Noel Schutt

Making Craft Cider: A Ciderist’s Guide by Simon McKie is an excellent starting point when learning to make your own cider. This is a short and well-written book that does a good job of summarising the best of the other four books in this series of reviews. McKie covers all the important topics—including choosing apples, pressing, blending, additions, and measurements—in a very short book, but manages to include enough detail to make informed choices in your first efforts as a ciderist. McKie includes a good explanation (with examples) of how to calculate specific gravity when adjusting sugar content, an important but often neglected topic. I appreciate the clear and accurate description of fermentation over the attempt at literary descriptions found in some other books. A useful note that McKie clearly describes is that having the correct total acid content is important for taste, but total acid is not the same as the pH, which is important for avoiding microbial infection.

Making Craft Cider is one of the most professionally produced zymurgy books I have read. It is well written, well typeset, nearly typo free, and has a good glossary and index. I’m not a fan of glossy paper, but it fits well with McKie’s use of many well-chosen photographs. The typical caveat about slight differences in terminology across the pond applies, but McKie is accurate and easy to read.

Making Craft Cider: A Ciderist’s Guide is a good first book for an aspiring ciderist to read. If you want same background on the American history of cider and styles of cider, you’ll also want to read Ben Watson’s Cider, hard and sweet. If you continue with cider making, you’ll also read Andrew Lea’s Craft Cider Making for slightly more information, but McKie’s book is the place to start.

This is the fourth review in a series on cider making books.

BibTeX reference:

@book{mckie2011making,
    Author = {Simon McKie},
    Publisher = {Osprey Publishing},
    Series = {Shire Library},
    Title = {Making Craft Cider: A Ciderist's Guide},
    Year = {2011}
}

Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale by Michael Pooley and John Lomax is a good introductory book on cider making. It is short with lots of photographs. One feature I like that is not in the other cider books is a pair of flowcharts on the steps for making either naturally conditioned sparkling cider or still cider.

Pooley and Lomax promote what Lea calls a ‘naturalistic style’ of cider making. They prefer to not add sulfur dioxide, but do recommend using commercial yeast. They note that if the juice is processed well and has enough acidity, there is a low chance of bacterial infection in the time before the yeast dominates. This is easy for them to ensure, because this book is primarily aimed at very small batches where the cider maker chooses, washes, and presses the apples themselves. They include a plan for building a small slatted basket cider press. They note that most ciders will end up clear without filtration or fining. An interesting idea that I learned from this book is that wine boxes are an inexpensive way to store still cider in a refrigerator.

Because Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale is an American edition of a British book, the terminology is a bit different from the American books, but it is well written and easy to understand. You just may need to learn a few more terms when you look for supplies locally. There are some clip-art-ish illustrations that don’t add anything add anything to the book, but it is mostly well illustrated and includes lots of photographs. It is distinguished from many homebrewing books because this cider making book has a professionally typeset and designed look. I like that Pooley and Lomax are consistent with the terminology that cider means the fermented variety; before fermentation it is apple juice. This demonstrates that the corruption of the term cider during Prohibition hasn’t spread out of the United States.

Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale is a good and very short introduction to cider making. If you have access to apple trees and don’t want to read much, this is a good starting point. If you are like me and want more technical details to help make decisions, you’ll end up reading Craft Cider Making by Andrew Lea soon after this book. If you are more interested in cider’s history and styles, read Ben Watson’s Cider, hard and sweet.

This is the third review in a series on cider making books.

BibTeX reference:

@book{pooley2011real,
    Author = {Michael Pooley and John Lomax},
    Edition = {2nd},
    Publisher = {Fox Chapel Publishing},
    Title = {Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale:
                An Introduction to Producing Cider at Home},
    Year = {2011}
}

The first book I read on cider was Ben Watson’s Cider, hard and sweet. This book is an excellent starting point for Americans only familiar with the pasteurised and preserved “cider” found in grocery stores in the fall. It provides a good introduction to the styles of cider produced around the world and includes the best history of cider I have read.

To avoid the problem that most Americans think of cider as an unfermented beverage, Watson adds a new term. His preferred term is “real cider” for fresh apple juice that has not been pasteurized or preserved. Both real cider and the cloudy grocery store kind are considered sweet cider. The sweet cider distinction leaves the transparent juice from grocery stores called apple juice. To fit this naming scheme, traditional cider must be called hard cider when the meaning is ambiguous.

Because America’s “cider culture” died decades ago, Watson includes a chapter on tasting cider. I think this section is more in-depth than needed, but it is probably beneficial for people unfamiliar with conducting experiments. The glossary of cider-tasting terms was helpful for learning to describe the flavors of ciders.

Watson includes two chapters on making your own cider. These are an okay starting point, but if you are interested in cider-making, I recommend Andrew Lea’s Craft Cider Making. These two chapters contain my only real complaints about this book: a misleading representation of yeast reproduction, and some incorrect terminology. Watson conflates malolactic and secondary fermentation. These are actually different processes. Secondary fermentation is caused by the continued action of the brewing yeast (typically Saccharomyces spp) after moving the cider off its lees left by the primary fermentation. Malolactic fermentation is a separate process involving lactic acid bacteria (eg Lactobacillus spp, Pediococcus spp). Secondary fermentation is still converting sugars to alcohols, malolactic fermentation is converting malic acid to lactic acid. Since I hadn’t yet read Lea when I started my 2011 ciders, Watson provided much of my original knowledge base, and my results have been good.

The history sections of Cider, hard and sweet led me to some conclusions about my previous perception of cider. Part of my original misconceptions were due to the fact that in the United States cider is often called “hard cider”. This gave me the impression of cider being a distilled beverage instead of a relatively low alcohol fruit wine. The former popularity of applejack contributed to a negative image of cider. This is due to the affects of the fusel alcohols and methanol that are concentrated when applejack is created from cider by freeze distillation. The adulterated drinks sold as “cider” during the industrial revolution also contributed to this incorrect image of true cider. Watson’s history of cider does a good job of correcting these misconceptions, as well as creating an appreciation for the history and styles of cider in America and Europe.

As for the production of the book: it is more professional than many of the other cider and brewing books I have read, but I found the typography and layout annoying. I also dislike the silly use of BCE. This is an unnecessary complication of the language: there is no good reason not to just stick with BC.

Cider, hard and sweet does a good job of introducing all aspects of cider production from choosing apples through cooking with cider. Overall, this is a good introduction for someone unfamiliar with cider, but it is no longer my first recommendation for a book on cider making. If you are unfamiliar with cider, start here; if you want to make your own, continue with Andrew Lea’s Craft Cider Making.

This is the first review in a series on cider making books.

BibTeX reference:

@book{watson2009cider,
    Author = {Ben Watson},
    Edition = {2nd},
    Publisher = {The Countryman Press},
    Title = {Cider, hard and sweet:
                history, traditions, and making your own},
    Year = {2009}
}