Bishop Ciders

One of my best and oldest friends got married this past weekend in Lubbock and I was honored that she asked me to be a bridesmaid. Since that meant a long car ride up there already, Kye and I decided on our way home we might as well make a detour to Denton, a town we’d both spent several years in and hadn’t visited in ages (seven years for me, almost four for him). I expected to have very mixed feelings being back there since the four years I spent there were some of the lowest in my life, but that visit turned out to be a fantastic decision. It’s amazing how much a town can change in only seven years and being there brought back far more good memories than bad. We reacquainted ourselves with old haunts and discovered a few new ones as well. I got to drag Kye to a couple of the dive bars I used to frequent (which turned out to be not quite as sketchy as I remembered them being, thank you craft beer and smoking ban) and he introduced me to some of the much more refined places he used to go.

As awesome as being back in Denton was, my favorite stop was in Dallas, the Bishop Cidercade:

Basically $10 allows you to access to a ridiculous number of arcade games and they also have a bar serving several of their beers on tap along with some from other local cideries. It was what I was most looking forward to on this trip mainly because Bishop had some of their ciders on tap that I wouldn't have gotten to try otherwise and they didn’t disappoint (Bishop never does in my opinion). The games were a ton of fun too, even though I’ve never been a huge arcade game fan (mainly from lack of opportunity).

I’ve loved Bishop Cider Co. since I first brought home a six-pack of their Crackberry several months ago. I have no issues admitting that I bought it mainly because of the name and I kind of expected to have buyer’s remorse, but it turned out to be delicious. That led to me tracking down every other cider of theirs I could get my hands on and I’ve yet to be disappointed by any of them (though their seasonal, Suicider, is hands down my favorite and I made sure to buy every single can of it I could get my hands on before it disappeared from the market). They came into being in 2014 and apparently their first ciders were made using apples they bought from Central Market in Dallas.

Since Suicider is no longer around, I’m going to instead gush about Crackberry and their current seasonal, Sour Cherry.

Crackberry is semi-dry made with cranberries and blackberries. It’s deliciously tart with a fuller mouthfeel than I usually expect from cider. The cranberry/blackberry flavors are both prevalent without one flavor overpowering the other and you still get that crisp apple taste as well. One of the guys I work with described it as being a cider made for wine drinkers and I totally agree with that. The Sour Cherry is a blend of apples and sour cherries. It’s a bit drier than the Crackberry, but not unpleasantly so. Again, the cherry and apple flavors are very well-balanced and complement each other nicely.

Basically, everyone should go buy Bishop cider. Right now... cause if you’re reading my blog it obviously means that you have way too much free time and could be doing so much more with your life… like buying/drinking awesome cider.