HippoPress -- The Hippo -- Guide to Manchester and Nashua NH

In Adams’ day, apple cider was hard and plentiful. A majority of colonists including women, children and even clergy who would not sip whiskey enjoyed the cloudy, native libation.

Apple cider’s history is intrinsically woven into New Hampshire’s. Granite state native Horace Greeley, a journalist, wrote that cider, next to water, was the cheapest and most abundant beverage in his home state. At times, it was in fact even cleaner than the water.

Today craft cider growers say that fine hard cider is on the verge of making a comeback. Knocked down the beverage-of-choice ladder by beer in the late 1800’s, craft cider is akin to a fine wine and is getting noticed.

Jeff Walch sells ten styles of craft hard cider at his shop, Jasper’s Home Brewing & Winemaking in Nashua. The price ranges from $4.99 to $16 per bottle, making it an easy purchase for the cider neophyte.

“Cider is an amazing beverage year round. It is very food-friendly and we sell tons of it,” he said.

Jasper’s carries the Pup’s Cider Company brand, a Greenfield, NH-based producer. In fact, last year Rich Stadnik produced a line of Jasper Cider for the shop.

“Cider is such a big part of New England’s history. A families wealth used to be measured by how many barrels of cider they had in the cellar,” said Stadnik.

Public perception of apple cider is often off the mark. True apple cider is not simply a thicker, cloudy apple juice and true hard apple cider is not a sweet, carbonated apple drink like a wine cooler.

“Just like a good wine doesn’t taste like grape juice, a good cider does not taste like apple juice,” said Stadnik.

In fact, a craft cider is more like a dry white wine. Served ice cold, it is refreshing and crisp and a nice accompaniment to fish and pork. Sweet cider can be used in cooking.

While the cider-making process is identical to wine making, the real art of fine cider making is all in the blending. Each year the result is different based on the apples and the blending.

Craft cider is typically between 6 and 8 percent alcohol by volume. Cheaper mass producers of cider jack up the alcohol content in their labels by adding lots of sugar, resulting in the soft drink sweet taste.

Ben Watson, the author of Cider, Hard and Sweet (Countryman Press, 1999, $19.95) feels that the resurgence of cider’s popularity will be what saves local orchards from being plowed under by housing developers.

Watson, who lives in Francistown, N.H., says that the high price of the state’s remaining open land is making offers from developers irresistible to tired and frustrated apple growers. The wholesale market is dwindling in the northeast and many growers are ready to give up.

“Cider is a value-added business for apple growers,” said Watson. “Cider should be vin du pays (wine of the day) in New Hampshire. The craft apple cider available today is not the same as it was 20 years ago. It is much more sophisticated now and people are catching on.”

He points out that a pure sweet cider can be purchased directly from the orchards. Often orchards do not pasteurize the cider, something people may be afraid of.

“There was a fear-mongering campaign from the government a few years ago because a strain of E. coli was found in unpasteurized apple juice.” Today, all cider sold by third parties, such as supermarkets, is pasteurized.

“The sweet cider sold at orchards is not the same as the cloudy apple juice sold at the supermarket,” Watson quipped.

“New Hampshire grows some of the best apples in the world. It baffles me when I see imports from Chile and New Zealand and our local farmers are starving.”

Cider producers, like many wine growers, are passionate about their product and are working tirelessly to keep the New Hampshire apple industry viable. And while few would advise us to drink a glass of hard cider at breakfast, local cider producers hope that craft cider is chilling in every refrigerator.

Where to buy NH cider

• Pup’s Cider Company, 193 East Road, Greenfield, 877-655-PUP,, www.pupscider.com.

• Jasper’s Homebrew & Winemaking, 4 Temple St., Nashua, 881-3052

• Farnum Hill Cider, 98 Poverty Lane, Lebanon, 448-1511, www.farnumhillciders.com