Daniel sent us this one — he's a big fan of dry cider and perry, and he's asking about the craft cider scene. Where are the real hotspots around the world for people who love this stuff, and if someone wanted to try brewing hard cider at home, what would they actually need? There's a lot to unpack here because cider occupies this weird space where it's everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
It really does. And I should mention — DeepSeek V four Pro is writing our script today, so if the facts are extra crisp, you know who to thank.
So Herman, you're the one who actually reads things. Where does craft cider even sit right now relative to the beer world?
The numbers tell an interesting story. Craft beer in the United States alone is something like a twenty-nine billion dollar market. Craft cider, by comparison, is around one point five billion globally, depending on whose figures you're using. So we're talking maybe five percent the size, give or take. But here's what's interesting — it's been growing at a steady clip, somewhere around five to seven percent annually, while craft beer growth has basically flattened.
It's not huge, but it's moving. And Daniel mentioned dry cider specifically, which I think is worth flagging up front, because most people's idea of cider is still shaped by the mass-market stuff.
The mass-market ciders — think Angry Orchard, Strongbow, Magners — those tend to be back-sweetened, sometimes with added sugar or concentrate, and they're designed to be broadly palatable. Dry cider is a completely different animal. It's fermented to completion, the yeast consumes all available sugar, and what you're left with is something much closer to a white wine in terms of residual sugar, but with apple character instead of grape. Daniel's taste is actually aligned with the traditional approach — most of the great cider regions of the world historically made dry cider.
Which brings us to the hotspots question. Where should someone go if they want the real thing?
If you're building a cider pilgrimage list, you start with three places that have been doing this for centuries. Normandy in France, the West Country in England — specifically Somerset and Herefordshire — and Asturias in northern Spain.
What makes Normandy the heavyweight?
Normandy is the spiritual home of what a lot of people think of as the platonic ideal of cider. They've been at it since at least the eighth century. The Pays d'Auge region in particular produces these incredible dry, funky, complex ciders using a method called keeving.
Explain that, because it sounds made up.
It sounds like something I'd invent to annoy you, but it's real. Keeving is a process where you let the pectin in the apple juice form a gel that traps nutrients, and that gel floats to the top of the fermentation vessel. You rack the clear juice from underneath it, and the resulting liquid is nutrient-deprived, so the yeast ferments very slowly and stops early, leaving some natural sweetness without backsweetening. It also produces a naturally sparkling cider. It's incredibly finicky and takes serious skill. Normandy cider makers have been perfecting it for generations.
They're removing nutrients to starve the yeast just enough to leave some sugar behind. That's remarkably counterintuitive.
It's basically the opposite of everything a beer brewer learns about healthy fermentation. And the apples they use are specific — bittersweet varieties with names like Michelin, Binet Rouge, Frequin. High tannin, high acid. These aren't eating apples. Bite into a Kingston Black and your face will implode.
What about the English side?
The West Country is fascinating because they also use bittersweet apples, but their approach is different. Traditional English farmhouse cider is often still rather than sparkling, and it can be aggressively dry and tannic. We're talking about a drink that farm workers historically received as part of their wages — up to two gallons a day in some cases. It was sustenance. The modern craft scene in Somerset has revived a lot of nearly lost apple varieties — Dabinett, Yarlington Mill, Harry Masters' Jersey. The Ross-on-Wye cidery, run by the Johnson family, has been making single-varietal ciders that are genuinely world-class. Mike Johnson is something of a legend in the community.
Asturian sidra natural is its own universe entirely. They use a completely different method called escanciado, or long pour, where you hold the bottle above your head and pour into a glass held at your hip. The idea is to aerate the cider and release aromatics. The cider itself is flat, extremely dry, and often has a slight acetic character — a touch of vinegar sharpness that's considered part of the style. It's not a flaw, it's the point. They ferment in large chestnut barrels, and the wild yeast and bacteria give it this bracing, almost challenging profile. If you've only had commercial cider, your first sip of a good Asturian sidra might feel like a confrontation.
I love that. A beverage that argues with you. So those are the old-world anchors. What about North America?
This is where it gets interesting, because the American craft cider scene has exploded in the last fifteen years in ways that are reshaping the category. The Pacific Northwest is the epicenter — Oregon and Washington together have something like two hundred cideries now. The climate is ideal for apple growing, there's a strong fermentation culture from the beer and wine worlds, and you've got access to both cider-specific apple varieties and interesting culinary apples that can be blended.
