Well, since I was just reading the Searching Tips Needed thread, I thought I’d take a look.
http://web.bham.ac.uk/GraftonG/cider/real.htm mentions apple wine, and http://web.bham.ac.uk/GraftonG/cider/homepage.htm has lots of links to recipes and other info.
Have fun!
I changed the title of this thread from What is the difference? to What is the difference between cider and juice. Descriptive thread titles are appreciated.
A couple of threads from last year on this subject:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=47229
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=43016
I think cider is fermented to a low degree. If you ever see a nice sized brown spot on an apple or a pear, and smell it, you smell the aroma of cider. The main difference is cider is good and juice isn’t.
Thats what Americans call “hard cider”. You can get it in bottles like beer or on tap. Some popular brands are “Ciderjack”, “Woodchuck Cider”, “Hardcore cider” etc.
It doesn’t taste the quite the same as apple wine, although I must admit the only apple wine I’m familiar with is Boone’s Farm.
Proper cider n the UK is very popular in the South-West of England where it is also known as ‘Scrumpy’ which is incredibly potent and very drinkable.
Cider is a fermented beverage, and although the big main brands in the UK such as Woodpecker, and Bulmers Strongbow are poor imitations of the real thing, everyone in the UK understands cider to be alchoholic.
Cider is also used in a special way, like wine, in that it can be made into vinegar.
I think the US use of the word cider, to mean a drink fit only for children and possibly adults who maybe shouldn’t be given sharp objects is poor hijack of a brew with a long and wonderful tradition.
Yes in England cider is always alcoholic (at least in the pubs I’ve frequented and worked in, and in the off-licenses I’ve seen, and TV ads) but apple juice is not.
Apple juice is usually still, unless you buy a bottled one labelled “sparkling apple juice.”
Having lived and worked also in Australia, as far as I could tell (I don’t actually drink cider) they regard cider as an alcoholic beverage too.
“Scrumpy” cider - sometimes just called “scrumpy” - seems to be a much stronger, more home-brewed-style version.
Cider can be apple coloured but it can also be white. Bottled white ciders were very popular a few years back, but then got pushed out by alcopops.
PS “Perry” (sp?) is fizzy alcoholic fermented pear juice. So is Babycham, AFAIK, but I don’t know if Babycham is the the same as perry.
In Normandy ,as well as producing cider , the apple juice is also distilled to produce the apple brandy called Calvados.
Farmers in the English west country let their pigs feed on the fallen cider apples. It is said that the resulting pork has a slight apple taste to it.
The terms aren’t clearly defined, and differ depending on where in the world you are. In the US, apple juice is a strained, pasteurized, fairly clear beverage. Apple cider is what you get when you stick a bunch of apples in a cider press and juice them; a brown, tangy liquid with solids still present (mmm!). We call alcoholic apple-based beverages “hard cider”, and they’re usually more of the consistency of our apple juice (with alcohol, of course). I understand that in Canada, the cider/juice definitions are reversed.
“Hard cider” wasn’t very popular in the US until recently, and now there are several brands on the market.
So what do British call the product we call ‘cider’? If juice is that nasty, yellow, factory made shit, what do you call the all-natural goodness that is fresh cider? Are they both juice? Is one ‘brown juice’ and the other ‘yellow juice’? I am dying to know!
Quoth Ned Flanders once:
“If it’s brown, you’re in Cider Town!
If it’s yellow, you’ve got cider there, fella!”
I used to work in a natural foods store, where one of my responsibilities was ordering and stocking the apple juice and cider. I asked one of the distributors once what the difference was, and, at least at his orchard, it was thus:
Cider, at least the non-alcoholic variety, is the juice you get from apples, period. Strained somewhat (about half an inch of apple sludge would accumulate at the bottom of the gallon jugs if you let them sit for a while) and bottled. That particular distributor did not pasteurize his cider at the time, but later started “flash pasteurizing”, where the cider was heated to a high temperature very rapidly (to 700 degrees F over 3 seconds, I think he said), then chilled very rapidly. Some of our customers didn’t want their food pasteurized, as they claimed it killed the healthy organisms as well as the harmful ones.
Apple juice is pasteurized, filtered more thoroughly, and may have additives, such as sugar.
Not exactly on topic, but a friend of mine who brews his own beer tried his hand at cider-making once. He found out, after making 2 large carboys of vinegar, that fermenting cider needs to be kept at a constant and fairly specific temperature. I think he said it had to remain within a 2-3 degree F range.
On the subject of apple soda- Fanta is made by Coca-Cola which makes Manzana Lift, in Mexico and central america. There were at one time, plans to introduce it into some regions of the US. Last I heard, coke was introducing one known as Manzana Mia into the same rgions, however some people called it a racist marketing strategy, so it may or may not have been abandoned. I will tell you though, that the Sour Apple Jones, is wonderful, but not nearly as good as Manzana Lift.
-PSM
Sorry about that biblio…
So from reading this, most of the “ciders” that one gets in the grocery store (non-alcoholic) it sounds to me that apple cider and apple juice aren’t that far off. One is more filtered than the other and really there is not that much difference. Guess I will have to conduct my own taste test when the store gets some cider back in stock.
Well good. They ran out of cider at the store and I was in the in mood (thanks to Kalash aka Kalashnikov) to make some apple with Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum hot drinks. I bought the juice and still haven’t tried it yet but plan on it this week when the temps really drop.
BTW, I never buy juice (or even fruit “jellies”) unless they are as pure as possible, meaning no sugar and as little alteration as possible. I’m not big on sugar unless I add it.
… and parts of Dallas/Fort Worth as well. Fanta sells Apple, Lemon, Pink Grapefruit and Pineapple at all the groceries around here.
Jesus, I even messed up a wise-crack. It should read:
“…If it’s yellow, you’ve got juice there, fella!”
If you had looked at my post, you would have gotten it right. 