Americans should buy Lee Valley tools and sell back to Canadians on Ebay.

How old are you, Grant? My granddaddies were making hard cider in the very early 20th century, and late 19th century, I was drinking it more than 50 years ago, and I'm positive we were far from the first folks south of Canada to try it.

Charlie Self "If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner." H. L. Mencken

Good thing it was a calm day, eh ?

That's a pretty ride.

Yes, but in our village we have a pond for him to sit in.

I'm 46. We didn't have cider in Montana that I knew of.

Grant

Charlie Self wrote:

Who said it was calm!

GregP wrote:

If you have apples in Montana, then someone somewhere had cider. Maybe not in the grocery store or bar, but somewhere.

You have a strong stomach, then !

Grant P. Beagles responds:

I'm 66 and tried my first hard cider in Westchester County about 50 years ago, but my grandparents were from Kentucky and Virginia, and started their tasting probably close to 100 years before that.

Hard cider has probably been around since the second apple.

Charlie Self "Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing." Redd Foxx

how's that different from applejack?

They had a hard cider in England (Wiltshire) in the 60s called Scrumpy. Word was that it couldn't be called Scrumpy unless a rat could walk across the scum floating at the top of the glass. Word also was that nobody could drink three pints (English pints) of the stuff and walk away

- word was right.

To have some real fun with hard cider, flash freeze a five gallon jug. Tap and pour off the part that doesn't freeze. Drink that.

Wear knee pads.

Charlie Self "Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing." Redd Foxx

Bridger asks:

Applejack is distilled from the hard cider.

Charlie Self "Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing." Redd Foxx

Next door neighbor in Ohio used to keep it on the back porch all winter. Kept pouring it off and refreezing. Ouch!

There's no scrumpy in Wiltshire. The locals (looking further to the South West) would lynch anyone who claimed that the pondwater served by those squaddie types in their poncey uniforms (real men wear smocks and mint sauce as aftershave) was anything remotely like cider, let alone scrumpy. If you want real scrumpy, go to Somerset (maybe Dorset or Herefordshire too). But Wiltshire is a beer county.

We don't use the term "cider" in the UK, at least not in the same way that Americans do. Our non-alcoholic stuff is called "apple juice" and all "cider" is fermented. If it's cloudy, strong and has tails and whiskers in it, it's generally regarded as "scrumpy". The _strong_ stuff is filtered these days and colourless - "white cider" or "trampagne". It fills the same evolutionary niche as Everclear does in the USA, but you can't use it to mix shellac. Calvados (distilled or freeze distilled) comes from Normandy - for tax reasons, the only English spirit for the last few centuries has been gin.

Outside the months of July and August, cider isn't drunk. Well, it is, but only by 15 year olds, tramps, and the incurably rustic. It's a criminal offence to drink cider in most urban areas. In the countryside though, it's often accepted as mitigating circumstances in cases of sheep molestation.

They did have a good ordinary bitter. But we used to haul 5 gallon containers of scrumpy back to the base. There was a Wine/Scrumpy bar in town - Swindon - that sold nothing else. Always a 'cheap drunk'.

But not in the south.

IIRC Terry Pratchett refers to it as "scrumble" being made of "mostly apples".

Nanny Ogg would be able to proovide the proper recipe. If She ain't available I recon one could ask JT...

Or, better, concentrated by freezing and discarding the ice fraction.

Tastes better icy cold from the porch, too.

Applejack is what you get when you put hard cider in the freezer, let the water freeze, and pour off the alcohol. Repeat for greater effect. Er, so I've heard.

Dave Hinz

I had some in Devon a few years back (somewhere around Exmouth, I think).

That's the stuff! And warm too, which made it none too refreshing. The second pint was a Strongbow, and went down rather well on a hot day.

Ken Muldrew snipped-for-privacy@ucalgazry.ca (remove all letters after y in the alphabet)