For LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, we’re sharing stories of queer-identified cider makers from across the country. In this Cider Culture feature, meet Morgan Murhpy and Maggie Przybylski of Two Broads Ciderworks.

In our ongoing series, Women Making Waves in the Cider World, we’ve talked to women working in nearly every sector of the industry, from podcasters and bloggers to distributors to production pros. Though craft cider — and plenty of other beverage sectors, like beer and wine, for that matter — is still a male-dominated sphere, our anecdotal research has proven that there are indeed women playing crucial roles everywhere in cider.

However, our 16th installment brings us to a scenario that we haven’t encountered yet in the column: a cidery that’s 100% co-founded and run by women. There are only two employees, the co-owners Morgan Murphy and Maggie Przybylski, a couple based in San Luis Obispo, a small city on California’s Central Coast. Together, they are Two Broads Ciderworks, a small-batch, agriculture-driven cidery founded in 2015.

Two Broads Ciderworks co-owners Maggie Przybylski and Morgan Murphy

Theirs is a love story: It starts with falling for each other, and then finding a new shared love for cider and apples. They met in 2001 as students studying on the Training Ship Golden Bear, and over the past nearly 20 years, have gone on to adventure into the territories of cider making and small business. Using locally sourced heirloom fruit, they make quirky, elegant ciders, like Mawage, a cyser that blends cider and orange blossom honey, Bearded Queen, an aromatic hopped cider, and Frost, an iced cider.

We caught up with these two to dig deeper into their story and learn more about their tasting room in SLO:

Cider Culture: Lots of people enjoy cider … what inspired you to turn that enjoyment into making cider?

Morgan Murphy: I was into home-brewing beer back when we first met. Though I was primarily a brewer, every fall we’d make cider. We traveled to Spain and France in 2003 and 2004 because flights were super-cheap. We were exposed to Spanish and French cider and realized there was a lot more exciting stuff happening there versus the macro cider, sweetened stuff [in the US].

Maggie Przybylski: Morgan and I would go every fall to this small orchard in this little microclimate area in San Luis Obispo county called See Canyon. There were orchards there with all these heirloom apples that we’d never heard of, we’d buy five-gallon gallons of juice to ferment.

Morgan: For a while, we wanted to start a brewery, but we realized that there are enough breweries. As we got older, we didn’t drink as much beer and started enjoying wine and cider more. Where we live is a big agricultural area, and there are tons of wineries and a few apple orchards, we thought doing something with the local producers of apples would be more interesting and fun for us.

Can you talk about actually starting Two Broads? What were those first few years like? What were some early challenges?

Morgan: About 10 years ago we were like, “Let’s start making this plan.” We’d look at equipment sales and collect things in the garage, fermenters and things. Five years ago we incorporated and it was like, “It’s time to start looking for a space.” It took a long time to find a space that was the right size with the right zoning and a landlord who wanted us. We found it about mid-way between downtown and the airport. SLO is pretty small, so there’s basically a college and the downtown, but we were looking for a smaller cheap warehouse where we could produce cider and do wholesale.

Maggie: It’s a logistics business: Where do we get the apples, how do we get them here? It’s a paperwork business too, with the regulations and the accounting. That took a long time to figure out and wrap our heads around. It’s a paperwork business with the side effect of making cider. Making it is almost the easiest part.

Did your career backgrounds help you as you started making cider plans?

Maggie: I was a wildlife biologist, but eight years ago I quit that my job to work at a restaurant. I wanted to learn what it would take to be in hospitality and run that kind of business. One of the first places where I applied hired me with no experience and I learned a lot! I actually just quit that job this October to go full time with Two Broads. I learned a lot and made great connections at that restaurant, and I’ll miss the little family we created there, but in order to get our tasting room open soon, we need to focus on it.

Morgan: I’m a software engineer.

When you moved into your current production space from your home garage, how did that change how you made cider?

Morgan: Space for barrel-aging is huge. And being able to grind and press apples — originally we were doing it by lifting buckets, and eventually we got this bin dumper thing which is just an amazing piece of hydraulic equipment. We’re still pretty hands-on, though. There are a few more things to automate, which is fun for me as an engineer, honing the process to make it a little more sane.

Maggie: Morgan likes to build things. We like to have our hands in every part of what we’re doing.

Morgan: Even if it may not be the smartest thing. Sometimes it’s just quicker to buy things. Like a keg washer is something you think you might not need, but then you realize you need it.

Maggie: The joy comes from making and using something, but it costs time. That time can be pretty precious.

How have things grown or changed for Two Broads Ciderworks from your start in 2015 to today?

Maggie: Production is in the same warehouse that we found in 2016. In 2017 we started producing there in very small batches. We expanded into the neighboring bay for storage and we also let some drag queens use it as a practice space for Rocky Horror.

Morgan: We’re still making under 10,000 liters a year. Our sales have grown year over year, and we’re sort of focused more on a high-quality product that’s locally focused. We’re not trying to just sell as many units out the door as possible. So it’s slow growth, but definitely growth.

Was a tasting room always part of your plan?

Maggie: We wanted a tasting room from the get-go, so that we could have different batches of different ciders and showcase them. We pulled the permits in January of 2020, and then COVID hit. We dragged our feet and finally opened during the holidays of 2021 with little fanfare. No grand opening for us! In mid-2022, we starting bringing on employees to help with the tasting room so we could keep consistent hours, which is hugely important.

Can you share a bit about what the tasting room is like?

Maggie: Our tasting room has a Bohemian Victorian aesthetic.

Morgan: A guiding principal is … we’ve been to overly-modern-industrial aesthetic breweries and man caves where you can’t hear yourself think or talk to the person next to you because it’s so echo-y. We’re trying to make our space cozier and more interesting. We have rugs and sound-absorbing panels on the ceiling, and we showcase local art and queer art. So you come into this nondescript warehouse parking lot and when you open the door and it’s kind of a different world. We also have a patio with a seasonal creek and really nice outside ambiance.

Where does Two Broads source fruit from?

Maggie: We get a lot of fruit from SLO Creek Farm, just outside of town, from Fair Hill Farm up north in Paso Robles. Some private orchards have offered to give us apples, too. We try to get fruit from between two counties unless it’s really special apples and then it’s usually a small purchase from Washington or Oregon. While it’s mostly dessert fruit in our area, we do get some interesting varieties, like Arkansas Black and crab apples but in small quantities.

We also get Yarlington Mill apples from Sierra Cider in Mariposa. They are so cool. And now we are leasing an orchard just outside the city. It’s mostly Braeburn, with some Granny Smith and Dolgo Crab sprinkled in there. And this really gorgeous red apple with red veining around the core that looks purple when it gets a yeast bloom.

Morgan: There is a lot of restoration that we need to do with this orchard. As we replace trees, we will also start transitioning the fruit to heirloom and cider apples. Maybe add some olallieberries. And Maggie wants pumpkins!

Are there any ciders you’ve made that surprised you, or that you’re especially proud of?

Maggie: Some batches surprised us. We didn’t expect Gala apples to deliver a gorgeous single varietal cider. Bearded Queen — we’re pretty proud of our names — is a dry hopped cider and it comes to you like a Sauv Blanc, it’s really fresh and tart with a passionfruit and grapefruit nose. I seem to be the fruit cider person, so I’ve been experimenting with a lot of bottle conditioning, that’s been really fun for me lately.

