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 [...]

  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 [...]

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 [...]