Cider and Perry with Gordon Strong – BeerSmith Podcast #316
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Gordon Strong joins me this week to discuss making cider and cider styles. This is Beersmith Podcast number 316. Beersmith Podcast

This is the Beersmith Home Brewing Show, where brewing great beer is our passion. If you want to take your brewing to the next level, visit beersmith.com, where you can download a trial version of our Beersmith software, subscribe to the newsletter, and get dozens of free articles on home brewing. And now, your host and the author of Home Brewing with Beersmith, Brad Smith.

This is Beersmith Podcast number 316 and it's late December 2024. Gordon Strong joins me this week to discuss making cider and cider styles.

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Today on the show, I welcome back Gordon Strong. Gordon is the President Emeritus and highest level beer judge in the Beer Judge Certification Program, as well as author of the books Modern Homebrew Recipes and Brewing Better Beer. Gordon is also a three-time winner of the Nankazi Award as top homebrewer, as well as prestigious AHA Governing Committee Award. Gordon, it's great to have you back on the show. How are you doing today? Hey, Brad. It's really wonderful to be with you. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure.

Merry, Merry Christmas to you. It's coming up quick, isn't it? Oh yeah. Yeah. I can feel it. Well, uh, what have you been up to the last year? We had, it's been about a year since we had you on, I think it was last November actually. Yeah. Uh, you know, just traveling, judging. Um, but the, from a project standpoint, the biggest thing I've been working on is trying to knock out the

the new CIDR guidelines. So getting in some subject matter expert review and it's, it's, it's a, it's a big rewrite. So it's, it's, it's been quite a bit of work. I think it wasn't the last one about 10 years ago or something like that. Right. Yeah. And, and actually that was in collaboration with an outside CIDR group. So that was, yeah,

you know, not fully the BJCP's work. And this is the fully in-house review. So expanded more, more making the cider guidelines of the same level of quality and detail that people expect out of the beer guidelines, for instance. So you're putting a little more detail into it, and I assume fleshing out probably some more categories as well, right? Yeah.

Yeah, there's at least four new categories and a complete new organization. And yeah, the existing ones have been expanded quite a bit because I know from judging in as many competitions as I go to, a lot of people understand the basic mechanics of judging, but they might not really have a good understanding of the style. So we have to give...

Enough detail so that somebody who knows how to judge, if given the guidelines, can do sort of a reasonable, decent job. I always hope people get out there and try a lot more examples. But, you know, if they wind up on the category, they can still do a decent job if they have the guidelines as a reference. So that's what I'm trying to deliver for people.

And I mean, commercially, cider has become very, very popular in the last 10 years, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you you really have to dig into the commercial numbers to look at the professional producers like beer makers are making a lot of them produce a lot of cider and other products.

non-deer beverages. Seltzer. Yeah, seltzer, tea, ready-to-drink cocktails, a variety of alternative beverages that

It might be sort of commercially viable, but I don't really hold my interest as somebody who makes things at home. But cider has kind of a long heritage and tradition around the world, so I'm interested in delving into that in some depth.

Well, I do want to get into cider in some detail, but first I think it's important to say that, you know, beer brewers have basically all the equipment they need to make cider at home. So I thought maybe we'd start with that topic. How do you make cider at home? What do you need to do it? There's, while there's not a direct analogy to extract and all grain brewing, there is sort of a level of difficulty that you can get into. And I guess the, the,

the equivalent to extract brewing and in cider is basically you go out and buy commercial sweet cider, uh, and you know, take it home and ferment it. It's, it's not that different from making mead. You're, you're getting some other sugar source and you're fermenting it. And if you know, you've got all the equipment, you know, you've got carboys and air locks and you know, you know how to handle yeast and,

You know how to package a completed product. So, yeah.