Morgan: I tend to like the barrel-aged stuff. We age that in French oak, and we’ve started dabbling with ice cider that I’m really proud of. The first time with ice cider did not go as planned. It started off okay, but our cooling unit went offline for two days and then temperature of the fermentation got warmer than it should’ve been. So the cider got dryer than an ice cider should get. It came out still sweet, with that huge aroma and flavor and acidity and it’s still pretty balanced. We have to warn people that it’s 16% because they’ll drink way too much of it. Since then, we’ve dialed in our ice cider process, and we were pretty thrilled to see them get gold at GLINTCAP in 2021.

Is it just the two of you working at the cidery right now?

Maggie: We have a few people who come help on pressing day help when we pick and press. And a few folks helping out in the tasting room!

What are your favorite things about working with each other?

Morgan: I’m very good at having big ideas and starting projects, and Maggie is very good at actually finishing projects. It’s a good mix. She’s good at keeping deadlines and organizing, and I tend to be better at process stuff in terms of fermentation and research. She’s also a lot friendlier than I am.

Maggie: I’m very good at cracking the whip as well. I may not have large ideas, but I have small ideas, and I have follow-through. We balance each other out, she’s pretty quiet and I’m definitely the extrovert.

Let’s talk about the name. How did you land on ‘Two Broads’ for your cidery?

Maggie: We toyed with a few names, like animal names like Cellar Cat, or SLO Cider (which is actually a company now). People just responded to Two Broads. I was just a little worried that some men, especially older men, are like, “Can I call you that?” The word has this history of being this misogynist word for women, but it seems like it’s being reclaimed. Most of the women we talked to loved the name. So we went with it. It tells you a little bit more about us, like we’re two women running this business and we’re not perfect ladies.

Two Broads Ciderworks ciders are available for purchase online for shipping in California, Colorado, Washington and Oregon, with free pick-up and delivery in SLO county. You can also check out their Vinoshipper shop for nationwide shipping. Currently, the Two Broads tasting room is open Friday from 3 to 8 p.m., Saturday from 1 to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 6 p.m. For more info and updates, follow Two Broads on Instagram and Facebook!

Two Broads Ciderworks is located at 3427 Roberto Ct., Suite 130 in San Luis Obispo, California; phone: (805) 292-1500.

• Photos: Courtesy of Two Broads Ciderworks

The post Women Making Waves in the Cider World: Two Broads Ciderworks appeared first on Cider Culture.

This Thanksgiving cider-pairing guide by Meredith Collins from the popular blog, Along Came a Cider, is brought to you by the American Cider Association (ACA).

So, we’ve finally made our Thanksgiving plans. Whether that involves an intimate gathering or a feast with the whole fam, one thing is for certain: There will be food. And where there’s food, there should be cider!

Everyone’s personal menu for Thanksgiving is both idiosyncratic and completely sacred. That makes every table different. Since Thanksgiving dinner is usually served family-style, with a kaleidoscope of simultaneous dishes (versus coursed out), the rules for pairings work a little differently.

Here are my suggestions for how and when to pair cider for each step of your Thanksgiving gathering:

The Welcome Glass

The variety and lightness of lithe, acid-driven ciders are perfect for one of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions: the welcome glass. Whether I’m the guest bringing a cider in with me, or if I’m opening my home to visitors, it’s nice to have something clean and refreshing to sip while dinner is cooking.

Examples: Foggy Ridge Cider Serious Cider, Angry Orchard First Flora, Castle Hill Cider Celestial

The Sides

Mashed potatoes & high acid, tannic ciders

Orchard-driven ciders need a balance of acidity and tannic structure that can only come from special apples. These apples might be wild or cider-specific varietals, but they have bittersweet and bittersharp characteristics that can give body to the cider. They are meant to both balance and cut through rich or creamy foods. They make the perfect contrast-based pairing for mashed potatoes. Whether yours are buttery, garlicky or creamy, mashed potatoes make the secret heart of Thanksgiving for many.

Examples: Eve’s Cidery Beckhorn Hollow, Cider Riot! 1763

Mild veggies & quaffable perry

This aroma-centric beverage complements lighter sides, like green beans and corn pudding. Light, bubbly perry has pleasant mild tartness, some sweetness and an intoxicating perfume. Keep the pairings for this one delicate, so the perry can really shine.

Examples: Stem Ciders Pear Apple Cider, Æppeltreow Orchard Oriole Draft Perry

Traditional perry & stuffing

This beverage is both aromatic and structured, making it the ideal accompaniment to the quintessential Thanksgiving side: stuffing. The savory palette of flavors often includes sage, rosemary, celery, garlic and pepper. Perry of this type uses perry-specific varieties of pear that give the beverage tannic backbone, medium acidity and a bouquet that can range from the delicately floral to the robust and rustic.

Examples: E. Z. Orchards Poire, Dragon’s Head Ciders Perry

Hopped cider & cranberry sauce

This might be a more controversial suggestion, as hops aren’t often thought of as a classic Thanksgiving note, but their clean herbal notes make a perfect counter to sweet and tart cranberry sauce. Hopped ciders can bring pine, grapefruit or even grassy flavors that add a zingy bite to this rich sweet-tart side.

Examples: 1911 Hopped, Reverend Nat’s Cider Hallelujah Hopricot

Wood-aged cider & roasted vegetables

A cider that’s wood-aged brings some qualities of the barrel to the glass. It can be toasty and buttery, often with caramel, rum, bourbon or vanilla on the nose, even in a dry cider. These sophisticated flavors layer elegantly with roasted vegetables. This pairing is such dynamite that you’ll want to keep creating it all winter long. And don’t forget to put some wood-aged cider into the gravy as you’re making it! You’ll get amazing depth and a hint of smokiness.

Examples: Embark Craft Ciderworks Whiskey Barrel Aged, Tilted Shed Ciderworks Barred Rock Barrel Aged

Sour cider & sweet potatoes

Sometimes where there’s sweet, we need sour! A good sour cider should have a cleanly tart attack that can cut through even the most praline or marshmallow-infused sweet potato side.

Examples: Shacksbury Lost Apple series, Graft Farm Flor

The Turkey

Fruit-blended ciders were simply made for pairing with turkey. If you have the option of finding one blended with berries, currants, grapes or other intensely-flavored dark fruits, those will bring out some of the savory goodness of your Thanksgiving main event! Fruit ciders bring some of the best qualities of apples and their additional fruits in an inviting balance. This is an unstoppable pairing for Thanksgiving!

Examples: Finnriver Cranberry Rosehip, Slyboro Ciderhouse Black Currant

Dessert

Spiced cider & pumpkin pie

Spiced cider is the most-focused fall cider. Spiced ciders often use the same traditional baking spices we see in many a Thanksgiving dessert, so they make a great complementary pairing. Sometimes it is ideal to pair like with like, and this is especially true with spiced cider and pumpkin pie.

Examples: Portland Cider Company Winter Spice, Left Foot Charley Cinnamon Girl

Ice cider & pretty much anything

Ice cider is a special treat, with a rich mouthfeel, intensely flavorful sweetness and a higher ABV because of the concentrated juice. It pairs perfectly with nearly any dessert on the table, including pumpkin pie, apple pie, brownies and anything else made with chocolate. If you’re the one doing the baking, may I suggest mini Bundt cakes with ice-cider-custard drizzle? The other Thanksgiving use for ice cider is to pair it with some relaxation — let the Thanksgiving chefs put their feet up while someone who didn’t cook cleans the kitchen!

Examples: Eden Specialty Ciders Honeycrisp, Cidrerie du Minot Crémant de Glace

What are your favorite Thanksgiving pairings? Let us know! We hope you enjoy a lovely holiday with your family and friends!

• Cranberry cake photo: Pexels
• Woman drinking cider photo: Jen Jones | Moxy International​
• All other photos: Dish Works

The post A Dish-by-Dish Cider Pairing Guide for Thanksgiving Dinner appeared first on Cider Culture.

