Drink your-self some cider

Bridge brought over two hard ciders Monday night, both by West County Cider. I don't know a lot about cider, so I started looking around on the web. Turns out cider is a pretty artisanal product and I love artisanal products.

To start, you pound the hell out of some apples. This is called scratting and the resulting product is called pommace. The pommace is formed into cakes, which are called cheese. The cheese is stacked on slatted racks with cloth on them and pressure is applied to the stacks to squeeze the juice. The juice is then strained and the cheese discarded.

The process of fermentation is the same as for wine: yeasts, either natural or added, consume the sugar and turn it into alcohol. To add the sparkle to cider, near the end of fermentation the juice is racked off the dead yeast cells while some sugar and yeast still remain, and is put in an airtight vessel. The carbon dioxide that results from the remaining fermentation is trapped in the solution, creating the effervescence.

Here are some cider facts:

• Cider can be bottled right after fermentation or aged in casks.

• Various apples are often blended for different characteristics.

• Apples that taste good to eat are often poor for cider because you need more tannin and acid in the fruit to translate to the beverage.

• Oxidization is a big concern while extracting juice from the cheese; exposure to air taints the product.

• Fermenting at colder temperature preserves subtlety in the resulting juice.

• European apples tend to be more tannic.

• If you put cider in an open bucket and leave it out on a cold night you can make Applejack by skimming the frozen water out and leaving a more concentrated alcohol.

The first Cider we drank was Heritage Apple. It is made from Baldwin, Roxburry Russet (which was America's first-named apple variety), and European apples. It was crisp and light with very nice acid; the predominant scent on the nose was that of a carton of white button mushrooms and reminiscent of the forest floor. A very interesting drink

The second was Baldwin, which I assume contains all Baldwin apples. It is slightly sweeter and more straightforward apple on the nose and palette. I imagine it would go very well with roast pork at a Christmas dinner, but that may just be the season taking hold.

Cider seems pretty cool to me.