Really, all I do, I mean, I'm basically an extract equivalent cider maker because I live in a region that has a huge variety of apples. So I've got some favorite local orchards that press their own sweet cider without preservatives, and I just go and buy some in season.

um, you know, bring it home and, uh, ferment it, throw it in a carboy, add some yeast, um, and just wait until it clears. And you can use, uh, it's important to say, you know, you can use almost any juice as long as it doesn't have preservatives in it. Right. But I mean, it can be pasteurized, right? Yeah. Yeah. You, uh, it's the preservatives that are the things that are going to, I mean, it's preservatives inhibit spoilage by, uh,

you know, preventing growth of organisms in the cider. And, you know, yeast is certainly one of those things. So, you know, the best raw ingredients you get are the ones that are minimally processed, fresh, local, in season. I mean, you can't

you know, in the U S you know, you don't want to go looking for sweet cider in July. Um, you know, that's just not really going to be there. Uh, you have to wait until apples are ripe and places are pressing. And, um,

you know, you just go around and, um, you know, do some, do some field research, try, try the ciders that people have. And, and since it's an agricultural product, they're going to be using a different blend of apples throughout the season. And,

The flavor profile and other characteristics of the apples sort of change. The sort of the later season apples tend to be sweeter and have less acidity than the early season apples that they're using in cider. Yeah.

Not every place that sells cider actually knows about it. They might just buy it from someplace or they might make it in-house. So try to get as close to the source as possible and see if you can find out what's in it. Because it's not going to be labeled usually with the varietals that are used. It'll just say, well, it contains apples. Well, duh.

So you do have to be able to taste it and say, well, do I like this? And then go and give it a try. I tend to, where I live in Ohio, I tend to be looking for sweet cider mid-October-ish, sort of a little bit later in the season so it's not super acidic and a good blend of flavors. But if you're

If you're buying it from a place that also sells apples, look at the varieties that they sell. Ask them, are these your apples that are actually in the cider? Where is it pressed? How's it handled? See if they'll talk to you. It's kind of like you need to get to know your farmer or your source here. It's

If you're making mead, you'll do a better job if you meet some beekeepers and understand what floral sources they're using. Same is true with cider. If you understand what's in them, then you can go ahead and ferment it. But mostly...

Most places, unless they're really trying for sort of heirloom variety apples, they're just going to be using the normal table apples.

So maybe not all the styles will be available to you. Maybe you're just looking at making a good sort of common cider with table fruit. And that's fine. That's kind of what I make. Yeah, I mean, I've even made it with juice off the shelf, you know, from the grocery store and it comes out fine. It's nothing special, but it does come out fine, you know.

Yeah. So it's certainly easy. I think it is interesting, though. I think from a historical perspective, they used to grow a whole different variety of ciders, right? I'm sorry, apples that they used for ciders that were targeted for ciders that were, I believe, more acidic, right? Historically?

I don't know that they'd be more acidic as they were often more tannic. Okay. Yeah. Because the table apples actually can have a fair amount of acidity in them. And that's kind of the characteristic, but you know, it's just more, it's like,

Places that grow heirloom tomatoes or something, they're just going to have more flavor. They might not store as well, or they might be more expensive, or they might not have the same yield, so they might not be as economically viable. But different places can grow them, and that's why a lot of the people that specialize in cider either have their own apple trees or have sort of built their own plants.

network of suppliers they've got people looking out you know how they go about sourcing the apples that go into specific yeah yeah but if you if you're just buying if you're buying the the the already pressed apples as as sweet cider

You don't really have a choice as to what goes into it. No. And that way, it's kind of like buying malt extract. I mean, you don't get to tell them what's in it. They're choosing it, and they're sort of producing it based on color. Yeah. So, I mean, the cider producers, they're just going to produce it based on the apples that they have then. Yeah. Unless you're sort of high-end. I'm sorry. So, let's say I get my five gallons of juice. Can you walk me through the process of making a batch? Sure.

Oh, yeah. It's like stupid simple. You like, I mean, it's basically like extract brewing. Without the boil? Well, if the extract you bought was already mixed with water. So the juice is ready to ferment. You don't really have to do anything with it, except boil.

you know, don't stick your hands in it or something. Yeah. You got to obviously got to still be aware of cleanliness and so on, but clean your vessels and everything. But, but you basically just pitch the yeast. Sanitize a fermenter. Yeah. You sanitize a fermenter. Um, you know, glass carboys are fine. Buckets are fine. Just, you know, something, something that you can sanitize and seal and, you know, slap an airlock on. Um,

you know, some ciders you can make just with the sort of natural fermentation of the, the yeast that's present. If it's unpasteurized and, um,

You know, without preservatives, they won't have treated it. There can be natural yeast. And sometimes if you buy sweet cider and you leave it around for a couple of weeks, if you pick up the container and you sort of feel it, it can feel like, oh, it feels like it's getting a little carbonation there. You know, it's starting to do that work for you.

