Welcome to another week, another edition, another installment of the greatest booze podcast on the planet, Barrel to Bottle with Binny's Beverage Depot. I'm Jeff Carlin, sitting shotgun with the great Kristen Ellis. Kristen, how are you today? That was the best introduction ever, man. Ever? Nice. I'm so jazzed up. You know why I'm excited? Why? Because I love apples. Me too. Apple sauce. Actually, I really do. I eat apples every day. Yeah? Yep, every day. Apple a day keeps the doctor at bay? That's not true. No? No, but I still eat them every day. Well, it keeps me feeling good and full and all that. My favorite part of apples are? When you ferment them and make cider. Absolutely. Anything fermented that can make me smile more, I'm into it. So today is all about- You do work at Binny's. Well, it's by design, Jeff. It's by design. So today we're all about cider. We got a guy we always call our big guns for beer, but he's actually our big guns for cider too. Roger, what's up? How are you doing? Good. Roger Adamson here to teach us everything about cider. We also have another special guest, Brian Rutzen. Hi, Brian. They call you Cider Brian. Yeah. It's a name I got several years ago because I kept walking around everywhere talking about cider. So they were like, this is it. Cider Brian's here. Yeah. Is it a condition or how did you get into just talking about cider? Curiosity. I volunteer every year at the Great Taste of the Midwest, the big beer festival of Madison, Wisconsin. I started doing that probably 11 or 12 years ago. We have a big party in the fall and we camp out and we get a truckload of apples and we crush and press juice and make raw fresh pressed apple cider. Can I come next year or this year? Yes. Well, I don't know. It actually just had its last run last year because the guy who was hosting it on his farm was getting a little bit up there in age and was like, God, I can't invite you guys here. But I think it's going to be moving around. So I just don't have the details. But yes, you can come once we find out where it is. Cool. That sounds great. It's a lot of fun. And you are the cider director and floor manager of the Northman Cider House. Yeah. How do you like that? Love it. It's been a dream mine to get that going. We've been working on it for years. Now we've been open for two years and it's been a lot of fun. Nice. Let's kind of get a bit of a background on cider. Let's talk about the history of it, the providence of it. And what separates cider from beer? What separates cider from beer? Maybe some myths and then we'll kind of jump into you've got a lovely tasting for us today because I'm staring at four beautiful looking ciders. Very different looking ciders. Yeah, different colors of gold to lime greens to oranges. So I love it. So let's just jump it off with a little bit of the history. Kind of where did cider come from? How did it get popular? I'm guessing we're going old world. Are we going to England, my friends? Even further back, I mean, really, apples are not native to America, right? There were no apples before European settlers here. There was wild crab apple varieties, but no apple trees. Yeah, nobody wants crab apples. If we go back thousands and thousands of years, the modern day apple originates in Central Asia and from there spreads out through trade and apples eventually make it into Europe and become a major part of European history. It was indeed the Spanish that have the oldest continuous cider tradition in Europe. Roman soldiers brought apple trees there 2,000 years ago to northern Spain because it was important for fortifications. For the same reason, it was important to American history because of drinking water, clean drinking water, right? I mean, you go out in the frontier and you don't know what to trust. The only good thing you know that is clean and safe, booze. Right. You know, no known pathogen can live in an alcoholic suspension. So you make cider, you have something to drink with breakfast, drink with lunch, drink with dinner, that's clean and tons of vitamin C. And in fact, it was the whaling and the fisherman fleets that needed the cider on board with them because they were gone for months at a time. This is what they would have to stab off scurvy, right? The vitamin C from cider was how they lived. And then you move from there and the cider cultures dispersed through France and England. And it's been part of those traditions for centuries. So yes, English settlers first brought them to America 400 years ago. And on the first, you know, landing, there were people with apple trees, apple seeds, and immediately you started planting. It was a lot easier to bring a grafted apple tree along with you on the journey so you could plant that immediately and get fruit on that first or second harvest. That was easier to get going in the early settling days than it was to, say, establish an entire wheat-based culture of farms. Grain was so important for bread and sustenance that you weren't going to sit there and turn it into beer. Beer was difficult and expensive and it was too precious. So cider was the everyman's drink in the early colonial American experience. Cool. So we're, you know, we're past Revolutionary War and all that stuff and we're pretty much, we're a thing. Right. And then cider kind of blew up, you know. Right. So the year of the Revolution, 1776, that's the year that John Chapman was born in Massachusetts. John Chapman, we might