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About Craft Cider
So different to widely available commercial ciders, we tell all on 100% full juice craft cider.
An introduction
Craft Cider refers to cider made solely from 100% apple juice, simply fermented. It is made, like wine, not brewed like beer or lager. And best drunk like wine, not beer too – a bottle or two to be enjoyed with food and friends.
Apples are pressed after harvest in Autumn, left to ferment, maybe some yeast added to help. You work with what nature gave you – a big crop, a high sugar crop, a late crop. Each growing year imparts different characteristics and complexity.
Fermentation
The juice is then left in large, airtight tanks over winter. In fermentation, all the sugar turns to alcohol, producing a naturally dry cider – so sometimes sugar or apple juice are added to “back-sweeten” to a more medium-dry profile. Fermentation can be stopped part-way, through a process called “keeving” – which keeps a naturally sweeter style.
Most craft ciders are then blended to the desired flavour profile of the cider-maker. Commonly made from special cider apple varieties, bittersweet or bittersharp, with big tannins, so suited to growing in the West of the UK. Increasingly the use of eating apple varieties as part of the blend in more common, making less tannic, lighter, applier ciders.
Some makers keep the same blend every year, so the end product will vary year to year; others modify the blend so it tastes the same each year, but they'll have got there a different way! Blends may then be aged in whisky barrels, or left for longer to mature further.
When ready, craft cider is then typically carbonated, bottled and sulphites may be added for freshness. Made in small batches to be enjoyed, bottle by bottle
Commercial cider
Isn’t that what all cider is? Well, no.
What we term “commercial cider” is usually made out of apple concentrate or syrup, often of mixed eating apples and not from the UK. This concentrate can then be canned, bottled or kegged any week of the year by diluting with water and sugar and additives, in a process more like a chemistry lesson. Oh, and cider only needs to be 35% apple juice to be legally called cider, so that’s exactly what a lot of commercial brands will do.
Designed to be cheap, sweet and more like apple-lager, long and refreshing, it is so far away from the craft cider we sell. You will simply taste the difference - craft cider is by far more complex, more tannic and with more rounded flavours.
So what do we sell?
Bristol Cider Shop only ever sell craft cider made from 100% apple juice. It’s our red line, our mission, and our point of difference. Craft cider costs in time, expertise, ingredients, judgement, risk, and tradition – and thus you might notice in pound notes too. Of course we may feel considerably more expensive than 10 cans in the supermarket, but simply we are not selling the same thing – that’s like comparing apples with pears!
Of course, full juice cider needs to taste good as well. It is not just about the method, but the skill - so we taste every cider we sell to ensure we can put our money where our mouth is. It's a hard job, but someone has to do it.
To find out more about craft cider, sign up to our newsletter to receive our Free Guide to Craft Cider here.