So you put it in a vessel, and then you pitch whatever kind of yeast you want. There are cider-specific yeasts that you can use. I mean, you can use beer yeasts, and you can use wine yeasts like you would use in mead. The cider-specific strains are interesting, and there's more of them that are coming out. In dry form, there's more than just one.

You know, the yeast can give it different characteristics just like in beer, but it's not going to totally drive it. You're really looking more towards, you know, what the apples are providing. The yeast isn't going to drive the final product, you know, to the same extent.

as you'd see in beer well it ferments uh you know salt most of its simple sugar so it ferments very quickly and then uh do you prefer to carbonate yours do you like to bottle it keg it i have kegs so i it's and kegging is simple so usually i wait till you know it naturally clears in the fermenter i prefer the fermenters that have you know i use the plastic ones um that uh

you know, if they have like a spigot in the bottom, so you can kind of, you know, sort of drain directly out or, you know, you can, you can certainly use a tube to,

um, a siphon. Um, and I just put it, put it in the keg and, um, you know, usually I usually give it some gas. Um, I, I prefer my ciders with a little bit of sparkle to them. And I think it also kind of helps, uh, protect it in the keg. You know, I'm not, I'm not doing a natural, um, carbonation in that, that form. Yeah. So it, it, it really is pretty simple. Mm-hmm.

Uh, do you like to back sweeten it? I know a lot of people do back sweeten their ciders cause you know, raw cider is very, very dry typically. Yeah. Um, you know, some of the, some of the yeast, um, you know, don't ferment quite as much. I tend to avoid the champagne yeast that can go super, super dry. I prefer dry ciders. I like to, I like to taste the, the flavor, but if I'm,

Back when I was competing for competition, yeah, I would sometimes sweeten them if I was trying to boost up either the sweetness or the apple character. One of the sort of things I would do in competition sometime if it just needed a little boost is that if you bought some

frozen apple juice concentrate yep you know it's frozen and then you let it thaw but the stuff that's thawing is the juice before the water so you get something really concentrated you just can put a couple of drops in and it it could boost the sweetness without you know overwhelming the um the character of what what you had fermented out yourself

Can you walk us through the back sweetening process? I know a lot of people do actually prefer the sweeter ciders. Yeah, I mean, you can sweeten with either raw juice or a sugar solution or some other kind of fruit juice. That's often how I would make a fruit cider for a competition. I'd have a dry cider and I'd

I'd blend in some sort of pure fruit juice, you know, often something like cherry or raspberry, something that would be very distinctive, easy for the judges to recognize. And you're just relying on the natural juice of the fruit. You do have to arrest the fermentation though first, right?

Well, it depends on how you're packaging it. If it's in a keg, what difference does it make? You know, it just might wind up a little more carbonated, but it depends on how fast you're going to drink it. I mean, it's not going to immediately...

um, take off, especially if you're storing it cold. Um, yeah, it'll, the sugars, yeah, they'll, if the yeast is in there, it'll eventually work on them, but that, you know, would tend to be slow. But yeah, if you, if you're putting it in a bottle, you don't want to create bottle bombs. So you'd have to, you'd have to filter out the yeast or, um,

You know, add sulfites and sorbates, I believe, use a combination. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Just like you would for mead. Yeah. You know, it's mead making and cider making when it comes to sort of fermentation and packaging. Very, very similar.

Including down to the adjustments, like the tweaking of the final sugar content, trying to hit a certain profile. I mean, I'm more likely to play around with the carbonation. And there, I'm putting in a keg and I'm force carbonating it to something I just sort of enjoy. I tend to, especially the drier ones, I tend to push to a higher level of carbonation.

because it just sort of increases the refreshing quality to it. I guess probably the carbonic acid from the carbon dioxide drives it up a little bit more, gives it a little more punch. Yeah, it'll also tend to, right, it'll increase that, so it'll be a little bit more of an edgy, bitey. A little punchier, yeah. Yeah.

