Summary of Why Americans and Brits say 'cider' to mean very different things

00:00:00 - 00:10:00

The YouTube video explains the difference between American and British cider. American cider is usually made with unfiltered apple juice, and English cider is usually made with pasteurized apple juice. The video goes on to explain that the distinction between "cider" and "hard cider" in the English language comes from the colonial period, when British settlers in North America described drinks with a harsher taste as being hard alcohol itself. American English has continued to use the hard/hard cider distinction, while British English has adopted the softer/sweet cider distinction.

• 00:00:00 In the United States, cider is typically made from apples that have been either unpasteurized or have had little to no processing done to them, while in the United Kingdom, hard cider is typically made from apples that have been pasteurized. There is a significant divergence in terminology between the two countries, with American English calling the non-alcoholic product apple juice, while British English calls it cider. The word "apple" is also used generically to refer to any fruit in various Indo-European languages, and in this sense, fruit is a generic term for any edible bulbous growth on a plant. This explains why the French still use their word for apple to describe potatoes. In addition, because English is generally spoken by educated chefs, "apple" has been used to describe alcoholic beverages going back to the 17th century, despite the fact that the wild ancestor of the apple is native to central Asia.
• 00:05:00 This YouTube video explains the difference between American and British cider. American cider is usually made with unfiltered apple juice, and English cider is usually made with pasteurized apple juice. Beer brewing professor Nathan Duncan is making his first hard cider as Americans would call it, and it's running a little below 1.008 alcohol. English colonists called new england's alcoholic apple cider "cider", and sweet cider (unfermented apple juice) emerged in competition with alcoholic cider. When Americans inevitably remembered how great alcoholic cider is, and started making it again at a commercial scale, the industry emerged alive on the other side from its ashes.
• 00:10:00 In the video, Johnathan Regucia explains that the distinction between "cider" and "hard cider" in the English language comes from the colonial period, when British settlers in North America described drinks with a harsher taste as being hard alcohol itself. American English has continued to use the hard/hard cider distinction, while British English has adopted the softer/sweet cider distinction.