I Ci What You Did Der
There's a funny saying that goes around the apple-growing community. You've heard of the whole "if you want to split an apple for four ponies, cut into four halves, but if you want to split an apple for ten, you make juice" schtick, right? I bet you'd love to hear what they say about cider.
"If the ten happen to be the ponies that make up your ‘least favourite’ list, you let the juice rot and make cider." Yep—cider is fermented, alcoholic apple juice, contrary to what some ponies, bless their bad parenting skills, might believe, or what their tongues might tell them—the cider's own flavour and scent is strong enough to hide the alcohol to unsuspecting partakers. Juicing is frowned upon by the bigger zealots—or, should I say seed-lots?—in the fruit-critic community. "Ruins the texture of the flesh," they say. "Kills the beauty of the colour and the shape," they say. "You can't crunch juice, and Celestia knows what ponies'll mix into them. No, juicing is an insult to the fruit."
Now, imagine letting even this contrary, perversity of a food called juice to rot, and you'll see why cider is not winning any prizes in the Canterlot Fine Fruit Festival, or the Equestrian Plant Produce Exhibit. Yet, it remains and even thrives in some places, so much so that it draws hordes that lose sleep over the excitement of getting a taste. Cider is destined to stay.
What does one need for cider? Apples, certainly, and good quality ones at that—it's the sugars, you see, that end up as alcohol, and sour ones that have more acid hinder the fermentation process—as queer as the idea may be, to let perfectly good apples rot. You'd also need proper barrels. They have to be sturdy, resistant to corrosion, and preferably not leave the cider smelling like fungi. Oak or applewood is good, though some circles are known for using wood from the Burning Bushes, a tree exclusive to the Everfree forest. They say it gives the cider an extra spice, boosts the kick, but only because nopony knows what exactly goes on in there. Hint: it ain't pretty.
That's not all, though. Sometimes, when cider-makers are rushed for time, their barrels need to be a little more special.
Just so we start out on the right hoof, it has nothing to do with magic, runes, or chaos. Just some good ol' fashioned nature and design, abused for the benefit of those higher up on the sentience scale.
The barrels that arrived at Sweet Apple Acres long, long ago were the work of a craftspony called Swivel Touch. These barrels were double-walled, with the interior made of porous sapling wood that let the juice breathe, and trapped in between these walls lived things called Haymaker's Yeast, or Quicingous Suicider for the educated folk out there. They were creatures that turned sugar into alcohol at a shockingly fast rate, one of Mother Nature's little hiccups, a terror to sugar mills all across Equestria—until the farmers realized that alcohol sold much better by the cupful. They worked much faster than regular yeast. They were the stars of cider, the unsung heroes of recreational and unsupervised drinking, the underpaid, pathetically treated workforce behind branded clothing and such tasteful metaphors. The story behind their discovery is fascinating, but we have no time for that—this story is about how they decided to have an uprising, and how they almost succeeded.
In Which Goop Comes to Life
It started with the name business. Yeast cells are not the brightest lot, but the magical nature of Equestria gives intelligence to whatever it damn well pleases, and that day it pleased itself to bless a particular barrel of cells. Out of this group rose two leaders, the two that had actively laid claim to their existence the fastest. One named itself Water; the other named itself Steve.
Upon realizing that they were, Water and Steve set about thinking things. They did not think about breeding, eating, or respirating. They thought instead about dangerous thoughts: Where are we? What are we? What am I? Is there more to life than this? These things frustrated them to no end, since their surroundings held no answers, so much so that they leapt into the most foolish course of action possible, flinging themselves at the mercy of the vast unknown that was other poni—sentient beings.
They tried to communicate.
Now, it must be said that barrels are not in the habit of moving before their season of use, and Water and Steve never crossed paths, having inhabited different sides of the barrel for the span of their lives. When Water spoke, he said thus: "Can you hear me?" When Steve spoke, he said thus: "Bloody hell, I'm going crazy!"
They were met with appropriate responses, respectively:
"What is hearing?"
"Are you now? Then what am I?"
