What's the Hold Up?

 Things have been a little quiet around here lately. Every time we talk to friends and family who are interested in our business, they ask us what we’re doing all the time. It’s a good question. Here’s what we’re working on, and what we need to get done before we can open.

Priority Number 1 – Location

We’ve been looking for a location pretty much non-stop since November. It’s hard to find a space that’s perfect. We've fallen in love with locations only to find out they won't work over and over again. Often, we feel like we’re on a never-ending episode of HGTV's “House Hunters”.

<Insert narrator’s voice>

“Aaron and Andrea have been looking for a location for their new cidery. Location #1 is on an accessible road with downtown views, plenty of space, and falls well below their budget, but can they handle a building that’s needs so much work? Location #2 offers room to expand in a convenient location in an up-and-coming neighborhood. But the lack of a private entrance and signage opportunities could cost them. Location #3 has everything they’re looking for – rustic character, functional space, and a busy street, but it’s a short-sale. Are they willing to risk their business future by letting the other locations go in their pursuit of this risky venture? Stay tuned to find out!”

<Fade to black>

It would be funnier if it weren’t so accurate.

So anyway, the location is a big issue. We think we’re close to having our location figured out and a lease signed, but until the paperwork has been finalized, we can’t move forward in any of the other areas.

Priority Number 2 – Permitting

Once we have a lease signed, we’ll be allowed to apply for our Federal Tobacco and Trade Bureau (TTB) permit. The application is comprehensive, and once it’s been submitted, it takes roughly 110 days (that’s 3.5 months!) to get our permit granted. Only after we have the TTB permit can we file for our state alcohol permit, and then after we’ve received that, we can apply for our city permit. All in all, the permitting process will take about 6 months if things go smoothly, and remember, we can’t start that process until the lease is signed.

Priority Number 3 – Build Out

Another item dependent on the lease. Once we have a lease and have our permit applications going through the Federal rigmarole, it’ll be time to start building out the space. Some of it will be un-sexy build-out, like getting the HVAC systems up and running, the plumbing and electrical requirements covered, etc. After that, the fun stuff will start and the cidery will really start to take shape. It’s hard to estimate how long this will take because we don’t have access to the building yet to see just what all needs to get done, but it will take at least several months to go from beginning construction to being able to open our doors to customers.

In the Meantime…

So a lot of the above issues are outside of our control. But, we’re still making gobs of cider and would love to share it with anyone who is interested! If you have an event coming up or if you’d like to throw a cider party at your house or business, send us an email and we can talk! So far we’ve provided cider to a nonprofit fundraiser, a wedding, and a medical office grand opening gala.

We also continue to make connections and contacts with people in the industry in Indianapolis so that we’ll be able to hit the ground running when we open.

So if you’re anxiously awaiting updates on our progress, please know that we’re awaiting those updates right along there with you, and probably more anxiously. :) 

Thanks for hanging in there with us and we’ll see you soon!

The Many Styles of Cider

Think of some of your favorite beverages: Wine. Beer. Juice. Soda.

One thing that all of these beverages have in common is that they are general categories. You can drill down into each of them and come up with wildly different styles: Merlot versus Chardonnay; a hoppy IPA versus a rich Stout. Coke versus Ginger Ale. Strawberry Kiwi or fresh-squeezed orange juice. I could go on and on, but I trust you get the point.

Cider is no different. It represents a general category – a beverage made with fermented apple juice, in the most traditional sense. Right now, as we experience the rebirth of the cider tradition in the States, we’ve just scratched the surface of the cider styles that exist. Generally speaking, the majority of cider consumption in the States comes from one style of cider – the very sweet, carbonated, controlled-yeast type. The exciting thing about the growing craft cider movement is that there are just as many styles of cider as there are of wine and beer, and we have much to discover! Here’s a little tutorial on some of the more common cider styles found around the world:

Scrumpy (English Style) – English-style ciders are usually fermented to quite dry and have a bit of funk to them (sometimes called ‘farmy’ because it can smell like hay or horses.) They tend to be carbonated, and if you’ve done much traveling in England, this is the cider you would have tried.

French Style – French ciders also have some farmy notes, but they’re more champagne-like than Scrumpy ciders, meaning they have a lot of tiny bubbles. The French don’t force-carbonate their ciders, and instead bottle condition them to achieve the champagne-like quality and a natural sweetness. These ciders are traditionally served with savory buckwheat crepes, often for breakfast!

Spanish Style – These ciders are super-tart and acidic. If you’ve never tried one, you may think it’s a bit off, but give it a chance! They’re like sour beers – a little funky, a little tart, and an acquired taste.

New England Style – New England style ciders are usually fermented to dryness and have a higher alcohol content than most other ciders because of the amount of sugar in the apples used.

Wild (Spontaneous) – Ciders that are ‘wild’ or ‘spontaneous’ mean that no yeast is added to the juice. Instead, the juice is pressed and left to ferment based on whatever wild yeast strains happen to be in the juice. These ciders take longer to ferment and can be a bit unpredictable – either the yeast offers a complex flavor that really works, or it doesn’t, in which case…cider vinegar!

