Full Throttle Bottle

Behold the power of Facebook.

When I first started researching cider, I found Old Time Cider, which, one way or another, lead me to Full Throttle Bottle on Facebook. Full Throttle Bottle is a specialty beer and wine store located in Seattle, WA. They post quite regularly on Facebook about new shipments coming in, things they are drinking, and brewers coming in for tastings. It is so tempting.

Now, we live in Vancouver, WA, which is right next to Portland, OR. Washington and Oregon have very similar laws when it comes to alcohol. Liquor is sold in state run facilities, and wine and beer are sold in grocery stores. Apparently, they are so much alike that even though we are in Washington, we are most definitely part of Portland’s distribution. This means that what is sold in our local stores is usually from Oregon, especially wine. Meanwhile, Full Throttle Bottle is in Seattle, so it is part of a different distribution market, one that we are not part of. Their posts were talking about stuff that we can’t get here, and it made us envious.

On a recent trip to Seattle, we stopped by Full Throttle Bottle. They had the most cider I had ever seen. Most of it was craft cider from Washington State and a few from France, and almost all of them I couldn’t get at home. They also told me that Red Barn Cider in Mt. Vernon, WA was going to be coming there for a tasting on Wednesday, April 7 between 5pm and 7pm. Sadly, I cannot not go because it is in the middle of the week.

So I recommend that you check out Full Throttle Bottle if you are ever in Seattle for their cider selection. I also have to say that I would have never gone there if it hadn’t been for their Facebook posts.

By the Bottle

Our closest beer store is called By the Bottle in downtown Vancouver, WA. By the Bottle was voted best beer store by the Northwest Brewing News Readers Choice Awards in the state of Washington for 2009. At first, we had a hard time believing that, as it is a small store. Surely there is a bigger beer store in Seattle that could beat ours out. Since then, we have been to two Seattle beer stores, and two Portland stores, and we have realized the gem we have in our back yard.

While By the Bottle is small, it is well lit with UV filters on the lights to prevent light damage to the beer. While all the beer stores have knowledgeable staff, By the Bottle’s owner does something different with her store that sets it above the rest – how the beers are organized. Their website states, “Overall, domestics and imports are grouped separately. Then, they are designated by region, and then by style order from light to dark. So if you’re in the mood for a domestic stout, all of the brands of this style will all be in one place. Placards above each cooler door clearly indicate the organization.” We find this system of organizing the best. Think of it this way, those two beers would be entered at a competition together, so shouldn’t they be shelved together? With By the Bottle, they are all in one place, and that is great when the mood strikes you for a particular style of beer.

If beer isn’t your thing, like it isn’t mine, By the Bottle does have a small selection of ciders, including Ace Cider, and a few meads out of California.

History of Cider Part V: The Decline of Cider in North America

In my last couple of posts, I outlined domestic apples coming to North America and their increase in popularity and propagation along with cider becoming the preferred beverage. However, as in England, America began to experience a rural to urban migration that hurt cider’s production and popularity.

