What Is the Difference Between Mead and Hard Cider?

When you’re out at your local craft beer bar, you might find yourself in a situation with a list of unfamiliar beverage options. From IPA to Tripel, you might be good to go on the beer front, but there’s a new segment of alcoholic beverages on the scene to learn about. With the demand for gluten-free and alternative options on the rise, refreshments like hard cider and mead are taking over the craft scene. But what exactly is mead? Why opt for cider? Read on for more about these unique drinks!

What Is Mead?

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Essentially, mead is a wine-like beverage made out of fermented honey and water. Similar to grape wine, mead is higher in alcohol content and has a nuance in flavor profile and sweetness. It is typically lighter in color, closest to pale yellow, and is generally thin in viscosity but with a light bubble. Mead can be brewed with malt, hops, fruits, spices, and other elements to create a unique array of flavors. It is enjoyed in many different forms, but more popular in European countries such as Spain and France. Rooted in history and myth, mead has been around for centuries, dating back to 3000 BC with the early Europeans.

Mead has not yet taken the craft alcohol market by storm, but there are a few cans and bottles consumers can try. Look for brands such as Meridian Hive Meadery (Austin, TX), Schramm’s Mead (Ferndale, MI), and Redstone Meadery (Boulder, CO).

What is Hard Cider?

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More familiar to the beer-lover’s palate, hard cider is a fermented alcoholic beverage made from apples. Cider is made from fruit so it is similar to a wine, but has more of the bubbly, yeast-like characteristics of beer. Cider is typically amber or gold in color and more often than not, clear and crisp with soft carbonation. It can range from fruit sweet to tangy and tart to brut dry, and aging cider can develop flavors further. Not to be confused with apple cider juice, hard apple cider is fermented for alcoholic content and the fruit sugars in cider can increase the ABV, or alcohol by volume. Cider too has been around for many centuries, but has deeper roots in England during the early half of the 19th century when drinking fermented beverages was safer to drink than water.

Looking to try some award-winning hard cider? Look out for Alpenfire Cider (Port Townsend, WA), Arsenal Cider House (Pittsburgh, PA), and Angry Orchard (Walden, NY).

Moroccan Spiced Chicken with Mead, Apricot and Almonds

New England

Semi-sweet honeyed mead keeps chicken thighs moist and flavorful in this Moroccan-inspired dish with apricot and almonds. Mead also contributes to a rich sauce that will pair beautifully with pearled couscous. Get the recipe.

Peach and Mead Cake

Juls’ Kitchen

In this upside-down style cake, mead is used to cook down the peaches for the topping and then cake batter (with more mead) is layered on top. After baking, this cake flips over into a beautiful peach-topped dessert, sweetened with honey and vanilla. Get the recipe.

Spiced Citrus Honey Hot Toddy

This Mama Cooks

Top off the night with a classic seasonal drink, the Hot Toddy. This mead and honey drink is the ideal antidote for a breezy fall night, and comes together in just a few steps with a cinnamon stick garnish and a cozy mug to enjoy it in. Get the recipe.

Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with Apple Mostarda

Plains Joy

Pork pairs beautifully with hard cider, taking in sweetness from the apples. Combining the classic flavor pairings of grainy mustard, apple cider vinegar, and hard cider, this braised pork is an ideal autumn dinner recipe. Get the recipe.

Chicken Breasts Braised with Hard Cider Bacon and Parsnips

A Farm Girl’s Dabbles

You can’t get much better than a one-pot meal and this chicken and hard cider dish comes together in one large dutch oven. You can also substitute other root vegetables for the parsnips, such as carrots or hearty potatoes. Get the recipe.

Apple & Cheddar Hard Cider Soup

No Spoon Necessary

It’s true—hard cider in this soup pairs with salty cheddar cheese and sweet apples for a delicious sweet-and-savory option. Just waiting for a hunk of crusty bread, this soup is a decadent way to celebrate the flavors of fall. Get the recipe.

