wherein Liz reviews some hard ciders, because why not

[edenfalling]

A post apropos nothing in particular:

I don't like beer.

I never have, and I am pretty sure I never will.

When Nick and I were kids, our parents used to let us try tiny sips of whatever alcoholic beverage they were drinking with dinner -- basically, we got a clean teaspoon from the kitchen and they'd measure out a spoonful as a sample -- and while I thought red and white wines were a bit odd (and Mom's occasional Black Russian and Dad's occasional brandy or other fancy liqueur were a bit odd and also bitey), my invariable reaction to beer samples was "BLEUGH!!!" When I was older, I tried beer under what are probably the most favorable circumstances possible: a good German beer, fresh and cool, after I'd been walking for several hours on a hot summer day. At which point my reaction improved from "BLEUGH!!!" to "...mneh." I figure that there is no real point in experimenting further, though I do try a sip every few years just to confirm that yeah, still "BLEUGH!!!" (Or, on very good days, just "Bleugh!!" Which is still emphatic enough for me.)

I do like wine! But wine is often tragically expensive, as are hard liquors, and sometimes I want a drink with somewhat less alcohol by volume so I can get more liquid in with my mind-altering chemicals.

The solution? Hard cider!

Hard cider is lovely (except when people try to make it taste more like beer by adding hops to it -- and before anyone pipes up, no, hops are not the whole reason I object to beer; it's the fundamental beeriness of beer that I dislike, though the hops certainly don't help anything) and it's been experiencing a great resurgence in America over the past ten or twenty years. I first encountered hard cider as a specialty thing bought in wine-sized bottles from a cidery that was part of the Cayuga Lake Wine Trail. That was circa 2005. These days, I can buy six-packs or twelve-packs of hard cider at my local supermarket. It's WONDERFUL.

I mention this because a newish development in the hard cider world is rosé ciders. I think this started as a way to ride the coattails of the slightly less newish dry rosé wine movement (which I also like a lot, FYI; I like rosé as a flavor but traditional rosés are often undrinkably sweet) but it has turned into a Thing in its own right.

I tend to drink Angry Orchard ciders because it's always a bit of gamble trying new things and also I don't like thinking in supermarkets (my goal is to buy what I need and get out before I get distracted), but Angry Orchard Rosé is often sold out on my shopping days. So I've been experimenting a bit with some other brands.

The two I've tried so far are Crispin and Beak & Skiff 1911 Established.

Angry Orchard Rosé is 5.5% alcohol by volume, and a nice dark salmony pink. I like it because it's less sweet than a lot of hard ciders, but without that sort of... hmmm... thin, scrapey edge a lot of drier ciders get? It's still quite full-bodied, which is good. I usually buy the 12oz glass bottles.

Crispin Rosé is 5% ABV, and noticeably paler than Angry Orchard. It's also significantly drier in taste, and I find that it is best drunk with one or two ice cubes in the glass. (It comes in 12oz cans, and so is best poured into a glass. Drinking cider from a metal can leads to weird undertastes.) Crispin apparently mixes pear juice in with apple juice when fermenting ciders, and their rosé also contains rose petals and hibiscus, which seems a bit fancypants to me, but hey, the ability to get a bit fancypants is a sign of a healthy industry, so.

Beak & Skiff 1911 Established Rosé is 6.7% ABV (edging toward apple wine, tbh). As with Angry Orchard, it's a very full-bodied drink -- just enough so, I think, to counter the relative sweetness -- still less sweet than a properly sweet hard cider, but even so. It comes in 16oz cans and is consequently a bit dangerous, due to both the increased ABV and the increased portion size.

In conclusion, the Angry Orchard and Crispin rosé hard ciders are best for accompanying meals, while the 1911 Established rosé hard cider is best for drinking on a hot summer afternoon.

But they are all delicious. :)

(Also, it's annoying to have to keep copypasting an é character from a Word document, since I can't seem to type one in Chrome. BLEUGH!)

Comments

[tielan]

Mmm, cider. Except that we have no cider in the house. This does not preclude me from going out to get cider (but we don't have many options for cider), however we don't have a lot of choice in your standard shops around here.

I suppose I could try the local ALDI which has an alcohol section.

[edenfalling]

I definitely recommend acquiring and drinking some cider. :)

[branchandroot]

Yes! Angry Orchard Rosé is my go-to summer cider. So tasty.

I used to get a variety pack of Woodchuck once a year, when they released the seasonal case, but I haven't been able to find that lately.

