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Craft Hard Cider Is On A Roll. How Ya Like Them Apples?
Hard cider is having a hot moment. Hotter still, if it's locally made and distributed. Over the past four years, the number of cideries across the country has doubled, from 400 to 800, according to The Cyder Market LLC, a small business that keeps statistics on the cider industry. [...] Wine has long had its connoisseurs. With the rise of the craft beer movement, drinkers have learned to appreciate the nuances of that brewed beverage, too. But cider, in many drinkers' imagination, remains an unrefined, blandly sweet drink, says Johnson. The reality is far different, he says.
[...] Hard cider's history in the U.S. goes all the way back to the Founding Fathers. During the American Revolution, many landowners had apple orchards and made homemade fermented cider using the cider apples that grew in their backyard, says Michelle McGrath, executive director of the U.S. Cider Makers Association. "Prohibition came and most of the cider apple trees were cut down in this country. But now, it's having a renaissance," she says. "It's coming back really strongly; it's taking market share from beer."
Nielsen's research says sales for regional cider are up 35.6 percent. McGrath says this is because local cideries have more varieties of cider that appeal to more sophisticated palates. In other words, cider seems to be going through what wine and beer went through years ago: people moving from drinking big brands to being more discerning, niche, and sometimes downright persnickety.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2017, @04:33PM (4 children)
Applejack is the correct term for hard cider that has undergone the ice process.
Maybe in your neck of the woods they use the same term for simple hard cider, but I believe this is sloppy slang and not historical usage.
Please see:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applejack_(drink) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:13PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2017, @08:26PM (2 children)
In places where it reliably gets cold enough outside to pull the ice distillation trick, I have never heard "applejack" refer to anything but ice distilled cider.
But, we are talking regional usage of a word here, which can vary. If you look at the wikipedia article, it says that *historically* applejack referred to ice distilled cider, so if we have to go with which usage is "correct", I would have to say that using applejack to mean ice distilled cider is "more correct."
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday December 06 2017, @10:33PM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2017, @02:14AM
Maybe the region I am familiar with (New England) is more alkie than yours. ;-)