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Carrot Salad With Yogurt, Ghee, and Barberry Dressing

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7 Delicious Ways to Use Up Your Apple Haul

You’ve spent a crisp fall afternoon apple picking, and now you need ideas for using up all that fruit (there’s only so many apple pies a person can bake). We’ve got you covered with everything from savory apple breads to interesting twists on a classic apple twist.

1. Apple Fritters

Chowhound

Choose a sweet-tart apple variety for this fritter recipe, which transforms fresh apples into a sweet donut shop classic. The pieces of apple are coated in a basic yeast donut batter and then fried. Top it all off with a maple syrup glaze. One bite and you’ll feel like you’re on a fall trip to Vermont. Get our Apple Fritters recipe.

2. Cheddar and Apple Quick Bread

Chowhound

Cheddar and apples were destined to get together in your kitchen, and bread is the perfect medium. This simple quick bread is easy to whisk together and bakes up into a moist, tender crumb with pockets of gooey cheese and sweet fruit. Get our Cheddar and Apple Quick Bread recipe.

3. Dutch Apple Pie

Chowhound

Reconsider the classic apple pie this fall. Our new favorite is this single crust pie with its additive and crumbly walnut streusel topping. Golden raisins and a touch of cider vinegar make the filling anything but basic. Get our Dutch Apple Pie recipe.

4. Apple and Aged Cheddar Grilled Cheese

Chowhound

For any baker intimidated by frosting and decorating cakes, this recipe is for you. Simply fill the cake layers with a tangy mascarpone frosting and fresh berries, and don’t even worry about frosting the sides. It’s rustic-looking in the very best way. Get our Apple and Aged Cheddar Grilled Cheese recipe.

5. Tangy Apple and Beet Salad

Salads can feel boring pretty quickly, so mix up the routine with seasonal ingredients. In this recipe, a tangy mustard dressing coats sturdy radicchio, roasted beets and fresh apple. Crumbled blue cheese gives the salad enough heft to be eaten as a main dish, or pair it with roast chicken for a heartier dinner. Get our Tangy Apple and Beet Salad recipe.

6. Mulled Apple Cider

Chowhound

Why eat your fruit when you can drink it? Nothing says fall quite like a warm mug of mulled cider. This version has a spicy kick from black pepper, plus plenty of warming spice in the form of star anise, cinnamon, and fresh ginger. Make an extra-large batch for a party and your kitchen will be perfumed with fall aromas. Get our Mulled Apple Cider recipe.

7. Grilled Coconut-Apple Crisp

Chowhound

Apple crisp conjures up images of fall in New England and cozy hearths with a glowing fireplace. This is not that apple crisp! This recipe takes you to the tropics with a hit of ginger and a sweetened coconut topping. It’s the perfect way to transport yourself from the cold to a warm beaches. Get our Grilled Coconut-Apple Crisp recipe.

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14 Ways to Make Use of Your Apple Orchard Haul

Ah, fall—it’s the most wonderful time of year (second only to Christmas, of course)! When the leaves are changing colors and the air becomes crisp, it’s peak season to get warm and cozy and relish in all that fall has to offer. If there’s one iconic activity to enjoy during this time of year, it’s definitely picking apples. Apple picking is an all-day affair; drinking hot cider while picking the best crop is hard work! Not to mention hauling your harvest home for a bounty of apple-filled recipes.

Using up pounds and pounds of fruit before it goes bad can definitely be a challenge. We’ve got a spread of unique ideas to use up your bushel of apples, from savory to sweet. Make a batch of apple butter in a slow cooker, or opt for apple salsa with crisp tortilla chips. You can also go for a stack of dehydrated apple chips, or an iconic apple pie, piled high in a crispy, buttery crust. Whatever way you choose, your house is going to smell amazing! Read on for fall-inspired treats and eats:

Apple Pan Dowdy

Bunny’s Warm Oven

Forget cobbler! This biscuit-topped apple bake is drenched in a thick, buttery caramel and baked until bubbly. Perfect for topping with vanilla ice cream, this Pan Dowdy is sure to please the whole family. Get the recipe.

