Tis the season for predictions—a new list seems to pop up daily. And just like holiday decorations, trend lists seem to start appearing earlier and earlier each year. Nonetheless, I still love sifting through the lists—and checking them twice—just to see what’s the next new gnaw, tea or spice.
Will moringa really be ushered in as the latest superfood with the new year? Is savory the new sweet? Will we all start dining communally and noshing on Ethiopian flavored snacks? Perhaps, not. But it sure is fun to pore over the lists.
Here are a few of my favorites to whet your appetite for 2018:
Colorful food – and not because it appeals to the senses or that eating multiple colors of fruit and vegetables is nutritionally sound—because colorful food is camera-ready for social media.
Mocktails – the return of cocktail culture over the past few years has paved the way for the rise of small-batch, house-made juices, sodas and other specialty drinks with and without healthy attributes. They’re all about flavor, color and quality of ingredients.
Fermentation – in myriad formats from slow-fermenting breads to fermented beverages and vegetables. What’s old is new again. This is one of those throwback trends that has roots in the trend for authenticity and simplicity in foods and their preparation.
Global cuisines – for culinary adventurers. Depending on the prognosticator, we can expect to see more modern Chinese and Mexican foods, the rise of Israeli cuisine and the flavors of southeast Asia.
And here’s one of my own:
Cider house rules – with the new set of standards for cider styles issued recently by the United States Association of Cider Makers, look for growth and creativity in the segment, especially among smaller craft cider makers.
Tree Top offers you two unique specialty processed juice concentrates for the Hard Cider market:
• Our Finishing-Style Juice Concentrate is a special crafted blend of apples grown in the western U.S where apples are hand-picked at the peak of harvest and processed in a way to capture the fresh, crisp apple flavor consumers have come to know.
• Our Heritage-Style Fermenting Apple Juice Concentrate is processed in a way to increase the concentrations of tannins already present in apples. The typical range of traditional apple juice concentrate has a gallic acid equivalent (GAE) of 200 – 450 ppm. Tree Top’s Heritage-Style Fermenting Juice ranges between 730 – 1,000 ppm GAE at single strength juice value.
