For years, we’ve attended the annual Cider Summit at Navy Pier, a gathering of cider makers from around the world. The ciders at this year’s event were almost all “hard,” with sugars in apple juice converted, with yeast, into alcohol.
Ciders are made all over the world, and the ones in the United States continue the tradition of using the kind of apples sown by Johnny Appleseed. Born John Chapman, Mr. Appleseed planted thousands of trees bearing apples that were usually too sour to eat but that made excellent hard cider.
Keith Huizinga of Oak Park’s Kinslagher recommended I check out some of his tasting room’s selection of hard ciders from Overgrown Orchard. I tried Overgrown Orchard’s Monument and Geist.
• Monument had a nose similar to that of a Belgian sour beer, tingly and appetizing. That aroma comes from cider that’s “wild fermented,” which means the fruit juice ferments using yeasts in the air and on the skins of Cox’s Orange Pippin, Roxbury Russet and Northern Spy apples.
• Geist cider uses Northern Spy but also Winesap and Black Twig apples, naturally fermented, and aged in pinot noir wine casks. Like Monument, Overgrown Orchard’s Geist is quite dry, and it begs to be sipped with food, the acidic notes perking the palate as do the cider’s light bubbles.
“I was initially drawn to the Overgrown Orchard because of their method of blending apples to make complex cider using wild fermentation,” Huizinga told us. “What they were doing was in complete contrast to how we make our lager beer: We control the process in intimate detail from start to finish. They let the apples and yeast/bacteria on the fruit lead the way.”
Intrigued by the fascinating flavors of ciders, I checked out some local sources. Wandering Famous Liquors in Forest Park and Whole Foods in River Forest, I found some big names, like Angry Orchard, but I was looking for something a little more, um, exotic. I found the best local selection of ciders at Sugar Beet Food Co-op. We tried several:
• 2 Fools Cider is labeled dry, and it’s a good beginner’s cider; we found it just a touch sweet, which makes it more accessible to those starting to acquire a taste for hard cider.
• Shacksbury Arlo Cider is a Basque-type cider, fermented in chestnut barrels, slightly funky, perhaps even scrumpy (look it up) and very dry.
• Farmhouse from Tandem Ciders is sold in 750 ML bottles, just like wine, and as with wine, Farmhouse is very food friendly, barrel-aged and with many dimensions of flavor.
Alcohol by volume, or ABV, for these ciders is around 6% — for most beer it’s 5%, although craft beers can be upward of 12%. Basically, the alcohol content in a bottle of hard cider is roughly equivalent to that in a bottle of beer.
Sorry to end on bad news, but Overgrown Orchard is out of business, but I understand Kinslagher still has two cases of their excellent cider available. If you want to try some, hurry.