[edenfalling]

Variety packs are a nice way to try new things without the commitment of "but I have five more bottles of this!" if it turns out you dislike a particular option. But they seem to have become a bit thinner on the ground in the past couple years -- even the ones I have seen have been 3 bottles each of four flavors instead of 2 bottles each of six flavors. *sigh*

[mindstalk]

If your thoughts about cider are "not sweet enough" or "I would like to feel a sugary coating on my teeth", I recommend Downeast cider. :)

[edenfalling]

Nah, I actually like a drier cider. It's just that dry alcoholic beverages (and this is true for wines as well) often lose some of their flavoring chemicals as they lose sugar molecules, and can wind up tasting kind of thin. My ideal cider is mid-dry and full-flavored -- I want to be able to taste the apples without feeling like someone is smacking me in the face with a sugar bowl.

[krait]

Interesting! This is a subject about which I know nothing, because my reaction to every alcoholic beverage I've ever tried has been "Bleugh!!" (Aside from flavouring applications such as a tablespoon of Kahlua in tiramisu, or a splash of mirin in stir fry.)

Things in metal cans do taste funny sometimes! And I particularly feel the frustration of copy-pasting specialty characters, because I'm on a Tolkien kick lately and it's rife with them: Fëanáro, Ñolofinwë, Míriel Þerinde...

[edenfalling]

Some people have that reaction to alcohol! I am not sure what the genetic or epigenetic cause is, but it is a known thing.

Metal cans are so convenient, but they do add weird undertastes to their contents, and particularly so if you drink directly from the can instead of pouring the contents into a less chemically reactive container.

This is what comes of having a historical linguist as the source of one's canon. They are far too prone to toss in weird typographical characters because they want to be precise about pronunciation. *wry*

[krait]

Too true. :D My advice: never get involved with a canon whose author is an even bigger language nerd than you are.

(Obviously this isn't advice that I intend to follow, but that's my advice!)

I seem to be magnetically attracted to canons where every character has 59 names, too, which would be really entertaining if I were watching somebody else deal with it. Let me tell you about Homestuck my fave, *deep breath* Nelyafinwë "Nelyo" Maitimo Maedhros (MaeðroÞ) Russandol "Russo" Fëanárion (Fëanorion), Crown Prince of the Ñoldor!

[edenfalling]

Hey, he was High King too for a little bit! ...And what title do you give to a person who's abdicated the throne on behalf of both himself and his entire family branch? Would he still count as a prince, or would he just be lord, or what? (This is not helped by elvish attitudes toward titles being awfully vague in the first place.)

[krait]

Well, if you ship him with Fingon then I suppose he's Consort to the High King. :D

(And then Consort Dowager?) :P

But I think post-abdication his title is Lord of the House of Fëanor, and later Lord of Himring.

[edenfalling]

I think the order would be Dowager Consort, wouldn't it?

This is the problem with elves and titles. Your only options are king, prince, or lord -- there's no gradation whatsoever aside from the "high king" thing once some of the Beleriand Noldor establish semi-independent kingdoms. I'm not even sure they have military titles like general or whatnot.

[krait]

Wouldn't he only be Dowager Consort after the Nirnaeth?

I have always wondered about the military titles, particularly! It seems an odd omission.

Although in Maedhros's case I can absolutely see him refusing or obfuscating any title Fingon tries to give him for political reasons, namely "nobody else fighting for you wants to address me as 'General' or as 'Prince' and you aren't going to waste goodwill trying to make them, Fingon. Call me 'lord of the Marches' and don't mention the land grant; it'll only make them easier to deal with if they think it's a courtesy title." :P

[edenfalling]

Yes! If you're dealing with groups of people larger than a certain size, you need some kind of rank signifiers -- preferably visual as well as linguistic. This could be as simple as handing out a particular colored ribbon to tie in your hair and calling your officer types "staff-people," but you need SOMETHING to organize around. You can use titles of nobility for that in a pinch, but to have NEITHER gradations of nobility NOR military rank is a downright peculiar worldbuilding gap.

...Maybe elves just have good enough memories that they just use visual rank signifiers and rely on knowing everyone's personal names for the rest? If everyone knows who Jimbob is, then shouting "rally around Jimbob!" is a marginally less wildly impractical approach than it would be among humans in groups larger than a few dozen people, especially if Jimbob is wearing a big flashy helmet or something.

Maedhros would totally take a ruthlessly practical approach to titles, wouldn't he? He's all about, "Is this useful for holding together a coalition to fight Morgoth? If yes, do it. If no, stop doing it and fix the problem." Or at least, that's his approach until he falls into suicidal despair.