know better as Johnny Appleseed. And as he grew up in this new nascent nation of America, he starts marching west ahead of Western expansion. And he's sort of a quirky individual. So people always think of Johnny Appleseed as this character out of a Disney cartoon or that he doesn't even really exist. There was a man named John Chapman who was considered Johnny Appleseed. And what he did is he marched across the Ohio River Valley with his apples in tow, and he would create nurseries all over the wilderness. And then a couple years would go on, the trees would come up. He'd see which apples were good for which things. And all of a sudden wagon trains came into the valley, and they'd start to claim their land. Now, the government was giving land away for free. All they had to do was show the government that they were making farm improvements. So the best way to do that is to start building a farm. A real way to show that you intend to stay is apple trees, right? If you have trees, you need to stay there, take care of them. Here he is. He's already got trees that are several years old. And he's like, friends, neighbors, I see you admiring my trees. I'd love to sell them to you. So as this crazy, quirky guy as he was, he was really a real estate speculator, selling people free land, right? Here, you want this land? It's yours, but pay me for the trees. And so then he'd move on. And so that legacy is why we have such an incredible apple diversity here in the Midwest specifically, because he's actually buried in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He made it this far west. He didn't really hang out in Michigan, but today Michigan is the second largest apple grower in the country because of his genetic diversity and legacy. Unfortunately, like so many stories when it comes to alcohol, Prohibition came and that was really what dealt a sour blow for the hard cider fans. When you see like Prohibitionists waving those little hatchets around, it wasn't just to smash bottles and smash casks. They're actually going and cutting down apple trees. Some of the very orchards that Johnny Appleseed planted were then destroyed by Prohibitionists, who didn't want people to have this ready source of not just nutritious, healthy food, but yes, you could technically make it into alcohol. But the key here is that we're talking about different varieties. They wouldn't go and chop down, say, your grandfather's apple tree that was growing dessert fruit for the family, because you didn't take that fruit and turn it into cider. Cider apples are gnarly, bitter. Farmers call them spitters because they'll walk around and see what it is, take a bite and just get the flavor and intensity of tannin and acid, and then immediately spit it up, because it could be very dense, difficult flesh, or the skins might be a little bit rough. So they're cutting down these spitter trees, these more tannic apple varieties that were only used to make cider. So every orchard that was used to make cider was leveled, and then they were replaced either with dessert apples or with some other crop that they could make money off of as farmers. And that is why it has taken us about 100 years to rediscover our apple cider heritage. Why is cider only now being a big deal? Why did it take us till 2 years ago to open up the Northman in Chicago? Because it's only been in the last 2 or 3 decades that there's been a resurgence in interesting apple varieties back in the forefront that people can grow, can blend, and ferment. So we're really at the beginning of something that's probably akin to what was happening to craft beer 20, 30 years ago. That people are taking these first brave steps, making mistakes left and right, but pushing forward. And it's really tough when apples are at the core of it. Pardon the pun. I'm sorry. I went there. I was waiting. I was waiting. Yeah, I knew it was coming. Grain takes a year to grow, right? You grow your crops, you cut down your grain, you got your malt, you know. It's a commodity. Brewers can look up in a catalog and say, what are we going to make this month, guys? Let's check out what's available. And they'll look up in a catalog and order it. And it's shipped there in a matter of days. Cider is fruit driven. It's produce. You have to wait for that harvest. And you have to see what the quality and quantity of that harvest is. It's true farming. Yes. And you have to... Trees take several years to get established. So it's not something you can just get going right away. It takes a decade to get just up and running on a production scale. So it's a much more labor intensive field. So that's why it's taken us so long to bounce back from the damage that happened from prohibition. It's been interesting to see in a relatively short period of time how much the variety of cider has changed on the shelves. I think that's one of the things that we struggle with the most is conveying to the consumer, there isn't just one kind of apple cider. Everything from very, very bone dry, we touched on yeast earlier. Yeast can impart totally different flavor profiles. So I think the biggest hurdle still is we're starting to finally enjoy this cider renaissance is showing to people how much variety there is on the cider shelf. Well, a lot of people think they kind of resort back to Angry Orchard. Now, Angry Orchard has its place because it maybe was leading the charge in terms of getting cider back into the mainstream, into