All You Need To Know About Hard Cider

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Brief History

Hard Cider is prepared from the fermented juice of apples. Although any variety of apples can be used but the juice of Cider Apples is heavenly and makes the best hard cider. The beverage is popular among the citizens of United Kingdom. The history of fermenting apples goes back as far as 55 BC when the Romans reached Kent, England and saw the English enjoying this drink. Hard Cider was considered as the Holy Grail among the English and was so sacred to them that they baptized their children with it. Between the 14^th and 17^th century the around a quarter of the working population in England were paid in cider.

In the 18^th century a missionary John Chapman commonly known as Johnny Appleseed – orchard starter takes the brought cider apples to America. He made nurseries of cider apple trees in Ohio River Regions and The Great Lakes. It was a matter of time when a small nursery of cider apples could be spotted in most of the homes.

Making Of Hard Cider

Scratting and Pressing: Cider-makers who believe in producing the best Hard Cider prefer to use cider apples exclusively. With time and experience cider making has become an art, selective breeding is now used to cultivate cider apples to enhance the taste of the final product.

The apples collected from the orchards are scratted and made into pulp or pomace.Electricity has replaced the traditional methods of scratting where it was done by using stones or in traditional cider mills run on horse-power or driven by hand. Layers of cider pulp known as cheeses is transferred in cider press and built into a block. The set of block is then exposed to high temperature till all the juice is drained from the pomace. Before being put into casks or large open containers the juice is strained through a large hair-sieve and left for fermentation.

Fermentation: “Slow and Steady Wins the Taste” is what we can say for Hard Cider. It is believed to taste best if it is allowed to ferment’s slowly. Hence a temperature of 4-16 degrees C (40 – 60 degree F) is considered best for its fermentation. Yeast such as Saccharomyces bayanus is added for fermentation of the beverage or it is left to the natural yeast to do their job.

Just before fermentation can consume all the sugar the juice is racked into new containers leaving the grime at the bottom of the old containers. It is made sure to fill the containers to the brim making sure there is no space for air so that the liquor does not come in contact with acetic bacteria. The remaining sugar in the liquid produces carbon dioxide forming a layer on it and protecting it from air contact. More sugar can be added at this stage specifically for this process. Racking can be repeated if the liquor is found to be cloudy.

Various flavours or fruit purees of fruits such as cranberry, grape, cherry and raspberry are used to make variations. The Hard Cider is ready to drink after three months but for better result it is left to mature in the casks for three years or more to get the flamboyance in the liquor.

Blending and Bottling: Ciders made from different varieties of apples are blended to suit the taste of market. High quality of ciders is made by using the champagne method, which is an expensive process as it requires special bottles, corks and other equipment. People who make cider at home normally use beer bottles for bottling which is economical.

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Vodka – A Versatile Spirit

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Vodka traces its origins to the eastern region of Europe. Russia as well as Poland claim to be the first producers of vodka. The word vodka stems from voda or woda which means water in both the countries. The physical appearance of the drink may have been the reason why it was called water, or probably because it was drunk with such ease and it was almost as common as water.

Vodka is now popular around the world but it took a long while for the drink to reach the rest of the world. The spirit can be produced from a variety of agricultural materials. In the EU, vodka is mainly produced from grain or molasses while potatoes and rice are usually used for the production of vodka in Eastern European countries.

History

Distilleries at Khylnovsk that bear evidence of the first production of vodka date back to the 12^th century although the first documented production in Russia was around the end of the 9^th century. Assertions from Poland date back the history of the drink to the 8^th century but the first Polish vodkas emerged during the 11^th century.

The use of distilled liquor during the middle ages was primarily for medicinal purposes and for the production of gunpowder. Russia produced various qualities of vodka starting from plain to high quality. With the crude production methods used in the vodka distilleries, the drink often had impurities which were masked by the distillers by flavouring it with fruits, herbs and spices.

During the 18^th century, a professor in St. Petersburg used charcoal filtration to purify the spirit. The awareness of vodka spread across many parts of Europe and production methods continued to improvise. The increasing popularity of vodka escalated the production of the spirit.

Towards the end of the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks seized all private distilleries that operated in Moscow. Emigration of the population led to many Russian vodka makers taking their recipes and skills to new places.

One of those emigrants began production in Paris under the French version of his family name – Smirnoff. The distiller did not meet with much success in the beginning, but soon he collaborated with a Russian émigré from the USA. They set up a distillery in 1934 and the vodka produced from this distillery was sold to a US drinks company.

This is how vodka was introduced to the western world and today it is considered as one of the most versatile spirits. The ability of vodka to mix easily with a variety of drinks is the reason why you will find it in the shelves of all the pubs and bars around the world.

Top Vodka Producing Countries

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