What makes wine wine and hard cider hard cider?

[BadgerBrigade]

I'm wondering what is the difference between wine and cider alcoholic ...
(I guess I mean hard Cider)?
Is there grape cider? Apple wine?


Also: what is "hooch"?

 

[Love2BrewCrew]

Both apples and grapes have fermentable sugars. The reason wine is "wine" in the sense that it is so wide spread is that grapes have enough fermentable sugars that it was very easy for them to ferment without much aid back in ancient times.

A good place to start in your knowledge search would probably be here:

Wine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cider - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Both sites provide a general overview that may help you.

 

[Shooter]

Yeast! Yeast makes wine into wine and hard cider into hard cider. Otherwise, they'd just be fruit juice!

 

[Bobby_M]

Wine is fermented fructose from any fruit, but grapes are so common that just saying "wine" by itself suggested fermented grapes.

Cider is a wine made specifically from apple juice.

Hooch is a term for a low-quality fermented beverage made just to get drunk.

 

[KurtB]

So Bobby, if I take a bunch of apples and ferment the juice I may end up with either:

Cider
Hooch
or Apfelwein

Depending on the quality of the finished beverage and if I end up calling Ed an MF'er the next afternoon when I wake up.

 

[2brew1cup]

I made ed worts apfelwein with wy3068.and got putrid hooch. Yay experiments!!