[krait]

Well, come to think of it, we have "herald" and I think "standard-bearer" as options! So quite possibly for elves that's the main thing they need; "rally to the standard-bearer!" essentially means 'find the guy closest to the king' and everybody just heads for whoever is holding a flag on a tall stick. :D Which is a pretty authentic military move, too. :P And it doesn't really matter who the king is (keeping up with that is the standard-carrying Elf's problem!) so long as you can spot the guy responsible for marking his position.

Maedhros absolutely operates on "Is it useful in opposing Morgoth? If yes, do it. If not, ignore it." Probably to the occasional frustration of his brothers, who still have some sense of work-life balance and would like him to just... sit down and write a poem, or something, for half an hour.

[edenfalling]

True! And you can probably give a standard-bearer to a group of fighters even without having a Lord or Lady So-and-So in the mix -- you'd just have something like, I dunno, "the standard of the folk of [fill in location]" and people could use that as a verbal and visual marker.

I suspect that one reason Maedhros never did sit down and write a poem or something is that if he ever relaxed his focus, all the trauma he'd been compartmentalizing away would crash down on him and he didn't think he could afford to be out of action for an indeterminate period of time.

...I'm pretty sure he inherited Miriel's tendency toward passively-suicidal depression, tbh, and I think he was at least subconsciously aware of that and fighting against it, until events swept over him and he stopped being able to care.

[krait]

Oh, yeah, "the banner of Gondor" or "the banner of Rohan" would also serve as a visual marker of location, in a multi-national force without a king at its head. People might not know the general's name, but the standard is easy to remember!

Poor Maedhros. I like to imagine that he did write some poems, at least early on. Probably for and/or about Fingon! But he never shared them, because the downside of having the greatest bard of the Noldor as a little brother is that his idea of inferior and unpolished poetry is unrealistic, and he's too proud to let inferior poems out into the world with his name attached. (He destroyed them all just before the Second Kinslaying, because he wouldn't let Fingon be associated with the decision he'd made.)

Love the theory of his inheriting Miriel's depression! Not sure he was ever fully aware of it, since he never met Miriel; it would probably depend on whether/how much she was talked about in the family. And sometimes I think he fought it a bit too hard. :D If not stopping became a habit, it would explain some of his later decisions.

I rather wonder if Feanor didn't have it, as well, and part of his... *gestures* his intensity and the initial basis of his paranoia was that he was fighting it. If you Do All The Things, you can't be depressed, right? But it's easy to suspect that things aren't this hard for your siblings, that they have some kind of advantage over you (and one that's specifically a result of their birth, if he suspects Miriel is the source). A fertile field for Melkor to plant seeds of doubt in!

[redwolf]

It doesn't sound like US ciders make it here, but aside from local labels there's a decent range from NZ, UK, France and Sweden readily available. I favour apple based ciders, but a friend is mad keen on the pear variants, which I find more muted. But then I like the appleness of cider and pears aren't my favourite fruit, which probably has more to do with it.

Oddly, the term "hard" cider never made it here. Cider is cider, regardless of whether or not it has alcohol. Bear in mind we cheerfully refer to both fries and crisps as "chips" here.

I'm not a big beer fan, but I am fond of wheat beers.

I love ginger beer (the more bite, the better) and ginger ale (prefer Schweppes Ginger Ale in a glass bottle). While hard cider as a term doesn't rate a mention, hard ginger beer does. Possibly because there's not much of it about and the non-alcoholic version is common. Also, hard ginger beer is terrible.

[edenfalling]

I think most US cideries haven't focused on the export market -- they have been too busy fighting for domestic market share alongside beer, wine coolers, and assorted novelty drinks. Many are also still fairly regional even within the US.

Don't quote me on this, but I would be willing to bet the reason American usage separates "cider" (unfermented, often unfiltered and/or unpasteurized drink associated with fall (or with mulling in winter)) and "hard cider" (alcoholic!) is a direct result of Prohibition. You can trace A LOT of American weirdness about and vocabulary for alcohol to Prohibition -- though admittedly the whiskey thing is a consequence of 18th century trade patterns and an east coast climate that's not terribly friendly to western European grape varieties

I prefer Canada Dry ginger ale, which is the least sweet ginger ale readily available on the market. (That brand name is also a byproduct of Prohibition, btw -- "dry" in this case signalling "non-alcoholic"... which is funny, because the man behind Canada Dry was also one of the biggest professional bootleggers around. *wry*)