Story of the Cidery

It all started one day in 2012 when my roommate and I decided since I was an orchardist and he, a beer fanatic, that we would make cider and become the very best cider makers on the block. We went down to the grocery store and bought a few gallons of apple juice and a carboy and away we went. One month later after letting our glorious cider ferment in our closet we were ready to taste the fruits of our labor! It was about just as delicious as you could imagine, if you can imagine bland yeasty tasting boozy water. Thus, our journey into cider began! Our first attempt was much like everybody else in the industry. From there we learned and grew in our abilities. As orchardists and fans of wine, we began searching into the traditions and specifically apple varieties that went into good ciders. As it turns out the apples play a very important role in making good cider. Who would have suspected? Dessert apples can only give you very limited flavors to play with. We ended up finding a local cidery that was using these special cider specific apples and making amazing ciders and began to talk with them. They told us of there favorite varieties that they had in their orchard. At that time my father was planning on planting a new orchard in Quincy. We decided that if we were going to have anything to do with cider then we wanted to do it right. That next spring we planted 50 acres of cider specific apples.