Down to prohibition. For a time you couldn't legally sell alcohol so apple juice was sold under the name cider. Sometimes with handy instructions on how not to store it to avoid it fermenting into alcohol. Then, by the time restrictions were lifted, cider just meant apple juice as far as America was concerned.
Ot can't have been very strong. You need yeast really to make it formant, and I can't imagine that that was present in the drink.
I used to have a mate that would do this sort of thing, but he also used to argue that if you let cheese go mouldy it's blue cheese. So I never really used to taste his products.
Johnny Appleseed wasn't planting edible apples, he was sowing seeds for a variety that tasted absolutely terrible, but was the best for alcoholic cider. What other country has a folk hero whose mission in life was making sure the next generation never ran out of alcoholic cider?
As I expanded on in an post higher up, here in Portugal cider is mainly sweetened apple juice with a little bit of alcohol: basically an alchopop.
It's probably due to how the local taste in many things tends a lot toward the sweet side (even though coffee here is usually a tiny cup of expresso, it comes with 10g packets of sugar, and unsurprisingly 10% of the population has Type II diabetes) and no tradition at all of brewing cider.
I wouldn't be surprised if in other countries without a tradition of brewing cider the thing also tends towards being some kind of alcoholic apple juice.
As a Frenchman from Normandie, and an uncle producing alcoholic cider, I was always very confused when ordering cider at restaurants. Hard cider is the booze one.
I envy you your access to real cider. About 10 years ago we could get it in Denmark, there would be a selection of ciders, next to craft beer in most supermarkets. Now the only cider you can get is the sweet 0.5% alcohol crap that the swedes make or carbonated vodka with fruit flavor.
But, in this sense, she's almost certainly referring to mulled cider, which is pretty much exclusively made with the hard stuff, with the some additional flavors and spices, and likely spiked as well.
My personal favorite recipe involves hard cider, cranberry juice, spices, and then spiked with rum.
It's much more fall feeling and alcoholic than either cider alone.
Yeah, you'll usually see that referred to as "hard cider" here. Though, it's worth pointing out that even American hard ciders are sickeningly sweet. There's a pub near me that has Strongbow, and I've become a big fan.
Yeah most of the popular brands you see are way too sweet. I do love me a nice dry/crisp hard ciderr though. My all time favorite is Woodchuck's Granny Smith flavor.
I've also had a pear cider which was super light and crisp. I think it was Wyders on draft.
Blackbird Cider Works in Buffalo, NY makes some good dry & semi-dry ciders. They're in grocery stores all over western New York, but not elsewhere (too small). There are others who make nice ciders elsewhere, but none of the big national chains do.
Yea, I was going to ask about this. I'd heard people mention cider on US TV and it didn't seem like it was alcoholic, with kids drinking it etc. The non alcoholic version sounds shit tbh.
The kind that’s just heated apple juice is gross but if you throw unfiltered apple juice into a crock pot, toss in half an orange spiked with cloves, and a cinnamon stick or two it becomes delicious pretty quickly. You can always add a shot of rum if you need it to be alcoholic. The citrus really makes it. Pineapple juice is a great addition too.
I lived in the UK for over a decade and really miss the proper British cider, made with the right kind of apple and without added crap.
Were I am now (Portugal) cider is basically an alchopop made of a little bit of fermented apple juice, plain apple juice, water and sugar - so sweet with a bit of alcohol - that that's including all the international brands like Strongbow (which in their local version are the same crap alcoholic fruit juice as the rest).
Only good cider I can buy around here is french organic cider (the cider from the Asturias in Spain is also the proper stuff, but you can't really find it here).
Buy a juicer, put a whole-ass bag of apples through that fucker, plus a knob of ginger. Simmer that shit in a pot with a few cinnamon sticks and whole cloves.
You can thank me later.
Also if you do actually do this and its your first experience juicing: clean your juicer immediately! Im serious, clean that shit while the cider is simmering. If you let it sit out 'til the next day you WILL regret it.
Apple cider is seasonal because it relies on apple harvesting, but there is no reason to not have pumpkin spice any time of year except for artificial scarcity. The same with eggnog except people don't like eggnog much to begin with.
But apples are available year round and cider is a great storage method. It is available year round. Preferences and market drivers cause seasonal supply increases.
Actual eggnog is an affront in the fact of god, but the carton of custard flavored milkshake that Southern Comfort sells every year is pretty excellent. I'm led to believe you can even put booze in it.
Asterisk: The beverage you're talking about (cider) is effectively apple wine and can be stored and maintained in pretty much the exact way any other wine can.
When you hear most modern Americans say "apple cider" they mean unfiltered, unclarified fresh apple juice, which is sold fresh in the mid-fall, kept refrigerated because it isn't shelf stable, and often served hot and spiced.
You can thank the temperance movement for the confusion.
Ok, now same question but for the Christmas lebkuchen and cinnamon stars and all the stuff I would stuff myself with all year round if it was available.
Fun fact. American folk legend Johnny Appleseed was actually a very successful businessman. Rather than planting apple trees randomly, he founded tree nurseries for cider production. He wore pauper's clothes because he wanted to, not because he was some vagabond.
I picked a half gallon of it up recently. It's decent and not overpowering but I don't anticipate picking it up again if regular cider is still available.
It's the spices often used in pumpkin pie and other pumpkin dishes. According to the internet, it's a combination of "cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves".
Try making a mixed drink with whiskey and the spices that make up the spice blend. It's the same stuff that most Americans would add to make hot apple cider, so not really all that different except without the sugar from the apple cider.
A little cinnamon, a little allspice, some nutmeg, maybe a little clove... Baby you got yourself a whiskey stew!
Remember, friends don't let friends ruin unpasteurized cider by sticking it on a stove and spicing the hell out of it. Only do that with pasteurized cider; it was already ruined when you bought it.
Or are you asking about sanitation? I'm using the word "pasteurization" colloquially to mean "heat pasteurization". UV-treated ciders typically still retain the flavor that heat pasteurization destroys, unless the brand just happens to suck regardless.
I urge you to please actually read a nutritional science book or watch someone like Renaissance Periodization with Dr. Mike Israetel on this. Sugar is not 'unhealthy'. Unrestricted and unmarked caloric intakes from foods including sugars and fats are. Any food source that isn't outright toxic on its own is healthy enough that your body can make use of it. The only people that actively should fear sugar are diabetic.