Why Angry Cider?

Angry Cider actually refers to a home-brewed beer (more like a concoction than a beer) that my college roommates and I attempted sometime in 1996/97. There were four of us living in a condo while going to the Indiana University Business School. All of us were fifth-year seniors with very little actual course work.

Needless to say it was a pretty fun year while we wrapped up our degrees and relaxed a bit before going out into the corporate world. I think that year I took some very challenging courses such as: Racquetball, Basketball, and Fencing. At some point we started brewing our own beer and actually had a couple of very good batches.

For our third batch we attempted a Razz-Wheat recipe based on various requests from girlfriends wanting a sweeter beer…girls. Anyway, as we sampled the Razz-Wheat throughout the brewing process…it never was sweet enough for us. Being the home-brewing amateurs we were, we naturally kept adding sugar to sweeten the taste. Well, knowing what I know now after several years of beer/wine making, adding more sugar only causes the yeast to convert the sugar to more alcohol. We ended up with a very strong and bitter beer that we estimated to be around 12-15% alcohol….well into the cider and wine range.

Being the frugal college alcoholics we were, we certainly were not going to throw it out, but instead bottled it in wine bottles and our cider was born.

Honestly the cider became quite popular as we would open a bottle prior to going out and pass it around as we all guffawed at the bitter faces everybody made as they took a swig. Eventually we realized the cider had a tendency to turn people into angry drunks. For some reason it caused some people to just get pissed and kind of angry at the world. Therefore it was eventually re-dubbed the “Angry Cider.”

A few years ago I started fermenting my own wine. When it came time to name some of my wines, I turned to the Angry Cider as a name. In my basement, I currently have about a hundred bottles of various varieties. Angry Cider Chianti, Angry Cider Shiraz, etc.

I originally started this website so I could just post the labels that I created, but eventually I figured it would just make a good personal webpage.