Hopped cider—is it straight gimmickry, meant to attract beer drinkers? Or could it be something greater than the sum of its parts?
The cidermakers who are doing it know exactly where they stand in that discussion.
“My approach to hopping cider is not to consider it a ‘hopped cider,’” says Yann Fay, head cidermaker at 1911 Established Cider House in Lafayette, New York, “but actually coming at it from the angle that it’s a fruit cider, where the fruit component is coming from the hops rather than another fruit itself.”