What are the standout producers?
In Oregon, you've got places like Reverend Nat's in Portland — though I should note he actually announced he was winding down operations a couple of years back and pivoting to a different model. Still, his influence on the scene was enormous. Finnriver in Washington is a major name, certified organic, beautiful orchard-based operation on the Olympic Peninsula. Tieton Cider Works is another Washington producer using proper cider apples. And in Vermont, there's Shacksbury, which has done some really interesting work with Basque-style ciders and wild fermentations. They collaborated with actual Basque cider makers to bring the style stateside.
What about the apples themselves? Are American cider makers using the same varieties as the Europeans?
Some are, and there's been a big push to plant traditional cider varieties here. But a lot of American cider makers are also working with what they call heritage or heirloom apples — varieties that were grown in North America for cider before Prohibition wiped out the industry. Names like Harrison, Hewes' Crab, Wickson. There's a guy named Tom Burford who was basically the Johnny Appleseed of cider apple revival in Virginia — he passed away a few years ago, but his work in identifying and propagating old cider varieties was foundational. And then you have producers working with dessert apples and getting surprisingly good results by blending for acid and tannin balance.
Prohibition is the ghost in the American cider story, isn't it.
Before Prohibition, cider was arguably the most consumed alcoholic beverage in America. Farmers all had apple orchards, pressing apples into cider was the easiest way to preserve the harvest, and hard cider was the everyday drink. Prohibition didn't just ban alcohol — it led to the destruction of cider apple orchards across the country. The temperance movement actively promoted cutting down cider apple trees. When the industry came back, it came back around beer and spirits. Cider was basically forgotten for eighty years.
The current craft cider movement is essentially an archaeological dig through a lost American tradition.
And it's happening in real time. Orchards are being replanted with varieties that nearly went extinct. Cider makers are figuring out techniques from scratch or by studying what the Europeans never stopped doing. It's a reconstruction project.
Are there other global hotspots worth mentioning?
The Basque Country in Spain is a major one — separate from Asturias, with its own tradition. Basque cider, or sagardoa, is made in the same natural, still, acidic style, and they have a cider house culture called sagardotegiak where you go in the spring, eat salt cod omelet and grilled steak, and drink cider straight from the barrel. It's a whole culinary ritual.
That sounds significantly better than standing in a brewery taproom with a flight paddle.
New Zealand is another one. They've got a climate that grows incredible apples, and their cider scene has developed a reputation for crisp, clean, fruit-forward styles. The Nelson region in particular. And South Africa has an emerging scene — they've been growing apples for export for decades, and some of those growers have started turning their fruit into cider. The Elgin Valley is producing some interesting stuff.
Anywhere in the British Isles beyond Somerset?
Ireland has a small but growing craft scene — which Daniel probably knows, given his background. There's a producer called Legacy Cider in County Waterford that's doing proper dry, tannic ciders. And in Scotland, there's a guy named James Finch who runs an operation called Naughton Cider in Fife. He forages wild apples and crabs from hedgerows and abandoned orchards. Totally wild fermentations, no additives, no filtration. The results are unpredictable but sometimes extraordinary.
Foraging wild apples. That's about as far from a can of Strongbow as you can get.
That's the spectrum that makes cider so interesting right now. You've got everything from four-hundred-year-old Norman farmhouse traditions to a guy in Fife picking crab apples from a hedge and seeing what happens.
Alright, so we've mapped the world for the cider tourist. Let's talk about the homebrewing side. Daniel wants to know what it takes to make this stuff yourself.
This is where I get excited, because hard cider is one of the easiest fermented beverages to make at home at a basic level, and one of the hardest to do really well. The barrier to entry is almost comically low compared to beer.
You need apple juice without preservatives, a fermentation vessel, an airlock, and yeast. That's it. You can make cider in a one-gallon glass jug with a rubber stopper and a three-dollar packet of yeast. If you want to go even simpler, you can ferment directly in the plastic jug the apple juice came in — just pour out a bit for headspace, pitch your yeast, and put an airlock on. I've seen people drill a hole in the cap and use a balloon with a pinhole as an airlock.
That sounds like something that would happen in a dorm room.
It absolutely does, and it absolutely works. But that's the entry level. The gap between "I made alcohol from apple juice" and "I made something I'd be proud to serve" is where the craft comes in.
Walk me through the staircase. What are the steps between dorm-room hooch and something that makes you proud?