A little acidic, a little brighter. So, I mean, if you've got something that's tasting a little dull, you know, before you, you know, add acid, say, you know, tricarbonating it first, maybe that'll give you the palate effect you're looking for. Well, let's dive into the different types of cider. Sure.

I was looking at the current style guide. I haven't seen the new one yet, but it has ciders basically divided into standard and specialty ciders. So let's start there. What's the difference between a standard and a specialty cider? Yeah, that was just the arbitrary classification we'd used. It was basically sort of apple and pear only ciders and peris. So just...

The traditional ones just using those fruits and the specialty ones would be using additional ingredients or processes or, you know, basically building a variation based on those other base styles. And then we also divide them by levels of sweetness. Can you walk us through different levels of sweetness?

Yeah, we originally had three levels of sweetnesses, you know, sort of low, medium, high. In the 2015 guidelines, the cider community wanted to go to five levels of sweetness, so basically adding a medium low and medium high. You know, they call them semi-dry and semi-sweet. So, you know, it's just like a...

A scale of five. Kind of like wine, I think, has a similar scale, right? Yeah. I mean, there's different. Yes, you can look at it that way. You know, if it's on a scale of one to five versus a scale of one to three, those all still cover the same ranges. It just gives you a little bit more granularity if you want to talk about it.

I was a little resistant to the idea because I thought judges would misuse it. You know, one person's medium is another person's medium dry, and I didn't want to see them waste 10 minutes arguing about which is which when at most it's worth half a point on the total score. Yeah.

But if it allows judges to sort them into a better tasting order, because like meads and some other wines, you prefer to go dry to sweet. It's easier on your palate, and that could sort of help in that regard. So I'm okay with it.

Now, there are quite a few Perry styles, which, of course, is made with pears, right? What is it about pears that makes it such a good combination with cider? Well, I mean, Perry is basically a cider made with pears instead of apples. It's not—Perry doesn't have apples in it on its own. It's just pears. And they can be like apples. You can be using table fruit like you would buy in a supermarket, or—

Or there are sort of heirloom classic varieties that aren't good for eating but have qualities that make these sort of more complex products. So, you know, some of the peri-pears are nearly inedible. There's so much tannin in them, but they have good qualities when fermented and mixed. So, yeah.

It's one of those, you know, really sort of artisanal products that can be made. And pears, as an agricultural product, take some time to produce. So, you know, there's a saying about you plant pears for your heirs, you know, just saying that the trees take some time to start yielding acceptable fruit. So, yeah.

You know, I don't make it that way because I don't have those kind of trees and I haven't built a network of suppliers, but I certainly enjoy it. The qualities of Perry is quite a bit different than cider.

Pears often have an increased level of sorbitol in them, which is a sugar alcohol, which kind of gives this sort of fuller, smoother mouthfeel. It's quite interesting. But I do enjoy pears. Pears are one of my favorite fruit. So the aromatics and flavors you get out of pears I think is quite interesting.

And pears and apples are, they're in the same botanical family. Pears and apples and quince are all, you know, we call them palm fruit. You know, I'm not a botanist, but they're closely related.

But it is interesting, a lot of the tannic varieties of pears survived, I guess, whereas on apples, a lot of them have kind of petered out over time, although there's a big effort now to rejuvenate a lot of those. Is that because pears are used more in baking? I'm just trying to figure out why that particular wine survived.

I'm not sure. I mean, I think maybe apples have survived more than you might think. Yeah. For the people that are making it on sort of artisanal craft level, you see more of these mass market versions just because it's attracted the high volume beer brewer types who are trying to put ciders out there and get...

sales volume versus the people that are making these sort of real handcrafted products. I don't want to disparage, you know, the mass marketed ciders that way, but, you know, I just, I, I look at the ingredients when I buy something and if it looks like it's a artisanal fermented product and less like a cocktail, uh,

You know, I tend to prefer that because you can make something that tastes absolutely like cider by just, you know, adding some alcohol to some fruit juice and, you know, adding some water and just artificially carbonating it. And, you know, to me, that's, you know, you're not really doing a fermentation and the fermentation, you know, with all kinds of foods is what gives you complexity.