• Ben Watson explains the decline, “Until around 1850, apple-growing and cidermaking remained closely linked to the small, self-reliant homestead farm, but the migration of workers to cities and to the fertile lands of the West after the Civil War meant that many old orchards were abandoned. Also, homemade farm cider, which was unfiltered and unpasteurized, didn’t travel well to the new centers of population. Coupled with this growing urbanization and resettlement during the late nineteenth century, a steady stream of immigrants from Germany and northern Europe led to the establishment of more breweries in America and increased the consumption of beer” (page 27).
• Hiram F. “Okanogan” Smith planted apple trees in central Washington State in 1848. Unlike Johnny Appleseed, these apple trees were planted for shipping and eating, not cider. Today, Washington produces half of the Unities States’ apples, and about 5% of the world’s apples.
• Around 1850s, damage done to apples by insects such as the codling moth and diseases like apple scab discouraged apple growers. This led the cutting down of orchards in the 1880s and increased use of arsenical insecticides and fungicides.
• In 1860, around 84% of Americans lived on farms.
• A short blurb on cider in The New York Times in 1901.
• The Temperance movement began to rise, and cider was no exception to them. Natural apple cider is about 6% alcohol, but American ciders had slowly been creeping up in alcohol content to allow for better storage and therefore shipping. Ben Watson explains, “Producers increased the final strength of the cider much as they do today, by adding a sweetener (honey, sugar, raisins, and so on) to the juice before or during fermentation. By the late eighteenth century, the alcohol content of the standard cider sold in taverns ran 7.5% – still not producting that much of a kick. Some producers, however, added rum to their rough cider, making it a less than “temperate” beverage. Also, the impurities found in traditional applejack (a strong, concentrated liquor that was made by freezing hard cider outside in the winter) gave drinkers awe-inspiring hangovers and, over time, led to the unfortunate condition known as apple palsy. Finally, just as had happened in earlier England, the good name of cider was besmirched by unscrupulous manufactures, who made it out of just about anything…” (pages 27-28)
• Many farmers who sympathized with the temperance movement cut down apple trees. Others started pasteurizing unfermented sweet apple juice and selling it inoffensive “sweet cider,” which is the beginning of the word confusion of cider by Americans today.
• By 1910, only 30% of Americans lived on farms.
• The winter of 1917-1918 was unusually cold, killing many apple orchards, including cider trees, especially the breed Baldwin.
• Cider production in 1919 was only at 13 million gallons verses 55 million gallons in 1899.
• In 1919, the temperance movement was successful in its push to have the federal government  declare that the making and sale of alcohol was illegal, marking the beginning of Prohibition, which was not repealed until 1933. Brian Palmer explains the impact, “The temperance movement encouraged the remaining orchardists to pasteurize and bottle their unfermented juice. Prohibition forced the holdouts to either chop down their trees or to convert their operations to grafted eating apples. Once Prohibition ended, cider never came back. Part of the reason lies in the nature of the product. Unlike barley farmers, who could adjust annual plantings fairly quickly to meet surging post-Prohibition demand, orchardists would have had to graft cider apples painstakingly onto an entire field of eating-apple trees or spend years starting a new orchard from seed. Beer manufacturers also lobbied hard for Prohibition’s repeal, which gave them an incentive to get brewing again when the laws changed. Cider makers, who typically worked independently and produced their wares in small batches, didn’t have the same drive once the ban was lifted. Urbanization also worked against cider, which was grown, fermented, and consumed on farms.” Thus, cider making traditions were only practiced by limited local farmers and enthusiasts.
• Another devastating winter occurred in 1933-1934, killing the remaining Baldwin trees. Farmers replaced them with the hardier McIntosh.

Conclusion on April 5, 2010

My sources include:

• Palmer, Brian. “Slate: What Would John Adams Drink?” http://www.slate.com/id/2231001/ September 30, 2009
• Watson, Ben. Cider, Hard and Sweet, 2^nd Edition. 2009. Pages 27-28

For further reading on Prohibition in general, see:

• Wikipedia: “Prohibition in the United States.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States
• Blum, Deborah. “Slate – The Chemist’s War.” http://www.slate.com/id/2245188/?GT1=38001 February 19, 2010
• Steves, Rick. “The Prohibition of Our Age.” http://www.ricksteves.com/tapa_blog/index.cfm?fuseaction=entry&entryID=122

Also see:

• Morgan, Joan and Richards, Alison. The New Book of Apples: The Definitive Guide to Apples, Including Over 2,000 Varieties. 2002
• Juniper, Barrie B and Mabberley, David J. The Story of the Apple. 2006

Book Review: Making Wild Wines & Meads

Admittedly, it is a little hard for me to review the front portion of Making Wild Wines & Meads: 125 Unusual Recipes Using Herbs, Fruits, Flowers, and More by Pattie Vargas and Rich Gulling. Because it was not my first wine making book, I am not as comfortable pulling out this 1999 book on winemaking techniques. What I use this book for is for more recipes and inspiration.