Seeded Apple Bread with Honey and Thyme

Yuki Sugiura

For a healthier option that’s still plenty satisfying, this seeded apple bread is sweetened with honey (and the apples themselves), and layered with even more fall flavors thanks to ground hazelnuts and thyme. Get this Seeded Apple Bread with Honey and Thyme recipe.

Harvest Chicken Skillet with Sweet Potatoes Brussels Sprouts and Sautéed Apples

Well Plated by Erin

It doesn’t have to be all about the sweet! A one-pan skillet is perfect for using up a few apples. Nutrient-rich sweet potatoes, hearty brussels sprouts, and chicken breast chunks are balanced perfectly with slightly softened apples. Get the recipe.

Cinnamon Apple Chips

Carrie’s Experimental Kitchen

These crispy dehydrated apple chips are ideal for packing lunchboxes or snacks on the go. These chips don’t require any extra sweetness, especially when you use peak-of-season apples. Simply sprinkle with cinnamon for extra fall flavor. Get the recipe.

Slow Cooker Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

Alexandra Cooks

Apples…in soup!? It may seem strange, but adding chopped apples to this squash-centric soup adds extra bulk and sweetness, without adding any refined sugar. Whip up a double batch and freeze for winter! Get the recipe.

One Pan Pork Chops with Apples

The Chunky Chef

The classic combo of pork chops and apples is perfect for using up your bushel of fruit! This one pan supper celebrates the fall flavors of sage and rosemary, pairing beautifully with sweet, wilted apples. Get the recipe.

Jewish Apple Cake

Brown Eyed Baker

Looking to bake your bushel, without going the pie (or bread, or pan dowdy) route? Go for a loaf of Jewish Apple Cake, perfect for an afternoon snack with coffee or tea, without going all out on the sugar. Get the recipe.

Slow Cooker Apple Butter

Dessert for Two

Have a few bruised apples at the bottom of your bag? Apple butter doesn’t need the prettiest crop when the spread is blended into a smooth puree anyway. Let this sauce simmer in your slow cooker all day and your house will smell like the glorious flavors of fall! Get the recipe.

Cinnamon Apple Pancakes

Creme de la Crumb

An apple a day, even at breakfast. Start your morning with hearty pancakes topped with sweet sauteed apples, tossed in sweet cinnamon. Get the recipe.

Apple Salsa

Six Sisters Stuff

Have a few tart apples that need to be used up? This sweet and salty apple salsa is great for crispy tortilla chips or makes a great topping for grilled fish. Get the recipe.

Autumn Apple Salad

House of Yumm

Crispy apples pair with crunchy nuts, creamy goat cheese, and savory bacon crumbles in this autumnal salad. Make a double batch of maple vinaigrette to make this recipe a million times over! Get the recipe.

Cinnamon Apple Oatmeal

The Oatmeal Artist

No need to seek a packet of instant—this oatmeal incorporates fresh apples, spiced cinnamon, and sweet raisins for a hearty breakfast. Pour over warmed milk for a decadent treat. Get the recipe.

Apple and Goat Cheese Flatbread

A Cup of Jo

Crunchy apples, creamy goat cheese, and peppery arugula top a crispy flatbread crust in this seasonal recipe. Perfect for a quick dinner or easy appetizer, you can absolutely switch out any type of apple depending on what your haul looks like. Get the recipe.

Mile High Apple Pie

Completely Delicious

If you’re going to make a pie, it’s time to go all out. Break out the deep dish pan and pile the sliced apples high. Get the recipe.

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The History of American Hard Cider

Hard cider. The name may sound tough, but this alcoholic beverage hasn’t had the easiest path to success. And while the moniker may be uniquely American — the rest of the world just calls it cider — the drink itself is not. It made its way from France to Britain, and from there, to the New World. But the history of hard cider, once it reached these shores, is as bittersweet as the wild apples of yore.

New England’s Beverage of Choice

By the time the Pilgrims and Puritans settled in what is now Massachusetts in the 1600s, beer was the most popular drink in England, followed by cider. However, it didn’t take long for them to figure out that cereal grains, such as wheat and barley, did not grow well in New England. As a result, they couldn’t really brew beer. According to Ben Watson, author of “Cider, Hard and Sweet: History, Traditions, and Making Your Own,” the colonists experimented with fermenting local ingredients, such as pumpkins, to see if they could come up with a satisfactory beverage.

