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}
}

Andrew Lea’s Craft Cider Making is the best book I have read on producing your own cider from fresh apple juice. It is an excellent introduction to making traditional ciders. As a food biochemist who spent 13 years in cider related research, the author is probably the most qualified author in this series. This background contributes to making this the most scientifically accurate of the cider books I am reviewing. This doesn’t detract from the readability of the book, Craft Cider Making is as well written as any of the other books.

Since this book is from the UK, some of the terminology is slightly different from what is used in the American books, but in the areas that matter this one is more correct. Since cider came to America from England there isn’t too much of an adjustment, you just need to know some small changes such as calling 4.5 liter bottles demijohns; American homebrewers usually use the term for bottles over 25 liters.

Being from the UK, you also have to recognize that the apple varieties are different than the ones we have in the US. Since the principles are the same, this just means you should just treat the section on apples as an introduction to terminology and concepts, not particular cultivars. You can then choose apples with similar characteristics. Or do what I did and just use the fresh juice available at a local orchard.

Craft Cider Making is focused on making traditional ciders. It includes a short chapter on cultivating apples, but only details needed for cider making; if you want a book on growing cider apples read an orchardist’s book. This is an example of the focus helps keep the book short and on track. Lea provides a good appendix of further resources, including brief reviews of other cider books and recommendations for books on cultivating apples.

While some of the other books downplay the use of sulfur dioxide in cider, Lea recommends some sulfiting. He notes that the use of sulfite is actually traditional, it’s just that in earlier times it was done by burning a sulfur candle or string in the barrel prior to filling it instead of adding Campden tablets. An interesting historical note from this book is the fact that sparkling beverages began with cider in England several decades before the famous start of champagne production in France. This was due to the location of the invention of the process necessary to make the high quality bottles required to maintain pressure.

Craft Cider Making is the best cider making book I have read. If you want a reference to use when making your own cider, this is the book I recommend buying. If you are more interested in learning history and styles of cider, read Ben Watson’s Cider, hard and sweet.

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

In addition to the book, Andrew Lea has a good website.

BibTeX reference:

@book{lea2011craft,
    Author = {Lea, Andrew},
    Publisher = {Good Life Press},
    Title = {Craft Cider Making},
    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}
}

At this point it is important to clarify some terms. Cider is produced by fermenting apple juice; it can be thought of as wine made from apples instead of grapes. The alcohol content is typically below that of wines, but can be anywhere in a wide range. There are many varieties, but they fit under the term cider. The gallon jugs labeled “cider” you can find in grocery stores are properly called apple juice, and are usually both pasteurised and preserved. What is typically sold as “apple juice” is filtered apple juice. To confuse things more, cider is often called “hard cider”, but this term is also used for applejack or distilled cider. The mangled nomenclature is one of the legacies of Prohibition, and only exists in the United States. Because of the confused terminology, some call fermented cider “hard cider”, unfiltered apple juice “sweet cider”, and filtered apple juice “apple juice”. Whenever I use the term cider I am referring to the fermented beverage. I refer to the unfermented varieties as filtered or unfiltered apple juice.

My interest in cider lead me to read several books on cider in 2011. These contained interesting history and technical information on the production of cider, with an emphasis on producing homemade cider.

We tried the bottled draft style ciders available locally. The draft ciders available taste good, but are a bit sweet. As I learned from my reading, they are actually kinda the light beer of the cider world: they are fermented dry, filtered, artificially back-sweetened, cut with up to half water, and force carbonated. Unlike light beer, these ciders taste good, but I wanted to try more traditional cider.

When apple season arrived, I bought several gallons of fresh apple juice from a local orchard. This fresh, unfiltered, non-pasteurised, no-preservatives added, juice is incomparably better than the pasteurised and preserved juice sold in grocery stores. We drank some of this juice fresh, but I fermented most into several varieties of cider. The first of the cider is ready—and tastes amazing—the rest are still fermenting or conditioning.