Step one is sourcing good juice. This is where most beginners go wrong. They grab whatever apple juice is on the shelf at the grocery store — which is usually from concentrate, pasteurized, and made from dessert apples bred for sweetness, not flavor complexity. You ferment that, and you get something thin, one-dimensional, and often weirdly sour or watery. The first upgrade is finding fresh-pressed juice, ideally from a local orchard. Many orchards will sell you unpasteurized cider in season. If you're going with store-bought, look for something that's not from concentrate and has no preservatives — potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate will prevent fermentation entirely. Ascorbic acid, which is vitamin C, is fine.
What about apple varieties? Do you need cider-specific apples?
You don't need them, but they help enormously. If you're using culinary or dessert apples, you want a blend. Sweet apples for fermentable sugar, sharp apples like Granny Smith or McIntosh for acid, and something with tannin — crab apples are fantastic for this, or you can add a bit of strong black tea to the must, which sounds like a hack but actually works because tea tannins are chemically similar to apple tannins. If you can get your hands on proper cider varieties, even better. A blend of Dabinett, Kingston Black, and something like a Wickson will give you complexity right out of the gate.
The tea thing. That's fascinating. How much are we talking?
For a five-gallon batch, maybe two or three strongly brewed cups of black tea added before fermentation. It adds astringency and body without introducing off-flavors. Some cider makers use wine tannin powder, which is even more precise. But tea is the budget-friendly option and it's surprisingly effective.
Alright, you've got your juice. What about yeast?
This is a huge decision point. The simplest option is to let the wild yeast on the apple skins do the work — that's a wild ferment, and it's what the traditional producers in Normandy and Asturias do. It can produce incredible complexity, but it's unpredictable. You might get something transcendent, or you might get something that tastes like a barn floor. For a beginner, I'd recommend starting with a commercial yeast. Champagne yeast is the classic choice — it ferments clean, dry, and neutral. But it can strip out some apple character. White wine yeasts like Cote des Blancs or a cider-specific strain like Mangrove Jack's M02 preserve more fruit aroma. Ale yeasts can work too — S-04, which is an English ale yeast, leaves a bit more body and residual character.
You just pitch it in?
Rehydrate if the packet says to, then dump it in. The juice should be at room temperature, somewhere between sixty and seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Fermentation will start within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and primary fermentation takes about one to two weeks. You'll see bubbling in the airlock, and the juice will go cloudy as the yeast multiplies, then gradually clear as fermentation finishes and the yeast drops out.
What about sanitation?
Same principles as brewing beer. Anything that touches the juice after it's been heated or pasteurized needs to be sanitized. Star San is the standard no-rinse sanitizer. Unsanitized equipment is how you get vinegar instead of cider. Acetobacter is everywhere, and it will turn your alcohol into acetic acid given half a chance. Clean and sanitize everything.
Primary fermentation is done. You've got something that's basically dry, flat, alcoholic apple juice.
Then the decisions start. Do you want it still or sparkling? Sweet or dry? Clear or hazy? If you want still and dry, you can bottle it right then — but you'll want to rack it off the yeast sediment first, which is called lees. Siphoning into a second vessel for a few weeks of aging can dramatically improve the flavor. The harsh notes mellow out, the apple character comes forward. Some cider makers age for months. If you're patient, six months in secondary can transform a decent cider into something really elegant.
If you want bubbles?
You have two options. One is bottle conditioning — you add a small, measured amount of sugar to the cider right before bottling, which the residual yeast will ferment in the sealed bottle, producing carbon dioxide and a bit more alcohol. The key is measurement. Too much sugar and you've made bottle bombs. The standard is about one ounce of priming sugar per gallon — corn sugar or table sugar both work. Dissolve it in a bit of boiling water, cool it, mix it into the cider, bottle, and wait two to three weeks.
Bottle bombs is not a euphemism, is it.
It is not. Glass shards everywhere, sticky ceiling, potential injury. Use a priming sugar calculator, which you can find online, and don't guess. The other option for carbonation is forced carbonation in a keg, which is what a lot of homebrewers eventually graduate to. It gives you precise control and zero risk of explosions.
What about sweetness? Daniel said he likes it completely dry, but some people might want a touch of sweetness.