Since nothing the colonists tried could compare to cider, they requested apple seeds from France and Britain. Some wealthy landowners were even able to import whole trees. The plants thrived on this side of the pond, and soon, cider became a major part of the colonists’ daily diet. If you’re wondering why they didn’t just quench their thirst with water, well — it tasted strange compared to what they were used to back home, which made them question its potability. Also, once cities were built and industry took hold, byproducts and sewage were regularly dumped into local waterways until, many years later, regulations to clean them up were established. By the late 18th century, the majority of the population in the northeast lived on farms, and one out of every ten had a cider press, which made it the number one beverage in New England for over a century.

Related Video: How to Make Hard Cider Braised Sausages

As time went on, westward expansion, the success of growing cereal grains in the midwest, and an influx of immigrants from other regions of Europe made beer more popular and readily available. But Americans continued to drink cider until Prohibition. It was then, Angry Orchard head cider maker Ryan Burke explains via email, that “apples that were grown specifically for cider making, apples with high tannins know as bittersweet, were systematically removed and replaced with apples more akin to what we find in the grocery store today.” Instead of cider apples, orchards planted eating apples (aka culinary or dessert apples). Cideries, forced to stop making alcoholic cider, instead began making sweet cider, which is nonalcoholic, unfiltered, unpasteurized, and has a much shorter shelf life.

Watson credits the craft beer movement of the 1980s with making hard cider (the “hard” was added to differentiate it from sweet cider) popular again. “It was a slow, organic growth,” Watson reflects. When his book originally came out in 1999, he had predicted that the cider industry would grow. He wasn’t wrong, but it was a slow process. Fast forward almost twenty years, and you’ll find hundreds of cideries across the U.S., with more opening up every year. “It’s great,” observes Watson, “but there’s a lot of competition now.” This forces cider makers to come up with innovative ways to differentiate themselves and stay relevant, with some pretty spectacular results.

Hard Cider, Then and Now

Tastes have certainly evolved over the past few hundred years. Burke surmises that, since the colonists relied on wild fermentation, their ciders “likely had a more funky farmhouse flavor to them.” He also points to the ciders coming out of Spain, England, and France as good examples of how Europeans, who have been growing and using the same types of bittersweet apples for centuries, have kept up cider-making traditions. “Today, sweet and medium-sweet ciders are still most popular in the U.S. when it comes to flavor profiles,” Burke says. He describes the number one cider in the U.S., Angry Orchard Crisp Apple, as crisp and apple-forward, with sweetness, bright acidity and dry tannins from combining culinary and traditional apples in the recipe. However, his team creates a wide range of cider styles, some of which harken back to what early Americans may have been drinking day-to-day.

Surprisingly, a cider’s sweetness is not a function of the amount of sugar in the fruit used to make it, according to Watson, unless you happen to be using antiquated methods. Many cideries use an apple concentrate, ferment it, cut it with water, and add juice or sugar after the fact, which is called back-sweetening. Alternatively, the alcohol content does depend on the amount of sugar in the fruit, which varies by factors such as climate and weather, in addition to which variety of apple is used.

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“There are over 6,000 apple varieties, all with distinctly different characteristics,” Burke writes. He and the team at Angry Orchard focus on sourcing quality fruit from growers across the country (and the world) and experiment with different varieties and techniques to create small-batch ciders that you can only find at their facility in Walden, New York. “Tradition is extremely important,” says Burke. “At the orchard, we also play around with many heirloom apples those long-ago cider makers would have had access to – like Newtown Pippin. At the cidery, we make a single varietal cider using that apple. It’s acidic and bright, and I think very similar to something you might have found in colonial times.”

Burke’s team also experiments with barrel-aging, wild and spontaneous fermentation, and an unfiltered process. “To continue growing the cider industry in America,” he adds, “we’ve begun planting traditional bittersweet cider apple trees and other heirloom varieties at our orchard in New York’s Hudson River Valley to see what varietals grow best in this region and which apples will continue to deliver high quality cider for years to come.” The resulting beverages offer a more complex flavor profile, ranging from slightly sweet to bone dry.

