Squashed Fire-Roasts Its Kabocha Before the Cider Ever Sees It

Pumpkin gets the season off, for once. North Country has built its fall cider on kabocha squash from a Maine orchard, chopped and fire-roasted before it ever meets the apple, with ginger and maple syrup behind it.

• Style: Hard Cider
• Release Date: 2026-09-25
• ABV: N/A
• North Country Hard Cider (Dover, NH)

Pumpkin has the autumn drinks aisle more or less to itself. North Country Hard Cider has spent this one on a different squash entirely.

Squashed arrives Friday, September 25, on tap and in cans to go at the cidery's Dover, New Hampshire tasting room. It is built on kabocha, a Japanese winter squash the cidery compares to buttercup, and which it describes as velvety in texture with a sweet, nutty flavor.

The process is where this one separates itself from the usual seasonal release. North Country chops the squash, fire-roasts it, and scoops out the flesh before combining it with the fermented apple cider blend. That roasting step is doing real work. Heat caramelizes the sugars already in the squash and concentrates what is left after the water cooks off, so what goes into the blend is a deeper, sweeter ingredient than the raw vegetable would have delivered. Ginger, maple syrup, cinnamon, and nutmeg round out the finished cider.

The squash comes from Cooper Farms in West Paris, Maine, a year-round farmstand on Route 26 better known for apples. McIntosh, Cortland, and Honeycrisp are its three main varieties, alongside heirlooms, baked goods, and its own cider. There is a tidy symmetry in a cidery sourcing its squash from an orchard.

North Country pours a rotating list of 18 or more ciders at Littleworth Road, and it has been recognized as the first cidery in New Hampshire's Sustainable Craft Beverage Program, an NH Department of Environmental Services designation it received in 2023.

Squashed lands Friday at the Dover tasting room, on draft and in cans to go.