This book is the best book I have come across for organizing recipes. Recipes are alphabetized by the primary ingredient within their subject chapters. Chapters include:

• Making wines from fruits
• Making wines from flowers, nuts, and vegetables
• Making meads, melomels and metheglins
• Making wines from herbs

For instance, for apples there is a dry apple wine, medium-sweet apple wine, spiced apple wine, crab apple wine, and an apple cider wine before it moves on to apricot recipes.  Each recipe takes up a page and has the title across the top, which makes it easy to find recipes. Sometimes recipes contain a little variation on the bottom of the page. It is also quite sterile when it comes to the recipes, much like cooking, telling you what you need and how to make it. This is in contrast to Terry Geary’s The Joy of Home Winemaking personal commentary about how or why things are done a particular way. This could be a good thing if you are annoyed with Geary’s comments, but it could be a bad thing as you may not learn why things are done a particular way.

The back of the book is lacking in anything interesting, useful, and at your fingertips.

Ice Cider

Ice wine is made from grapes that have been allowed to freeze, which concentrates their sugars, before picking. The result is usually a sweet dessert wine.

According to Ben Watson’s Cider: Hard & Sweet, a Frenchman living in Quebec by the name of Christian Barthomeuf began experimenting with trying to make ice cider in a similar fashion as ice wine. In 1996, the first commercial ice cider became available.  In 2007, about fifty ice cider producers mostly in southern Quebec produced half a million bottles.

Watson says there are two methods to make ice cider, cryoconcentration and cryoextraction. The first method is very much like applejack in that fresh pressed apple cider is allowed to freeze and have the ice removed leaving a higher concentration of sugar, but unlike applejack, the sweet cider has not been allowed to ferment yet. The second method involves leaving the apples on the trees until they freeze at temperatures around 16⁰F to 5⁰F, usually in January. Then the apples are harvested and pressed while still partially frozen. Since very few apple varieties stay on the tree that long, sometime apples from cold storage are allowed to freeze outside.

Watson goes on to say that Quebec has some standards for how much sugar should be present before fermentation and after fermentation, leaving a sweet full flavored apple cider between 7 and 13 percent alcohol.

Watson states, “According to Charles Crawford, owner of Domaine Pinnacle, it takes 80 apples to make just one 375 ml. bottle of ice cider, which is only one reason it is so expensive. The harvest, pressing, and eight- or nine- month fermentation are all labor-intensive, and producers use special wine yeasts and must stop fermentation to leave just the right amount of residual sugar.”

Waston discourages people from making ice cider, saying it should be left to the pros. He cites the difficulty to freeze apples in other regions and difficulty in stopping the fermentation, which he says a failure will end up in a strong cidre fort. He even points out that some ice cider makers have batches that they can’t sell as ice cider, and convert it to a dessert apple wine kind of like pommeau.

Edit: I found this excellent blog on ice cider out of the UK after I posted my own on ice cider. Please give it a read.

Applejack

Traditional applejack is like making brandy, but instead of heating up to remove the alcohol from the water, applejack is frozen to remove the water from the alcohol. This technique is sometimes referred to as “cold distilling.”

Making applejack was once popular in the New England area of the United States. It was made by putting a bucket of apple cider outside in the winter where temperatures drop below 0⁰ F and the water in the cider would freeze, which was then scooped off, leaving behind the alcohol. This process is repeated several times to remove most of the water and concentrate the alcohol.

The colder the temperatures are, the higher the applejack proof can become. In Wines & Beers of Old New England, Sanborn C. Brown estimates that 0⁰ F can yield a 28 proof or 14 percent alcohol by volume applejack. If the temperatures were around -30⁰F, the applejack could reach 65 proof. Therefore, it can be as weak as wine or as strong as brandy depending on where it was made and how cold it got.

