We’re in full spring mode. We’re packing our calendars with home projects, patio hangs, casual hikes, and picnics. And while it was fun to cozy up to imperial and barrel-aged ciders, we’re looking forward to berry-picking season. As these days usher in the return of strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries, don’t miss out on the opportunity to savor those ripe flavors in cider form. It’s Monday, which means Peaks & Pints offers a flight of ciders. As you can guess from the brilliant introduction, we’re offering a flight of berry cider today—many cideries are brewing tart and balanced berry varieties using fruits to cut the traditionally cloying apple flavor. Peaks & Pints offers five delicious berry ciders in a flight we call Peaks & Pints Monday Cider Flight: Berries.
Peaks & Pints Monday Cider Flight: Berries
Superstition Blueberry Spaceship Box
5.55% ABV
In 2009, husband and wife Jeff and Jen Herbert were planning a Thanksgiving dinner in their Prescott, Arizona, home when Jeff decided to create a beverage that paid homage to Jen’s family’s roots in Vermont. He busted open a home brewing kit she gifted him to make an alcoholic beverage by fermenting honey with water and adding maple mead. By 2012, the couple turned their hobby into Superstition Meadery, a mead and hard cider company that produces the top-rated hard cider in the world, Blueberry Spaceship Box. It’s a spectacular blend of sweet and tart, apple and blueberry, and it is at home when served as a bubbly apéritif or paired with Peaks and Pints’ meat sandwiches.
Bauman’s All The Berries
6.2% ABV
In 1895, on the West Coast, between Salem and Portland, Bauman Farms was first homesteaded by Elizabeth Bauman and her teenage sons, Stephen and Leo. Stephen eventually married at the cider apples on their Gervais, Oregon, farm, with the barrels in their barn fermenting the goods into hard cider. When beer production arrived with German immigrants, cider’s popularity diminished. However, it was 20th-century prohibition that ended most U.S. cider production, including Stephen Bauman’s operation. The Baumans turned to dessert apple growing. His great-granddaughter, Christine Walter, armed with a degree in biochemistry from Lewis & Clark University, revived her great-grandfather’s complex cider operation, taking advantage of the family farm history spanning five generations, her work ethic growing up on the farm, and modern-day cidermaking methods. She opened Bauman’s Cider Company in 2016, honoring Stephen Bauman on the cider’s branding. All the Berries is a semi-sweet cider filled with flavor from three of her favorites that they grow: blueberries, raspberries, and marionberries.
Tumalo Huckleberry Lemon
6.5% ABV
Tumalo Cider was built from the ground up by its brewer, Kelly Roark, with business partner Jeff Bennet, plus the help of friends and family. Roark has been brewing cider out of his home since 2007, creating an authentic, distinct, and loved cider amongst the Bend, Oregon, community. He started years ago, filling trash cans with free apples he would find growing around town, Bend, then pressing them with friends for homebrew apple cider. Today, Tumalo, still in Bend, specializes in small-batch artisan cider focusing on dry, complex apple profiles. Head Cidermaker Kelly Roark also knows his way around berries. Northwest berries combine with a touch of lemon for a refreshing combination of sweet and tart Huckleberry Lemon cider.
Cockrell Valley Raspberry
6.7% ABV
Brothers Richard and John Cockrell have been making cider and beer in their Puyallup homes for over 25 years, sharing their craft with family and friends, and grabbing many local, state, and national awards and accolades. As the brothers began planning their retirement, their fans begged them to go pro. Their hobby became Cockrell Hard Cider. Valley Red Raspberry is made with fresh Puyallup Valley raspberries direct from their farm. This second place at the National Home Brewers Association competition cider pours a transparent pinkish ruby red with a small pink head. The nose is sweet, with candied raspberries and syrup. Flavor follows, with candied raspberries and syrup, but not overly sweet.
Tieton Blueberry
6.9% ABV
In 2008, Craig Campbell and his wife, Sharon, began experimenting with making cider from dessert apples grown in their 400-acre commercial fruit orchards. Despite naysayers who warned that cider apples required a maritime climate, Craig also planted a two-acre test orchard with 25 varieties of cider apples. Today, their two-acre experiment expanded into Cider View, a 30-acre “high-density” cider orchard. Their commercial cidery, Tieton Cider Works, blends American heritage, English and French cider varietals with dessert apples to capture what each variety brings to the bottle: sweetness, acidity, tannin, and aroma. The results are ciders with body and a depth of finish, including their Blueberry cider. Crisp sweet blueberries upfront, balanced with tangy cider apples, make for thirst-quenching sips.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