If you’re part of the Instagram cidersphere, your feed has likely been rife with harvest photos. Though the perfect time for apple picking varies a bit from region to region, autumn is when farmers and orchardists are out there, harvesting apples in epic numbers.

What better way to celebrate the hard and hopeful work that happens during the harvest season than with harvest ciders?

By “harvest ciders,” we mean ciders that allow the apples and their native yeasts to speak of the land and climate where the fruit was grown, ciders that highlight the qualities of the apples themselves. We mean ciders made with local cider apples, firm with tannins and explosive with acid, which taste of place and not of sugar or other additives. These ciders are made once a year, usually after harvest, similar to wine’s production schedule. After they age for however long the cider maker chooses, the ciders are released, and once they’re sold out, that’s it. This is a markedly different method than year-round cidermaking (more akin to craft beer’s methodology).

While the warm weather usually has us reaching for crushable session ciders (with other fruits and hops more than welcome to the party!), in the fall we long for the esoteric, thought-provoking complexity of harvest ciders.

Here are five to try:

Eden Harvest Ciders

Eden Ciders‘ website has perhaps the most concise definition of “harvest cider” that we’ve come across. The qualifications include:

• Heirloom and tannic cider-variety apples, grown sustainably and locally in a way that supports rural communities, and building long-term relationships with orchards that grow rare, high-flavor varieties of apples.
• Apples harvested at peak ripeness, as opposed to under-ripe for storage and shipment to grocery stores.
• Apples pressed at harvest, or soon after, when flavors, sugars and acids are at their most excellent, as opposed to bringing apples out of cold storage months later when their characteristics have dulled. For Eden, this means making one batch of each cider per year, a very different approach from many modern ciders that produce a new batch from a recipe every few weeks.
• A slow, cool fermentation that is similar to wine making, allowing flavors to develop over time, and to express the unique character of the apple varieties and their terroir.
• Maturing ciders so their acids, tannins and any residual sweetness are fully integrated and balanced. This means allowing time to do the work instead of cheap, fast techniques, like adding sugar, acid or tannin out of bags, finding agents to speed clarification, or enzymes to fix microbiological issues.

It’s a lot to consider, and it shows how thoughtful and careful owner Eleanor Leger and her team are in their approach and their philosophy. Any cider from Eden makes a grand toast to the harvest season, though we love the everyday, easygoing nature of the Harvest Cider cans. The lineup consists of Peak Bloom, Deep Cut and Brut Rosé, each made with apples from Vermont orchards, which are gently pressed immediately after harvest and given slow, cool fermentations.

Tasting notes: Peak Bloom: applesauce, honey, white grape, slate; Deep Cut: peach, black tea, citrus; Brut Rosé: bright red berry and apple with light earthy tannin and lingering crispness.

Farnum Hill Farmhouse

This cider-making operation at legendary Poverty Lane Orchards uses bittersweet cider apples varietals, like Dabinett, Ellis Bitter and Yarlington Mill, believing they “make far better cider than fruit-bowl apples.” Farnum Hill’s ciders showcase these apples’ wild and diverse flavors, ranging from fruity and herbal to mineral and earthy notes, each harmonizing with the help of balanced tannins and acid.

Farnum Hill Farmhouse, packaged in camping-friendly cans, is a more casual, rustic cider than some of its ciders in larger format bottles. It’s blended with early-ripening apples for a crisp, pale gold and bubbly drinking experience with a touch less alcohol than Farnum Hill’s other varieties.

Tasting notes: Citrus, pineapple, bittersweet apple and a whiff of barnyard funk, with a clean, appetizing finish.

Big Hill Ciderworks Golden Russet

Big Hill Ciderworks is located in the heart of Adams County, PA, one of the most prolific apple-growing regions in the U.S. Big Hill presses, ferments, bottles and distributes all of  its ciders from the many varieties of apples grown on its land. This is beautiful, providing orchard-driven ciders with no added sugars, sweeteners, colors or flavorings. Many of its ciders are blends of different apples, which are all really balanced and expressive, but we especially love the pure clarity of its Golden Russet cider. This is a single varietal cider that sings with the flavor of of this old American cultivar of a domesticated apple that’s known for its intense tartness.

The cider spends the winter resting on lees (leftover yeast particles), and is then racked and barrel-aged for eight months before bottling. Big Hill says this cider is “a true expression of our microclimate and the terroir of our orchards.”

Tasting notes: Notes of vanilla and burnt sugar with a smooth, lush flavor and balanced dryness.

Art + Science Clutch Cider

Art + Science is a natural cider, perry, and wine producer in rural Yamhill County, Oregon, headed up by husband-and-wife team Dan Rinke and Kim Hamblin (learn more about them via our Instagram Live Q&A chat!). To make cider, they foraged for fruit and purchase from nearby small orchards, then ferment with indigenous yeasts. While they wait for their own estate orchards to fully come into production, the couple explores mostly on privately-owned lands, from abandoned and neglected orchards to seedlings trees growing wild in nature. While this isn’t an agricultural “harvest” in the traditional sense, to us, the effort, labor and persistence involved with foraging is its own harvest to be celebrated!

Art + Science’s Clutch Cider is an orchard-based cider sourced from twenty year old English cider apples planted at Northrop Acres outside of Amity, Oregon. The fruit is milled and pressed, and then fermented naturally with native yeast with nothing else added  – no added sulfur, acid, sugar or forced carbonation.

Tasting notes: Traditional and dry, with a bit of barnyard funk, upfront acidity and notable tannic structure.

Scar of the Sea Newtown Pippin Hard Cider

Scar of the Sea, founded by Mikey Giugni and Michael Brughelli, two college friends with a shared affinity for the ocean, makes cider and wine that are influenced by the maritime soils, and climates of the Central Coast of California. Its ciders are made with apples harvested from a handful of orchards dotted across the Mountain foothills, coastal valleys and high deserts of the nearby terrain. These include Bear Creek Ranch in Santa Cruz, Chadmark Farms in Paso Robles and Kids Inc Orchards in the Sierra Foothills. The apples harvested from these small farms create ciders that are terroir-driven, balanced and complex.

Its Newtown Pippin Cider is made from a harvest of Newton Pippin apples from Bear Valley Ranch in Aptos, California, which was planted between 1940 and the 1960s farmed without any chemical inputs After barrel fermentation with native yeast in French oak barrels, the cider is barrel-aged aged sur lie for 12 months. Then, it’s re-fermented in the bottle with a dosage from 2020 fresh juice to add carbonation.

Tasting notes: Very bright with aromas of bubble gum, banana runts and apples. Tart and dry.

What are your favorite harvest ciders to reach for as the weather cools? Let us know!

• Eden Cider photos: Dish Works
• Harvest photo: Jack's Hard Cider
• All other photos: Courtesy of the respective cideries

The post 5 Ciders to Drink to Celebrate the Harvest appeared first on Cider Culture.

In 2015, Pomme Boots Society, an analog to the beer world’s Pink Boots Society, was founded as an organization for women in the cider industry. The stated goal of Pomme Boots is to “support positive network connections, education and professional development for women in the dynamic field of cider.” In the fall of 2021, Pomme Boots teamed up with Pink Boots Society (an organization supporting women in the beer industry) after changes in the Pink Boots by-laws opened up membership for the first time to women working in cider and other forms of fermentation.

