at 5 o’clock there were 25 people waiting to get in. So we thought, ok, we’d better be ready for tomorrow. If you get buy-in from the locals… the ones who are going to come back… then you’ve got a good foundation. And we’re right beside the grocery store. So a lot of people get their groceries and stop by with their growler bottles for a refill. We’ve made it part of the downtown shopping experience. What’s on tap? What’s going into the growlers? What really differentiates us from industrial cider pro- duction is that we never use concentrated sugar and we sweeten with fresh-pressed juice. We do it a little different- ly from the way most people do it. Most people ferment the juice half-way and then they stop the fermentation, and leave the rest of the sweetness in there. We actually ferment it until it’s completely dry, like a really dry apple wine. And it’s very much in a wine style. So we ferment it with a white wine yeast and we do it for a very long, cold fermentation period. So we’ve outfitted the cellar with these beautiful jacketed tanks, and we do a six-week fermentation. In contrast, most industrial ciders are fer- mented in under 2 weeks. When that fermentation is done, we sweeten it with fresh-pressed juice. That’s what really catches people. When you come to the Annapolis Valley and you want to taste fresh apples, that’s what we capture with the “back-sweetening” with the fresh-pressed juice. On the taps, we’ve got one that’s a little sweeter, called “The Classic” (at 5.6% alc.). One that’s a little drier, called “Crisp and Dry” (7.7% alc.). And then we make one every time we make a batch that’s a little different, and it’s some- thing different every time. We weren’t sure what to call it. So we called it “Something Different!”! Then many of them will add concentrated sugar if they need more sweetness.
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2017
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