Annie  Proulx and Lew Nichols in Cider: Making, Using & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider do mention that “Applejack makers are concerned with getting the most alcohol out of the weather and the cider for their efforts, so” they will add extra sugar and use wine yeasts that can make a higher alcohol apple wine. This process is done during the fall so that the freezing process can begin in January. However, a high alcohol apple wine does not increase the applejack proof, but the temperature does, as previously described. They describe applejack “very flavorsome, but dry, and many prefer to sweeten it to taste before bottling” (page 167).

The real problem with cold distilling is that the finished product has an increased level of toxins. Fermentation creates a few toxins, such as esters and aldehydes, but they are at low dosages that really do not harm the body. With regular heat distilling, these toxins are the first to boil off at the low temperatures in what is called the “head”, and they are set aside for industrial uses such as making lacquer, nail enamel, and cleaning solvents. It smells very much like finger nail paint remover. The second part of heat distilling is the “heart”, which is the consumable ethyl alcohol. The last part, the “tails”, is more toxins such as fusel oils and amyl and propyl alcohols, which are harmful if swallowed at these higher concentrates. These three sections are common to every heat distillation, and can be separated by smell and timing in the distillation process. However, with cold distilling, these toxins are not removed, and the constant removal of water in cold distilling further concentrates them. As a result of the toxins in applejack, it is well known for having a “kick” and then leaving the drinker with a horrible hangover the next day, despite being possibly a lower alcohol content than other higher proof heat distilled spirits.

To read more on the process, check out Annie  Proulx and Lew Nichols’ Cider: Making, Using & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider and Ben Watson’s Cider: Hard & Sweet. Remember, even though applejack is not distilled with heat, the process of cold distillation is still considered illegal in the United States without a proper permit.

Apple Brandy

Apple brandy is distilled cider. To make brandy, you first ferment apple juice into cider, and then you heat the cider at a temperature in which the alcohol evaporates while the water does not. It is done in such a controlled method that the alcohol vapor becomes condensation and is collected as a liquid, allowed to age (usually in oak), and then bottled. Ben Watson described it in Cider: Hard & Sweet, “In this way, humble hard cider undergoes a kind of metamorphosis, from light, low-alcohol drink that quenches the thirst on  a hot summer’s day to a volatile, intoxicating liquid that warms the heart and fires the soul in the dark watches of a winter night” (page 116).

Watson also attributes the first written reference to distilling cider to Gilles de Gouberville in 1553. It quickly rose in popularity, enough so that France granted a closed guild of apple brandy distillers in 1606.

Considered the best apple brandy in the world, Calvados is made in a Normandy, France region where it got its name and other parts of Normandy. There, regulations stipulate that only Calvados can come from this region, and the cider must be double distilled. Watson explains:

“The cider is distilled twice, as the first pass though the still results in a liquor that is only about 30 to 40 percent alcohol. The French call this first run les petites eaux, or ‘little waters,’ which is the same thing whiskey distillers refer to as ‘low wines.’ Revaporizing these low wines in the still doubles their strength and produces a clear, roughly apple brandy of around 140 to 150 proof (70 to 75 percent alcohol). The second distillation also ensures that the brandy, after aging, will have sufficient body and bouquet. Like good whiskeys, Calvados loses much of its rough, raw edge during storage. It is always barrel-aged in wood, preferably in oak casks… Calvados must be aged for at least two years at a storage temperature around 55⁰ F… most Calvados takes on a golden straw or light amber hue during the long-term tenure inside the oak cask… Before bottling, the brandy is sometimes cut back with distilled water to a final strength of between 80 and 100 proof (40 to 50 percent alcohol)” (page 118-119).

At my tour of Clear Creek Distillery in Portland, OR, I learned that they only used Golden Delicious apples to make their apple brandy. They crushed the apples, but did not press them before allowing them to ferment. This technique is common with eau-de-vie. Watson says it was explained to him as part of a New York State Agricultural Experiment Station demonstration as a way to have a prolonged contact with the pulp and skins, which increases the bouquet of the distilled cider. I should note also that Clear Creek Distillery only did a single distill on the apple pulp.

