Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Cider Revolution!: Your DIY Guide to Cider & Pet-Nat
    Cider Revolution!: Your DIY Guide to Cider & Pet-Nat
    Cider Revolution!: Your DIY Guide to Cider & Pet-Nat
    Ebook216 pages1 hour

    Cider Revolution!: Your DIY Guide to Cider & Pet-Nat

    By Karl Sjostrom and Mikael Nypelius

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    After years spent working in the restaurant industry, specialising in wine and spirits, friends Karl Sjostrom and Mikael Nypelius decided to launch 'Cider for the People'.

    Fascinated by the growing trend in natural wines, Karl and Mikael began to produce their own cider and pet-nat (natural sparkling wines made with minimal intervention and without added sugar) using 100% hand-picked fruit from the farms and villages outside Malmo, Sweden. Their aim is to make modern, natural drinks using only the natural occurring yeast of the fruit, without any additives or preservatives. Produced under the name 'Fruktstereo' each harvest is named after an iconic album and they have been producing hits for distribution across the world since 2017.

    Contents include: What is cider? Harvesting, Juicing, Fermenting, Ageing and bottle fermentation, Step-by-step, Recipes, The theory behind the bubbles and Fruit lexicon.

    In Cider Revolution! Karl and Mikael seek to pass on their passion for cider and inspire others to taste, appreciate and try their hand at making their own batch from home, with minimal fuss and only a few basic pieces of equipment. As well as passing on the secrets of the cider-making processes, they give us recipes for cider and pet-nats and look at the range of fruits that can be used for brewing, including pears, cherries, plums, rhubarb and berries. There are tasting notes so that your cider can be appreciated in much the same way as any fine wine. The ideal book for cider fans or anyone looking to dip into home brewing – it's time to join the cider revolution!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJul 7, 2021
    ISBN9781911682370
    Cider Revolution!: Your DIY Guide to Cider & Pet-Nat
    Author

    Karl Sjostrom

    Under the slogan “Cider for the People!” Karl Sjostrom and Mikael Nypelius produce contemporary Swedish cider in the company Fruktstereo. They share a background as sommeliers in restaurants and are followers of the growing trend for natural wines. They run their business from Malmo, Sweden, where produce everything by hand – from fruit to finished bottled product.

    Related authors

    Related to Cider Revolution!

    Related ebooks

    Beverages For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Discovering Georgia

      Mar 3, 2021

      Discovering Georgia
      5 min read

    • Article

      Transforming Tempranillo

      Feb 5, 2020

      Transforming Tempranillo
      7 min read

    • Article

      Zest For Life

      May 21, 2021

      Zest For Life
      4 min read

    • Article

      30 TOP BUYS American Syrah

      May 1, 2024

      30 TOP BUYS American Syrah
      10 min read

    • Article

      Montepulciano

      Apr 3, 2024

      Astaple of pizzerias across the land, Montepulciano is a grape variety that everyone knows but few love. Despite being the second most-planted red grape in Italy, it has struggled to be taken as anything other than good-value ‘house wine’. This panel

      11 min read

    • Article

      Paso Robles Appellation Education

      Jul 19, 2022

      Paso Robles Appellation Education
      8 min read

    • Article

      Italian Drinks

      Sep 2, 2020

      Italian Drinks
      3 min read

    • Article

      Why I Make Wine In Spain

      Feb 2, 2022

      Why I Make Wine In Spain
      4 min read

    • Article

      Australia

      May 24, 2022

      96 Mayer 2018 Cabernet (Yarra Valley). It’s ultra rare to see 100% whole bunch in Cabernet, but if anyone can pull it off, enigmatic, artisanal producer Timo Mayer can. By deriving tannin structure from the fruit and not from heavy oak, it allows for

      3 min read

    • Article

      Ataste Of The Top 2022 Northern Rhônes

      Feb 7, 2024

      These 40 wines are listed by commune north to south, then by score, then alphabetically by producer, and are a selection based on quality, value or interest from the 177 recommended by Matt Walls from the northern Rhône in 2022. Some are still being

