by Kirby Lindsay Laney, posted 11 February 2017
Fremont has beer. We have whiskey. And we have hard cider, although many of us don’t know what it is – or the long, deep history it has in our nation. Fortunately, Fremont not only has one of the first modern cider houses, serving nearly 300 types of hard cider, it also has Colin Schilling, C.E.O. and co-founder of Schilling Cider, who wants everyone to learn about this tremendous ‘new’ beverage.
The Fremont Cider House serves up the cider manufactured by Schilling Hard Cider, in Auburn. With Mark Kornei, Schilling launched the businesses nearly five years ago, and it’s growing very quickly as awareness and appreciation catch on, again.
Now, In Fremont
Schilling makes cider from 100% fruit. “Ours are some of the best made,” Schilling said. Of course, he’s a bit biased. But he’s welcoming everyone to the Fremont Cider House where customers can taste and compare and decide for themselves. The Cider House serves up hard ciders from a hundred or more other labels, alongside Schilling’s own. Schilling encourages small crafters to contact the Cider House about getting new products on one of the 32 rotating taps. “We’re really passionate about cider,” Schilling acknowledged, and at the Fremont Cider House they want to showcase their own creative, innovative recipes, as well as what other cider makers have crafted.
“It’s a lost art,” Schilling acknowledged. Cider started in America with the colonists, who made the beverage from fruit growing wild across their new land. Beer required growing and cultivating hops, while one big apple tree provided more than 250 gallons of hard cider, Schilling observed, “by far, most of the population drank cider.”
Prohibition, in 1920, put an end to cider making by putting an end to the orchards. At that time, few people ate apples, or grew them for eating, and orchards that produced fruit for hard cider were cut or burned down, particularly on the East Coast, to stop bootlegging. The few surviving orchards cultivated eating and baking apples, and cider survived only in the far back country, and only by margins. When Prohibition came to an end, Germany stood ready to ship quantities of beer, and whiskey manufacturing came back nearly as fast.
Two 20-Year-Olds, Making Alcohol
Schilling grew up in Idaho, on 100 acres, where they still made cider from apples. He knew about making hard cider, but still he, and Kornei, went to school, got degrees and jobs working in banking and technology. Yet, the friends found themselves desiring a more creative outlet; something hands-on, where they could follow the entrepreneurial spirit their families had instilled in them.
Schilling Cider, “originally started in my garage in Queen Anne,” he explained. The attempt succeeded, and outgrew the garage. Looking for real manufacturing space, “we had a hard time convincing landlords to rent to us,” Schilling recalled. He doesn’t knock the reluctance of overly-cautious property owners to rent to two 20-year-olds who wanted to make alcohol. In time, “we found a landlord who used to make wine,” and they relocated their operations to Auburn.
Today, Schilling is the largest independently owned cider manufacturer in Washington State, distributed in 20 states, plus Japan and China, with a second Cider House planned for Portland, Oregon. For now, Schilling is happy with that reach. He doesn’t plan to pursue much more, for now, as “it takes a lot of energy to get into a new market,” he observed. The most important priority for him is to conserve his energy, and that of his partners, to keep crafting a consistently high-quality product.
Crafting High-Quality
“It’s a unique flavor,” Schilling said of hard cider, “consumed in a casual fashion.” Gluten-free and made from fruit, cider has a lower calorie count than beer, more comparable to wine and cocktails. Yet, cider is “not as hoity-toity as wine,” Schilling acknowledged.
Schilling Ciders use Washington apples, and pears, and adapt the cider style to the fruit sourced locally. “We make cider with what is available to us,” Schilling explained. This stands in contrast to imported ciders which often focus on the type of apples used. Schilling prefers to work with local suppliers, using the product available, flavoring the cider with ginger, red currants, blueberry, pomegranate, rhubarb, or grapefruit. “A real driver of the ciders is the flavor,” Schilling explained, likening it to beer and the exotic flavors found in craft brews.
Schilling Cider House, in Fremont, offers “the largest collection of draft ciders, to my knowledge,” Schilling observed. In addition to 32 taps, the Fremont Cider House also offers over 250 different ciders from around the world, sold in bottles or cans.
Mystifying Standards, Confusing Regulations
As to alcohol content, “it depends on the cider,” Schilling explained, “it’s as wide as its genre.” Cider makers determine the alcohol content of the product, and can adjust the recipe to suit a content goal. They actually must do this to meet industry rules and regulations that can be confusing, irregular and contrary.
“The taxes on cider are the most convoluted,” Schilling admitted. Some of this came with repeal of Prohibition, as rigid controls were put in place and never adapted. A failure of bureaucracy to keep up with the times, the industry, and the demand of customers, has put the cider makers in a swamp of red tape and mystifying standards.
The F.D.A. regulates food, and hard cider, although they don’t regulate other alcoholic beverages. This places hard cider under arbitrary laws dealing with carbonation and flavorings, package sizing and the types of fruit (pear, apples, or other) they use to make the base cider, in addition to alcohol content. Yet, cider also gets regulated as a wine, with cider manufacturers prohibited from using ingredients like brown sugar, or molasses, which can be a deceptive additive in wine but a potentially healthy sweetener in cider.
Schilling works with other cider manufacturers, and together they’ve created the Northwest Cider Association to advocate for the industry, rather than working under the Washington Wine Commission, as they did originally. The NCA were able, with the help of Representative Frank Chopp and Senator Joe Fain, to get legal use of growlers for cider and, as of January 1st, to reduce the fees cider makers pay for using carbonation.
Yet, the complex regulations and rules haven’t stopped Schilling Ciders from innovating and experimenting with flavors and recipes. “In Washington we grow a lot of neat fruits,” Schilling observed, and he hopes that in the future, with a better understanding by regulators, Schilling will be able to deliver even more combinations to their fans.
Rare & Unique Hard Cider
“We make high quality products,” Schilling said, “Quality comes first.” It’s a policy and a promise Schilling, and everyone at Schilling Hard Cider, takes seriously. So do customers who crowd into the Cider House in Fremont to sample Schilling Cider, and other fruit based beverages from hard cider manufacturers across the U.S. and the world.
Stop by, if you are 21+, and give this historic and creative beverage a try!
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©2017 Kirby Laney. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Reproduction, adaptation or distribution without permission is prohibited.