Serious times call for serious ciders (or beers, or whatever you’re drinking) and that’s a goofy intro to segue right into Serious Scrump Imperial English Cider from 2 Towns Ciderhouse.

2 Towns had sent me two bottles of Scrump to review. This 11% imperial cider is made by first concentrating the apple juice via freezing and removing the water ice—sort of pre-fermentation ice distilling. The cidery describes this in the press release:

In quintessential 2 Towns fashion, Serious Scrump takes the traditional English ‘scrumpy’ style and gives it a Northwest twist.

Historically, scrumpy ciders are made with a blend of random apples leftover from the harvest (or stolen from orchards in some cases). The resulting cider is usually a strong, dry cider adored for it’s utilization of otherwise wasted apples.

2 Town’s modern twist takes a similarly eclectic blend of high acid Northwest apples, pressed before freezing the juice. Then, slowly over the course of several days, the intensified ‘ice juice’ is drained out, leaving a frozen slushy of water crystals behind. The resulting high sugar, deliciously rich ice juice provides a boost of apple character and the fuel needed for the English yeast to reach that “Serious” ABV!

Serious Scrump is 11% ABV.

Appearance: Dark gold color, bright and clear. Looks fairly still with no head or apparent carbonation.

Smell: Apple juice with some depth and richness, and some tannic structure hinting at apple peel and crab apples (likely the “high acid” contribution of the apples).

Taste: Sweet applewine character with a prickly alcohol heat. It’s semi-sweet to sweet with a tannic quality. Really nice essence of apple is present here, and there is a touch of rich caramelization. For that simplicity is key here, especially in a big cider like this.

Mouthfeel: Fairly still and it has a boozy sweet body with a lingering apple syrup finish.

Overall: It’s a really nice, big and slightly boozy, sweet cider. I think a good analogue is a dessert wine though this really lets the “apple” shine through.

It’s available in bottles through May so you may want to stock up on some as we continue to weather out the pandemic.