#PickCider Review Wild Hare Hard Cider's Hopscotch, & I'm off to judge cider again!

Its time to start thinking about how to #pickcider for Thanksgiving, and I wanted to challenge myself to think about taking this really delicious easy pairing and give it a fun challenge. I want to find out if a hopped cider can work for the Thanksgiving meal, so I'm trying Hopscotch by Wild Hare Ciders out of Virginia.

Based on the way that Wild Hare introduces themselves, I can see that they also care about variety and challenge in their ciders. This is what Wild Hare says by way of introduction, “From classic dry ciders to more modern ciders infused with hops and herbs, we craft cider with a variety of personalities. Throughout the year we will have our standard offerings, and also seasonal batches and experimental flavors. Come in to find the cider that is the perfect match for you”.

I also found out online that this micro Virginia cidery sources apples from the Shenandoah Valley. They pride themselves on producing ciders different from folks will find on grocery store shelves. This boutique micro-cidery talk about both modern fermentation techniques and the long history of cider. The founder is Jay Clement, and the cidermaker is Nathan Briggs. They do have a tasting room where visitors can try their current selections.

Find out more on the web at: http://wildharecider.com

Today's cider is their Hopscotch; it's label describes it as “a lightly dry-hopped cider.” This grammar nerd found that an interesting order of modifiers. In the end it looks like the level of hopping will be light and the method of hopping is dry hopping, but we'll see whether or not tasting the cider bears this out. As for a Thanksgiving pairing, I tend to think the fresh lightness of a hopped cider, provided it is a balanced beverage, would complement many traditional Thanksgiving side dishes, including sweet potatoes, carrots, and brussels sprouts.

The full official description reads,

This small batch cider gives a nod to beer making and does so by dry hopping a special blend of finished cider. With a variety of aroma hops, the process imparts a floral & citrus aroma, creating a truly unique product that is not bitter, but has the spirit to stand up to beer and wine.

This cider is a 2017 GLINTCAP Bronze medalist. Its ABV is 6.9%

What I don't know about Wildhare Cider's Hopscotch is much about the apple varieties used to make it. But the best way to find out more about this cider will be to taste it.

Appearance: hazy, vibrant straw, no visible bubbles

This definitely looks like a hopped cider. They are more likely to be hazy and appear less bubbly. 

Aromas: mildly hoppy, sweet, fruity, lychee

I'm digging the mildly hoppy cider aroma; its pleasing and mellow. The notes are sweet fruity with lots of lychee smell. I'm anticipating a bright cider based on these smells.

Sweetness/dryness: off dry

You could call this cider medium dry or more precisely off dry. The sweetness is balanced by acidity and fruitiness. Yes, I'd definitely call this balanced. The Hopscotch tastes less sweet than it smells.

Flavors and drinking experience: high acid, green fruit, spicy,

This cider tastes like green or light fruits: pears, lychee, and golden apples. I'd say its surprisingly less sweet than I expected based on the aromas. The Hopscotch offers up plentiful acid and a very nice amount of hop flavor. There are no tannins to speak of.

I found its light body and medium sparkle very appealing. One of the more exciting flavor notes for me in this cider is the subtle spiciness. The hops are indeed aromatic hops but there's just enough bitterness to remind me of a fresh tonic with apple and Quinine. Its pleasing and not as cooling and summery as some hopped ciders. I do think it would pair well with some vegetable sides for Thanksgiving.

Also, I will be judging at the Pennsylvania State Farm Products Show (or just the PA Farm Show) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania later this month. And its not too late to enter!

Their cider entries must arrive by November 17th, so the deadline is coming up very soon. Read more here: http://www.farmshow.pa.gov/exhibit/rules-regulations/Pages/default.aspx

This is a first year for this competition, so I’m super excited to be judging. 

Cider Review: Bulwark Traditional Craft Cider Original

The time has come to confess. I'm itching for travel. Many of my friends have camped, flown, or driven out to adventure in the last few months, while I've mostly stayed put. Today though I have a cider that traveled for me. What a fun way to taste another cider making tradition and another place, in this case I'll vicariously experience Nova Scotia through Bulwark Cider's Original.

Bulwark is appearing in this blog for the first time today. My friend Eric (of CiderGuide) sent me a bottle after I helped him out. Thank you, Eric! and this isn't one I would ordinarily be able to find easily. Bulwark produces cider in Nova Scotia, where they are affiliated with a winery. On the website, I read about their “5 Signature Apple Blend” including, Macintosh, Cortland, Russet, Honeycrisp, and Northern Spy. These are eating apples, but Northern Spy goes into a number of my favorite ciders. 

