Common Questions About Aging Cider
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We have learned so much about the cider industry over the years. Even with all of that knowledge, our education falters in some areas. One of those areas is aging/cellaring cider. As we are not large producers of cider or age our ciders as thoroughly as some of the craftier cider makers, we could use some help getting to know the aging process.
We reached out to a few cider experts with questions and they responded. We will add their responses below as we get more.
Aging Hard Cider
If you are part of the cider industry, you know Mike Beck. His resume is stacked with accolades in the industry and he is still as active as ever. Mike is the owner of Uncle John’s Hard Cider and Cider Mill in St. John’s, Michigan. He was also the past president of the United States Association of Cider Makers, and the only American cidermaker to receive a gold medal for his perry from the British Cider Championships.
He is a fifth generation apple grower that brought 16 ounce cans on the cider map! He is also the heart of GLINTCAP since it started. Like we said, the guy has a resume that never ends! With knowledge comes great power. He was kind enough to use this power to answer some of our burning questions about aging cider.
Why would someone want to age a cider?
“We do not specifically age any cider product on purpose. However, I keep a collection of library ciders made from our premium and one off cider line-up. Cider for the most part age pretty well. We have some Magnums of our Bittersweet blend “Melded” that are 10 years old that really are just now showing sign of age. Our primary purpose is to see what happens to our products over time. I do this with canned ciders as well. We are also collaborating some cider with a sparkling wine producer that is cave aging some cider for a Champagne style. Autolyzing yeast to get that sourdough bread aroma to pop from the glass.”
What ciders age well?
“High-tannin ciders age best so far, high Co2 ciders age pretty good to if the seal is good.”
What is the best environment for the aging?
“Colder, damper, darker all the better. Old farm house basement root cellar is by far better than anything you can pay big money for.”
How does aging cider change the flavors over time?
“The high fruit notes soften, acid mellows slightly, and other flavours and aromas present themselves, leather, spice, minerality/earth notes.”
How does aging cider compare to aging something like wine or beer?
“I’m a one trick pony and not very good at that to say the least, have not tried either of those.”
Any tips and tricks on aging?
“Temperature control is the biggest factor – cool and steady as possible.”
Tell us about your favorite type of cider and why it may be good aged?
“Standard cider is what I like best: dry or sweet as long as it is balanced. Clean too, I am much too Plain Jane of a dude to wrap my head around funkiness/brett and the like. I like to try old cider just to see how they are holding up.”
Cider’s Talia & Daniel Haykin:
Information on Haykin Cidery:
They are a harvest-based cidery that presses fruit in season from farmers that they know personally. All but one of our growers are in Colorado. The Haykin’s visit each orchard during the harvest season to hand select the apples we press for each vintage. They only use two ingredients: apples and yeast. They never pasteurize or sterile filter. Ultimately this business believes cider making is a type of wine making, and all the best practices of fine wine apply to fine cider as well.
From their team:
“We prefer our cider after it has aged for some time, it is much better in the second year than the second month. During the first year, acids mellow, previously disjointed flavors come together, the aroma broadens and intensifies. Over the course of years, simpler fruity flavors take a step back, and richer caramel notes and (hopefully graceful) oxidation takes a step forward. The ideal aging temperature is around 55 degrees. The characteristics that help improve a cider’s ability to age include higher acidity, tannin and co2.
None of our products are pasteurized or sterile filtered. Our cider is very much alive in the bottle which impacts aging as well. Often by the second year, our ciders drop a tiny bit of spent yeast cells, or lees. The lees will go through a process called autolysis that imparts flavor, aroma and improved texture to the cider. Characteristic autolytic notes are bready, yeasty and rich. We’ve found that autolysis also corresponds to stronger fruity aromas and flavors. After a year or two, the cider tastes like an intensified version of its younger self.
Likewise, lees aging improves the quality of the cider’s sparkle. Autolyzing yeast imparts a substance called glycoproteins into the cider which help promote small bubbles and a silkier mouthfeel. Autolysis also helps inhibits oxidation, extending the cider’s ability to age.
We are taking all of these concepts and applying them to a new product line, Method Ancestral, we are working on now. In Method Ancestral the apple’s own sugar produces all of the sparkle in each bottle, dropping lots of lees in the process. We will age our cider on the lees for 12 months, 18 months or longer and eventually disgorge the bottles to remove the sediment. We’ve been working on this concept for years and our early experiments have yielded fantastic results. It is hard to wait so long to start drinking a cider, but the patient cider maker is richly rewarded.”