The Books

Here are links to my reviews of cider books. These reviews should be posted over the next several weeks.

• Cider, hard and sweet: History, Traditions & Making Your Own by Ben Watson
• Cider: Making, Using & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider by Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols
• Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale by Michael Pooley and John Lomax
• Craft Cider Making by Andrew Lea
• Making Craft Cider: A Ciderist’s Guide by Simon McKie

The Ciders

Here are the ciders I made this year. All are made from the same batch of apple juice from a local orchard. I’ll post details RSN.

• Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast
  • dry still cider
  • off-dry carbonated cider
• Lalvin EC–1118 yeast
  • dry still cider
  • sweet sparkling cider
  • raspberry still cider
  • raspberry sweet sparkling cider
  • cyser

It is no longer a luxury to make our economy low-carbon and sustainable. It’s a matter of preventing harm to the species who dwell on the Earth, including our own. Just as an ailing patient can recover, so can an ailing planet. But we must act now. [page 5]

Changing Planet, Changing Health by Paul Epstein and Dan Ferber is an excellent book on the connection between the environment and human health. Even if you aren’t convinced by the planetary science background behind human-caused climate change, this book presents a compelling argument that the actions needed for ecological reasons must also be taken to address health issues.

To maintain and improve human health, we must choose solutions that address all four of the great crises of our time—the global food crisis, the energy crisis, the economic crisis, and climate change. What’s more, we need to do it in a way that is fair to everyone, including the world’s poor. This seems like a daunting task. The good news is that solutions that address these multiple crises are available. [page 281]

I appreciate reading a book based on the fact that these problems are interconnected instead of denying it. There are plenty of books that explain the existence of anthropogenic climate change and other manmade environmental problems, some of which propose a partial solution to one of these problems. Changing Planet, Changing Health is a good addition because it uses systems thinking to show the connection between multiple problems, as well as greatly expanding the coverage of health implications. This is particularly needed after the popularity of books—such as Bjørn Lomborg’s awful Cool It—which are based on trying to disconnect these issues.

Changing Planet, Changing Health centers on describing the the health impacts of climate change, but also includes proposed solutions. In the section on solutions, I was introduced me to a historical parallel that I was unaware of:

In the mid-nineteenth century, when London treated the River Thames like an open sewer, a seemingly never-ending epidemic of epidemics plagued the city. Public health reformers sought citywide authority for massive public works projects to clean up the water supply and dispose safely of sewage. Many Londoners resisted, protesting that an invasive government would threaten their rights as individuals and communities to make their own decisions about waste removal. The reformers won the battle; drinking water was piped in and treated, and modern sanitation systems were installed in cities throughout the developed world. The generations that followed lived longer and healthier lives. [page 293]

This is an apt comparison. We currently treat the atmosphere as a nearly open sewer, with spotty regulations of what and how much can be released into it. It is no longer common to hear arguments against the existence of public utilities for water and sewer, but we are bombarded with the same individual rights argument whenever any limitations on air pollution are discussed. It is common to hear a politician use a states’ rights argument to say that any regulation of pollution—when they admit there should be some regulation—should be at the state level; but due to the competition between states to be the most “business friendly”, this effectively means no regulation. Yet in this close parallel, we see that sometimes government action is necessary. The creation of effective municipal water plants and sewer systems are responsible for nearly eliminating many deseases from the areas with these public works, while the diseases remain common in areas with poor sanitation. Given the direct health, ecological, and climate consequences caused by polluting the atmosphere, and the current low level af activity to reduce this problem, it is reasonable to think that this is also a case where the solution must involve public actions.

Changing Planet, Changing Health easily makes it onto my short list of books you should read. If you aren’t already very familiar with the health implications of our alterations to the planet, Changing Planet, Changing Health should be at the top of your reading list. I’m not the only one to give this book a hearty recommendation, in their review on RealClimate, Jim Bouldin and Rasmus E. Benestad say:

Paul Epstein and Dan Ferber have created in this book an outstanding synthesis of climate change and human/environmental health concerns. It is born of a lifetime’s work, and addresses topics that will potentially affect a very large number of people. This is a great and needed contribution and we recommend it without reservation.

