Traveling in (that is, drinking our way through) London, if my girlfriend deliberated too long over the tap list, she’d inevitably be offered a lager, or, at higher-class joints, cider—"like beer, for girls," one tender called it. Always popular across the pond, cider has been climbing the ranks here lately, riding the craft-beer wave with ten-buck bottles of small-batch, heritage-tree, orchard-to-barrel liquid autumn. Now, the big brewers are joining in. AB-InBev and MillerCoors both offer cider: thinned out, sweetened up—like beer for bros.
The latest is Miller’s Redd’s Apple Ale. "Crisp like an apple; brewed like an ale," they say. It is neither. Redd’s is syrupy-sweet light beer, extra bubbly and dolled up with "natural apple flavor and caramel color." A far cry, you think, from cider’s rustic roots. But not quite. Cider’s glory days were the the 18th century, when one Massachusetts town split 3,000 barrels among 40 houses—that’s 100 pints per family per week. Thirsty? Hang on—this was homemade stuff, pressed out of the season’s dregs, filtered through hay (or, in a pinch, hair), sour, flat, sometimes slicked with oily bacteria. Parched farmhands weren’t picky. Come grog time at 11 and 4, they’d gather at rural porches to dip a mug in the communal barrel. But at bars, the swill was usually topped with spices, frothed with milk, or mid with rum, mead (a "cider royal"), and yes, beer.
So Miller’s mash-up has some history. And I say, if you buy a sir on a whim and wonder what to do with five-and-a-half undrinkable leftovers, take a cue from our freewheeling founders and mix it up. A dash smooths out an overbearing IPA; if you take your coffee with a syrup shot, try an ounce or two in a roasty porter. Don’t expect wonders, but hey—at least it’s hairless.
GQ’s man at the taps, William Bostwick, is writing a history of the world in six beers, to be published by W.W. Norton. Follow him at brewerstale.tumblr.com