Cider Chat · Ria Windcaller: Award-winning Cidermaker, Podcaster | Craft Beer Columnist

484: Rethinking American Cider History with Patrick McCauley

December 31, 2025·1 hr 10 min·5 clips

Why did cider never come back after Prohibition, unlike beer and whiskey?

Prohibition starts the question. The cold open asks why cider never bounced back the way beer, whiskey, and wine did after the dry years. Patrick McCauley returns with maps in his head and a historian's patience. He comes in as a Michigan amateur cider maker and amateur cider historian, with earlier work on Washtenaw County cider mills. The conversation takes its time in a good way. Ria gives Patrick room to show how cider culture reached beyond the familiar East Coast apple story and into places that sound less obvious now. Nebraska gets a fresh look. Patrick explains that settlers from New England and Missouri brought cider habits with them, even onto prairie ground that many people would not picture as apple country. Iowa comes through scraps. A random 1866 article matters because it hints that the state was just reaching enough cider volume to bottle it and talk technique. That is the work here: no single clean source, just 1899 statistics, state pomological journals, and odd mentions that happened to survive. Washtenaw County gives the story a close-up. Patrick talks through early apple trees likely planted before the main settler wave, then the first orchards he can document in 1825. A cider mill shows up in 1841. More cider businesses come later, building through the 1850s and 1860s before peaking in the 1880s. The lag is the point. Cider history is not only about apples being present. Orchards have to mature, mills have to appear, and businesses have to stick. Ria keeps pulling the thread through sources, trade magazines, Farmer's Almanac-style clues, and regional surprises. By the end, even with transcript glitches, the repeated cider-song energy keeps the episode warm and rooted in community.

As heard by us

A patient cider history that makes the Midwest feel central.

Cider Chat uses Patrick McCauley's research to pose a blunt question: if Prohibition ran from 1920 to 1933, why did cider never fully return? The episode is at its best when it widens beyond a simple national timeline and into the Midwest, where orchards, cider mills, migration,…

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Why you'd press play

You want the Midwest cider story hiding in Prohibition's shadow.

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