Sadly, a single distill is not the only area in which US apple brandy distillers cut corners. Annie  Proulx and Lew Nichols in Cider: Making, Using & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider explain that unlike the French, who have ridged laws concerning where and how Calvados is made, the US has no such guidelines. Coupled with:

“the purposes of supply and marketing economics, apple brandy is a blend of apple and grain neutral spirits. Harry Weiss, in his definitive work, The History of Applejack or Apple Brandy in New Jersey from Colonial Times to the Present (New Jersey Agricultural Society, 1954), puts the reasons in a nutshell – grains return far greater alcohol volume for volume and at a considerably less cost than apples. The Weiss equation holds that two bushels of sound apples are needed to make one gallon of 50 percent apple alcohol, while the same quantity of rye or other small grains will return three gallons of 50 percent, or 100 proof, and corn three and a half gallons with similar strength. Since good apples cost considerably more than grain, pure apple brandy is noncompetitive with grain spirits, and blending the costlier apple with less expensive neutral spirits lessens the disparity at the marketplace” (page 168).

I do not think this was true for Clear Creek Distillery, as they were very proud of their craft liquor, but it is something to be aware of when looking to purchase apple brandy.

History of Cider Part IV: Apples and Cider in North America

So far, I have only been looking at European history of apples and cider. Today, I will turn my attention to the New World.

• While North America did have a few wild apples including garland crab (Malus cornaria), prairie crab (M. ioensis), and southern crab (M. angustifolia), officials are unsure how much they were used by Native Americans.
• Nine years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in America, the first European apple trees were planted in 1623 in Boston by William Blackstone, who was a dissident of the Church of England and a minister to the Plymouth settlers. Stories say he saddle trained a bull and rode around the country side distributing apples to his friends. Due to problems with the British colonial authorities, he moved to Rhode Island in 1635 and established another apple orchard there.
• Ben Watson states, “To the settlers of this new country, the apple represented the perfect homestead fruit. An apple tree, once it began to bear, would dependably produce bushels of fruit that could be used immediately for eating or cooking. Some varieties, like Roxbury Russet, could be stored in a cold cellar and kept all winter long, while others, like the old Hightop Sweet apple reputedly grown at Plymouth Plantation, could be sliced and dried for later use. But cider played the most crucial role in America’s rural economy, as pressing and fermenting the fresh juice of the apple was the easiest way for farmers to preserve the enormous harvest that came from even a modest orchard. Cider was also the basis for many other products, such as applejack, apple brandy, and cider vinegar, which was used to preserve other fresh foods and for myriad other purposes around the home” (pages 23-24).
• In 1647, the first grafted tree from Europe arrived and was planted by Gov. Peter Stuyvesant in New Amsterdam. That same year, apple trees were being grafted onto wild rootstock in Virginia.
• In 1741, apple trees from North America were beginning to be exported to other locations such as the West Indies. In 1773, the English apple crops failed, in which American apples were imported there as a result.
• As in England, paying with cider became normal, especially in rural areas that did not see much currency. In 1740, cider cost three shillings for a barrel, compared to 1817 when it was selling for five dollars a hogshead. During this time, William Coxe encouraged cidermakders to convert part of their cider to vinegar, which was three times the price of cider. In his book A View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees written in 1817, he lists how much cider and apple brandy were made.
• Most people could not afford to buy European grafted apple trees, so much of the propagation and spread of apples in North America was done by seed, as they were easy to carry and plant. Orchards sprung up where farmers disposed of the crushed and pressed apple pomace that included seeds.  However, the most famous spreading of apple seeds was done by a man named John Chapman , AKA Johnny Appleseed. An eccentric man, he tried to push west ahead of settlers between 1797 and at least 1806 to have established orchards by time settlements were beginning to develop.
• Watson estimates that one out of every ten farms in New England owned and operated a cider mill by 1775. He explains cider’s popularity, “…most early settlers preferred not to drink the local water, which could be unpalatable or even – close to settlements – polluted. This left milk and alcoholic beverages, but importing such a staple as ale from England was expensive and chancy, and early experiments in growing barley and hops in New England had proved a dismal failure… Apple trees, however, could be grown almost everywhere in America, and it didn’t take long for the colonists to put down their persimmon beer and take up cidermaking in earnest” (pages 24-25). A single village near Boston with about forty families reported in 1726 of making 10,000 barrels of cider. In 1767, the per capita average of 1.14 barrels of cider was being consumed in Massachusetts, by both men, women, and children, averaging about 35 gallons of cider. John Adams, the second president of the United States, drank a tankard of cider every morning.
• In 1790, around 96% of Americans lived on farms which produced nearly all the food they needed, while only 4% of the population lived in towns.
• Seed propagation lead to the establishment of many new apple breeds, which in turn lead nurseries in the 1800s to offer many different apple varieties. There were more than five hundred cultivated apple varieties in 1850, and eleven hundred that had originated in America was listed in Fruit and Fruit Trees of America in 1872 by Charles Downing.
• In the 1840 Whig presidential campaign, William Henry Harrison and John Tyler used the log cabin and the cider barrel as their logo for self reliant Americans, and gave out cider to all voters. They won, 234 to 60.

