Real Cider
Our cidermaking is inspired by the Real Cider guidelines from CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) in the UK. Of course, we’ve put a Tassie twist on them. This means we make our ciders as follows:
- We use only local Tasmanian apples and pears.
- When possible, we source traditional Tassie apples, such as Geeveston Fanny & Orange Pippin.
- We make all of our ciders ourselves in Tasmania.
- Our ciders have no added water, sugar, or concentrate.
- Our ciders have no added flavours or colours.
- Our ciders are unfined.
- Our ciders are unfiltered.
- Our ciders are unpasteurised.
- We use only natural, secondary fermentation processes to carbonate our ciders (it’s all bottle or keg fermented).
We choose to make all of our ciders and perries this way because we think it gives the most authentic cider taste. In a nutshell, because we’ve mucked around with it less, you’ll taste more of the apples or pears in the glass. By bottle or keg fermenting everything we achieve a smoother, creamier texture from the smaller bubbles and complexity and cloudiness from the yeast that remains. The side benefit of following these guidelines is that all of our ciders are sugar free, gluten free and vegan, but we’ll probably forget to tell you that as it’s all about the flavour for us.
We do use a small amount of preservative to keep the fruit flavours in our ciders and perries as fresh as possible, that’s why you’ll find ‘sulfites’ listed on our labels. We can’t use much, as all our sparkling products are keg or bottle fermented, but because we’ve used some we’d like you to know that they’re there.
Of course, we were never particularly suited to rules (just ask our mums), so sometimes we follow these rules to the letter and sometimes we add other natural ingredients. We always tell you what we’ve done so you can choose what you’d like to drink.
Cider Rosé
Alcohol: 8.0% v/v
Carbonation: Sparkling
Flavour Profile: Soft & fruity
We both love rosé wines, sparkling & still, and we wanted to try making a cider version. To do this we’ve blended two quintessentially Tasmanian products together: apples and pinot noir. This is a pink lady apple cider that we’ve blushed with 6% pinot noir. The red wine is mostly for the colour, but brings a subtle, dry raspberry flavour to the cider.
Scrumpy
Alcohol: 7.5% v/v
Carbonation: Still
Flavour Profile: Dry & creamy
Scrumpy is a traditional, English farmhouse cider style, it is a little rougher around the edges, cloudy and often still. The name comes from the term “scrumping” which means to steal fruit from an orchard or garden, but we can guarantee that there’s no stolen fruit in ours! The batches vary, but the current batch is 100% granny smith apples that we’ve fermented and matured in American oak barrels for nine months. The creamy, butterscotch flavours from the oak and the fact that it is not sparkling makes it like an apple wine, and it is great enjoyed from a wine glass.
Perry
Alcohol: 6.5% v/v
Carbonation: Sparkling
Flavour Profile: Soft & creamy
Apples make cider and pears make perry, although in Australia you’ll quite often see perries labelled as “pear ciders.” We’ve decided to stick with the more traditional English name for our perry. Pears are naturally high in a sugar alcohol, sorbitol, that does not ferment out so perries are always sweeter and creamier and lower in alcohol than ciders. The current batch is made from 90% beurre bosc pears, giving this perry a great texture, with 10% golden delicious apple blended in to add a spicy, apple pie flavour. Most commercial perries are made with pear flavouring, giving a distinctive pear drop / ginger character, so if you haven’t tried a real perry before we think you’ll be surprised how good they are.
Dry Hopped Cider
Alcohol: 8.0% v/v
Carbonation: Sparkling
Flavour Profile: Dry with bite
When Corey started cidermaking in Tassie in 2008 there weren’t any traditional cider apples available for him to use. He was on the hunt for something natural & Tasmanian to add to get the bitterness, bite and astringency you’d see in these types of apples when the answer hit him: hops. We spent a bit of time thinking he’d invented a new cider, but then discovered dry hopped cider was growing in popularity in the US craft cider scene. Our dry hopped cider is made from stripped fuji apples with two varieties of Tassie hops added. If you’re in the Ciderhouse and correctly guess which hops, we’ll give you a free drink, but we warn you, nobody’s worked it out yet.
Sparkling Cider
Alcohol: 7.5% v/v
Carbonation: Sparkling
Flavour Profile: Dry & Crisp
In England, sparkling cider was traditionally the poor man’s Champagne – dry, crisp and fruit driven. Ours is made from a blend of jonagold and granny smith apples. We use many of the techniques you’d use to make fine sparkling wines: oxidative juice handling, fermentation temperatures that retain fruit flavours but maximise texture, lees stirring, some use of old oak and secondary fermentation in bottle or keg.
Experimental
This is our chance to play. Different apple varieties, different yeast strains, trialling new techniques: this is where you’ll find the ciders that we’re experimenting with. They are mainly available at the CiderHouse and at festivals and events, but we have a small amount of bottle stock for sale directly from us.
To date, they have included:
#1 Geeveston Fanny Cider: Made from a traditional Tassie apple variety from Geeveston in the Huon Valley, this cider was bone dry, yet still tasted like a fresh apple. 5.5% v/v. Launched at the Winter Fest 2014.
#2 Dry Hopped Perry: A cross between our perry and our dry hopped cider. 6.5% v/v. Launched in the CiderHouse July 2014.
#3 Mean Green: the IPA of ciders, our dry hopped cider, with the hops turned up to eleven. 8% v/v. Made for Hopvember 2014.
#4 Toffee Apple Cider: a long held plan of Corey’s, finally come to fruition. This is the sweetest cider we have made, and had no added flavourings or colours. The toffee flavour came from fermenting granny smith apples in a brand new American oak barrel. 7.5% v/v. Launched at the Esk BeerFest 2015.