So, you know, know what it is that you're drinking. But, you know, those mass market ciders can be quite enjoyable and refreshing as well. So it depends on, you know, what you're interested in drinking at the moment. But there's a lot of categories. Are there a lot of good artisanal, I should say, peri makers? I'm not familiar with many in our area. I think there's quite a few cideries, but...

Yeah, there's, there's fewer of them in the U S I think, um, you know, it's, um, I see, I see more of them in France, you know, maybe in Canada, different, different areas like that. Um, you know, you, you kind of have to hunt for it. It's not going to have the same kind of volume. Um, and, uh,

It's always, you know, when you get to these heirloom-ish kind of things, it's very regional because you have to, they're going to be small batches, so they're not going to be widely distributed. Right. So, you know, maybe you have to go to those areas. You know, I remember driving around in northern France once.

Between looking at World War II invasion beaches and things, you're driving around Normandy and Brittany, and all kinds of cider producers all over the place, little family places in England.

I tell you, no matter which one you pull into, you're going to get something super enjoyable. So, I mean, it depends on where you are. If you're in an area that does apples in more of a big way, you can find those. And more people are sort of paying attention to the craft and going through it. It's harder for...

beer makers to sort of understand the level of sort of agriculture that you have to get into to really do high-end ciders on yourself. I mean, you have to understand about the different trees and selecting the fruit and all of that. It's not like you just roll down to your local homebrew shop and like

you know, bada bing, you know, off you go. So, I mean, I, I don't really have the interest level to go and develop those skills myself. Like I need, like I need another hobby to be obsessed about. I was thinking, I've got a friend who actually has a, has a small orchard, right?

But on that, just that small orchard, which isn't even that many acres, I think he grows 42 varieties of apples, just to give you an idea. So it's kind of amazing when you think about it. Right. So you could hit him up and say, you know, hey, you know, what kind of varieties do you have? And you can look at them and they're kind of categorized in four general families based on like the level of acidity and tannin in them.

And, you know, maybe you can get a custom pressing or maybe you can get a Apple press of your own and, and, and, you know, select your own fruit. It's, it's the real analogy in, in, in, in beer, because it's not like,

You've got like a barley field in your backyard and you're going to go grow your own heirloom varieties and malt it yourself. Yeah. But, but that's really what some cider makers sort of go through to produce the sort of higher end stuff. Yeah.

I don't want to do that. So I tend to produce the common ciders and the variations of common ciders based on the, you know, the great juice that I can buy. I just thought it was absolutely amazing because I probably couldn't name six or seven different varieties of apples and he's got 42 growing on his little tiny farm. So anyways, let's get into, let's get into making, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Get him to press it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, ask him, you know, does he ever press them into cider? And, you know, maybe he can put together a custom blend for you. I'm sure he does. I'll have to ask him next of all. But anyways, let's get into making cider with fruits. You can obviously take pears or apples and mix them with other fruits and ferment them out. Which fruits tend to work well with cider? Stone fruits. Stone fruits.

Berries, those are sort of my favorites. I mean, really, really pretty much any fruit that you enjoy the flavor profile of. You just have to, you just like with making mead or like with using fruit with beer, you have to understand the fruit is providing other than flavor because they'll provide acidity and tannin.

And you have to take that into account with what's already in there and how you wind up balancing it. Yeah, I think Ken Tram, famous mead maker Ken Tram, who I've had on the show several times, he coined the term, I think it was noble fruits, which are the fruits that are high in acidity and highly tannic. And it includes things like, oh, I don't know, sour cherries, black currants, all the berries, raspberries, dates.

Logan Berry's all those other ones. You look at the stuff that he uses in his meads and those are probably it. Yeah, that was it. Yeah. But I thought it was, I thought it was pretty clever. And honestly, they probably do work the best actually. Yeah. So. Yeah. The very tannic, very acidic fruits.