      10 min read

    • Article

      Uruguay beyond Tannat

      Sep 1, 2021

      Uruguay beyond Tannat
      7 min read

    • Article

      Plant Your Own Mini Meadow

      Apr 7, 2020

      Plant Your Own Mini Meadow
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Little Hops How-To

      Mar 13, 2020

      A Little Hops How-To
      7 min read

    • Article

      Andrew Jefford

      Nov 3, 2021

      Disconcerting: I couldn’t forget this bottle for days afterwards. Still can’t. Back in August, wine critic Lin Liu MW (together with her partner Philippe Lejeune of Château de Chambert in Cahors) came to dinner, en route to a short holiday in Provenc

      3 min read

    • Article

      Sherry

      May 3, 2023

      Sherry
      5 min read

    • Article

      Winds Of Change

      Dec 1, 2021

      Winds Of Change
      9 min read

    • Article

      Burgundy on a Budget

      Oct 4, 2022

      Burgundy on a Budget
      3 min read

    • Article

      Burgundy's Existential Challenge

      Mar 15, 2022

      Burgundy's Existential Challenge
      6 min read

    • Article

      Smith’s Eight: Spanish Wines That Inspired Me

      Feb 2, 2022

      £37 (ib) GB Wine Shippers, Lay & Wheeler From old, low-yielding vines on albariza soil on a biodynamically farmed plot in the pago Miraflores in Sanlúcar. Ale Muchada puts a huge effort into farming, learning from the old generation of Sanlúcar growe

      2 min read

    • Article

      What Makes a Wine Age Worthy?

      Oct 31, 2023

      What Makes a Wine Age Worthy?
      2 min read

    • Article

      Holiday Gift Guide

      Oct 26, 2021

      Holiday Gift Guide
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Cider Revolution!

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Cider Revolution! - Karl Sjostrom

      Illustration

      Every autumn in Sweden, we’re left with an abundance of surplus fruit in domestic gardens and old orchards. What a waste, we thought, and started our revolution. With simple equipment and an open mindset anyone can make exciting fermented fruit drinks using apples, pears, plums and berries.

      Our revolution is anchored in the belief that our fruit is worth celebrating. For us, nothing is off limits and the traditional boundaries between cider, beer and wine are no longer relevant. With a bit of creativity, attentiveness to nature and a little knowledge about natural fermentation processes, you can produce drinks with honest flavours and great complexity, without using any ingredients other than those you’ve picked yourself. By drawing on insights from beer brewers and winemakers, we want to show you how you can ferment small- and medium-sized batches that will truly do justice to the fruit.

      The idea behind Fruktstereo is to celebrate Swedish fruit, but when we started reading about traditional cidermaking it became clear that Sweden isn’t thought to have any ‘real’ cider apples that have the bitterness and character of apples from other European cider nations. Our classic cooking apples are sweet, tasty and tart. Perhaps there wasn’t any future in making real good cider up here in the north?

      But, with a firm belief that super tasty apples picked straight from the tree should be able to be fermented into a really tasty drink, we employed all our combined experience from the wine world. We embarked on a journey towards a new type of Scandinavian cider – very different from the French, English or Spanish varieties. A unique beverage for our climate and our fruit, in a style that we want to drink ourselves. By mixing in other fruits and berries we might veer away from what many consider cider to be, but why should that matter?

      Long live the cider revolution!

      Karl and Mikael

      IllustrationIllustrationIllustration

      The question ‘What is cider?’ might seem straightforward – most people will simply think of an alcoholic apple beverage. But there’s far more to cider than that. The flavour can be anything from super sweet to bone dry, from mega bitter to easy drinking, the alcohol content almost zero or with a proper bite to it. It’s not just apples: other fruits and berries come into play, and, there is also a lot of variation in the fruit-juice content of different ciders.

      Illustration

      Sweden has produced cider since time immemorial, but industrial production has been dominant since the 1950s. Sweden can hardly be regarded as being an influential cider country internationally. If you ask people what characterizes Swedish cider, ‘sweet alcoholic soda pop’ is likely to be a common verdict. However, this type of cider is found in many places around the world although it is indeed often known as ‘Swedish cider’.