Part V will be on March 29, 2010

My sources include:

• Palmer, Brian. “Slate: What Would John Adams Drink?” http://www.slate.com/id/2231001/ September 30, 2009
• Watson, Ben. Cider, Hard and Sweet, 2^nd Edition. 2009. Pages 23-27
• The Straight Dope: “What’s the story with Jonny Appleseed?” http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2141/whats-the-story-with-johnny-appleseed January 20, 2004

Book Review: The Joy of Home Winemaking

The first thing I ever brewed up came from The Joy of Home Winemaking by Terry Garey, published in 1996 Garey has a simplified recipe using minimal wine making equipment and juice concentrate to make a simple apple wine. It kind of lets you get a feel for everything without spending a lot of money, though later, you wonder if it was really wise to start brewing without a hydrometer.

While there are other fruit wine making books out there, this is the one I recommend for beginners. Garey organizes the book quite well and has a good tone. Experimenting is encouraged, yet the basics are not ignored. Recipes include blueberry wine, canned cherry wine, elderberry wine, potato wine, mint wine, herb wine, grain wines, and an onion wine that Garey admits to never having made. Garey adds a personal touch to recipes, commenting on how the author likes to make it, but suggestions on how you could make it to fit your tastes.  This book is a how to with recipe guidelines, and I think that is why I like it.

Geary also has included a section of drinks to make from your wine, making liquors from spirits, an appendix on troubleshooting problems, and a conversion chart from metric, bottle sizes, and wine supply stores. There is an index of topics, and an index of wine recipes.

Take a look at Garey’s website.

Wine Thief

No, I am not going to talk about a person who steals wine today. I am going to talk about a device that winemakers uses pull a sample out of their vats and barrels called a wine thief.

A wine thief is a glass tube with two open ends. As a child, did you ever suck pop up a straw and then replace your finger over the top and then pull the straw out? The pop was trapped in straw. Well, a wine thief works in the same way. The thief is put into the wine, allowed to fill from one end to the level of the wine it is in, and then a finger is used to plug the other end. The wine thief can then be removed and aimed at a container. The moment you remove your finger, the wine pours out.

Wine thiefs are very handy at getting a sample from the middle of the wine batch for testing with a hydrometer or for tasting, and are easier to use than hooking up a siphon. They come in many different sizes, so they can range from $8 to $30.

However, it is possible to buy a turkey baster and use it to pull samples as long as that is the only thing you use it on. Do not use it on meat and then on wine again!