But, I mean, you can taste, if you have the juice, you can mix it with just plain apple juice, and it will give you an idea of, is this flavor compatible with apple? Yeah. So, I mean, really, if you buy a lot of commercial juices that are some other fruit, if you look at it,

they often have a fair amount of apple juice or grape, white grape juice mixed in to provide sort of a cheap, fruity, sugary source. Um, you know, it's hard to buy pure black currant juice. Very hard to get these days. Yeah. Chances are, you know, unless you're going to some Eastern European market or something, but chances are it's cut with something else. Um,

You know, if you look at fruit juices, they're often like that. So when I try to use fruit juice, I mean, when you said you want to make a cider with fruit, yeah, you can go out and you can source the fresh fruit in season like you would with mead. But if it's not exactly in the same season, you can use sort of pure juice products instead.

I always liked this Knudsen's juice that had a lot of... Yeah, I mean, I used to have a lot of my meads. I used the Knudsen's, I guess, all-natural juice or something like that. It's basically no preservatives. I think it's pasteurized, but... Yeah, yeah. So, exactly. They used to sell a black currant juice, which was wonderful, but I don't know if I... I haven't been able to find it the last couple of years. Yeah, it's probably a limited market for that. Yeah. So...

Well, let's go on to herbs and spices. Obviously, you can use those. And I know I've gone to a number of cideries where they had hop cider as well. Yeah. And, you know, I consider that all part of the same category. I mean, hops are basically an herb the way you use it because you're not using hops like you would in beer because you don't want like a big bitter element of it besides your nut.

boiling it, I hope. So you're essentially dry-hopping a cider. And there you have to pair the aromatics of the hops with what the character of the apple is. So you don't want one to step on another. I think something like Amarillo very nicely, because it's sort of a gentle...

It's not something that would really step all over any apple aromatics. But a hop cider can be awfully nice. It's interesting. But as a judge, first I have to say, do I still get a cider character out of it? If all I get is the specialty ingredient, then...

You know, is this really a cider? I need to basically get that apple character. Yeah, I mean, the hop cider for me, I enjoy it, but it's not something I want to drink like, you know, several pints of kind of a thing. It's a novelty, I guess. Yeah, and it can be somewhat refreshing if they don't overdo it and get the, you know, there starts to get too much tannin and bitterness and, you know, tasting like...

you know, dried leaves or like tea. Yeah. Um, you know, because that, that, that tends to have a cumulative effect on your palate. And the more you drink it, the more it coats your tongue and you feel yourself, you know, needing to scrape, scrape off so you can taste things. But, um, the first time you have a dry hop cider, you know, it's like, wow, this, that, that's unexpected. Um,

you know, if it's done well. Let's talk about spices. I know there's a lot of spices used in various kinds of cider, you know, the common things you might think like cinnamon, nutmeg, and so on, but what are some other good options? Yeah, again, I tend to think in cooking terms. So, you know, if there are any apple-based dishes, whether savory or sweet,

Think about how they're spiced and think about whether those are compatible. So, I mean, the obvious one is the classic American apple pie, you know, pretty much like what you said, cinnamon, nutmeg, maybe clove. Be careful on the clove. But it was another good one, I think, yeah.

Oh, it is. Yeah. Yeah. And whether there's, you know, some of those are used in conjunction with fruit, other fruit. Yeah, you can you can use some of those, but well-known spice blends that might have another name. You said like apple pie spice, pumpkin pie spice, you know, the sort of potpourri kind of thing.

spices, you know, the mulled cider kind of, you know, maybe bringing some like orange peel and lemon peel in addition to, you know, some of those apple pie spices, warming spices, you know, think star anise and cardamom and, and, you know, other sort of interesting spices like that. Yeah. Those, those can add some interest, but again, you know,

Think about whether they're going to be complementing and enhancing the apple or if they're just going to totally step all over it. Something like ginger is very powerful and could easily overpower apple. If you use something like rosemary in there, another very powerful herb. But

you know, the idea of rosemary and apple doesn't, you know, doesn't sound wonderful to me, but you know, I, I, I could be convinced. Well, yeah, a lot of it's a lot of it's getting the level, right. Um, which I guess, you know, a lot of people, uh, you added to taste afterwards, which is probably the smart way to do it, you know? Yeah. I would, you know, the same way, um, the same way I would, um, adjust needs is I would use, um,

I would make sort of a tea with the spices, you know, pour some boiling water over the spices, let it steep for two to five, at most 10 minutes, because you will extract some tannins out of those, and then blend the tea in to taste, you know, just make sort of a powerful mix, you know, something like

The chai tea mix has a lot of those kind of blends. If you're tasting food dishes and you think that's interesting, particularly if there's apples associated with it, I think that's fair game for experimentation. But the classic would be apple pie spices. Sure. Yeah.

