. Yes or no question from Emma Ross. Are there bug bits in my cider,

probably? Bug bits? Well, as in bits of bugs? It's a bug, you know, you squish, mush, and I'm thinking, yeah, it's got to be a couple of little tiny bugs in there. It depends on whether you're getting from your, you know, your professional cider maker, or you're going to see old Farmer Brown down the lane who's making old leg bender, you know. Don't worry about it. Gareth Askey asked, is cloudy apple cider the cider equivalent of orange juice with bits, different types of bits? But why is some cider cloudy? Is that the mother? First of all, I want to address the fact that his name is Gareth Askey, who's asking a question. That's a brilliant name. Mr. Askey, keep asking away, ask all the questions I've

thoroughly enjoyed that you've asked. Post fermentation, yeast and large chunks of apple bits will drop to the bottom, but you will still have with it within suspension some bits of pectin and some just like natural appley bits, a bit like natural bits from orange juice. What majority of makers will then do will put it through a filter, you know, just put it through something that just like the sieves out the chunkier bits of apple constituents. So the vast majority of ciders you get in the marketplace are like crystal clear. It's very easy to put through a filter. I've got nothing wrong with that. I don't think it's a bad thing at all. What I find interesting is when makers choose not to do that again, it's very much a modern thing of the last

50 years, the idea of instilling the clarity in there as a probably as a as a marker of sort of quality and cleanliness and professionalism moving away from that sort of more rustic and traditional kind of viewpoint. Certainly there's been a bit of a drive of again from a sort of commercial point of view makers using that as a way of bringing like a new product into the marketplace, right? We've got a cider which is just, you know, fizzy and then we've got like the sweeter version. What do we do now? Let's do the cloudy version. Yes, come on. This is all part of the amazing diversity that exists for cider that, you know, different ciders, different fruits, different varieties, different fermentation processes, vessels, but different consumers

on different occasions. Oh, well, I'm hoping from a little bit of filtration to flimflam, Robin Cohen wants to know, I was recently told that in times before refrigeration and indoor water, hard cider was given to the kids to drink. Is this flimflam? It's true. It is absolutely true. You know, in the same way that in various parts of certainly British history, the beer was was considerably safer than the drinking water. You know, we think about the state of the sewerage system or lack of sewerage system, especially as the population in as cities started to grow by having this fermentation process is amazing at killing off bugs and beasts. So even at relatively low alcohol levels, so it is genuinely true. In fact,

I'll have to remember the year. I think it's in the 15th century, maybe the 13th century, there's there is a record of babies being baptized inside it in the UK because the water quality was so poor. Actually, that was from last week. No, it's yeah. So, you know, that is absolutely true. Okay, two more questions. Sarah Tully says, I'm a cider girl born and raised English by birth and I now live in Canada, where luckily the cider industry has boomed in the last 10 years, probably because of you, Gabe. She says I've drank many a can of cider, but once in a blue moon, I get one that, well, smells like a fart or rotten egg, tastes almost as bad and is flat. Why does this happen? What is going on? So the the farty egginess is those are those are the

characters of these sulfide compounds. And so these these are natural compounds that are released by by yeast when they are not very happy stressed yeast. So this is normally a food issue. So they haven't got so the the yeast is converting the sugar into alcohol, but yeast has got to eat as well, right? So it needs to have these nutrients, it needs to have some nitrogen needs to have some B vitamins in order to easily function properly and convert all that sugar into alcohol. If it hasn't got that, sometimes there's a bit of a breakdown. Sometimes if if it's too hot, and then the process gets all a bit too much to the yeast, and you know, just throws a bit of a dirty protest basically, or sometimes if the temperature goes kind of like too cold, like partway through the

fermentation, it can stop and these sulfidey characters can remain. It is a bit of an issue. It doesn't need to happen. It's one of those things like like having vinegar, you know, within your cider, it's something that is easily averted. It doesn't need to happen, but but it is something that does that does come around. Maybe if it happens, you should just treat it like it was supposed to happen, make a wish, crack open a different bottle, you know, you could do that. You know, one of the things is that if that was a beer, consumers and the drinks trade have the confidence to know that's not right. Yeah. You know, what's would would get in touch with the with the brewery or they take it back to the bar. People don't know like is is is the cider

supposed to be like that. And so if they end up thinking, Oh, I think that is how it's supposed to taste. Man, cider smells of farts. That's bad. I therefore, I don't like cider. That's a really, really bad thing. So if you smell that, take it back to the bar and get another one. But make a wish and make a wish and make a wish. Obviously, consider it lucky. Sarah Hoover wants to know if I were to go to a store looking for the best possible cider, again, I'm going to editorialize that and say, I know it's objective, but what should Sarah look for any hidden info we should know about? So what I would say is just check out your local producers. There are there is over 1000 makers in the USA today. And in being made in basically every

single state, maybe not Alaska, I'm going to say, but everywhere else, you know, cider, please prove me wrong. Somebody that there is cider being made everywhere. Just go and seek out, go and seek out your local. But there are there are some of the best cider makers in the world within USA. You're based in in California, right? Is that correct? So you need to check out, you know, people like Tanaki cider who in Santa Cruz, people like tilted shed who are in Sonoma, absolutely fantastic, you know, makers there. And then as you get into the Pacific Northwest, people like Reverend Nats, then sort of get into Michigan, you've got people like Uncle John's hard cider in Pennsylvania, you've got Big Hills cider works and Plowman cider and, you know, New York,

