Chena Cherry Uses Granny Smith to Keep Semi-Sweet Honest

Most of the work in a fruited cider happens before the fruit shows up. Black Spruce Brewing Company builds the base for its Fruit Project ciders from a blend of dessert apples, then adds granny smith specifically for acidity.

That second step is the one worth explaining. Dessert apples are the eating varieties, bred for sugar and aroma rather than for the tannin and sharpness that traditional cider fruit brings to a press. Fermented on their own they can finish slack, with nothing much for the fruit to push against. Granny smith is the correction. It is high in malic acid, dependably tart, and available in quantity year-round in a way that heritage cider apples are not.

Chena Cherry is the cherry entry in that series, and a fresh batch is pouring now. Black Spruce lists it at 6.5 percent and describes it as slightly sweet, with apple and cherry. The brewery says its Fruit Project ciders are packed full of fruit flavor, and the cider range is gluten-reduced.

The semi-sweet designation is where the granny smith earns its place. A semi-sweet cider is finished with residual sugar still in it, and sugar without acid underneath reads as heavy and a little dull. Acid is what keeps that sweetness legible instead of cloying. Cherry helps from the other direction, since it carries real tartness of its own rather than arriving as pure sweetness the way some fruit additions do.

The cider sits alongside Pinnell Pineapple in the brewery's current lineup, also at 6.5 percent, and follows the Calamansi-Mango entry Black Spruce ran earlier this year. Fruit Project is clearly a format the brewery intends to keep rotating through.

Chena Cherry is on tap and in 4-packs to go, and the brewery is letting customers build mix-and-match 4-packs across its current releases. Black Spruce says its cider will also be at the awards ceremony for this weekend's Equinox Marathon, which the brewery is sponsoring.