by Anne Spiselman

When former Goose Island Brewery co-owner and brew master Greg Hall announced this spring that he was leaving the company his dad founded in 1988 and starting Virtue Cider, he not only sent shock waves through the craft beer world, he also raised the coolness factor of hard cider a notch or two. But, he’s not the first in recent years to want to restore this neglected stepsister of wine and beer to its rightful place in the United States. Not since colonial times through the mid-19^th century, when it was the alcoholic beverage of choice for the commoner, has cider enjoyed such a resurgence.

And where better than the Midwest, the stomping grounds of John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) whose seed-grown apples were most suitable for cidermaking? Apple orchards have been mainstays for farmers for many decades, and factors ranging from the tough economy to the farm-to-table movement, have inspired a growing number of farmers to add cider mills, especially in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana. Virtue Cider’s home base is in Southwest Michigan, where Hall owns a house. He plans to build a bottling facility and hopes to have his first draft cider, produced by a local winery, ready for Chicago bars and restaurants in early 2012, with bottled cider available the following year.

At press time, Hall was lining up sources for fruit. No easy task, both because of the quantities needed and because he’s going to start with English-style ciders made from heirloom bittersweet and bitter sharp apples—small, hard, ugly, with tannins that develop complex flavors—rather than the more familiar eating or cooking cultivars. He says the idea stemmed from a visit in 2000 to Maltings Pub in York, England with Goose Island’s brewers. “The pub was having a cider festival with about 40 farmstead ciders from all over England on tap,” he recalls. “I’d never tasted cider like that before.” He anticipates a repertoire of five to ten ciders, though he admits that once he gets going, he won’t want to stop and will undoubtedly experiment with different yeast strains, maceration, barrel aging, and other techniques.

To ease the wait for Virtue’s ciders, we found a handful of artisanal Midwestern ciderists whose products are available in Chicago now. The kinds of apples and methods they use vary widely, resulting in ciders for virtually every taste.

J.K.’s Scrumpy/Almar Orchards

Flushing, Michigan

Fifth-generation apple grower Jim Koan says his ancestors made cider during the Civil War, but he sold most of Almar Orchards’ apples at below cost to large grocery store chains from the time he took over the business 35 years ago until 1998. That’s when he began to make hard cider from his apples, marketing it locally, because there wasn’t much competition and he hoped it would be more sustainable. With the addition of sales/distribution partner Bruce Wright, the demand for J.K.’s Scrumpy Hard Cider increased and it now gobbles up roughly 80% of Almar’s 40,000 annual bushels of 35 kinds of organic eating and cooking apples. The rest go to farmers markets, Community Supported Agriculture programs, U-Pick, and long-time patrons.

Koan makes the amber, slightly sweet cider with a blend of apples—Northern Spy, Granny Smith, Gold Rush, and others—the blend varies depending on the time of year. Picked a bit green, they’re kept in controlled cold storage, but are ripened for a few days at room temperature to maximize flavor. After ripening, they are placed in a modern cider press that washes and brushes them, grinds them to a pomace, presses out the juice, and pipes it into a 300-gallon stainless steel tank to ferment slowly for six months to a year at 45-50° F. For the most part, Koan relies on natural yeasts in the air, though occasionally he inoculates with Champagne yeast. When his “sixth sense” tells him the cider is ready, he racks it off the lees (siphons off the sediments), transfers it to a clean tank, leaving the sediment behind, which reintroduces oxygen and starts a second fermentation that lasts a month or two. Just before bottling (in 22-ounce bottles with beer caps), the cider spends five hours in a carbonation tank. “We originally used natural carbonation,” Koan says, “but the pressure was unpredictable and we had lots of exploding bottles.”

Besides Scrumpy, Koan produces J.K.’s Solstice, which is released in early November and available through the end of the year. It’s spiced with organic cinnamon, vanilla, and maple syrup during the second fermentation, resulting in a slightly higher alcohol content (7 % as opposed to 6 %). He’s also working on a summer cider. The new cider, however, will require more apples than he can grow. This need could spark the formation of a new co-op of organic growers who are currently having trouble finding markets for all their apples. Koan says to look for the co-op in another year or two.

AEppelTreow Winery

Burlington, Wisconsin

Charles and Milissa McGonegal founded AEppelTreow (pronounced: Apple True) Winery a decade ago, partnering with half-century-old Brightonwoods Orchard. Brightonwoods grows nearly 200 cultivars of heirloom apples and pears, and practices integrated pest management and sustainable agriculture. The winery is in a barn on the property and currently turns out 19 ciders, though McGonegal uses the term “cider” loosely to refer to any fermented apple beverage from a .5% to 24% alcohol. Like most ciderists, he makes a traditional draft cider: bright, dryish Barn Swallow (available in kegs or bottles), which is 5.8% alcohol and contains a mix of eating and cooking apples hand-harvested in September. It differs from Koan’s Scrumpy in several ways.

The first fermentation, with wine yeast (dry in packets which slows the process and allows wild organisms to work) in 500-gallon stainless steel tanks, takes two-to-six weeks at about 65° F, and the second fermentation takes about three months. The cider is filtered several times, back sweetened with a bit of apple juice concentrate, and carbonated before bottling. Another product, Songbird cider, offers variations: cranberry-apple, strawberry-raspberry-apple, and spiced, as well as perry (cider made with pears). McGonegal also makes the complex Kinglet Bitter Draft Cider with a blend of English and French heirloom bittersweet and bitter sharp apples, among them Domaine, Frequin Rouge, Coat Jersey, and Dabinette. In addition, he’s experimented with special reserves—both single varietals and blends of heirloom apples—which “rest” for six months instead of three and are bottled with no back sweetening or forced carbonation.

