Overview: Today, I’m happy to share with you a rarity in American hard cider—at least in Colorado—a hard cider from a small-batch, artisanal cidery in Cedaredge, Colorado, which distributes only locally, through farmers markets, and to four different liquor stores on the Colorado front [...]

  Or: Captain Mycroft and the Keg of Joy Head over to our kegging tutorial to see the basics on kegging your beverage—this works equally well with any beverage you want to keg—sparkling mead, beer, hard cider—all with the same process. I’ve only recently gotten into kegging, but it [...]

Samuel Smith’s Organic Cider is an import from the United Kingdom produced by the Samuel Smith Brewery of Yorkshire, which has produced some excellent, traditional English beers and was founded in 1758. It’s a great example of a traditional English cider—relatively dry, with some [...]

Overview: Ace Joker Hard Cider is made by California Cider Company of Sonoma, California, and is that company’s driest offering, at 9g of sugar in a 12-oz bottle. Tasting Notes: Joker is drinkable, but I have to say I’m disappointed in it—it’s reasonably dry and refreshing but [...]

Overview: Glider Cider is a hard cider made by Colorado Cider Company of Denver, Colorado. It’s a relatively dry, natural cider whose ingredient list is all of two entries long: yeast and apple juice. Like the other Colorado Cider products, it is sulfited, however (this is generally done [...]

Overview: Pearsnickity is a Perry (fermented pear juice) made by Colorado Cider Company of Denver, CO, a relatively new company in Colorado which produces a number of hard cider and related beverages. It is relatively mild, at 6% alcohol by volume, and, as you might imagine, is fruity and [...]

  Like JK Scrumpy’s Northern Neighbor, its Orchard Gate Gold cider has a crisp, tannic snap that I love. It doesn’t have the intense wild apple character that Northern Neighbor does, but it’s definitely chock full of cider apples. This would be an almost flawless example of [...]

Well, I’ve ruined my cider review strategy already. I had been planning on working my way up through reviews of some of the run-of-the-mill, commercial ciders before moving on to what I consider to be the main event: artisanal ciders made in a localized fashion with quality cider apples of [...]

And now, for something completely different which has little to do with our usual faire: The heavens opened over the last few days here in Longmont. When my work office closed down, I tried to drive to my home in the Southmoor park neighborhood. The main roads in town were so gridlocked (or closed, [...]

I intended this post to be a simple review of Crispin’s flagship product, a hard apple cider which is intentionally drier (i.e., contains less sugar) than most commercial ciders on the market. And that’s what it starts with: a review. But when I started looking into the company’s [...]