many people's hands and building a sort of recognition for the category. But now it's kind of considered sort of the Miller Lite, if you will, just by the layman or whatnot. Not to, like I said, make fun or anything, but that's just kind of the stigma that it carries. And especially if we talk about the history of development of cider, I mean, the brand that most people will harken back to is Woodchuck. Because Woodchuck, we probably, I don't, I'm not going to age myself here too badly. Well, they had the cutest bottles in college, remember those? That's where I was going with this. It's the one thing you remember from college. It was the only brand available in college, and if it was too sweet for you then, then that's what you're going to remember your cider experience. And you walked away from it saying, no, I've tried cider, I don't like it. And right now we're at that moment to where it's finally people are paying attention and saying, wait, there might be something else going on here than just over sweetened collegiate drunk juice, you know, this isn't just for kids. And the sweet myth, right? We talked about that. That it's just, it's sweet, that's what turns people off. But we've got here tasting of what I assume before getting in there, these are drier styles. They're drier and I kind of put it in order just because of color and really the history. I wanted to start with Chapman's Blend. We started with Vander Mills Chapman's Blend, it's based on American heirloom varieties like Baldwin, Northern Spy, Macintosh, things like this. Cool apple names like Winter Banana. That is a cool name. Right? And they literally, they're really just for aroma, but if you bring a Winter Banana apple out of cold storage and you bring it into a room, you let it warm up and then you slice it open, it smells like bananas and it's a mushy flesh on the inside. It's a great American apple. So I wanted to start there with the VanderMill Chapmans, but our next cider you'll see has got a lot more gold color to it. And this is also from Michigan. In fact, the first three ciders I picked are from Michigan. This one is from Uncle John's cider, and this is actually a blend of American heirloom cider apples, but also French and English apple varieties that have come back over from Europe and have been now grafted into American orchards. So here, I think you're going to notice some of that same acid level you did in the first one. I was going to say, these are awfully malic to me, number two. But more tannin. You're going to have more tannin in this one than you would in the first one. Malic acid is, of course, the most predominant acid in apples. Apples, the Latin name for apples is malus domestica. So the malic is really what drives the flavor experience. And acid is key, but tannin is even harder to find in American apples. There's definitely, the tannins are fine-grained, but they're very grippy. But they help to balance the acidity, I think. There's a lot of structure to this one. Yeah, Uncle John's Melded, it's one of his premium ciders. Uncle John's Cider is located in St. John's, Michigan, just north of Lansing. The same family's been there for a hundred years growing apples. This is just screaming for some potato chips or popcorn or something. Like a little bit of salt would just sort of really bring that fruit out, I think. These are nice and refreshingly dry palate cleansing. I could see serving this with richer dishes, richer cheeses. I mean, it's definitely just going to cut some of that fat. Oh, yeah. It's got a salinity to it that I haven't really had in a cider before. That's what I was thinking. And obviously, I'm more the novice or the novice in the room when it comes to tasting stuff like this. But there's like a licorice essence, the real faint that I keep tasting. And I'm not sure where that's coming from. But I keep that flavor just pops to my front. It could be part of the yeast esters that are happening here, because these are the two ciders we just tasted are inoculated, there are champagne yeasts. That might just be the combination of the blend, right? You have all these different apples playing together. The salinity that you're going to, minerality is very key in cider. Cool. So the first one was, once again? Was VanderMill Chapman's blend. Okay, the second one? The second one is Uncle John's, Melded. And the third one will be a brand new cider to Chicago. They've been around for a while, but they just launched in Chicago. They're called Tandem, located on the Lelandon Peninsula, very north of Michigan. And this would be a little bit sweeter, but not because they're adding sugar. They're stopping fermentation. So the alcohol is a little bit lower. These first two are at 6.5% or 6.9% alcohol. This is, gosh, I think it's 4.5%. Are they doing that via chilling or filtration? Both. Okay. But that will keep some of the inherent sweetness, the sugars, unfermented, and keep that sweetness. This has got much more, this is like apple juice cider. I mean, it's much closer to apple juice cider. It's juicier. Yeah. So this is called Macintosh from Tandem. So it is using a lot of Macintosh apples. And that's an apple that we probably do remember from our youth as something we've seen around on tables and in grandma's kitchen for cooking. But again, it lends wonderful flavor to cider as well. And this has like that fresh bite out of a Macintosh, like flavor to it, but it's not, it doesn't have a