Eves and Eden, also Eves are in sort of Finger Lakes area, Eden and Vermont, you know, we're talking about drinks that exuding all of the quality and elegance of wine. There's just there's just so many fantastic producers out there. So just go to the store and drink loads of cider, I think is what I'm trying to say. I will post links on my website, you sweet, thirsty people, or here's an idea, you could put on clothes and you could leave the house. You've got cider bars, we don't really have cider bars over, but almost every single like city has got a cider bar, you've got 101 tap house in LA, you've got the San Francisco cider house, Portland's got like five cider houses alone. It's crazy. If you're in DC, do head to Ancho. It's one of the best cider experiences

that you'll have, you know, anywhere, anywhere in the world. So it's not just that sort of at home thing. It's like getting out there and sort of seeking it in any city that you are. It's an awesome experience. What about the last question I always ask? What about the worst thing about cider? It can't all be roses. What sucks? That there is amongst, maybe amongst amongst the community of a feeling of whether it be inferiority to other drinks, or maybe in some instances, a little bit of gatekeeping around. So like cider can only be this and we can never kind of change. It's like, you know, come on people, like just like be open to the opportunity. And I really, I use the word opportunity a lot because because I see it and that there are so many consumers

today who who are interested in so many different types of drinks, we're less sort of like siloed in terms of, well, I'm just a beer drink or I'm just a wine drink or I'm just a spirits drinker. It's like, I know you could be interested in interesting drinks and cider very much sits within that sort of spectrum and with that opportunity. And so the thing that annoys me the most is that cider doesn't have the reputational understanding that I think it deserves. But I have considerable faith that we will get there. I think that you are doing all of the work to get us there. I'm calling it now. Ciders, Ciders it man. That's hot. What about your favorite favorite thing about cider? Can you even name one thing? I suppose there's two things, which I know is not

one thing. But partly it's the people, it's the community element. There is a community of cider people. And in a UK context, we got together for the first time just at the weekend for this event called the Bristol Cider Salon, which I sort of helped to co-organized along with the wonderful Martin Barclay from Pilton Cider and Tom Oliver from Oliver Cider and Perry. And it was in the city of Bristol, which I live just outside of in the southwest of England, real heartland area. And it was makers, enthusiasts and drinkers all getting together, sharing some drinks. And it's a really cool thing. It's something that we all sort of share. It's something that we're passionate about. Cider people are just like quite nice people and

interesting people. So there's definitely this, there's this community, whether it be cider, but also, again, coming back to the sense of place and the geographical community, I love the fact that there's makers in the area that I'm from. And there's a very apple variety called the Democrat, a cider apple variety. And I made 10 liters of Democrat not last year, two years ago. And I think it tastes all right. It's a little bit it's a little bit farmy on the nose, entered into a competition, didn't get a medal, not bitter, not bitter much. But, you know, ultimately, I don't care, it doesn't matter. I just feel so grateful that here is something that apple variety was being recorded as being an awesome

apple 500 years ago. And I know that the like my grandad used to make, you know, cider and peri on this on this farm when my mom grew up. And it's not in the family anymore. But, you know, I made a peri from the same tree that I know that he would have done and he died before I was born. And there's nothing sad about this other than just like, it's just awesome that I have this have this connection through this through this action. I feel slightly responsible, but more just kind of celebratory. So it's just, it's just something that really gets into your bones, I think. Wow, that's really amazing. You give so much context to cider. And I love that that is one way for other people to appreciate it as well. It's not just something that tastes good,

that you sit around and drink, or if you've had a hard day, and you absolutely need this to unwind. It's not, it's not about that. And I love that that's kind of the message that you're, you're spreading is that cider really is an art to be enjoyed, you know. Absolutely. So ask dry experts, scrumpy questions, because earnestly, they are just bubbly fonts of knowledge and passion. And one day, we're all going to be eaten by worms anyway. So do whatever you want. Learn what you want. Find out more about Gabe Cook at TheCiderologist.com naturally. You can look for him on social media as The Ciderologist. Pick up his books, Ciderology is his first one. And then he just released Modern British Ciders. And his podcast is Neutral

Cider Hotel, A Donation Went to Tiny Changes. All those links are in the show notes. If you liked this episode, send it to a friend. There are a bunch more links at alleyward.com slash ology slash ciderology. We are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at alleyward, just one L in my name on Instagram and Twitter. Come be our friends. Thank you to longtime friend Aaron Talbert, who is the admin on the ologies podcast Facebook group, Full of Great People, ologiesmerch.com is where to go to get t-shirts and totes and hoodies and masks and all that stuff. And that is handled by Sisters, Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Fultes of the comedy podcast. You are that. Emily White of the Wardery makes all of our transcripts. She's great. She's available for

hire if you need transcripts or anything. Bleeping is done by Caleb Patton. And bleeped episodes and transcripts are available at alleyward.com slash ologies slash extras. There's a link in the show notes. Thank you, of course, to Noel Dilworth and Susan Hale for the ologies business they do behind the scenes and social media help. And of course, to the incomparable Jared Sleeper, who is both sweet and dry and a bit scrumpy. And to Zeke Rodriguez-Thomas and Stephen Ray Morris, who both helped with small ologies episodes. More of those are coming soon. Thank you to Nick Thorburn, who wrote and performed the theme music. And happy belated birthday to Dr. Mike Natter, also was my pops birthday last week. If you stick around, I burden you with a secret from

my dark, deep soul. Okay, this week's secret was I was out of underwear because laundry just does not do itself. And it's been a busy week. And then I found a new pack of undies in the linen closet. And I was like, yes, I totally forgot I bought them. And I'm going to tell you something. I don't always wash things before I wear them. Jared is horrified at this. He washes everything before it touches his body. But I'm like, it's not like someone in the factory wore them around all day. I was like, you know, chemicals. I don't care. I don't care. I don't know if wearing clothes without washing them first is like cool and chill of me because I don't care or if it's repulsive, but it hasn't killed me yet. And I've got bigger fish to fry. Okay, bye.

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