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A Soft, Light Kiss of Apple Flavor
by Belly Buddy Mark Stevens
At A Glance
Beer: Hard Core Crisp Hard Cider Pros: Fruity and light enough to avoid offending average palates Cons: Lacks intensity and depth The Bottom Line: A good pale light bodied cider, not particularly sweet, not particularly tart. An average middle of the road cider. Recommended: Yes
Like a lot of guys, I was skeptical about ciders when I first started tasting them. Their soft fruity flavors always caused me nightmares of high school dates who wanted to drink a horribly gruesome apple-flavored beer-like product called Malt Duck. My spine tingles at the horror.
It took many years and a couple of trips to beer festivals where I could witness first-hand that suitably macho men of indubitable heterosexuality were actually enjoying big glasses of hard cider before I was willing to actually try one myself. A few more pints of cider and I started appreciating them for the amazingly variable flavors that they can represent. The United States will probably never have the range of wonderful craft-made ciders that England has, but there's always the hope that a great American-made cider will cross the bar in front of me.
And in that spirit, I boldly reached out for the six-pack of Hard Core Crisp Hard Cider while strolling the aisles of my friendly local beer warehouse. Let's see how the Hard Core stacks up...
What I Look For in a Cider
Ciders can be immensely variable animals. They can be very low alcohol drinks, or they can pack an alcoholic wallop that will knock your headache into the next decade. They can be sugary sweet, or they can be acidic and tart. They can be brown and murky, or they can be light and golden. They can be flat as a pancake, or they can be as bubbly as a magnum of champagne.
I look at all these factors when I'm thinking about a cider, and I think about how the glass in hand fits into a larger world of infinitely varying cider tastes.
A lot of variables go into cider making, starting from the growing of the apples. Different varieties produce different variations on what we think of as "apple" flavor, and they produce varying sugar content levels, just as grapes do. Of course climate and geographic factors also play into all of this. Some of the variability is reduced by blending varieties, and by adding sugar to adjust the sweetness of the juice to a predictable level.
Cider makers usually blend juice from different varieties grown at different orchards, although there are some that produce varietal ciders, just like varietal wines. The blending helps cider makers control both the sugar levels and flavors to create consistent products.
Apples contain acids, just like grapes do, and these acids help make the juice taste tart. The tartness also balances and contrasts with the sugars in the cider to create a more complex and pleasant flavor experience, just the way it works with wine. When a batch of apple juice lacks the acid levels that a cider maker wants in order to make a wine tart enough for his tastes, he can add some acid.
Ciders and perries that beer enthusiast groups like CAMRA serve at festivals such as the Great British Beer Festival are rated on a scale of 1 to 9 according to their relative tartness or sweetness. A cider rated as 1 may have a very sweet flavor with very little acid, while one rated 9 may be very tart. Once you know how the levels work, it becomes easy to pick out the ciders that you want to sample.
A Mug of Cider!
I'll pull out a big hefty glass mug for this cider, so let's pop that lid and see what we've got here!
Appearance:
This Hard Core Crisp Hard Cider sure does pour a pretty glass! The cider has a deep golden color that reminds me of well-made pilsner lager beers. Perfectly brilliant clarity without a spec of sediment or haze. Carbonation is very light and spritzy like a wine that's just on the cusp of earning a label of "sparkling". (If you're into the jargon, I'd call this a petillant cider.)
Aroma:
Stick your nose in a glass of Crisp Hard Cider and you'll get a blast of fresh apples just as you expect, but try to pick it apart a little bit, and come back to it for a quick sniff, and you'll get just a hint of musty barn smell with a little bit of a metallic edge that reminds me of the somewhat odd, somewhat old, somewhat mystical smell that I experienced when I was a little kid, delving into Granddad's treasures out in his backyard shed (Boy! I miss my Granddad!). Mostly though, it's the smell of apples being crushed on a fall evening.
Flavor:
This is a soft, fruity tasting cider that's got just enough acid to balance and to create a slightly sharp tartness on the tongue. This is not a tart cider, but it's also not got so much residual sugar that I'd call it a sweet cider either. If I were trying to plot it on a scale like CAMRA uses to pinpoint sweet and sour flavors, I'd put it about midway - call it a 5. Most people probably aren't familiar with that scale though, so let's think of something more useful. Okay, how about comparing it to wines. I think the best comparison of this cider to the world of wine is that it would be like a sweet, soft, young German Mosel Riesling.
Verdict:
Overall, Hard Core is a pretty good cider. It's balanced and nicely fruity and light, but it's not what I would consider a masterpiece of the cidermaker's art. I'd really like a cider that doesn't try to be balanced and that doesn't try to satisfy a mass market taste. I'd like a cider that's either much tarter and more acidic than this, or that is much sweeter and cruder tasting than this. I view cider as slightly better than the Hornsby's Pub Draft ciders that I've had, but not as good as most of the small label brands I've had in England (nor as good as Woodchuck's Granny Smith cider - but I'll save that opinion for another day).
Cidery Notes
Hard Core is produced by Boston Beer Company - the Samuel Adams guys. I'm not quite sure why Jim Koch and his boys decided to take a foray into the world of hard ciders, but I really think they do much better with their brewskis.
Price per six-pack ($US): 6
This review first appeared on Epinions.
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