lot of complexity that you get from the first two, at least we tasted. Yes. It's going to have, there's still some cool heirloom varieties, but it's mostly a little bit of acid, not a lot of tannin. That little bit of residual sugar, though, gives it weight, and I think that it really does sit on the palate very, very nicely. It feels a little bit softer, and it's just, it's pretty, you know? One thing that I think is kind of neat when people walk down a cider aisle now, availability of aisle. The availability of cider now is pretty tremendous in all the different varieties. I think it's almost gotten to the point where people are a bit overwhelmed, and they'll look at the price point, and they'll look at the different options, and sometimes they're a little confused. One thing that's been nice to see lately is a big emphasis on the importance of having real fresh pressed apples when you're making it, as opposed to some of the earlier ciders that were relying more on juice. Right. I mean, the big division in cider making is, do you ferment from a concentrated base, or are you using fresh pressed whole fruit? When you start from concentrate, you're basically, you have that fresh pressed juice that's been concentrated, which is more stable, and higher sugars. And so you basically take that concentrate, load it up with sugar, ferment it to be about 12% alcohol, and then water it down to five. Budweiser and Miller are not allowed to make beer that way. You know, cheap wine is still wine, cheap beers, still beer. Cheap cider is not really cider. It's something else. And again, I have friends who work for these companies, I don't have anything against them. You mentioned Angry Orchard. Yeah, their main line of cider is they're fermenting from concentrate, but that concentrate is coming from northern France. High quality, bittersweet fruit, the likes of which we could never see in America in those numbers. So it's not like South American or Chinese, apple concentrate coming in bulk, you know, freighters. They're doing their best to source it honestly, but they are skipping a couple steps to make that much cider consistently year round because it's just because it is so produce driven, it's hard to do that any other way. Our last cider that we have is a wild used fermented cider. And this is from England and this is typically the way most English ciders would be. Are some English ciders inoculated with champagne or aleys? Yes, but for the traditional hardcore ciders that are representative of England, this is very typical. This is Barnyardy. Right? Yeah. So this is Ross on Why. It's a traditional farmhouse, a medium dry, still cider. Everything we've had here has been fairly heavily carbonated. This has no carbonation. Some cider in England has carbonation. This is very common to have a still cider offering there. But something that Americans are not widely used to. Seems like a little tiny bit of petulance to it. Just a little baby bit, but definitely not carbonated. This is crying out for some blue cheese, some figs, bears. Can we go eat now? Not until we get to our Q&A. They use Farmhouse Funk a lot to describe these types of ciders, but I think you also get in some of this taste. Think of leather. When we finish off with the Spanish, we will get some of that smoke maybe too. But these are phenols, four-ethyl glycols, byproducts of the fermentation process, not necessarily remnants from the farm from which they came. If I were to turn somebody onto cider with this tasting, I think for just simplicity's sake, I would start them with the third one here, and kind of move them back, and then bring them onto the barnyard-y one, just because there definitely is fruit there. There's a lot going on, but you have to get past the barnyard quality and look for those secondary flavors, and then you kind of get the meat of what's going on there. But think of it this way, though. If you had a friend who said, I don't like cider because it's just too darn sweet, and they think it's for kids, and then you give them this, it will blow the doors off, and they'll be forced to drop their excuses. And like, no, I guess I don't like cider because it's too dry and gnarly and funky. Well, fine. Then don't like cider for that reason, but don't tell me you don't like it because it's too sweet, because there's a million reasons not to like cider, but because it's too sweet is not one of them. If they say, if they taste this though, and go, I don't like it because it tastes like shit, they're kind of right. Tastes like a horse's ass. You're not wrong. And these types of ciders are among our highest selling. Now, not this particular one because it's a little bit of a price or bottle, but our funky English on draft, when I serve it to people and they smell it and they're like, are you kidding me? People actually drink this. I tell them it's among our fourth most popular drafts. It's good. It's interesting, but I like this kind of style. So, yeah. Yeah. Stinky cheese, stinky cider. I mean, there are some cheeses that you like. Are you really going to eat that? And that's a whole other thing, Cider Brian, is like, what's up with food? A lot of times in these podcasts, we're just tasting through these things independently, and these expressions change dramatically when we have salt, number one. I mean, gosh, and then fat. Give me some fries. It's just like, it's a whole other thing. So you have to kind of go into The Northman