One of McGonegal’s most impressive innovations is his Champagne-method sparkling cider, inspired by French cider and historic Great Lakes ciders and available as Appely Brut (7.5% alcohol) and Appely Doux. The Brut features a less fruity blend of Jonathan, Russet, Golden Delicious, and historic English and French bittersweets. The initial process is similar to that used for the draft ciders, but after the second fermentation the cider is sweetened with sugar to set the carbonation level. It is then filtered and bottled in heavy punted Champagne bottles with a special yeast. It rests and re-ferments for at least four months, then the bottles are taken out of storage and tipped upside down so the yeast settles into the neck (called “riddling”). Next the yeast is disgorged (or expelled), the cider is topped off with more Brut and finished with a Champagne cork and wire safety hood. The Doux gets a sweet dosage of apple wine and apple juice concentrate, plus more Doux, after disgorging. McGonegal says the Doux sells better, but the delightful Brut was the first cider he made in 2001, prompted he quips, by “insanity.”

Vander Mill Winery
Spring Lake, Michigan

Opened in 2006, Vander Mill Winery started making hard cider in 2008, and managing partner Paul Vander Heide, says production has doubled every year since—to a projected 15,000-20,000 gallons in 2011. All the fruit comes from Western Michigan orchards. What sets these ciders apart, is they are unfiltered and fermented with ale yeasts (rather than wine or Champagne): English ale yeast is used for all except seasonal (late spring and summer) Michigan Wit, which is made with Belgian ale yeast. The basic cider blend always includes Jonathan, Golden Delicious, Gala, McIntosh, Rome, and Empire apples. The primary fermentation is two-to-three weeks at 60-70° F. The cider gets a secondary fermentation of one-to-two weeks and then is allowed to rest in the tank for a month. After resting, it is back sweetened with a little sugar and then it goes into kegs—Vander Heide’s preferred way to test out ciders—and bottles.

Created in 2009, aromatic Michigan Wit is dryer than the regular cider. It’s steeped with orange peel and crushed coriander during the second fermentation, which is typical of Belgian ales. It is designed, according to Vander Heide, “to show craft beer drinkers that cider isn’t just sweet fruit juice.” His other spiced ciders, made in small batches for specific bars and restaurants, include Cider Masala with an Indian black chai spice blend and macerated vanilla beans, and Totally Roasted with the mill’s own crushed cinnamon-roasted pecans and vanilla beans. Additional bourbon-barrel-aged experiments include Doubled Over, a cyser (a cider fermented with honey) which is dry-hopped with two kinds of hops right before being kegged which causes the “beer geeks to go ‘ooooh!’” and a still-unnamed brew that’s been fermenting with natural air-born yeasts in a barrel since last fall. It should be ready by the end of October.

Seedling
South Haven, Michigan

Seedling owner Peter Klein, who grows 26 kinds of apples on about 17 acres, sells lots of fresh cider at Green City Market, but he also sends some to a winemaker. There it is fermented with Champagne yeast and finished with a little residual sugar and a stint in a carbonation tank. It is then bottled in 750 ml bottles with beer caps. The hard cider is a blend of tarter, mostly heirloom apples—Golden Russet, Golden Grimes, Mutsu—but Klein also has tried a different batch of two single varietals, specifically Golden Grimes and Golden Russet, each with its own “interesting flavor,” which he expects will be true of his macerated cider-juice mixed back in with apple pulp for 24 hours. It’s been bottled, but at press time he hadn’t yet tasted it.

Lehman’s Orchard
Niles, Michigan

Lehman’s Orchard owner/manager Steve Lecklider has been farming fruit and selling it at farmers markets since 1992, but he didn’t start “dabbling” with wines and ciders until 2007. His specialty is juicy Honeycrisp Hard Apple Cider (7% alcohol; kegs and beer bottles) made with a blend of 75% Honeycrisp apples and 25% other eating and cooking cultivars—Jonathan, Empire, Macoun, Ida Red, McIntosh—from the more than 20 American, French, and British varieties he grows sustainably. Lecklider always starts with cold apples, which are hand sorted and washed, ground to a pomace and pressed. The juice is pumped into stainless steel fermentation tanks, tested for acidity and sweetness, and allowed to ferment to dryness with Champagne yeast at 55° F for two to three weeks. Next, it’s racked off the lees, usually into 275-gallon plastic tanks, where it combines with several smaller batches of the same kind of cider. It is then placed into cold storage for seven or eight months. After a second racking to filter out more sediment, it gets a little sugar for flavor and spends a week in a refrigerated, low-pressure CO2 tank before bottling.

Lecklider’s fruit-flavored apple ciders start with a late-season blend of Winesap, Gold Rush, Johnny Gold, Ambrosia, Pink Lady, and whatever other variety of apple is available. Rather than adding blueberry, raspberry or cherry juice during the second fermentation like many ciderists, Lecklider actually floats mesh bags full of fruit in the cider during the initial fermentation for what he says is a “subtler, more rounded flavor.” Johnnyapple Hard Cider, available in bottles for the first time this fall, is a mix of late season apples without the other fruit.

Where to Find in Chicagoland

Anne Spiselman is one hard-core reporter, especially when the topic involves apples. Well versed in food, wine and their neglected stepsister, cider, she happily took on this assignment and tapped her sources for this article. She has written for most major news publications in Chicago