You can find out much more about Bulwark Cider on their website: https://bulwarkcider.com/

Or visit their Facebook page to see what's happening: https://www.facebook.com/bulwarkcider/

One reason to visit the website is to see what Bulwark says about sweetness and to check out their really great graphic that lays out the relative acidity, tannins, and sweetness of each of their ciders in one great graphic. (https://bulwarkcider.com/ciders)

About the Original, I'll let Bulwark introduce it.

Our signature cider, Bulwark Original, is a hand-crafted traditional cider, which is dry, crisp, and refreshing. 

It has a faint hint of spice followed by the Bulwark Original signature flavour that is achieved through our careful blending of five varieties of freshly-pressed Nova Scotia apples grown in the famed Annapolis Valley. 

The dry start is quite complex without the intense sharpness often associated with many traditional dry ciders. It moves quickly from dry to an almost wine-like and slightly mineral fruitiness before relaxing into a nutty floral finish. Great on its own or on ice!

Everyone knows how I feel about ice, but the rest of this is plenty intriguing.

Appearance: Brilliant, medium straw, lots of small visible bubbles

This cider looks fairly traditional, nice medium straw color, great clarity and some real bubble action. The picture fails to show the clarity because of the glass fogging, but its there.

Aromas: vinous, apple, plum, cold

What an interesting range of aromas, I get apples, plums, grapes, and some sense of cold. There's something rocky and mineral about the smell. The fermentation notes remind me specifically of wine, but there's also something a bit blunt in the background that's hard to describe.

Sweetness/dryness: semi-dry

The Original initially tastes sweeter than I expected, but that balances out quickly. It doesn't have a sweet finish. 

Flavors and drinking experience: Floral, spicy, caramel, high acid

The cider offers up high acid without necessarily being tart. There's a fermented flavor and a concentration of flavor that are unusual.

I really enjoy the Bulwark Original's caramel richness, particularly because it is balanced by chilled stone fruits. There's some spicy cooked apple notes as well. Its Floral, warm, and like the description promises, nutty. That's a lot going on, though the cider is not mediated with flashy additives, its different.

Overall, the cider has medium body, medium bubble and a clean fermentation, but one that still imparts character to the finished drink. The Bulwark is quite satisfying, and I love the subtle ways in which it surprised me. 

CiderCon 2015: Sensory Analysis Training by Charles McGonegal and Gary Awdey

CiderCon 2015 was a huge and wonderful experience. Rather than attempting to give an overview, I'm going to present my experience chronologically through my impressions of various sessions. That way, I can present the information and the experience fully without trying to condense everthing into a post or two. But, since I am posting about how I interpreted the conference and material, this posts will be absolutely as subjective and opinionated as my cider reviews, but this time you'll get the presenters' wonderful interesting information primarily, but seasoned with commentary by yours truly.

February 3rd (Day 1) Sensory Analysis Training

 It would be easy to think that tasting cider is all fun and games. I can assure you that it is not. Some cider experiences are more like taking a chance with Bernie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans from the Harry Potter universe than like sitting down at your favorite taproom.

This presentation is one that I did in a very similar format for GLINTCAP last year, but it is also one that everyone can always stand to review. How it works is this; Charles McGonegal and Gary Awdey start with one base cider and add minute amounts of various substances to subtly (or not so subtly) alter the cider’s taste, mouthfeel, or aroma in ways that highlight different cider styles and commonly occurring cider flaws. They've put tons and tons of work into this presentation and it shows.

The first time I worked my way through this presentation, Gary donated a generous amount of one of his semi-dry ciders (I think). This time we started with this year’s Appeltreow Barnswallow a draft style New World Style Cider (to use the lingo of GLINTCAP, Charles, and Gary). It has a mild 5.5% ABV and comes from a blend of dessert fruit. To me, it smells sweet and the flavors give me impressions of briskness, freshness, and semi-sweetness. The apples involved include Cortland, Ida Red, and Red Delicious.

Our speakers opened with a discussion of the actual limits of taste, the old chesnut that we can only taste approximately six flavors with our tongues. They spoke of using both aroma and mouthfeel (often described as texture) to express more fully the complete experience of drinking a cider.

Caveat: I’m not going to post an equal verbose blow-by-blow of each sample, but I will highlight a few that were particularly enlightening to me because I encounter them in my cider experiences regularly, or because they stood out for some other quality. Like being horrible.

Part 1. Texture and Mouthfeel

Sample 1 was tremendously useful. The mysterious addition made the cider smell sharper and increased the stone and mineral elements of the aroma. For me particularly, it had that slightly bleachy note that I taste in ciders quite regularly. Not a good thing. The mouthfeel seemed thin to me. The addition, as it turns out, was malic acid. Malic acid cuts viscosity, so it makes sense to think of the mouthfeel as thinner. Now, I will associate that bleach note with malic acid and know to pay more attention to texture when it comes up.

Sample 2 didn’t strike me particularly. It tasted pricklier and had carbonic acid.