The cider industry today is less of a boy’s club than in the 2010s, and many conversations and actions around diversity and inclusion have been shared and have happened in the past few years. However, the world of professional alcohol sales and production can still be an unsafe space for female-identified people, and a network of mutual support is a super-valuable resource. The private Pomme Boots Facebook group is home to nearly 470 members who use the platform to ask each other questions, troubleshoot, and to share victories and frustrations. Members also meet up in real life at events, conferences and outings.

Pomme Boots was founded by Jana Daisy-Ensign, Jennie Dorsey and Gemma Fanelli. Here is some background information about who each of these powerhouses are, and how they got into fermented apple juice.

Jana Daisy-Ensign

Jana Daisy-Ensign has a background working in nonprofits and in craft beverages, and she is now the Program Manager at Northwest Cider Association, helping to promote and advocate for the association’s members across the Pacific Northwest, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia. She also freelances as a cidery sales and marketing consultant, and she is a cider judge, Certified Pommelier and a published category writer. She is deeply passionate about cider and community, and in 2019 was named the inaugural recipient of PICC’s NW Cider Leadership Award.

“Working in craft beverage for many years (and through two pregnancies!), I have garnered quite an array of experience and insight. For me, part of what has been so exciting about the cider revival has been the opportunity for the cider category to be re-envisioned by a more diverse and representative group of people than those more established sectors of the beverage industry (i.e., spirits, beer),” Jana says. Jana is also a certified yoga instructor and has led Pomme Boots’ popular Yoga + Cider events.

Jennie Dorsey

Always recognizable by her candy-colored hair, Jennie Dorsey has been on the cider scene for over a decade in a number of different roles. She’s worked for Schilling Cider House and Tieton Ciderworks, and she is also the American Cider Association’s Cider Education Outreach Manager. A true champion of craft cider, she was named Cider Server of the Year by the ACA in 2018, and is a Certified Pommelier.

Jennie clearly has an abundance of enthusiasm for the Pomme Boots mission, and traces her start back through relationships with some of the Pacific Northwest’s biggest names in the business.

“One of my favorite memories is when I was still quite young in the cider world and Craig Campbell took me on a tour of his cider and perry orchards. The crisp, late-summer air was fragrant with ripening fruit, and the sun was high, illuminating the labored branches. And then we began sampling. He would grab a piece of fruit and cut off a sample with his pocket knife and hand it to me. We did this over and over, canvassing the orchards. While I had experienced ciders and perries made from some of these varietals, I had never had the true fruit. My palate was in heaven! Even the fruits labeled ‘spitters’ were so intoxicatingly delicious. I knew that I loved cider before then, but it was not until that moment that I knew this beverage had to be in my life.” Jennie is locally beloved for her cider tours on bicycle.

Gemma Fanelli

The third visionary for the Pomme Boots Society is Gemma Fanelli, an Italian-speaking foodie from a large farming family. A chef and all-around restaurant industry pro, Gemma has worked for a number of Portland institutions, like Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider and Alter Ego Cider, as well as Pizza Thief, where she is currently Director of Operations. Similar to Jennie, Gemma attributes a moment of discovering heirloom fruit as being key to embracing the cider industry.

“In the fall of 2014, I accompanied my friend and Rev Nat’s co-worker, Kate Coulton, apple picking at Skurdahl Farm in Sherwood, Oregon. She had done this work for Nat before and she was teaching me the protocol. I was surprised to find that there was no ‘picking’ involved at all! We crawled around on the floor of the orchard, sorting through already fallen fruit, throwing rotten apples to one side and good (enough) apples into the crates. My first bites of a Kingston Black, Dabinett and Yarlington Mill proved these apples are truly ‘spitters.’ I remember we collected 34 crates that day of heirloom cider apples; the smell of fermenting fruit filled my nose, I was covered in dirt, grass and decaying apple remnants from head to toe, my muscles ached, but I felt absolutely invigorated and satisfied.”

Three cheers for the women who founded Pomme Boots! We are so grateful for this organization and all of the people its brought together over the past seven years. Here’s to seven more!

• Photos, top to bottom: Jana Daisy-Ensign, Gemma Fanelli Schmit, Kevin Sullivan, Caitlin Braam

The post Women Making Waves in the Hard Cider World: Pomme Boots Society appeared first on Cider Culture.

Malaika Tyson is one half of the blogging duo Cider Soms, which was started as a way to introduce wine-lovers to the world of cider. Created along with her husband Sean, the “Soms” blog seeks to uncover and explain the complexities of ciders in a fun way.

For Women’s History Month, I want to highlight some of the amazing women cidermakers and cidery owners I’ve met throughout the years. In this Q&A, I speak with Elizabeth Ryan Hudson of Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider, who goes way, way back in the industry. In fact, she’s been in business for 25 years! So much has changed over those decades, and to speak with her is to dive into the fascinating history of the US cider community, from its nascent stages to the present day.

(The questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.)

Elizabeth Ryan, founder/owner of Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider

Malaika Tyson: You are one of the first commercial cidermakers of this generation in the US. I can only think of a few women who started making cider when you did. How did you get your start?

Elizabeth Ryan: I made my first barrel of cider in 1980 when I was a student at Cornell University, with apples from the University’s orchards. I have a degree in pomology and I was always interested in cider, which was a de facto non-existent beverage in the 80s. Even though I had taken winemaking classes, there was nothing about making cider. Cider had all but disappeared from the scene, except, maybe once in a while, you’d run into a bottle of French cider. One of the reasons for this is that there were a whole set of laws that inhibited the production of cider in New York and nationally. 

I eventually went to work as vineyard manager at Benmarl Winery. Later, I bought an orchard on my own and my then-boyfriend said to me, “I’ll have nothing to do with it.” When he said I had to choose between the orchard and him, I chose the orchard. Eventually he did come around, and we got married, had a kid and eventually divorced. That first orchard (Editor’s note: Elizabeth now runs five farms) had a great array of what I call classic New England cider apples, like Baldwins, Russets, Gravensteins and York Imperials. 

All that time, I was one of the few woman apple growers, and I was pretty used to going to meetings and maybe there’d be 400 or 500 people in the room and there’d be 10 women. In many ways there were lots of gender issues and gender bias, even in my own farm family.

When did you decide to make cider commercially?

In 1995, I got very serious about making cider. I started randomly calling people in England and I remember it was a dollar a minute back then. I called the director of tourism in Somerset and I asked if they still sang to the trees, which is the Wassail tradition. She told me to call Richard Sheppy, a legendary multi-generational Somerset producer, who was very traditional and didn’t even use yeast. I cold-called him and he was adorable and lovely to me. I asked, do you still sing to the trees? And he said, yes. And then I asked, “When are you doing it?” And he said next week. 

So I got on a flight to Somerset in the middle of the winter and attended my first Wassail. There were over 500 people at this amazing ceremony that started in pitch blackness and ended in a huge bonfire and copious quantities of cider. I remember leaving thinking that these were my people, and wanting to establish these cider traditions in the US. 

When I came back home, I formed a company named La Pomme Sauvage, the wild apple, and our trade name was DBA The Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider Company. I took Peter Mitchell’s course, I started making hard cider and I got a license. I had set a very high bar for us in terms of what I wanted our cider to be: best-in-class, incredible, complex and delicious. And to reference European apples and styles using American apples.

Did you have any initial supporters after you got started?

Yes, a friend, Hillary, who was another woman who had also gone to Cornell. She was the daughter of a well-known restaurateur, who owned Windows On The World and the Rainbow Room. Hillary worked with me to set up a local food hall and several farmers markets. It turned out she couldn’t technically be a partner because of tide house laws, but she supported the roll out of my first cider, Maeve’s, which has about 2% residual sugar. It’s our most approachable cider, it’s not made with bittersweets and bitter sharps and it is designed to be made from incredibly good New York State apples.

