Beer of the Week: Crispin Natural Hard Apple Cider Artisanal Reserve The Saint

When I arrived at Boonville last May to set up camp for the Legendary Boonville Festival, I was in a bit of a bad position. It was just after 11 and the coolers and jockey boxes wouldn’t be arriving for another 3-4 hours. Thankfully, people are incredibly friendly at Boonville and I was offered a sample of a cider brewed with yeast from Chimay. I was greeted with one of the best tasting ciders I had ever tasted. While tracking this cider down proved difficult over the following months, I did finally track it down. This week, the Beer of the Week is actually no beer, but a cider: Crispin Natural Hard Apple Cider Artisanal Reserve The Saint.

The Saint

Prepare to be converted. The Saint is a uniquely debonair & elegant cider, a cider to convert skeptics.

Naturally fermented using a premium blend of fresh pressed apple juice, not from concentrate, and fermented with Belgian Trappist beer yeasts, The Saint boasts a sweet floral bouquet that develops a yeasty, herbal complexity.

The Saint is uncorrupted by added malt, spirit or grape alcohols, and is free of added sugar, colorants, sorbate and benzoate preservatives, and is filtered cold for crisp refreshment.

A small batch, hand-crafted, super-premium hard apple cider, The Saint is smoothed with pure organic maple syrup for a silky, sustained mouth-feel that develops complexity on the palate. The Saint is vinted to a 6.9 percent ABV for a full body, yet remains exceptionally easy to drink from the first crisp sip to the last drop.It’s very, very good. The Saint has an elevated drinkability that is never sacrificed to overbearing complexity.

Cloudy Filtration. The embodiment of artisanal style, The Saint uses rack-aged apple wine through our cloudy filtration process. Discerning drinkers will find residual apple wine sediment in each bottle for a rich full-bodied flavor that’s true to the apple and good to the last drop. Give a full Bottoms-Up! Tilt & swirl to disperse the apple-wine sediment evenly and to ensure an even taste profile through the entire bottle.

Crispin’s new campaign is about putting their ciders over ice. While this may be ok for some people, I couldn’t bring myself to add the ice.

The Saint starts with apple cider flavor but with a thick mouthfeel. This cider looks like a hefeweizen and drinks like one too. The flavor has more depth than your standard cider with an overripe apple or applesauce flavor. The finish is clean with a subtle hint of the apple sweetness, but also a dry alcohol is that pulls at your breath.

I don’t always drink cider, but when I do, I prefer to drink Crispin’s The Saint. More complex than other ciders, they are taking a new look at ciders and applying modern beer brewing techniques to come up with new flavors. Look for The Saint as well as other Artisan Series releases from Crispin for a fresh take on ciders.