When I lived in England back in the last century, cider was the drink of choice among England’s downtrodden, just as cheap white port was the drink of choice among the bums of my hometown of Duluth, Minn.

Cider was cheap back then. You’d see fellows drinking bomber bottles of Woodpecker and Strongbow cider still in the brown paper bag, just like the bums on Superior Street in downtown Duluth would swig the awful, cheap white port.

So I’ve watched the growth of the cider industry with amusement, remembering it was a bum’s drink not that long ago. I’ve tried most of them, hoping a nice appley one would come along, but all the cider makers seem to prefer the dry cider that eliminates any of the natural flavors of the fruit from which it is made. I figure if it’s made of apples, I should taste apple.

I might never have tried Stella Artois Cidre, thinking it was in that dry cider style, had a friend not found bomber bottle cases of it on sale.

This is a nice appley cider that registers 4.5 percent alcohol. I had already befriended this cider when I made a big salad with some spicy varieties of greens and a dressing on the citric acid end. I poured a big glass of Cidre on the side and found it to be the most wonderful tasting salad beverage I have ever had the pleasure of drinking, so much so that I would like to have salad and Cidre at every meal.

And it made me curious. I had not yet tried the Boston Brewing Company’s (makers of Samuel Adams beer) entry into the cider market, Angry Orchard. So I picked up a bottle of Iceman and immediately fell in love with its intense appley presence, but very different from Cidre. This is an incredible ice cider, made as our friends to the north make it, by freezing the juice to intensify the apple presence, This is a 10 percent cider with a mouth-puckering sweet-sour finish that is strong enough to stand up to a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, or Tofurky and all the trimmings, if that’s how you swing.

Piraat Ale

A friend was at a high-end industry beer tasting and brought me some swag – coasters, bumper stickers, stick pins. One was a bumper sticker for a Belgian that I have never tried, which is all the more inexplicable when I saw the bumper sticker, which read: Piraat:  It’s all about the booty!

So I picked up a big bottle of this 10.5 percent bruiser from the Brouwerij Von Steenberge, who also make the dark triple known as Gulden Draak that is given a secondary fermentation in the bottle with wine yeast.
Yowzer! The cork popped out of this bottle with so much force it could easily have put someone’s eye out had I not aimed it at the ceiling. As it was, it still put a nice dent in the ceiling tile, which means this beer is alive!

It poured out with an amazing head. Looked like a big Belgian golden strong ale. I waited a few minutes for the head to subside, then sampled and got a big blast of hops. What the…? This is more like a Belgian version of an India pale ale.

Hops I don’t usually associate with Belgian beers. And to be assaulted with them right up front, and then everything works backwards to the sweet malt, well, it all explains the name of the beer…these are pirate brewers, upending our expectations of beer.