After rolling out your ciders, how did you get the product in front of people?

I went and raised some money and eventually I did a private placement, but I didn’t know what that meant. Hillary and I just fumbled our way through it. She was a great co-conspirator, although pretty quickly she was swept into her family’s restaurant business. But the one thing that happened that was extraordinary was that early on Brooklyn Brewery heard about what we were doing and they said they wanted us in their portfolio. And I also started getting phone calls from legendary people in the industry. Fritz Maytag (former owner of Anchor Brewing Company) called me and he said to me, “I just had your cider and you girls are really onto something. It’s really amazing and I want to support you.”  

The guys at Bulmer’s Cider drank it and they said, “Very good. This is exactly the kind of cider that we think no one in America will ever drink.” We knew we could prove them wrong, so we kept chipping away and, and since then, it’s been a long saga of, of getting larger, getting smaller, getting larger, getting smaller, getting larger, getting medium, getting little and relaunching. 

When we launched our cider officially in 1997 we got a full-page story on the front page of the food section of The New York Times and did a trade-only launch at Windows on the World with 300 trade attendees. We had a draft line and speciality cocktail, with the recipe printed on stationery. All of this was a whole new world for me because I was a farmer.

Why did you start to self-distribute?

I did want to be a bigger producer. We invested in a six pack line and were partnered with a beer distributor. However, there was a lot of pressure on us to produce more mass market ciders and new flavors. To do that, you have to produce the ciders quickly, something we are unwilling to do. So our focus is still direct marketing, we don’t even have a cider club. I primarily sell my cider in 25 famers markets and at the tasting room. 

What has been one of the most challenging aspects of running a business?

As a woman farmer and producer, it’s been accessing capital. The agriculture credit system is incredibly conservative. After my divorce, farm credit called my note and actually came to the farm and sat with me in my living room to tell me that my farm was worth a lot of money and that I couldn’t run the farm myself. So they were calling my note to “take the farm off my hands.”

Their argument was that because I was divorced and my husband was on the mortgage, that I couldn’t handle what running a farm required. I told them that I’m the one who went to Cornell, I’m the one who has a degree in fruit production, and I’m the one who’s actually been running the farm and the only way they would get me off the farm was through the front door in a box. It was a long journey convincing them, but I kept the farm. When I bought Stone Ridge orchard, I needed to raise a couple million dollars, and I couldn’t and that was hard.

Now, when I see all these new women producers, it blows my mind. I go to CiderCon and I meet these young women; it’s fascinating and thrilling to see that, and also to see the growth in consumption.

Have you noticed production trends with cider?

I watched cider back in the nineties disappear from the shelves. We were overwhelmed by other beverage categories. In 1996, I formed an international trade association: the North American Cider Makers Association. We worked to get legislation through and we succeeded in getting the taxes lowered. It was not easy, but we managed to actually get it under the radar because we were such a small category that lowering the taxes from a Senate scoring point of view was non-consequential.

We made the argument to Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy that the tax cuts would stimulate production and would save farms and support farmers. And to lower taxes it meant it wouldn’t take much to have production double or triple and consumption quadruple, and that the states will make more money in the end.

In addition to financial incentives, there is an intimate relationship between what you’re legally allowed to do and growth in an industry. The New York State Cider Association (Editor’s note: Elizabeth is a founding member) and other cidermakers, like Steve Woods, worked hard to change many of the archaic post-prohibition laws. I don’t think many people understand how terribly difficult this work was, how slow it was, or how many trips to Washington we had to make trying to find friends and allies. We opened a dialogue with lawmakers about the problems we were having and they worked with us collaboratively to slowly come up with some solutions.

After we started to solve some of these problems, production was stimulated. In my opinion, it was a trickle and then an explosion in cider production.

If there was one business strategy you could implement to better the cider industry what would it be?

If there were one goal, the goal would be to get more people with educated palates drinking cider. When you go to England, France and Spain, cider is an everyday beverage and it is unbelievably affordable because people and producers are subsidized in certain ways on the backend, at the front end, and in between. There is all kinds of support for agriculture and supporting local farmers embedded in a lot of those countries. So, I think our price points are a little bit of a barrier, but yet there’s also a lot of value in these cider apples.

You’ve managed to survive two disasters: September 11 and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yes, September 11 had devastating impacts on New York. It was a little bit like COVID, but in different ways. Lower Manhattan was closed from 14th Street, all the small restaurants downtown closed, many to never reopen. We had some investors at the time and I offered to buy everybody out for a dollar.

The last two years have also been very challenging and my focus has been staying in business. We support a core staff year round of thirty people and their families. I was determined that we weren’t going to lose anybody if they wanted to stay. The cider operation and the farm are so co-mingled and integrated with each other, that it’s almost hard for me to separate them. The growers are the people taking all of the risk on the front end and I personally put most of my support to my colleagues who are farmers.

I think by the end of this year, we’ll be back in several wholesale markets, but everything is very fragile. I was lucky. I got some SBA money and while we posted some fairly massive losses, we also had some significant gains. We had a very strong fourth quarter.

What are takeaways that you would have for someone who’s looking to get started in the industry?

You have to ask yourself who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish in a whole life and business sense, and how can you keep that as you grow your business?

Steep yourself in the traditions, get out there and talk to people, learn and be humble.

Be patient, although it’s hard when you’re under financial pressure and you’re under pressure to take shortcuts.

Don’t quit your day job. I quit my day job, but if you have a day job, it gives you a lot of options because it allows you to kind of take the time and grow at your own pace.

If you were stuck on a desert island, what three things would you bring with you?

I would bring some seeds, a musician, and matches.

To learn more about Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider, check out its website.

Find Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider‘s tasting room at Stone Ridge Orchard 3012 Route 213, in Stone Ridge, New York.

• Feature photo: Erica Berger
• All other photos: Courtesy of Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider

The post Women Making Waves in the Cider World: Elizabeth Ryan of Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider appeared first on Cider Culture.

Malaika Tyson is one half of the blogging duo Cider Soms, which was started as a way to introduce wine-lovers to the world of cider. Created along with her husband Sean, the “Soms” blog seeks to uncover and explain the complexities of ciders in a fun way.

For Women’s History Month, I want to highlight some of the amazing women cidermakers and cidery owners I’ve met throughout the years. I was able to chat with Talia Haykin, owner and CEO of Haykin Family Cider, located in Aurora, Colorado, just 12 miles west of Denver. She and her husband Daniel founded the company in 2017 and opened their taproom in February of 2018. Haykin Family Cider specializes in single varietal ciders, which are carefully crafted with no adjuncts or added sugars.

Talia Haykin, co-founder and ownewr of Haykin Family Cider

(The questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.)

Malaika Tyson: How long has Haykin Family Cider been open?

Talia Haykin: Five years. I was thinking about it last night while I was lying awake with my 3-month-old baby. It’s crazy.

Was it always your plan to start a cidery?

No! Cidermaking was always just going to be a hobby. We were making cider because we enjoy drinking it, but then we started winning awards. We won at Franklin County Cider Days, and we won at GLINTCAP, including best-in-class. Some people approached us and said we should start this business. We told them no, but they were insistent. A second couple also came to us and encouraged us to start the business. 

So without them, would you still be making cider just as a hobby?

Absolutely. Starting a cidery is expensive and it takes a lot of time. I had a full-time job prior to starting this business. While we are investors in Haykin as well, we wouldn’t have been able to fully personally invest. So without those investors telling us to start a cidery, we probably would have continued to be amateurs and participate, but I don’t think we would have progressed to where we are now.