This is actually one of the trickier parts of cider making. If you're bottle conditioning, you can't add sugar for sweetness without also adding sugar for carbonation, because the yeast will eat all of it. The workaround for sweet, sparkling cider is to backsweeten with a non-fermentable sugar — lactose, xylitol, or erythritol — and then prime with fermentable sugar for carbonation. Or you can use a process called stovetop pasteurization, where you let the cider carbonate in the bottle, then heat the sealed bottles in hot water to kill the yeast before they consume all the sugar. It's fussy and a bit dangerous if you get the temperature wrong. Honestly, for a home cider maker, embracing dry cider is the path of least resistance, and it's what Daniel wants anyway.
Daniel's taste in dry cider is actually the simplest thing to execute well at home.
His preferences are perfectly aligned with the path of least resistance. Dry, still cider is the easiest style to nail. Dry, sparkling adds the priming step but is still straightforward. Sweet, sparkling is where you start fighting the process.
What about perry? He mentioned perry specifically.
Perry is cider made from pears instead of apples — specifically perry pears, which are not the same as eating pears. Perry pears are small, tannic, and often inedible raw. They're a completely different fruit tradition, and they're harder to come by. The classic perry regions are the same as the classic cider regions — Herefordshire and Gloucestershire in England, Normandy in France. Perry pears have names like Blakeney Red, Gin, and Thorn. The fermentation can be trickier because pear juice has a different sugar profile — it contains sorbitol, which is a sugar alcohol that yeast can't ferment, so perry often has a slight residual sweetness even when fermented dry. It's a more delicate, floral, sometimes almost musky beverage.
Can you make perry at home?
You can, but the bottleneck is getting perry pears. Most home perry makers either have access to a perry pear tree or they buy juice from a specialist orchard. You can make a pear wine from dessert pears, and it can be pleasant, but it's not going to have the tannic structure and complexity of true perry. Some homebrew shops sell perry pear concentrate, which is a workable shortcut. The process is otherwise identical to cider.
The homebrewing summary: get good juice, sanitize everything, pick your yeast, ferment it dry, optionally age it, optionally carbonate it, and don't blow up your kitchen.
That's the essence. The beauty of cider is that the floor is low and the ceiling is incredibly high. You can make something drinkable on your first try with almost no equipment, and you can spend a lifetime refining your process, sourcing better fruit, experimenting with wild ferments, blending varieties, and chasing the kind of complexity that rivals fine wine.
What's the most common mistake you see beginners make?
They bottle after two weeks, the cider is harsh and yeasty, and they're disappointed. Cider rewards patience more than almost anything else. Even a month of aging makes a noticeable difference. Three months is better. Six months, and you start to understand why people get obsessed with this stuff.
The sloth beverage.
If there's a fermented drink that suits your temperament, it's the one that gets better the longer you ignore it.
I feel seen. What about equipment? If someone wants to do it properly rather than the dorm-room version, what's the shopping list?
A beginner kit would be: a six-gallon food-grade plastic bucket for primary fermentation, a five-gallon glass carboy for secondary, a siphon and tubing, an airlock and stopper, sanitizer, a hydrometer for measuring sugar content, and bottles — either beer bottles with a capper and caps, or swing-top bottles which are more expensive per bottle but don't require a capper. You can get a basic starter kit from any homebrew shop for maybe sixty to eighty dollars. Add a fruit press if you're processing your own apples, but that's a bigger investment — a decent press starts around two hundred dollars and goes up from there.
If you're not pressing your own fruit, you're buying juice from an orchard.
And in that case, you're really just a fermentation manager. The skill shifts from fruit selection and pressing to yeast management, aging decisions, and blending. Some of the best home cider makers I know don't own a single apple tree — they've built relationships with orchards and get fresh-pressed juice delivered during harvest season.
That's an interesting model. It's almost more like winemaking, where the vigneron buys grapes from growers.
And some cider makers are basically urban winemakers — they don't own land, they don't grow fruit, but they have exceptional palates and blending skills. There's a producer in Chicago called Eris that operates a cidery and taproom in the city and sources apples from Michigan orchards. The model works.
We should probably talk about the elephant in the room, which is that most people still think of cider as a sweet, fizzy, gluten-free beer alternative.
That framing does a real disservice to what cider can be. The gluten-free thing is a legitimate selling point — cider is naturally gluten-free, which matters for people with celiac or gluten sensitivity. But positioning it as "beer for people who can't have beer" misses the point entirely. Cider isn't a substitute for anything. It's its own category with its own history, its own terroir, its own traditions. A well-made dry cider has more in common with a white Burgundy than it does with an IPA.
Terroir is a strong word. Can cider actually express terroir in the way wine does?