You can also listen to an interview with the authors on Sound Medicine from the Indiana University School of Medicine and WFYI Public Radio. While you are at it, it’s worth reading Chapter 8: Human Health of the Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007.

BibTeX:

@book{epstein2011,
	Author = {Paul Epstein and Dan Ferber},
	Publisher = {University of California Press},
	Title = {Changing Planet, Changing Health:
	        How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It},
	Year = {2011}
}

The Merchants’ War is the much later (thirty-one years!) sequel to The Space Merchants. It continues the story after the settlement of Venus has become established. The novel revolves around the continuing conflict between the Advertising Agency controlled earth and the Anti-Huckster Venus. The Merchants’ War is a pretty good continuation of The Space Merchants, though the large time jump between the two books was shocking at first. The long time between the two stories turns out to be ok because it allows Pohl to concentrate on the huckster against anti-advertising cold war instead of the colonization story.

I appreciated Pohl’s descriptions of Political Action Committees, political candidate screening (Casting), and the protagonist’s reaction to seeing the night sky in an ‘aboriginal’ area.

If you enjoyed The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth, The Merchant’s War is worth reading.

@book{pohl1986merchants,
	Author = {Pohl, Frederik},
	Publisher = {St. Martin's Press},
	Title = {The Merchants' War},
	Year = {1986}
}

Our representative government now is perhaps more representative than it has ever been before in history. It is not necessarily representative per capita, but it most surely is ad valorem. If you like philosophical problems, here is one for you: should each human being’s vote register alike, as the lawbooks pretend and as some say the founders of our nation desired? Or should a vote be weighed according to the wisdom, the power, and the influence—that is, the money—of the voter? That is a philosophical problem for you, you understand; not for me. I am a pragmatist, and a pragmatist, moreover, on the payroll of Fowler Schocken. [page 15]

Now, off to find the Consies; and to read the sequel, The Merchants’ War.

BibTeX:

@book{pohl1953,
	Author = {Frederik Pohl and C M Kornbluth},
	Title = {The Space Merchants},
	Year = {1953}
}

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Renewable Energy for Your Home is a very basic intro to the different categories of home energy production and conservation for people who don’t know anything about the subject. After reading this book, you’ll want to read separate books on the areas that you are interested in, but If you’ve never paid attention to small scale generation and home energy conservation, this is a decent place to start.

BibTeX ref:

@book{bryanbelli2009,
	Author = {Bryan, H. and Belli, B.},
	Publisher = {Alpha Books},
	Series = {Complete Idiot's Guide to},
	Title = {The Complete Idiot's Guide to Renewable Energy for Your Home},
	Year = {2009}
}

Reading the Landscape of America contains good descriptions of succession and development in various communities, extending back to the last ice age. This helps in understanding what grows where, why places with similar geography and climate can be so different, and why some ecosystems are fragile (or endangered) and others are more robust. Being able to figure out why what you see is where it is, and understand the implications, makes visiting new places—or revisiting familiar places—more enjoyable and enriching. It’s too bad I didn’t read this book a few years ago.

I read the second (1975) edition, which adds to the first (1957) edition. Many chapters in the second edition add a ‘Revisited’ section, where Watts went to the same places years later. It’d be great if a current ecologist would write additional ‘Revisited’ sections to cover the changes of the landscape and science in the past thirty-five years. I’d buy a copy. Either way, I’ll probably read this book again.

This book is now published by Nature Study Guild Publishers and is on Google Books. The cover image is from the publisher.

BibTeX citation:

@book{watts1975,
	Author = {May Theilgaard Watts},
	Publisher = {Macmillan Publishing},
	Title = {Reading the Landscape of America},
	Year = {1975}
}