What is something that people don’t think about when starting a business?

People have asked me, “Should I start a business?” And I tell them not to start a business for the sake of starting one. They have to be passionate. Starting a business is not a fun experience, it takes a lot of work. I’m doing taxes, bookkeeping, HR and payroll. That’s not why you start the business, right?

We started Haykins because we loved cider and found something that was interesting, different and unique, and we wanted to make it on a slightly larger scale than we could do in our basement. We stick to that, and our whole ethos was always making the type of cider we enjoy to drink, which are ciders that have similar profiles as sparkling wines. 

How long did you keep working before making this your full-time role?

We started planning the cidery in 2016, and at the time I was a chief marketing officer for another company. The company had a management shift, and I decided I didn’t want to stay there. So I left my full-time job in 2016, but I had a full book of freelance clients that I was working for. I continued the freelance work when we opened in 2018, and I was doing the majority of the administrative side of this business. It was tough balancing that with a full book of clients.

I was slowly whittling down my clients, but I still had one really good long-term client. In January of 2020 that client decided to sunset and I transitioned to working full-time for Haykin in March 2020.

What do you think is your secret to being able to stay open during the pandemic?

Oh, probably just insanity. We’re just crazy enough to keep going. I think part of it is that we approached this as a hobby business. We didn’t put all of our eggs in that basket and when the pandemic hit, I’m really thankful that Dan (Talia’s husband and Haykin’s Founder & Cidermaker) was still working as an investment advisor.

So when all of a sudden our tasting room was shut down, it was nice to know we could still put food on the table for our kids. I don’t want to say we didn’t take any chances, but it was like being able to put ourselves out there a little bit more.

What is your business model?

We have like three business sides. We have wholesale, which then gets retailed, the tasting room, and online direct to consumer sales. I think we’re up to 80 or 90 accounts locally. Shutting down the tasting room was not cool, but I think probably the biggest challenge for us with the pandemic was we’re in a lot of fine dining, and they were hit really hard and were shut for a lot longer.

And they opened back up, they weren’t taking many risks, like bringing in new products or bringing in a lot of products. Liquor stores that would place orders for three or four cases at a time were ordering one case monthly. Nobody wanted to hold a bunch of inventory that they owed money on. Now that we’ve come on the other side, all of the restaurant staff has turned over. So it’s sort of like starting all over with our fine dining and re-educating.

However, when we’ve been added to tasting menus, we’ve seen a lot of movement of that product in the tap room. We’ve had diners come straight from the restaurant and order a case of the cider they just had. Those diners may have never picked up a case of our cider before, so it’s helping change the perception of cider.

How are your cider club and direct-to-consumer sales going?

It’s amazing. It’s really what has made it possible for us to continue through the pandemic.  Knowing that we had 200-plus people that were going to take a shipment at set time intervals really helped our bottom line. However, it’s also challenging, because the way our club is structured is that we need 18 unique releases every year.

So while we had bought a lot of apples in 2019 and had a lot of inventory going into 2020, we weren’t able to just completely stop buying juice and buying apples because we needed to create these unique releases for the club. So it shifted our business model. Before, we were doing big batches, releasing to the club and then releasing to the public. We’ve now shifted to club-only smaller batches.

What goals do you have for the business? Like over the next five to 10 years?

When Dan and I started the business, neither one of us had ever started a business before, nor had we been in the alcohol industry. After a year or two, we realized that you have to think a little bit bigger, you have to think about the broader, bigger picture. We did a lot by faith. For example, we brought an architect in and we said, here’s our end goal of what we want the space to look like and how do we get there?

I would hope that we could build our space to create a bigger tasting room, more of a destination, and be able to host bigger events. Another goal of ours is to work on more out-of-state distribution; right now we’re distributed in two states other than Colorado and we are going into Utah. I don’t ever see us becoming this huge regional or national cidery, we’re going to stay boutique, but I would also love to at least have doubled the club size in five years.

Do you pay yourself?

No. While I am gaining some equity as an investor, I haven’t received a paycheck yet. When you start a business, you’re not usually thinking about, “When do I pay myself?”, but rather, “How do I pay off debt?” and making sure your employees are paid. That is the most important thing to us, being able to pay our employees a living wage and providing insurance for them. We are also in the process of paying off the building and all the stuff in our building. 

If you had one business strategy that you could implement to better the cider industry, what would it be?

I wish the cider industry was as organized, cohesive and well-funded as the wine industry. I’m sure they feel that their industry is stratified significantly, but I feel like the cider industry is so diverse and so stratified. Like you have everything from a $1 can of cider to a $40 bottle of cider. 

What pieces of advice do you have for someone getting started in the industry?

There are really good people in this industry that care about the industry as a whole and you should meet those people. There is an all-boats-rise mentality, which is incredible. 

There are a lot of really un-fun things you have to do when you start a business that nobody really talks about, including how time consuming or difficult all those things are. So definitely talk to people who’ve opened this type of business before you start one.

I would say there’s really incredible stuff hanging out in regional places that you would never expect and to keep your mind open to all types of cider while you’re traveling, try to find really interesting things that aren’t being shipped or distributed nationally.

If you were stuck on a desert island with three things would you take with you?

A Kindle full of books, a really comfortable mattress, and lots of cider.

To learn more about Haykin Family Cider, check out its website, Facebook and Instagram pages.

Find Haykin Family Cider‘s tasting room at 12001 E. 33rd Ave., Unit D in Aurora, Colorado; phone: (720) 242-7292.

• All photos: Courtesy of Haykin Family Cider

The post Women Making Waves in the Cider World: Talia Haykin of Haykin Family Cider appeared first on Cider Culture.

Malaika Tyson is one half of the blogging duo Cider Soms, which was started as a way to introduce wine-lovers to the world of cider. Created along with her husband Sean, the “Soms” blog seeks to uncover and explain the complexities of ciders in a fun way.

For Women’s History Month, I want to highlight some of the amazing women cidermakers and cidery owners I’ve met throughout the years. I was fortunate to have a conversation with Gretchen Esbensen of Shoal Draft Cider/Annapolis Fermenting, based in Annapolis, Maryland. Esbensen, who has been in business for just one year, makes fresh ciders in fun names like Booze Cruise and High Tide Haze. Here, we learn more about her start up story, and get some good advice for prospective new business owners. 

(The questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.)

Malaika Tyson: How did you get your start?

Gretchen Esbensen: I made cider as a basement experiment, usually only making one or two batches in the winter. When the pandemic started, all of my travel for work ended, and since I was stuck in my house, I started making cider more frequently. I started getting pretty good at it and I liked my cider more than some I had. But, cidermaking was still a hobby.

I quit my job in the summer of 2020, and by that October I needed something new and needed space to figure it out. After hiking in New Hampshire for two weeks, I came back to a cider that I started before I left. That cider was more than just palatable, it was great!

I remembered how I’d made it and got super-serious about perfecting that recipe. By January 2021, I had  incorporated my business, and made my first sale in that July to a dive bar near my house.

Where did you make your first sale?

When I was in the process of refining my recipe and making sure this was viable, I made a lot of cider and delivered growlers to my friend’s houses. Some of my friends happen to also be general managers at bars, so on my first day of sales, I actually already had pre-orders from four different bars.

Do you think that if the pandemic had not happened that you would have even considered making cider full-time?

Nope. I would be in international consulting for science and engineering. And I wouldn’t have blue hair. [Editor’s note: Gretchen has very cool blue hair]

How were you able to establish your business so quickly?

Part of the reason I was able to get started so quickly was because I didn’t need a physical location. I don’t have $2 million rolling around to build a facility and build out a taproom.