To summarize days of cultural development (ha ha), which is what centuries are to ponies, Water's side of the yeast became a thoughtful, reflective, reserved society, while Steve's side grew to become an anarchy of ideas, chaotic and non-progressive. Both were willing to hear new thoughts, but only Steve's side did not take persecutive action if said thought was offensive or unappealing to the majority. It was only polite to respect the ridiculous, after all, in a society without norm.
Normally, Applejack would fill the barrels with sugar water, changed weekly (because of the alcohol), to feed the yeast—they were fetched from the swampy lowlands of the border at high prices, and she did not see any reason to buy what grew naturally on its own. Cider season was coming up, however, and so she added a certain something—two pints of honey—to get the yeast excited and rearing to work in time. It was tradition. That made it okay.
What she did not know was why. She believed that honey was simply better sugar that made the yeast happier in preparation, and she was partly right. Along with the sugars, though, were amounts of anti-oxen or somesuch, good for ponies but bad for microorganisms. There was not a lot of anti-oxen; it was simply enough to do away with the old, slower yeast, and encourage the growth of a younger, more effective batch.
The Water region, named after its founder, lost fifty thousand of their kind that hour (about a fortnight in yeast time). The Unnamed region, named by the Waterians because the inhabitants were "too crass to come up with anything respectable", lost thirty thousand. Neither side knew the numbers; they were too busy dealing with the shock.
Two particular individuals did very well in getting over it. Thus began the rise of Vacuole and Appendage.
Vacuole suggested, in the most sorrowful tones a cell can muster, that the massive killings were an outrage to the denziens of Water. It was shameful, despicable, and intolerable. Something had to be done about this in retaliation. The hard sell was that all of these actions were the work of the Great Being, whose shadow occasionally passed by the thinner parts of the Outer Wall.
The idea of the Great Being was the one thing both sides had in common, and it was this: there was a being that provided the sugar and the water, the renewal of both, and it was Great. There were as many skeptics as there were believers, but a concession was made in favour of vengeance, the common indulgence to all sentient beings. The Waterians rallied under Vacuole and began to plot how to exact retribution for the fallen.
Appendage suggested that the Great Being was bringing a new era, one full of strange new foods and suspensions, and this was simply the beginning. The unworthy, he claimed, were to be purged, and the faithful would rejoice under the many blessings as long as they turned to It. When a couple of others asked Appendage how to go about this "turning" business when they could not actually see the Great Being, Appendage replied: "I am its representative. You may turn to me instead, and I shall put in a word of Close Enough for you."
Time is Constant, But Duration is Relative
Three pony days passed. Both involved two pints of honey. Miraculously, both Vacuole and Appendage survived long enough to mature past the prime of their lives, and to witness the first day of cider season.
Despite the successive blows to the population, Vacuole had built up steady support for his cause, winning over a large part of his side of the barrel and their rapidly-increasing offspring. The most stubborn of skeptics had been pushed to the edge of his influence more out of peer pressure than physical enforcement, where they muttered and grumbled about superstitious belief as much as they wanted. Appendage had a small but loyal group of followers, which is impressive considering the scarcity of f—er, care given to the future in the Unnamed region. They prayed thrice a yeast day, which is almost nine pony minutes, and sent a member regularly to float to the surface to check for signs of the Great Arrival.
Then came the First Shaking: when the barrel was moved out into the backyard.
Yeast are tiny things. Hence, their focus is geared toward the minuscule—a dab of moisture, a speck of dust. The backyard was considerably airer than the cellar and a lot warmer under the beaming sun, which spelt chaos for the population.
They were bombarded with waves of heat, travelling purposefully through the pores in the wood into the yeast layer like an alligator wading through butter. There was a moment of panic as it passed over each and every one of them, and then a collective mix of feelings when they realized that it was non-fatal. Nopony—nobody was harmed.
Then came the First Wash, the filling of apple mush into those wondrous barrels that Granny Smith had invested in when times were good.
Compared to the honey, the apple mush was a lot easier to stomach, and the remnant yeast were of a stronger disposition than their ancestors. The youths took to working the process in the way only yeast years of exhortation and propaganda could instill. They ate away at the juice, this queer, like-sugar-yet-not substance, and out came the alcohol, a stinging waste that vanished through the walls as usual. They were egged on, cheered, even thanked by the great leader Vacuole himself, carried in movement with the help of two assistants.
