Hard Cider Organization Offers Accredited Program

United States Association of Cider Makers (USACM) introduces Sicera, the first-ever hard Cider Certification Program. This accreditation program is designed for distributors, servers, and others who are interested in becoming trained experts on all things involving hard cider.

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“The art and science of cider-making has all the nuance and complexity of winemaking and brewing great beer, but until now, there has been no way to formally acknowledge that expertise,” said David Cordtz, a member of the USACM Board of Directors and co-founder of Sonoma Cider. “By standardizing the curriculum and providing a framework for evaluating (hard) cider expertise, we now have an apples-to-apples way to compare and evaluate someone’s depth of knowledge in our field. This program will at long last recognize the considerable expertise and intellectual rigor required to make quality (hard) cider.”

Similar to beer’s Cicerone and wine’s Court of Master Sommeliers programs, the Sicera program will be broken up into levels. The first, Level One, will be held Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016 in Portland, OR, the day after the annual CiderCON gathering. This level will explore the history of hard cider, hard cider making, hard cider styles, pairings and how to serve hard cider. Attendees will also tour a local cidery. Other levels will look at sensory evaluation, keeping and serving hard cider, orchard basics, federal definitions of hard cider and more.

Registration will open in September.

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