Scrumpy

David MacGuire Asks...
             Patrick Tull
             Adam Quinan
             Kevin Danks
             Peder Pedersen
             Francis Muir
             Adam Quinan and Somerset Cider
             Kevin Danks and American Cider
             Bruce Trinque

David MacGuire Asks...
[C]an anyone tell me what Scrumpy is? I believe it has cider in it, but I'm not sure what else.

Patrick Tull
Scrumpy is what we Brits call draught cider, and a fierce concoction it is too.

Adam Quinan
Scrumpy is very alcoholic traditionally made cider, it used to be a mainly rural drink and much stronger than the sweet fizzy alcoholic cider usually available.

Kevin Danks
Scrumpy, that is rough traditional cider, is very different from the mass-produced, fizzy pasteurised stuff that you see in the supermarkets. For a start it will often be slightly cloudy, not carbonated and will usually have a high alcohol content.
I have no idea whether the US has a cider industry, or even if cider apples (for ordinary desert apples will not do) are grown there. In this country cider traditionally comes from the south west of England, where rainfall is above average.
There are some traditional stories about cider and cider making, which probably have some truth in them. The most famous one is that old-time cider makers would throw a couple of dead rats (POB connection....) into the vat when fermentation began. The cider was said to be ready to drink when all that was left was the bleached bones.

Peder Pedersen
I have drunk what Kevin Danks calls scrumpy in Somerset and Devon, and it is very similar - I expect because of the shared history of both countries and their similar climate and agriculture. But it tends to be more cloudy because of the traces of apple matter left in the barrels. In England you can also buy bottled cider in pubs which is processed and clarified and is artificially fizzy. So it is also sweeter. Real scrumpy cider would not be fizzy unless the fermentation process lasting about six weeks were not complete.
You mustn't confuse it with apple wine, which is also produced in England by the same company called Merrydown which makes cider. Apple wine can also be found in Germany and the adjoining regions. For example it is very much the local drink in the bars in Sachsenhausen, a "quartier" of Frankfurt-am-Main. I am not completely certain but the difference is due, I think, to the superior yeast used (rather than relying on the basic natural yeast adhering to the apples) and also to the stage at which the residual apple matter is removed from the liquid.

Francis Muir
Scrumpy is rough cider. Farmhouse cider. A West-country product. Made from small or unselected apples.
I like the last citation in the OED:
1977 4 Mar. 242/4 Another [pub] sold evil-smelling 'scrumpy', producing its own extensive Saturday-night network of vomit.

Adam Quinan and Somerset Cider
When visiting my grandparents who lived in an oldish (c. 1400) farmhouse in Somerset, I was always given some Somerset cider (not the real scrumpy but alcoholic) without sugar. I must have been aged between 5 and 11 while this was going on. I still like cider and have recently found some pretty good stuff at a reasonable price in our local LCBO store.
And later...
The cider I suggested, Weston's Scrumpy Supreme (which it ain't, Scrumpy or Supreme that is), is actually English, brewed in Herefordshire, you can get that and Strongbow in the LCBO as well as some weird BC concoctions and some Ontario ciders.
My grandparents owned an old farmhouse in Somerset with an orchard full of cider apple trees. There was an old press in the barn but they being older and not having a few farmhands to refresh didn't bother to make their own cider, they had a brewer send in some contract pickers once a year to gather the crop. Cider apples are not really table apples being unprepossessing in appearance and very tart.

Kevin Danks and American Cider
The way I read this, the word "cider" as used in America can mean plain apple juice, in contrast to this country where to my knowledge it only ever means the alcoholic drink fermented from apple juice. Have I got that right?

Bruce Trinque
"Cider" in America generally means the nonalcoholic form, although it is not used quite as a synonym for what we call apple juice. "Apple juice" such as we buy bottled in grocery stores is a clear liquid produced, I believe, strictly from the white inner portion of the apple. Cider, on the other hand, is made by pressing the whole apple: skins, seeds, stems, occasional hitchhiking insects, and all; this produces a rather cloudy but more flavorful drink. "Hard cider" is the general American term, in my experience, for the fermented version of cider.
Alcoholic cider is indeed seeming to catch on in the States. For the past couple years I have been regularly buying "Woodchuck" cider, brewed in Vermont, I believe, as a good summer alternative to beer. I had never tried hard cider until I was vacationing in London a few years ago, and I became an instant convert.