and experience these ciders on their own, but then see how they play with food, because you're going to find that the profiles change completely, you know? So never forget the food element. Well, hey, let's transition and spread the love by giving somebody a $20 gift card to Binny's Beverage Depot in our Q&A portion. How do they win that? Well, if you write to us at Binny's Bev on Twitter, we could choose you if your question is cool enough, if you're cool enough, and then you're going to win the money. That's it. Sweet. I'm in. It is sweet. All right. So Cider Brian, I'm calling you CB, you're CB now. That's one of my nicknames at the bar. This comes from Nicole B over in Arlington Heights. How do cider makers ensure a year long supply of cider? How do they do it? Hope and pray. They. Listen, she's got the money, but she might not be satisfied with their answer. No, it's fine. They're actually still pressing right now. Apples last long. The reason apples are such a large part of the American consciousness is because very few fruits can last as long as apples do. And if you put your apples in a root cellar in colonial America, and you walk out in February and you still have a fruit that you can eat, that's going to blow people's minds. And so that's what apples were for people. Now, in the modern era, you have refrigerated cold storage throughout Michigan. So there are these warehouses that just have two stories of apple crates stacked in these warehouses that are kept at perfect temperature for months on end, and they're pressing all the time. And so you'll see now typically most of the presses are done running by March. Pretty much probably run through most of your apple supply by then. But then you can hold your juice, and you can either hold your juice through one of several different ways, or you can ferment and hold that for a little while, and then finish. Just like with the wine world, there's different ways to stabilize the product, and hold it and work it and blend year over year over year. So temperature control, that's pretty much the number one way. Keep it close to freezing but not freezing. Things can't spoil that temperature, and you can have stocks that will last you forever. Pull it out when you need it, make your batch, and... That's it. That's it. Yeah, it happens in the wine world, it happens in a lot of places. That's kind of the way to do it. Yeah, it's a very difficult task, and this is also one of the main reasons why cider is so darn expensive. When you walk in and you see beer is one price, and cider is another, and like, why is cider so expensive? I always like to joke and say, well, because beer is 90% water. The pre-fermentation cost of beer is about a penny or two a gallon. Cider, you go to a farmer's market, you're going to spend five bucks minimum on a gallon of cider. Better juice quality, seven, eight. Some of your finest cider apples are going to get $13 to $15 a gallon before you've fermented it. There's compare and contrasting, which is fine, but also there's just like letting cider be its own thing. It's not beer, it's not wine, so it's just, let's treat it as it is, and it's its own existence. It's price, quality, scale can run from low to high within its own category, and then maybe it can finally find its place in the Chicago sun, so to speak. Well said. Thank you. If I want to learn more about cider, are there any events coming up? Actually, well, we have CB here because Cider Summit's coming up this month. Is it always in February, Cider Summit? Every other year, the National Conference takes place in Chicago, and they'll have that all week, and then the week will end on Saturday with the Summit. This year, the conference is not in Chicago, so the Summit will be happening on its own. What did we see? February 17th. February 17th at the Grand Ballroom, Navy Pier, Chicago. Two sessions, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. is the first session, and the session two is 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Do you know that Binny's is a sponsor? I do. They've been a sponsor for years. It's presented by Binny's Beverage Depot. Yeah, cool. Love it. So you guys, we have a table there as well, so you can come hang out, get some photos. I'm going to be there, probably in the afternoon to evening, just so you guys know, I'll be there walking around, asking questions. You'll be there, so I'll be by you hanging out. There'll be tons of stuff. You're my new bestie. Yeah, I mean, I'm telling you, if you really want to impress folks about the difference of cider availability, you go there, spend a couple hours. Every table will be something different than the next. They're going to be making cider cocktails, so brandy old fashions, Moscow mules made from vodka that was made from apples. All sorts of cool stuff. Yeah. So a lot of fun. Cool. Looking forward to it. Roger? Once you find the ciders you love at Cider Summit, stop by Binny's. We'll be doing our February cider sale. Tons of ciders on sale. Sweet. That's why we bring Roger. Sweet and dry. He's the responsible. Sweet and dry, yeah. Okay, good. Well, listen, folks, I hope that you've enjoyed this week, as much as I have. Jeff, how about you? You look just tickled pink, my friend. Oh, yeah. You can call me the Johnny Appleseed of the Binny's Barrel to Bottle. Nobody's going to call you that, yeah. Anyway, folks, thanks for listening. Keep tasting. We'll see you next week.