We’ve got some local Real Cider (AKA Cyder) going out to one of our clients this week so I thought we should quickly explain the differences here:
As someone who grew up amongst Kentish apple orchards, I’ve grown up with proper apple juice being readily available and once I came of age, Cyder was really the only thing on offer. It wasn’t until I went to university that I experienced a fizzy cider, and to tell you the truth it still doesn’t sit right with me. My local cider producer doesn’t offer anything below 7% ABV, so the watery, fizzy concoction you get in most bars baffled me; until, that is, I did some research and found that they’re two completely different products.
The best analogy I’ve come across to describe the difference is that of olive oil. You get olive oil, and then you get ‘extra virgin’ olive oil. Extra virgin is pressed straight from the raw olives, whereas standard olive oil is often second or third pressing and produces a taste with much less flavour than the product produced straight from the first pressing.
In this context, Cyder is extra virgin olive oil. It is produced by taking loads of apples (we’ll get onto the difference between Cyder apples and eating apples in a later post), smashing them up into a pulp, then pressing their juice out and leaving this to ferment.
Ciders are produced by taking the leftover pulp, which has had the juice squeezed out from Cyder production, then mixing this with water and leaving it to ferment. The resulting drink has much less taste and much less alcohol content, as its main ingredient is really water. Ciders were originally popularised as a cheap and easy-to-brew alternative to beer, in the days when water was not always drinkable
Fun Fact: Apples actually contain their own yeasts. This is why foraging animals can get drunk from eating them; they ferment and produce alcohol whilst on the floor of the orchard. These yeast strains create a lot of the flavour in drinks, and so the range of tasting notes found in Real Cider varies massively. These yeasts are also all unique to the area, so that each area will have it’s own unique taste. That is why there is some conflict between Somerset and Kent Cyder producers; there are totally different tasting notes produced by the local yeasts, and whatever you’ve been brought up on is what you’re going to prefer.
That being said, a good Cyder is a good Cyder, regardless of where it comes from (in this humble business owners opinion).