This is where the most innovative cider makers seem to be focusing their energy: ancient methods and a return to the wild. “Some people are looking back to tradition,” Watson relates, “foraging apples, going out and finding old seedling trees, grafting them, finding feral apples that would be good for contributing to cider…they’re doing very interesting things.”

Going backwards to move forwards may sound counterintuitive, but if the success of national brands like Angry Orchard, in addition to small regional makers here and there, is any indication, America’s taste in cider will surely follow.

What Are the Best Apples for Baking?

What Is the Difference Between Applejack and Calvados?

How to Cook with Apple Cores

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How to Cook with Apple Cores

What’s not to love about an orchard-fresh apple on a crisp autumn day? For many people, it’s the core, which often finds itself on the fast track to the trash. But did you know that you can use apple cores to make apple juice, apple cider vinegar, and much more?

Before you start cooking with cores, you may want to get the apple seeds out of the way. Accidentally biting into or swallowing a seed isn’t the most pleasant experience. But on top of that, apple seeds contain a compound that can release cyanide when it encounters enzymes in our bodies. If you unintentionally swallow a seed here and there, you have nothing to worry about. To consume a lethal amount of cyanide, you would have to ingest about 200 apple seeds from 20 cores. Furthermore, you would have to carefully chew each of these seeds in order to break through the seed’s casing and release the compound. So while it’s extremely unlikely that ingesting stray apple seeds will do you any harm, it’s easy enough to remove them if it makes you feel more at ease. Just cut the core in half and use a knife to slide them out.

Before you can tackle one of these recipes, you’re going to need build up a reserve of cores. You can use your freezer to preserve cores while you grow your collection. As soon as you gather enough cores and remove the seeds, you’re ready to get cooking!

Apple Juice

Green Talk

Move over, Mott’s. All you’ll need to make your own juice is a pot, some jars to store the juice, and two or three ingredients: cores, water, and (if you so choose) sugar. You’ll bring the cores and water to a boil, then reduce the heat and let the mixture simmer for half an hour. Finally, toss what remains of the cores and use a coffee filter to catch any sediment before storing (or drinking)! Get the recipe.

Apple Jelly

A Year Without Groceries

The recipe for apple jelly isn’t all that different from the one for juice, except that sugar is a must, and you’ll need some lemon juice as well. You can also use the peels in this recipe! Get the recipe.

Apple Cider Vinegar

Don’t Waste The Crumbs

Apple cider vinegar is known as an age-old remedy for all manner of health issues from sore throats to blood sugar to dandruff and more. To make your own, you’ll once again need apple cores, sugar, and water. The key difference in making vinegar is that it isn’t a one-day task: The ingredients will need to spend about two weeks fermenting. Get the recipe.

Agrodolce

Purple Kale

Agrodolce is an Italian sweet and sour sauce that can be used to add flavor to a variety of dishes from meats to greens. This recipe calls for 10 cores to make one cup of sauce. Get the recipe.

Bourbon Cocktail

Splendid Table

Once you have your agrodolce, add two ounces to another two ounces of bourbon, top it off with a sprig of rosemary or thyme, and you’ve got yourself a flavorful fall cocktail! Get the recipe.

Wine

Instructables

For this recipe, you will need: a few pounds of apple cores, 5 to 12 months, and an adventurous spirit. Once you’ve assembled all of those ingredients (plus sugar, yeast, and a large glass container), you’re ready to try your hand at homemade apple core wine! Get the recipe.

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Pumpkin Skillet Coffeecake With Streusel Topping

pumpkin streusel muffin crossed with a blondie, and you'll have a good idea what this curiously rich coffee cake is all about—hearty and satisfying, aromatic, and chewy, with a hint of fudgyness thanks to the effects of melted white chocolate in the dough. Malted milk powder bumps up the earthiness of pumpkin, and helps with browning too. Get Recipe!

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