Apple

FruitsPome

The apple, the fruit of the domesticated apple tree, is one of the most widely used fruits in beverages. Its juice is drunk fresh, clarified, or unfiltered. It is also fermented into cider and apple wine, soured into vinegar for shrubs and switchels, and distilled into apple brandies.

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How apple is prepared

Apples are used for fresh, clarified, and unfiltered juice and for sparkling juice. Juice is mixed with mineral water as a spritzer, or heated with spices as mulled cider. The fruit is fermented into dry, sweet, low-alcohol, sparkling, and ice ciders and into apple wine. Cider vinegar is used in shrubs and switchels. Distilled and fortified products include cider brandy, calvados, applejack, and pommeau. Apples also serve as a base or flavoring in many modern non-alcoholic sodas, ferments, and mixed drinks.

Cold Brewing

Beverages using this technique · 1
NON
NON8 Torched Apple & Oolong
Still amber0% ABV
prepared as Cold-Infused Freeze-Dried Apple

Freeze-dried apple cubes are cold-steeped for 24 hours. The product name does not establish that the apples are torched.[7]

Service signal Works as a liquid component.

In depth

Central Asian origins and early spread

The apple's story begins in the wild fruit forests on the slopes of the Tian Shan in Central Asia, where the ancestral species Malus sieversii still grows. People there selected trees for larger, sweeter fruit over thousands of years. The fruit then moved westward along overland trade routes, mixing along the way with native crabapples, most importantly the European crabapple. By classical antiquity, apples were grown in quantity around the Mediterranean, and grafting allowed good trees to be reproduced faithfully. Pressing and fermenting such an abundant, sugary fruit was a natural step. Wherever apples became plentiful, they were turned into both fresh juice and fermented drinks.[1]

Medieval Europe and the naming of cider

In early medieval Europe, fermented apple juice was a common farm drink in cool regions where grapes struggled. Speakers of Old English called it 'apple wine.' The word 'cider' itself has a long path. It traces to a Hebrew term for strong drink, which passed through Greek and Church Latin into Old French and then into English. In Norman French writing of the twelfth century, the word was already applied specifically to an apple beverage. The earliest ciders were likely made from small, tart, tannic crabapples, the forerunners of the bittersweet and bittersharp varieties still prized by traditional makers. Methods were learned by trial and error, relying on wild yeasts and whatever vessels were at hand.[2]

English and French cider traditions

Over the centuries, two broad styles took shape on either side of the Channel. In England, especially the West Country, cider was typically fermented to dryness from tannic cider apples and could be fairly strong. Orchard wassailing became the rural custom tied to it: a midwinter blessing of the trees with songs and offerings of cider or spiced drink. In Normandy and Brittany, makers favored sweeter fruit and developed keeving, a technique that slows fermentation. Keeving leaves natural sugar and lowers the alcohol, producing gently sparkling, softer cidre that remains one of the classic lower-alcohol apple drinks. Comparable farmhouse traditions grew up in Asturias and the Basque Country of northern Spain, in northern Portugal, and in Ireland.[2]

Normandy's apple brandies and pommeau

Normandy also turned its cider into spirits. Distillation of cider is documented there from the mid-sixteenth century, and a guild of cider distillers formed in the early 1600s. The resulting brandy, later known as calvados, is cask-aged and governed by appellation rules. It became woven into regional custom. The trou normand is a small glass taken between courses to revive the appetite. Café-calva pairs coffee with a nip of brandy. A related Norman and Breton specialty, pommeau, blends unfermented apple must with young apple brandy and ages the mixture in oak. The result is a sweet, mahogany-colored aperitif. England has a parallel tradition of cider brandy, and in North America the comparable spirit is called applejack.[3]

German Apfelwein, sweet must, and spritzers

In the German-speaking world, the apple drink goes by several regional names. It is called Apfelwein or Ebbelwoi around Frankfurt and in Hesse, Viez along the Moselle and Saar, and Most in southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It is typically made from sour apple varieties into a tart, dry beverage of moderate strength. Around Frankfurt it is poured from a gray-and-blue stoneware jug into a faceted, diamond-patterned glass. Some makers add the astringent juice of the service tree, Sorbus domestica, for extra bite. The same regions distinguish fermented sour must from Süßmost, the sweet must that is essentially fresh apple juice. Mixing apple juice with sparkling mineral water is a ubiquitous German non-alcoholic refresher. Heated Apfelwein with cinnamon, cloves, and orange is a traditional cold-weather comfort.[4]

Colonial North America: sweet and hard cider

European colonists brought apple seeds and grafts to North America in the seventeenth century, where the only native apples were crabapples. Seedling orchards spread rapidly through colonial farms and along Native American trade routes. Cider became an everyday household drink in New England and beyond, valued partly because pressed and fermented apples kept through the winter. In the United States, the word 'cider' came to cover both stages of the drink. Freshly pressed, unfermented juice was 'sweet cider,' while the fermented version was 'hard cider.' That usage survives today: in much of the US and Canada, 'apple cider' means cloudy, unfiltered fresh juice, often served hot and mulled with spices in autumn.[1]

Vinegar drinks: shrubs and switchels

Letting cider continue past alcoholic fermentation, so that acetic acid bacteria convert its alcohol to acid, yields cider vinegar. This sour ingredient underpins several historic non-alcoholic drinks. Fruit vinegars, including apple, grew popular in the North Atlantic world in the early nineteenth century. Cider vinegar became a base for drinking vinegars and shrubs, which are fruit-and-vinegar syrups diluted with water. It was also used in switchel, a farmhand's thirst-quencher of water, vinegar, a sweetener such as molasses or honey, and often ginger. These tart drinks have seen a modern revival among non-alcoholic and craft beverage makers, along with diluted cider-vinegar tonics. Health claims made for such tonics, however, lack strong clinical support.[5]

Industrial juice and today's low- and no-alcohol apple drinks

Large-scale apple juice production grew with mechanized pressing, enzymatic clarification, and pasteurization. Pasteurization is relatively gentle for apple juice because of its natural acidity. Juice can also be concentrated for storage and shipping. Today apple juice ranks among the world's most common fruit juices, with China, Poland, the United States, and Germany among the leading producers. Alongside clear juice, smaller orchards still make cloudy, unfiltered juice in apple-growing regions. Modern beverage makers use apples in many lighter formats: sparkling juices, low-alcohol keeved ciders, dealcoholized and non-alcoholic ciders, apple-based sodas and fermented drinks, and mocktails built on fresh juice or shrubs. The same fruit that first fermented in farmhouse barrels now anchors a broad range of drinks with little or no alcohol.[6]

References

  1. [1]EncyclopediaApple — Wikipedia↑§1↑§6
  2. [2]EncyclopediaCider — Wikipedia↑§2↑§3
  3. [3]EncyclopediaCalvados — Wikipedia↑§4
  4. [4]EncyclopediaApfelwein — Wikipedia↑§5
  5. [5]EncyclopediaApple cider vinegar — Wikipedia↑§7
  6. [6]EncyclopediaApple juice — Wikipedia↑§8
  7. [7]Producerhttps://www.non.world/products/non8-torched-apple-oolong↑prepared