A taproom also means the financial liability of having to buy all of the equipment and the building, as well as establishing the working parts, like employees, facilities and operations, accounting and grounds management. Unfortunately, when you look at the business side of cider and take the romance out, what you have is a biochemical engineering plant.

All of the fermenting and canning I do is contracted. So I don’t have to worry about sourcing or buying apples or juice. I work on the recipe and send it to a lab for analysis and use that information to develop parameters of success. Those parameters are in the contract that I have with the fermenter. I’m not picking apples they use, but the resulting cider does need to adhere to those parameters. It ends up being about half dessert apples, and half cider apples.

I pay a flat fee for all these services. It’s definitely a model that comes from the beer world.

Do you have a team yet?

I operate pretty leanly. Because all the production is done by the contract fermenter, I function as a wholesaler and distributor. I did just hire my first part-time salesperson, and hopefully she can make it into a full-time position. I’m also trying to find a good bookkeeper and accountant.

It’s challenging to keep in compliance with both state and federal laws, but I’m lucky because in the eyes of the Federal government, I’m just a distributor.

What’s been your biggest expense so far?

Marketing and branding. I can use Adobe Illustrator all day long, but I can’t start from a blank slate. So I hired a graphic designer that specializes in craft beverage design. While I spent a lot, I would highly recommend people invest money there. It was important to me because I wanted to launch a professional-looking product on day one. 

Were there any challenges that surprised you?

Getting tap handles! I ended up having to make them myself because when I got the idea in my brain, I couldn’t find somebody that could make them in less than eight months. I purchased thick acrylic, but the people who made the acrylic didn’t have a drill press or a way to put in threads, so I used my drill to make the holes and I also put on the metal threads. It took about six months, and the process is documented on my Instagram page. 

I was also quoted a really high price for the tap stickers, so I bought a Cricut [a custom sticker and label machine] for $200. And let me tell you that it has been endlessly helpful. It paid for itself on day one.

If you had a business strategy that you could implement to better the cider industry, what would it be?

Cider agents, like an artist’s agent. Somebody that already knows all of the right people, like key distributors, and are willing to advocate for you. I think it would help all sides of the industry, both from the large distributor side and from the producer side. I do think it’s probably a job for someone who previously worked for a large distributor. 

What pieces of advice do you have for someone getting started in the industry?

You can’t do this stuff without going a hundred percent all-in. If I still had my full-time job and tried to start this, the way I’m doing, no one would believe my commitment.

It’s going to cost three times more than you think.

You’re never ready enough. So you might as well just do it now.

If you were stuck on a desert island and you could only bring three things, what would they be?

Sunscreen, my sailboat, and a knife.

To learn more about Annapolis Fermenting/Shoal Draft Cider check out its website, Facebook and Instagram.

• All photos: Courtesy of Shoal Draft Cider

The post Women Making Waves in the Cider World: Gretchen Esbensen of Shoal Draft Cider appeared first on Cider Culture.

We are so excited to announce a new collaboration with Half Time Beverage, an epic craft beverage shop with two locations in New York state. Half Time is known for its wide selection of beer, but its cider selection is also super-impressive. We’ve worked with the Half Time Beverage team to curate a set of exciting, fun, delicious ciders: It’s the Cider Culture 2022 12-Pack!

Before we dive deep into our 12-pack, allow us to clarify that, Half Time does ship outside of New York. In fact, they can ship orders to 34 states! For full info, head here.

Back to the ciders: We are blessed to try a lot of ciders, and it’s impossible to play favorites. Thus, the Cider Culture 12-pack, which we co-curated with Jennie Dorsey of the American Cider Association, is really about offering a selection that shows off the wide range of styles and flavors that cider can have. They are all from American cider producers from different regions, and because the Cider Culture 2022 12-pack is two cans each of six ciders, it’s great for sharing with friends. The Cider Culture 2022 12-pack makes an amazing introduction to the category for newer cider drinkers, so if you have some pals who you’ve been trying to woo to the cider side, here is your chance!

Here is more info about the six ciders included:

Artifact Cider Project: Feels Like Home

Fruity and unfiltered, aged on rum-soaked oak with a little bit of sweetness and acidity. Pairs well with late-night bonfires. 5.4% ABV.

Graft Cider: Farm Flor

This rustic dry and tart oak-aged farmhouse cider is an outlier, more akin to Spanish-style cider. 6.9% ABV.

Shacksbury Cider: Vermonter

A dry, gin botanical homegrown but refined cider made by slowly fermenting apples and adding juniper berries. A taste of Alpine meadows, spring wildflowers, and the Green Mountains themselves. 6% ABV.

Austin Eastciders: Brut

A light cider with the refreshing sensory experience of a dry champagne boasting flavors of tart apple, with citrus notes and aroma of crisp apple with orange peel. Pairs well with manchego cheese, smoked salmon, crepes with fruit and orange juice for a light mimosa. 4.2% ABV.

Brooklyn Cider House: Little Wild

This wild-fermented cider is aged on the lees for between 6 and 8 months, then it’s blended with fresh-pressed cider for a semi-sweet, carbonated cider that’s tart, earthy and bursting with fresh apple, citrus and honey aromas. Varietals include Dabinett, Manchurian Crab, Northern Spy, Rhode Island Greening, Empire and Mcintosh. 5% ABV.

Hudson North Cider: Ski Trip

Zesty orange notes are followed by warming flavors of mulled cider, vanilla bean, cinnamon and apple pie. HNC is on a mission! 10 cents of every gallon sold, in addition to the funds raised at their Taps for Trails pint night, are donated to their trail partners who work to maintain, preserve and educate people about the beautiful lands around us. 5% ABV.

Want this badass box of cider shipped right to your front door? Head to Half Time’s website for more info and to shop the Cider Culture 2022 12-pack!

• Vermonter photo: Shacksbury Cider
• All other photos: Half Time Beverage

The post Explore Rad Craft Ciders in Half Time Beverage’s ‘Cider Culture 2022 12-Pack’! appeared first on Cider Culture.

So, you want to host a party. Great idea! Your friends/family/crush/co-workers are going to be psyched. Time to start planning out what kind of snacks you’re going to serve, putting together a Spotify playlist and strategizing about how you’re going to clean the entire house without going crazy. But the best part of all is planning out the bar situation!

… Or is it? Depending on the occasion, the guests and your budget, figuring out how to keep everyone’s glasses filled can be a little bit stressful. And while we’d be psyched to go to a cider-only party, chances are low that every single person you’ve invited will be down with drinking only cider all night.

Not to fear! We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves to help you build the cider-party bar of your dreams!

Offer One Cocktail

Yup, you heard us right. For the guests that prefer a bit of liquor in their cup, set out the ingredients for one special (you can call it “signature” if you want to be fancy) cocktail for the evening. Unless you actually want to play bartender all night, pick one that people can easily make for themselves, or choose a “batch cocktail,” something that you can make in a big pitcher or punch bowl and leave it at that. Of course, if you want it to be a cider cocktail, we’re all about it! A cider mojito or a minty cider mule looks (and tastes) impressive, but each is ready in a jiffy.

Hop to It

Got beer-nerd friends coming to the party? A growler from a local brewery is a nice way to provide a little something (fresh and on the cheap, too!) for them, too. Or — better yet — lure them over to the cider side with your favorite hopped cider. We can’t even tell you how many beer bros’ minds we’ve opened with sips of pleasantly dry and bittersweet hopped ciders. Lost Tropic from Graft Cider, The Lake Hopper from Citizen Cider, Earth from Kurant Cider and American Hopped from Embark Craft Ciderworks are all great ones to offer up.

