America’s cider makers are experiencing a revival akin to the craft-beer revolution: invoking old-world, traditional styles while also innovating and experimenting. Hard cider is tapping into the beer and wine markets as well as the gluten-free trend, and it is developing an identity of its own. It’s an exciting time to be drinking and learning about cider, and it’s as good a time as any to start making your own at home.
First Things First
Brian Rutzen, known as “Cider Brian,” has turned a passion for cider into a career and made it his goal to “grow the size of the cider-drinking public in Chicago.” He wears many hats: he is the Chicago sales ambassador for Uncle John’s Cider Mill, the cider director of the new cider-focused bar The Northman, a cider broker who connects cider producers and importers with local distribution teams; and he has been making cider at home for seven years.
As Rutzen says, the first distinction to make between beer and cider is simply that cider is not beer; cider is fermented not brewed, and making cider is much more similar, in process, to wine making. “Cider makers are really only listening to the apples and trying to find out what the cider wants to become based on the blend of apples that they are using. You can’t impose your will on cider the way beer brewers impose their will on beer because the beer brewer has complete control over everything,” says Rutzen. “[Cider makers] are at the mercy of what Mother Nature has given them, and even if they use the same apple crop every year, that crop changes based on sugar levels, acidity, everything.”