The same apple variety grown in different soils, different microclimates, different harvest years will produce different juice. There's a reason Normandy cider tastes different from West Country cider even when they're using similar apple varieties. Soil composition, rainfall, sun exposure, harvest timing — all of it matters. Single-orchard ciders are becoming a thing in the same way single-vineyard wines are. There's a producer in Virginia called Albemarle CiderWorks that does vintage-dated, single-varietal ciders from specific orchards, and each one tells a different story.
That's a level of connoisseurship most people don't associate with fermented apple juice.
Which is what makes this moment so interesting. The category is still being defined for a lot of consumers. The craft beer boom created a generation of drinkers who are comfortable with complexity, who understand tasting notes and hop varieties and barrel aging. A lot of those people are discovering cider and realizing it can be just as deep. The cider world is still small enough that you can know the major producers, visit the key regions, and feel like you're part of a community rather than a market.
Daniel's in a good position for this, being based in Jerusalem. Is there a cider scene in Israel?
There is, actually. It's tiny, but it exists. There's a cidery called Bazelet in the Golan Heights that's been making cider for a few years now. They've got access to good apples and a climate that works. And there are a few other small operations scattered around. The challenge is that Israel isn't a traditional apple-growing region in the way that, say, the Galilee is for wine grapes. But the craft beer scene in Israel has grown substantially in the last decade, and cider tends to follow beer culture.
If Daniel wanted to try making his own dry cider in Jerusalem, what's his biggest practical hurdle?
Sourcing good juice, probably. Fresh-pressed apple juice isn't as common in Israel as it is in, say, New England or the West Country. But it's not impossible. There are orchards in the north, and during harvest season you can get fresh juice. The other option is importing juice or concentrate from Europe, but that gets expensive and defeats some of the local character. If I were him, I'd start by finding an orchard that presses in the fall and buying a few gallons to experiment with.
The equipment is just an online order away.
Homebrew shops ship anywhere. He could have a starter kit delivered in a week. The yeast, the sanitizer, the airlock — none of it is hard to get. The bottleneck really is the fruit.
Alright, so we've covered the global hotspots, the homebrewing basics, and the philosophy of dry cider. Anything we haven't touched?
One thing worth mentioning is the cider calendar. If you want to make cider from fresh-pressed juice, you're working on the harvest schedule. In the northern hemisphere, apples are harvested from late August through November, depending on the variety and the region. That's when fresh juice is available. If you miss the window, you're waiting a year. A lot of home cider makers do one big pressing weekend in the fall and then ferment and age through the winter and spring. By summer, you're drinking last year's cider and thinking about what you'll do differently next harvest.
It's a seasonal rhythm. That's actually appealing — it connects you to the agricultural cycle in a way that brewing beer from grain you bought at the shop doesn't.
That's exactly the appeal for a lot of cider makers. It's not just a hobby, it's a relationship with the land and the seasons. Even if you're buying juice rather than pressing your own, you're still tied to the harvest. There's something deeply satisfying about drinking a cider in July and remembering the October afternoon when you pitched the yeast.
I suspect Daniel would appreciate that dimension of it. He's got a bit of the agrarian romantic in him.
He did move to Jerusalem and start a family there. The man has a sense of rootedness. Cider making fits that sensibility.
If we were to give him a three-sentence summary: Go to Normandy, Somerset, or Asturias for the real thing. Start with good juice and patience. And embrace the dry — it's easier and better.
That's the episode in a glass.
Now: Hilbert's daily fun fact.
Hilbert: In the early medieval period, communities near the Aral Sea basin practiced a dietary ritual involving fermented mare's milk that historians long attributed to Mongol influence. It was only corrected in two thousand nineteen when archaeobotanical evidence showed the practice originated with local Sogdian populations three centuries before any recorded Mongol contact.
Sogdians getting credit three centuries late.
Better late than never, I suppose.
One thought before we wrap — the thing that strikes me about cider is that it's a drink that nearly disappeared and is now being rebuilt by people who care deeply about tradition but aren't trapped by it. That's a rare combination. Whether you're in a Norman farmhouse or a Portland warehouse or a Jerusalem apartment, there's something fundamentally human about taking fruit and time and turning it into something worth sharing.
The barrier to entry is so low that anyone who's curious can try it. You don't need a brewery, you don't need a vineyard. You need juice, yeast, and patience. The rest is just refinement.
Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumingtop, and to Daniel for the prompt. If you want more episodes, we're at myweirdprompts.com and wherever you get your podcasts.
This has been My Weird Prompts. We'll catch you next time.
