CAMRA Vancouver’s Ciderwise Brings People Together Around Craft Cider

Cider has not always been sexy. What was once most commonly purchased in a two-liter bottle and involved under-aged drinking games has growers grown far beyond expectation. Today cider is a craft product that is brewed with much of the same passion and attention to detail as your favourite craft beer. With Cideries popping up all around British Columbia, the diversity and complexity of flavour from the broad range of ciders now available is fantastic.

Bringing people together around the flavour of craft cider is the craft beer advocacy group CAMRA Vancouver. Pushing beyond the usual focus of quality beer, CAMRA Vancouver proudly hosts the Ciderwise festival in East Vancouver. This year’s festival took place in the Wise Hall and brought together select Cideries from in and around British Columbia. Consumers experienced the marvel that comes from Apples and other, cider-containing fruits. Also, select gluten free beer options were on hand for those looking to try something a little different on the craft beer spectrum of the scale.

With the insurgence of ciders in British Columbia, tastings were at available at the 2015 Ciderwise event from Sea Cider, Left Field, Tod Creek, Howling Moon, Central City and others from outside of the BC borders.  From super-dry to barrel-aged, the diversity of flavour from BC cider is inspiring to see in an industry that is growing momentum. As patrons relished from booth to booth, the mood was somewhat different from your typical beer festival. A heightened sense of community, comradery and thirst for education around cider washed through the room. The craft beer industry illustrates each of these attributes but cider, well cider, takes it a step further.

The somewhat memory-scarred history of cider is a thing of the past. While it was once the teenage drink of choice as the raspberry-kool-aid of alcoholic drinks, things are rather different today. Cider takes on much of the same inspiration as craft beer and offers something unique and different from the usual. With the warm days of summer ahead and many lazy days to be spent on patios, beaches and around camp fires, don’t forget about craft beer’s sexy sister – craft cider.