Names

[hollyking]

Considering last night's cider fiasco these two blog posts about cider caught my attention. First, This Week in Germany (TWIG) posted about a fight over the right to call a German cider Apfelwein. It seems that an EU commission received a proposal to limit usage of the word wine (wein in German) to products made from grapes only. The next post I read, from Deutsche Welle (DW), explained how a campaign from Germany defended the traditional name of the drink. Last Tuesday the EU commission announced their intention to allow Apfelwein and other fruit wines to be marketed as they are now. So the great Apfelwein War of 2007 has been avoided.

The amusing bit to me was reading how the naming conflict on one post and the resolution of the conflict on another post. The discrepancy comes from the fact that TWIG posts once each week and DW is constantly updating their news reports. I don't fault TWIG since they're not really a news organization. As a branch of the German Embassy in the U.S. their purpose is to promote information about Germany. They just got caught by a quick response from the EU commission.

In other news a Czech brewery named Budweiser Budvar (BB) won a case against Anheuser-Busch (AB) to keep their name. BB started brewing beer in the 13th century, 1265 to be exact, 200 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. AB claimed that it has the rights to the name Budweiser which Eberhard Anheuser chose because of its reputation in his homeland and was registered as a trademark by AB in 1878. There are still cases pending over the names "Bud" and "Budvar."

Speaking of beer there I've had some interest about going to the Winter Beer Fest. The festival is Friday and Saturday, but my company is hosting a party on Friday so I'll only be attending on Saturday. I'll start early because as a member of Washington Beer Lovers (WABL) I can get in an hour early at noon.

The fiasco? Since Monday Three Lions has been out of Strongbow. The waitress told me last night that their distributor hadn't made their delivery. On Monday I had some Woodpecker which was good. Last night they were even out of that and I had a few bottles of Magners. It was definitely my least favorite of the three. I didn't hate it as much as loba did, but I wouldn't order it if I had a choice.

Comments

[torainfor.livejournal.com]

I love cider. I remember have TNT cider in a pub in England. It came in a bottle shaped like a stick of dynamite but I really liked it.

I guess I never thought of cider as a "wine"--I always thought of it as a substitute for beer. But it's not carbonated, is it?

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

TNT sounds interesting. I wonder if I can find it here.

Making cider is a lot closer to wine than beer. The only ingredients are apple juice and yeast. Mass produced ciders are usually carbonated to some level.

[ragnorokt.livejournal.com]

Cider, Wine, Mead, and Melomel are all essentially the same type of thing, what we would think of as a wine (actually mead is far older than any of the rest) based drink. Some sort of mixture of fruit juice or honey thined with water, that is fermented with wine yeasts. Once you crush the fruit and strain the juice (or not) you can start fermenting. Cider can be sparkiling if desired. Here is more information than you will ever want about beer and cider.

Beer a much more involved process that requires special treatment of grains and soaking the grain in hot water, seperating the grain from the wort, washing the grain, boiling the wort, cooling the wort then start fermenting.

If you can find it you should give perry a spin. It is like cider but is fermented from pears. There are some from England floating around. Woodchuck pear cider is an apple product with pear flavoring, not the same thing at all.

So hollyking did you ever drink the cyser I sent you?

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

Yes. I don't think I have any of your gifts left. I've drunk them all. *hic*

[ragnorokt.livejournal.com]

So how was it? I never got a review...

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

It was tasty. Let me try to remember how it went.