Well, I did want to go into the BJCB style guide. You mentioned you're doing some major revisions. What are some of the big changes that you're incorporating? I'll start organizational. So you talked about the 2015 guidelines having two categories. We're expanding that to four. Okay. So we're breaking, we're breaking Perry into its own category. And what had been sort of the, the,

traditional cider, the standard cider, is traditional cider. So the regional cider varieties of the world that are primarily just taking apples, crushing them, and fermenting them. So the common cider is

made from table apples, but also, you know, we had English and French styles before. We're adding an heirloom variety, which is kind of like a modern craft cider, something that has apples with more tannin, but not necessarily the extra fermentation effects that you get out of English and French, things that have

malolactic fermentation that generate funky or, you know, spicy kind of elements. No, just something that has more tannin to it as opposed to the generally sweeter and more acidic table fruit. Adding the Spanish cider?

which is another global, um, style. Um, and that's the, the sort of the traditional cider. So we'll have five subcategories, um, the common, the heirloom, and then English, French, and Spanish. Nice. So, yeah. So that's, uh, again, the, uh,

BJCP is looking to be more than just an American organization. So we're trying to be open to styles that exist in other countries and, you know, representing their heritage, even if it is sort of hard, would be hard for an American to produce them. You know, not all cider is going to be made here. So we have to be open to that. Sure.

Are they, uh, when's a, when's a new style guide coming out, Gordon? Well, so I'm calling it, um, 2025. So, so it might come out in 2025, maybe. It's, it's going to come out like this. This is essentially done. I basically, uh, intended to be a Christmas present. So, um, um,

The people that would publish it on the website, you know, I'm not sort of expecting them to be busting up their vacation to deal with me. Wasn't it the last beer guide you put out like the last day of the year or something? It was like right at the end. Yeah. And, you know, I was going to call this 2024 for the same reason.

you know, enough people said, well, you're putting it out sort of at the start. So, you know, call it this like, yeah, but it was most of the work had been finished in that year. So yeah, you, I'm bending to the trend here. Always a challenge. Yeah. Where can, uh, where can people learn more about making cider at home? Um, so there, there are, there are a number of really good books. There are, um,

Probably more books about cider than there are about mead, I think. The new Cider Maker handbook, Claude Jolicoeur, is sort of the latest classic, really well regarded. Ben Watson has a good book, Cider Hard and Sweet.

Um, you know, either of those are, are good places to start. Um, the, the Ben Watson book is a little, uh, um, easier to digest cause it's smaller. Um, you know, those are, those are good places. Uh, the BJCP website has some information on it, but you know, we're not going to go into the, here's how you grow a tree. It's going to be more about how do you, how do you appreciate the styles? Hmm.

I did want to mention the other categories. I'll go ahead and reference them. No, no, go ahead, please. Yes, that's fine. So, like I told you, there's traditional, which has the five sub-styles. Then there's a group of ones that I'm calling strong-siders.

So New England cider, apple wine, ice cider, and fire cider. They're all using some form of concentration technique or some additional form of sugar being added, something to make a stronger product, and it might have some other effects.

And then we have specialty cider as its own category with fruit cider, spice cider, and experimental, where anything goes. So the fire cider is a new style. It's something that had come out of Canada, where they're actually sort of –

down. It's almost, you know, almost like making maple syrup. You know, you're boiling down cider and then fermenting it. So it's different than ice cider, which is kind of like making ice wine. You're, you're, you're sort of concentrating it that way. Freezing. Yeah. Apple. Yeah. And apple wine is more like you're just adding a bunch of plain white sugar to it to, to bump up something to be like super dry and, and, and more, um, you know,

And New England cider, you know, tends to have raisins and maybe some other adjuncts, brown sugar or such, and it could be in a barrel. So those are the different variations there.

