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Editor's Note: Gregory Hall is the founder of Virtue Cider, a Chicago-based craft cider company. Hall served as the Brewmaster of Goose Island Beer Company from 1991 to 2011.

I became a big fan of hard cider on a trip to England in 2000 with a group of brewers from Goose Island. We visited several breweries on the trip, but the highlight was visiting a pub called The Maltings in York.

They were hosting a cider festival with casks from small producers all around the English countryside. We were all blown away by the variety, complexity and just plain wonderfulness of those ciders.

Here are five of my favorites, in no particular order.

Five Hard Ciders to Try Right Now: Gregory Hall
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Sink your teeth into this week's top stories from around the globe.

• People in the path of Superstorm Sandy stocked up before the storm with nonperishables. After the storm, they stocked up with vanity pounds now known as the "Sandy Five." - New York Times

• Behold the cheesiest of cheese biscuits, native to eastern North Carolina. - News & Observer

• For the first time in nine grease-stained years, sales at McDonald’s dipped in October. – Bloomberg BusinessWeek

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Nestle is recalling more than 200,000 canisters of its chocolate drink mix Nesquik because of possible contamination of salmonella.

Nestle said the problem occurred on batches of the the mix produced in October. The bottom of the canister says it is best to use by October 2014. The size of the canisters affected are 40.7 ounces, 21.8 ounces, and 10.9 ounces. The two smaller containers have a promotion for the current Disney movie "Wreck-It Ralph" on the side of the container and the words "Be a Hero" across the bottom.

Nestle said the problem was caused by ingredient supplier, Omya Inc. that it has issued a recall of certain lots of its ingredient, calcium carbonate. Linda Pleiman, an Omya spokesperson, said that it had notified its other customers of the problem but was not aware of any other recalls at this time.
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While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

Throw your snoot in the air. Wave it like you just don't care - November 9 is National Scrapple Day!

But what exactly is scrapple, you ask? Per chef Andrew Little of Sheppard Mansion in Hanover, Pennsylvania, "Scrapple is affectionately known as 'everything but the squeal.' It is traditionally a loaf made with the leftover bits of the butchering of hogs. Spices and buckwheat flour are added while the pork is cooking, and the entire mix is poured into loaf pans to chill and set."
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