MISSOURI HARD CIDER WEEK

Hard Cider is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented apples or pears.  While it is often marketed and packaged similar to beer it is actually a low alcohol apple wine, typically in the range of 4% to 7% alcohol by volume.  The first references to hard cider date to Roman times, where Julius Caesar in 55 BC noted Celtic Britons fermenting local apples.  The British traditions of hard cider carried over to the new colonies where the first hard cider orchards were planted in Plymouth Massachusetts in 1620.  Hard Cider remained the leading alcoholic beverage for the new Americans for over 200 years into the mid-19th century.  Before there was Franklin D Rosevelt and a “chicken in every pot”, there was the lesser known “Hard Cider & Log Cabin” campaign of 1840 by our 9th President, William Henry Harrison.


Only in the mid-1800s did consumer preferences for beer finally exceed hard cider, driven by a wave of German immigration and inexpensive midwestern grain.  This, and later prohibition precipitated a decline in hard cider to where it eventually became a niche beverage kept alive in America by only a few New England farmers.