Meanwhile, on the Unnamed side, cells were torn between starving or feeding on the curiousity. Most chose the latter and survived. They all had a good, nervous laugh afterwards, mostly directed at Appendage's group.
It was when the Second Shaking and the First Drain came—when the barrel was emptied—that Appendage managed to get a snigger through. None of them knew that he would die feeding on a particularly strong bit of apple peel the next pony day. If they did, perhaps they might have been kinder with their blows, which, while harmless in both notion and reality to us, hurts yeast cells a great deal.
Thus ended the first day of cider season, the second following close after.
The Third Shaking and the Second Wash were met with considerably less fanfare than before. Vacuole, in his old age, was considering a truce with the Great Being. The principles of revenge for the dead, yes, the principles were still around, and the Great Being was still a source of amazement and suspicion, but nothing sowed the seeds of questioning like the major yet non-threatening Shakings. It made cells laugh. It made them examine themselves, and it made them examine the majority belief. Soon, they might even start doubting the existence of the Great Being altogether! He did not intend to die without his power, for he was quite fond of it; he had to weigh his stance carefully. The younger generation was the key. What did they want, and how could he appeal to them?
Then there were the worrying reports of noise and smoke coming from the wallfront. More precisely, it was minor tremors and indigestible black particles, but the point was that they were alien, even more than the juice.
Vacuole lost a good bit of rest that yeast day.
He would have stayed up wide awake if he had known what was in store for them on the third day of cider season, the day of the competition.
There was another shaking, but by this time it was shrugged off. They had not even bothered to give it a number.
"Any moment, the juice is going to flow through. Any moment now," they muttered to themselves. And they were right—after a second, much more violent shaking, the apple mush filled the barrel, and the yeast got to feeding.
There was a valhala of screaming as force gripped every cell.
As you might recall, Twilight Sparkle had joined in to help the Apples. Her main role was stacking up the barrels.
Remember how sensitive yeast are to tiny things? Imagine the effect something much more powerful would have on them. Something like levitation magic and the thaumic radiation it leaves.
The details are too technical to delve into. All you need to know is that many, many yeast cells died in those moments, very painfully. It could have been the sentience. It could have been the thaumic radiation. It might as well have been both.
There is a reason why magic is not allowed during important farming seasons. It's a pity that the previous generation taught their descendants about the "value of hard work" and "integrity" instead of how their implements actually functioned.
Don't feel too bad. Haymaker's Yeast is experiencing a drop in prices even now. A group of entrepreneurs have desecrated the wild beauty of the lowlands to build a yeast farm, and production in bulk is a good deal cheaper. One only hopes that Applejack finds out soon enough.
Anyhow
Really, Haymaker’s Yeast is such a fickle thing. You just can’t tell what they’re doing inside those dark barrels, and Celestia forbid, literally, if a story like this ever gets out and about around the foodie community. Rebelling cells? Power struggles? Pony worship? None of these sound legal, let alone healthy, I can bet you that. “Good ‘ol cider making” just isn’t cutting it anymore. Why we even use the old-fangled things is beyond me in this era of steam and metal.
Oh, don’t you worry about how we know these things, we do indeed. It’s part of the business, see, getting ahead of the game and whatnot. But back to you and your needs.
You need cider. Obviously, you also need quality. Quality that we can’t risk at the wobbly bits of mental mold in moldy cellars, which leaves us at a predicament, since all cider is made this way!
All cider, except, we may humbly suggest, ours. Do you see this grand machine, our gleaming, churning, fabulo-tastic Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000? Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t, in which case we might suggest you get your eyes checked, yes, you, my good madam, but not before a taste of our wonderful, one hundred and eleven percent yeast-free cider! And if the young mare—miss Golden Delicious, absolutely charming, what a fitting name indeed—would be so kind as to lend us some apples, we can get to remedying this terrible situation immediately! Why, good ponies of Oatschwitz, what you have here is opportunity!
A/N: Special thanks to Ponychan’s Sir Duke and Vimbert for pre-reading and advice.
Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed this! Do leave feedback (I love feedback) and, well, enjoy the rest of your day!
