Reverend Nat's Hard Cider

Whilst recovering from a Triple IPA Festival late last year, I remembered the palate-wrecking activity with rose-colored glasses and desired greatly to claim those beverages as my own. A good triple IPA is dominated by three competing sensory experiences: a massive west-coast aromatic hop nose and bitterness, a shockingly high level of residual sweetness to counteract the bitterness, and a boozy high-alcohol finish. So the next day I began trials on an extremely hoppy apple juice based liquor. I hesitated to call this a cider because it tasted very nearly like a beer with nearly no apple character. Over the course of eight months, I made more than a dozen trials (and spent plenty of time with the biggest baddest IPAs I could find) and the result became Envy, the first release in our 7 Deadly Sins project. Since then I have produced nearly 10 more ciders in the Hopland project including the award-winning Hopland in Space, a collaboration with Coalition Brewery.

---

2016, Bronze, International Women's Wine Competition