And peri is kind of the same idea of, you know, it's just sort of a mix of the different cider traditions. So it has the common cider with fruit, the heirloom cider using peri pears. There's an ice peri, which is another sort of Canadian style with a concentrated by freezing. And then the experimental category, which would have any...

any like added ingredient or process that's not already covered. So there's quite a bit of, of, of style, um, to choose from and they're organized in a way that, that should make it a little bit easier to break them apart in competition, depending on the number of entries, uh, that they receive. So I'm looking forward to seeing what people make. Well, we look forward to seeing it and, uh, coming out very shortly, just a couple of weeks. Um,

Well, Gordon, I want to get your closing thoughts on cider making. Yeah, so I don't put my – I mean, I've won medals in cider. I've won national medals in cider. But I don't consider myself the geeky cider maker. I'm more like the find some really, really, really good sweet cider and then ferment it.

using the techniques that I know how to do. And then maybe I'll make variations of that by adding other ingredients. So just knowing how to ferment something, knowing how to balance something, knowing how to present something to judges, that can take you so far. But if you really want to go into some of these more esoteric styles that require...

less common apples or if you want to get into Perry's, then you have to spend a lot of effort in building your own sort of network of suppliers or how are you going to source the fruit? And you might have to do some more of the work yourself. It's not something that you can expect somebody else to have done the bulk of the work for you. So it depends on what you want to put into it.

What I tend to think of myself more as is a really good cider judge. So you can appreciate these things. You can learn to develop the vocabulary about the flavors of what you're tasting, to understand what's expected in these world styles, and then be...

then be one of the people that can help decide, you know, the most worthy examples in a competition. Because a lot of people are afraid of cider like they are mead. So if you can do a credible job of judging cider and mead, you'll actually be doing competition organizers a favor. They always seem to be searching for judges. So

Don't think that you have to produce all of the ciders you drink. Look for these world styles for the ones that you're not able to make yourself. Judge in some bigger competitions that have the specialists entering them, and then maybe you can taste what those styles should taste like, and maybe that will inspire you. If you really taste something that you like...

you might be more incentivized to go figure out how to do it on your own. So hopefully, hopefully that will light some creative juices on your people. For me, I, you know, I make, you know, a batch of cider a year and I just keep it on. I serve it on draft. It's, it's a nice, it's a nice tap to have around tastes wonderful in the summer.

The other thing that I love to do with getting the cider is I'll make sizer, which is actually the mead.

with using apple cider and honey. And that's where I tend to bring in the apple pie spices. Oh, yeah. I've won a lot of medals with my apple pie spices. Apple pie cider or mead, I should say. Yeah, like liquid apple pie. Nice. The honey goes with the flavor really well.

And that one, you want to make that one sweet, and I like carbonating it so it doesn't finish too heavy. So that's another thing you can do with the seasonal cider when you're able to buy it in the fall.

So I hope people – when the guidelines come out, I'd really love to hear what people think. So a lot of work went into them, and interested in hearing the thoughts.

Your show reaches a wide audience around the world when I travel. You wouldn't believe the number of people in other countries that tell me, oh, I heard your podcast with Brad. This is great. You got to tell me who they are so I can go get some free beer from them or something, you know. Thank you.

Well, Gordon, thank you. Thank you again for coming on the show today. Really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. Yeah, I'm glad we were able to fit it in here right before Christmas. Have a present for people. Yeah. Today, my guest was Gordon Strong, the author of the books, Modern Homebrew Recipes and Brewing Better Beer. Thank you again, Gordon. Appreciate it. Cheers.

Well, a big thank you to Gordon Strong for joining me this week. Thanks also to Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine. They recently added a new collection of more than 500 beer recipes from pro brewers to their site. And most of them will let you download the Beersmith recipe file. The new Craft Beer and Brewing recipe site is at beerandbrewing.com slash beer dash recipes. Again, that's beerandbrewing.com slash beer dash recipes.

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