See * for disclaimer

This is one of my favorite episodes, mainly because I liked Music Man and other films of that type and period. I know there are lots of Bronies who don't like musicals and that kind of thing because it's 'too old', but I'm old too. So there.

The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 (January 28th 2012, 22 minutes)

Summary: The Apples get embroiled in a bet, and might loose the farm because of it.

Camping out for cider season. I can see this, but the evident demand of this cider is fascinating.

Although it's a joke, Spike's reference to a 'Sapphire Season' might be more evidence that gemstones are not what we think they are.

Okay, while the montage is going on, let's talk about what 'cider' is. Traditionally, cider is fermented fruit juice, usually but not always apple, with a relatively low alcohol content, starting at 1.5% and going above 8% in some cases. Once you get about 10% alcohol you're in the range of 'Apple Wine', which I personally think tastes like drinking a glass of hammers, but whatever. There are specific breeds of apples used for apple cider, apples that are more sour than 'eating' apples. What gets sold as 'Apple Cider' in grocery stores now-a-days is just apple juice from cider apples with no filtering so there's still pulp suspended it in. It's not actually real cider.

The fermentation is done at a relatively low temperature to slow it down. Even so, it only takes three months for a basic cider to ferment. Traditionally cider and various types of small beer (like root beer, ginger beer, etc.) all have similar alcohol levels, and are used as enticement to get itinerant workers to come to your farm during planting and harvest. It was also much safer to drink than water, given that the low alcohol content still killed most of the harmful bacteria, so it was often used as the primary drink for the entire family in medieval times.

We're seeing foam on the cider, and it appears to be pressurized given that Apple Bloom isn't pumping the cider, she's releasing it. And when it runs out the spout fizzles. This means the cider is either fermented or carbonated like soda. Natural carbonation is also a product of fermentation, as the earliest forms of soda were in fact ciders and small beers, but it's possible to do it other ways and that might be part of the 'magic' of Sweet Apple Acres cider that makes it that attractive.

That's one heck of a piece of Victorian engineering there. Reminds me of some of the sequences from the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang film.

Again with the tall, thin body type. This is becoming far more common as the series progresses, and seems to be more common with Unicorns than others.

The Flim Flam Brothers, and song, being the Music Man reference of course. Snake Oil Salesmen of this type being extremely common during the 19th century, but kept strong right up until the middle of the 20th century with travelling salesmen peddling just about anything they could. Even today there is a resurgence of the vacuum cleaner salespeople who go door-to-door with a variety of magic tricks to make you think their wares are functionally better than anyone else's.

Reference to Horse and Pony being considered different things in that song.

Here's one of the scenes that people use to point out that the number of mares in any sample population in Ponyville is far more than the number of stallions. I've paused the scene near the end of the song where there's a bird-eye shot, and yes, there are more mares in there, but not a *huge* number more. They just seem to push themselves to the front when it's a pony-eye view, and leave the stallions in the back rows.

The Apples are good farmers, however this is giving the impression that they are pretty bad businessponies. While farms often do have bad seasons that can be devastating, the script here is implying that the Apples run the edge of bankruptcy as their normal operating procedure. The cider sales are all that gets them through the winter, every year. A farm this large and productive with the level of obvious demand that the cider and the zap apple jam products have should not be in any danger of 'losing the farm' that easily unless there's some massive expense that the Apples are trying to support. Given the apparent size of the farm, maybe it's too big for the current Apple family to handle, so they can't really effectively work it to cover the expense of that extra land. Or too much land is being given over to non-productive uses (as per episodes I haven't reached yet in this blog.) Both of those would mean they either mortgaged the farm to someone, some point in the recent past because that farm that was part of a land grant from Princess Celestia as per the Family Appreciation Day episode, or the various levels of government have put truly onerous taxes on that land... Maybe this has something to do with the mysterious circumstances around Applejack's parents, or Granny got desperate when Applejack went to Manehattan, as that left just Granny Smith and Big Mac to run the entire farm.

And the Apples are bad gamblers. They just gave away all their advantages.

Okay, you can't ferment cider *that* fast. If that's coming out of the barrels pressurized like that, when it was put into the barrels with just a tap above a topless barrel and after only an hour or so of aging, there's some special Earth Pony magic going on that the Flim Flam brothers have figured out how to replicate with Unicorn magic.

Well, that's unfortunate that Applejack didn't learn anything, because there was a lot there for her *to* learn. Don't gamble your life on things, ask for Rarity's help in running the business side of the farm, etc.