How to Host a Cider Tasting Party

It was my birthday, and that meant time for another girls night! Last year we held a Tidal Bay tasting party.

Here’s how we did that

Then, at our next gathering, we hosted a red wine from around the world event. This was based on a similar format.

Here’s how to host your own red wine party

So, this year, we decided to host a cider tasting party.

Living in the Annapolis Valley there is a plethora of cideries, with new ones popping up all the time. We needed a chance to try them all, and find our favourites.

Based on our previous testing nights, we used a similar format. Here’s how we organized our cider tasting party. Follow these steps to host one of your own!

Create an invitation using Evite. I like using this program, because it keeps track of who is coming, the system sends reminders, and you can ask guests to bring things.
Make a list of cideries you would like to test and have each of your guests sign up to bring one of the ciders.

For our party, we tested the following ciders. We tried to focus on local ciders where we could.

Annapolis Valley Cider

What we discovered is there are a LOT of different variations of the brands. When possible, ask guests to bring the BASIC or CLASSIC version, to make comparison easier.

3. Before everyone arrives, set out the glasses. For the first party, we used washable glasses, but with so many people, it took a lot of time to wash a lot of dishes.

So, this time, we used recyclable cups.

For each bottle we were testing, I prepared a cup for each guest. Each bottle was associated with a different sticker.

This was a great way to raid the kids’ old sticker collections, and made it fun to talk about how everyone loved the “Dinosaur Cider”.

4. Have a Host. It makes it a lot easier if one person agrees to pour and serve the glasses, so that everyone else is blind to what they are drinking. The host also keeps track of the master list of what sticker was which cider.

I was lucky that my sister agreed to host our party! A job she loved… or at least she said she did!

5. Give everyone a testing sheet.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE TESTING SHEET HERE

We use this basic testing sheet for all of our events. It’s basic and easy to use, and not very scientific.

You can be as scientific as you want, keeping some in your cup to compare samples, or chugging it all down.

6. Do a big reveal. At the end, show everyone what cider was which and allow guests to have more of their favourites!

This post is not about promoting one product over another, so we are not going to reveal our favourites, but let you choose your own! Besides, everyone’s tastes are different, and that’s half the fun, finding out what you like!