Wow ‘Em With Weird Ones

For your fellow cider-lovers in the house, go the extra mile to pick up a few unique and offbeat ciders that they might not have tried before. Maybe it’s time to stop into that bottle shop that you’ve heard good things about, or to pay a visit to the local cidery on the outskirts of town for something a little outside the norm. Seasonal flavors, wild ingredients, foraged apples, garden-fresh herbs and flowers are showing up all over the place in the craft cider world, so why not use your party as a chance to sample some new and exciting stuff?

Go Big, Even Just a Little

Just like you’d bust out a bottle of sparkling wine for a toast or a little end-of-night cheers-ing, put a few special large-format bottles of cider on ice to share with your friends. It’s all too easy to hoard “the good stuff,” waiting for some occasion that may never come. That occasion is now! You don’t need to pillage your entire cellar, and if your guests truly won’t appreciate this level of cider, that’s a call for you to make. But, especially if your friends are cider fans or cider-curious, show them how incredibly nuanced and expressive craft ciders can be. Make a thing of it: Pop the cork with a whoop, pour the ciders into champagne flutes or coup glasses, and then savor the moment of something exceptional, experienced with people you love.

Can You Dig It?

But, don’t forget to stock up on some cans of session ciders that aren’t trying too hard to be anything but thirst-quenching and crowd-pleasing. At the beginning of the party, everyone will want to try cocktails, heirloom ciders and maybe a glass of wine or two (if you choose to provide). But, as the night rages on, it’s nice to have some inexpensive, accessible and cold ciders as dance-party fuel. For an extra fun touch, show off your koozie collection by letting guests use them! And, while you’re at it, throw some craft sodas and seltzers in the cooler or fridge for non-drinkers and designated drivers. No one wants to just drink tap water at a party!

As always, please imbibe responsibly and remember to #pickcider at your next celebration!

• Photos: Dish Works

The post How to Build a Cider-Party Bar appeared first on Cider Culture.

I’ve been fascinated by cider glassware for years. And based on the responses when I asked my fellow cider-nerds on Twitter how they serve cider, I’m not the only one. Lots of people have their own favorite type of glass in which to pour cider; other folks like to switch out the glass type depending on the cider they’re pouring. Because there are so many types of cider out there, this approach makes the most sense to me: Just as different kinds of beer, wine and cocktails deserve their own specific vessels, so do ciders.

Here are my thoughts on glassware and ciders:

Specialized for Cider

Original Cider Tasting Mug: One of the most amazing glasses for cider that I’ve ever encountered isn’t a glass at all, it’s a mug: the Original Cider Tasting Mug by 33 Books. What I love about this mug is how it concentrates everything that cider has to offer: aroma, color and body. The wide mouth and tapered neck allow for space to breathe in aromatics. The opaque white walls allow you to see the true color of the cider, and the ceramic exterior helps to keep the cider colder longer.

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Though this mug works for any cider, I use it most when I’m enjoying a UK Cider, like Oliver’s Herefordshire Dry Cider, with aromatics and color that are both rich and nuanced. I like the leathery tannins and ripe apple as brought out by the mug.

Libbey Hard Cider Glass: I’m also fond of the Libbey Hard Cider Glass, or the 545, which was designed to maximize one’s ability to enjoy a sparkling cider by preserving the bubbles longer, and still giving all of those luscious aromas a place to congregate. I find this 16-ounce size to be a bit large, based on the ABV of many quality ciders, but it’s easy to leave a little room at the top. That’s a double win, because it serves the cider at a reasonable volume and gives space so you can really dig into the bowl for aroma notes.

Libbey 545 Cider Glass at center

This is a great glass for a modern cider or perry, particularly one that’s brilliant, so you can enjoy the shine and the smells at the same time. I like the Portland Cider Company Kinda Dry or the Doc’s Draft Hard Apple Cider. Both of these ciders achieve balance by including some sweetness, plenty of bubbles and bright, food-friendly acidity.

Birrateque Cider Glass: Similar to the Libbey glass is the Luigi Bormioli Birrateque Cider Glass, and I find this glass’ stylish details especially riveting to both the eye and the palate. This is another oversized glass, but it works beautifully for a hopped, botanical or fruit-blended, lower ABV cider.

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Don’t forget to leave room for your nose, as the aromatic chamber is key to getting the most out of a good glass. In terms of specific cider recommendations, Rootstock Ciderworks Hopped is a delicious, award-winner to try here, with piney hops that will leap out of the glass.

Incidentally Fabulous

Some glasses are lovely for cider even though they weren’t designed specifically for the beverage. Here’s a quick tour of some of my favorites. I’ve included a cider recommendation for each, a selection that demonstrates the special appeal of that glass’ shape.

Footed Tulip Glass: I can certainly enjoy a footed tulip glass like Libbey’s 3808 Snifter, but I don’t mean to be brand-specific for this particular choice. There are a lot of footed tulip glasses, and they go by several different names, like a “tulip” or a “Belgian beer glass.”

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This is a preferred glass by the United States Association of Cider Makers (USACM) for the Cider Certification Program. If you like ciders fermented with beer or ale yeasts, like Wit’s Up by Citizen Cider, try them in this sort of glass for an extra aroma treat.

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Stemmed White Wine Glass: For a heritage or orchard-based cider with a higher alcohol content, I like a large white wine glass with a stem, like the Riedel Performance Riesling glass. This sort of glass is beautifully flexible, but I think it is best-suited to a dry still cider, like the Farnum Hill Extra Dry Still (if you’re lucky enough to find it). I know some of my cider friends like a stemless glass, but I don’t prefer them. They get smudgy with fingerprints without a stem to hold, and the cider does warm up more quickly.

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A Universal Tasting Glass: Many cider aficionados swear by this type of universal tasting glass, like the Rastal Teku Glass. It’s designed to show off the qualities of the beverage it contains, whatever those qualities might be. It isn’t cider specific, but it’s wonderful to show you the scents, flavors, colors and textures of special beverages. For almost-dry cider, like Colorado Cider Co.’s Block One, it’s ideal. This glass’ bowl is more sharply-angled and less curved than many of the rest on this list, and it is designed to retain aroma through a slow-and-considered tasting. This shape won’t allow aromas to disappear after a sip or two, and that’s very nice for a cider that smells as lovely as this one.

Coupe: Coupes are divisive, I know. They don’t have a standard size and they don’t preserve bubbles for the longest duration. But what they do provide is surface area for a strongly sparkling cider and a gloriously vintage vibe. Don’t sip a coupe seriously and slowly, but do bring them out for a party! Then wow your guests with a naturally sparkling cider. I am very fond of the Marie Coupe, (and its countless variants) for a method Champenoise cider or perry. Snowdrift Cider Co. has a Perry Reserve that fits the bill for a coupe perfectly. It will bubble vigorously and show off gorgeous aromas, due to its secondary in-the-bottle fermentation

My last consideration for serving cider in specialized glassware is to consider ABV and pour size together. These should be as fundamentally linked as any two serving factors can be. Whether you are sharing cider with guests, clients or simply enjoying cider yourself, do consider ABV. Cider’s ABV varies tremendously, which means that our pour size should vary too. A smaller pour of a higher ABV cider might serve best in either a smaller glass or one that leaves generous room in its bowl to sniff and swirl the cider. A lower ABV cider might belong in a larger format glass.

In all of these cases though, the glass serves to frame and highlight the beverage. Choose your glass and consider your cider appreciatively. Look, smell, taste and enjoy it. If I’ve forgotten your favorites, leave a comment to let me know!

• Feature photo and glassware GIF: Dish Works

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