Sample 3 smells more dessert-like and richer. Folks around the room noticed that it offered a mild warmth, longer finish, as well as richness and astringence. This was a simple addition of one more percentage of ABV from an unflavored alcohol source. Notable to me because ciders vary so much in ABV, and I want to think intelligently about how alcohol level and drinking experience interact.

Sample 4 tasted great to me at first. It was the kind of sweetness that can be incredibly pleasing in cider. It tasted like warm ripe apples. But after two sips, it didn’t taste very different. My expectations adapted quickly. This addition turns out to be not very appley at all, but rather .75% sucrose from beet sugar. As McGonegal says, there are two easy ways to increase thickness or richness of mouthfeel, adding either alcohol or sugar, and now we’ve tasted both.

Sample 5 struck me as funny, because I remember tasting it at the GLINTCAP presentation and at this one, but it tasted very different. Perhaps this is a difference in how the additive played against the two different base ciders. Or perhaps my tastes were picking things up differently. At GLINTCAP, I loved it. I remember it was my favorite additive of the entire presentation. The increased bitterness was just bliss to me. This time it also tasted more sour as well as more bitter and the flavors didn’t meld right to me. The additive was 10 ml of quinine; its goal to add bitterness without adding astringence.

Sample 6: super bitter and mega astringence. The aroma appears reduced but the finish is stretched. It hits the tongue in a velvety way and somehow made many folks notice the sides of their tongues. The speakers developed a way to add apple-based polyphenols through apple vitamins. This is a way folks sometimes fake tannins, but the speakers had only harsh words for this phenomenon.

Part 2 Aromas

Sample 7 normal levels of Ethyl Acetate. It smelled like an unsubtle blast of fresh fresh fresh apples and a greenness that is hard to fully explain. This is a normal in some quantities but can become a real problem it too present.

Sample 8 tasted strongly and harshly of sour strawberry juiciness. It reminded me of acetone better known in my world as fingernail polish remover. This is a higher concentration of the same Ethyl Acetate as in sample 7 with the emphasis that many qualities can be acceptable or even positive at low levels but become problematic and unpleasant at higher levels.

Sample 9 reminded me of those super natural hippie marshmallows from fancy stores. Many other folks mentioned tasting banana. The additive was Acetaldehyde which can serve as a sign of cider sickness.

Sample 10 Yeasty, cheesy, butterscotch, milky, Caramel. Diacetyl. Either I've gotten more sensitive to buttery popcorn flaw over this past year, or the sample is different. Beer folks tend to be more sensitive to this flaw and reject it harshly, whereas in cider in small amounts it is considered neutral. Only in higher levels is it unambiguously a flaw.

Sample 11 Baby powder, fruit, blankness, sweet sweet weirdness. Fusel Esters. Rose banana geranium, yeast derived flavors.Some folks like it, others (like me) do not.

Sample 12 Super meaty, bacon, smoky, beef jerky, 3 phenolics. Different groups of phenolics smell like different things including mothballs, smoky ham, and horseblanket or barn. In many english ciders this is a feature of maturation. This is very difficult to control but a dangerous one because some variants are quite tasty and desirable but others are simply foul. Chlorogenic and lacto bacillus but again not easy to control.

Sample 13 Diaper, rotten pear. sweet wood, tastes super acidic. Somehow both greenly under-ripe and tropical. This is "red and green apple flavor" from commercial fruit oils. "natural" flavors are anything but savory, natural, or appealing when we research them.

Sample 14 (added by each taster with a tiny straw) Tannin tea astringent oak. flavor overlay. This is oak and apple brandy. Very pleasant.

No sample 15. Ha! We escaped this time. This slot is usually reserved for mouse flaw.  This one is legendarily weird because of how differently people taste it and because of how it really can appear and disappear. Perceiving this flaw is dependent on the Ph in one's mouth; it has no aroma. There is one thing that consistently works to make the flaw apparent to more people: swirling baking soda water in the mouth makes it more commonly perceivable. I am fairly sensitive to it, and I hate it. It really does bring up musty mousecage, dirty straw, wet fur, or even like weird musty bad flour.

Sample 16 sweet, extra astringent, kind of bleachy again, burnt matches, 80/ppm added 50 more sulfites. This is a really common one even in decent commercial ciders.

Sample 17 Forgive my french, but this one struck most everyone as cat piss. Sulfides: diethyl di sulfide. no H2S. Low nitrogen. It could also be described as burnt rubber, rotten onion, So unbelievably gross. Don't try this one at home, kids.

Very interesting, but a nearly overwhelming experience, even the second time around. I highly recommend taking this if you ever get the chance; it works wonders for a bit of calibration and ways to articulate what you're experiencing in aroma, mouthfeel, or flavor. Thanks again to Charles and Gary for this extremely valuable service to the cider community.