      In Europe, the regulations for what can be called cider vary from country to country, but the Swedish style is based on the definition from the Swedish Food Agency: ‘Cider is a beverage that is produced from fermented fruit juice from apples and/or pears... The fruit juice content in the finished product should be at least 15% by volume.’ This is something we think should be highlighted. Do consumers know that the drinks in this category only have to contain 15% fruit juice? That’s a completely different cider compared with a product that contains 100% fruit juice. To draw a comparison with the wine world: it is a given that a bottle of wine contains 100% grapes – imagine the scandal if the producers started to dilute the wine with other fermentable juice, or even water. But within cidermaking it is clearly regarded as completely normal.

      Around the world

      British cider has a long history. In legal terms it needs a minimum of 35% apple or pear juice, although the ‘real cider’ movement requires at least 90% fresh pressed juice. One traditional style is firmly rooted in the countryside of the west of England and is mainly produced as still, dry ‘farmhouse’ cider (so-called scrumpy). This can often be fairly bitter since it’s made from traditional cider apples that are high in tannins. A range of different cider styles are also produced here, and the bitter character can be tempered by retaining some of the natural sugars in a process called keeving.

      Keeving is a method that aims to ‘invert’ the yeast, so that it sits on the top instead of sinking to the bottom, usually by adding enzymes. This way you can easily rack the cider from the yeast. Moreover, it’s common to filter the cider through a microfilter to make sure it’s as clean as possible when bottling. Executed correctly, keeving will slow down the fermentation and eventually stop it – before all the sugar has converted into alcohol. This leaves a certain amount of sweetness, with a small amount of bubbles. In eastern parts of England, cider is traditionally made using dessert apples and is therefore lighter and less rustic in character.

      French cider, with a bitter bite, oxidized tones from over-ripe fruit and often with some residual sweetness, is another style often associated with artisan cider. Thanks to the keeving method, which is very common in Brittany and Normandy, the cider, which would otherwise be regarded as far too bitter and dry, becomes a bit more balanced. There’s an almost infinite number of fruit trees and different apple and pear varieties in these regions and it’s therefore common to classify these cider apples into a few main groups to get a better overview: bittersweet, bitter, acidic and sweet. To achieve a good balance to the cider, the different varieties are blended. Moreover, the fruit often comes from old trees, sometimes several hundred years old. If it’s picked too early, the fruit is inedible, the bitterness is enormously high and the cider not very drinkable. If you wait until the fruit is thoroughly ripe, or has fallen from the tree, the bitterness is muted and will also add an oxidized note to the cider. A fairly large amount of cider is also produced in south-west France, where it is similar to the cider on the other side of the border in northern Spain, since the climate and apple varieties are more or less the same.

      Illustration

      One of our musical homages, in this case to Oasis’ classic ‘Definitely Maybe’.

      In France, cider must be made from 100% apple juice. It is labelled doux (sweet), demi-sec (medium) or brut (dry). The sweet ciders are low in alcohol because less sugar has been converted during the fermentation. Any of the styles may be still or naturally sparkling (cidre bouché) after a second fermentation in the bottle.

      Spain also has a long tradition of cidermaking. There, apple trees have grown wild, and later been cultivated, for hundreds of years. In Asturias, cider is called sidra and in the Basque country it’s called sagardoa. Just as in other well-known cider regions, the apple varieties grow well in the cool and wet climate and develop their flavours and aromas during long growing seasons. Asturias produces more cider than any other part of Spain and just like in Normandy there is a more developed regulatory framework when it comes to fruit varieties and production methods in comparison with other regions. The style is often still, acidic and completely dry. Traditionally it is fermented and aged in large wooden barrels that are often made from chestnut. This creates a so-called reductive style and the cider might therefore need ‘airing’.

      Reduction and a reductive style can be characterized by something being absent – the beverage can feel restrained and perhaps a bit shy. It can also smell slightly of ‘fart’, something that indicates that the beverage needs decanting, that is, the beverage needs pouring over into a carafe. In Asturias, this aeration is achieved by holding the bottle high and pouring the cider in a long stream down into the glass. This accentuates the fruit in the beverage and also tones down the acidity.

      In the USA, all types of beverages made from apples and/or pears are called cider. Juice and fermented

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1