Ice Cider – Similar to ice wines, ice ciders are made from freezing the juice and removing the water, leaving a highly concentrated, very sweet dessert cider. They’re labor intensive, and very much worth the effort!

These ciders are all made with few additional ingredients outside of apples, yeast, and sometimes a bit extra sugar. The variety comes from the way the blend of apples used from the start and the way the cider is fermented, stored, and aged. Variety also comes from the vintage of the apples as well, just like wine - some years are great growing years, others aren't, and the soil and ecological conditions where apples and grapes are grown affect the flavor of the cider or wine from year to year.

Ash & Elm cider lineup for a recent event. 

Then, there’s a whole new world of cider styles coming from the craft beer movement. These styles are nearly limitless, but a few categories are starting to settle into their own:

Hopped Ciders – Like hoppy beers? Try a dry-hopped cider if you get a chance! The aroma is hoppy and there’s a bit of that bitter aftertaste, but the sweetness of the cider mixed with the hops gives a totally different flavor than a standard IPA.

Barrel Aged Ciders – Cider aged in bourbon barrels have that same vanilla and alcohol-y finish that a bourbon barrel aged beer has. A variety of different barrels can be used with ciders: white wine, bourbon, rum, and more!

Fruity and Herbal Ciders – Ever had a jalapeno or bell pepper cider? They exist and they’re good! Ginger Cider, Blackberry Cider, Lemongrass and Basil Cider, Pumpkin Cider, the list can go on and on.

We’re excited to bring some of these styles of cider to Indy when we open. We have our standard semi-sweet and dry ciders that will be available all the time, but we’ll also have a rotating selection of seasonal and limited release ciders. Sure to be in the mix are hopped ciders, herbal ciders, barrel-aged ciders, and plenty more. We’d love to know what cider styles sound good to you, so feel free to drop us a line or leave a comment!

What We Can't Do - Graphic Design

So far, the start-up phase of a business has really boiled down to making a lot of decisions.  Those decision can be summed up pretty simply: Do it ourselves and how? versus Have someone else do it and whom?  

Aaron and I both consider ourselves capable, and love saving money where we can, so we tend to try to do a lot ourselves. But from the beginning, there have been a few key areas that we’ve wanted to get right the first time. For example: forming an LLC? Lawyers can do that faster and better than we can. On the flip side, consultants offered to do market research or help us come up with a budget. Nah, we can do that. Research and math are our strong suits.

One thing we can’t do is graphic design. We have a lot of opinions about graphic design, and had a strong vision about the look and feel that we wanted, all of which drove us toward finding a designer who could bring it to life. Enter Amy McAdams, an AWESOME freelance graphic designer in Indy who had created logos and artwork for multiple local businesses. We knew we had our design partner.

When we changed our name to Ash & Elm (see previous blog about this), we were at a loss of what direction to go. Amy came up with a solid idea to have typeface only, and we loved the idea of laying it over a cross-section of a tree. Amy was in, and took it a step further, suggesting we find an actual piece of a tree and make a print instead of trying to create everything through technology.

This was our typeface logo which we used as a jumping off point. I called a tree-service company that had tree cuttings at their disposal and picked up a few cross-sections (also known as tree cookies!). Though I’d requested a piece of an Ash or Elm tree, they only had Cottonwood available (sad face).

Next, I went to a friends’ wood shop and sanded these bad boys down. I had a near death experience when my scarf got eaten by the sander while I was still wearing it, so this may have been something I should’ve had someone else do. I also took a blowtorch to the sanded cookie to make the rings really stand out (Google suggested this).

Then, Amy came over, we had coffee, rolled ink onto the cleaned cookies, and made multiple ink pressings. It took a while to find the ideal method (paper on top of inked cookie, rub with fingers over and over again, use just the right amount of ink, and carefully remove).

We took our best pressing and then Amy worked her magic by digitally scanning it in, correcting a few issues, and overlaying our typeface.

We love the finished product, and are so glad we called upon an expert in this case! Hopefully this logo and brand will become synonymous with great, hand-crafted, ciders put out by a company that is active and engaged in their community. 

Where Will We Get Our Apples?

A lot of people ask us where we’ll get our apples from. When we started working on this project a year ago, our plan was to work with local orchards to source apples for our cider. We met with an old friend whose family owns an apple orchard, and she dropped some wisdom on us that was a bit surprising: Indiana sells all the apples they grow, and in fact, we have to import apples from Washington state and China just to supply everyone with enough apples to eat! In other words, while we have several orchards sprinkled throughout the state, we don’t come close to having enough extras laying around to fuel a large cider company.

Another issue: the great majority of apples grown in Indiana are considered dessert apples - the kind you can pick up and eat or use to make an apple pie. Historically, those aren’t the kinds of apples that are used in traditional cider-making. Now, lots of cideries in the States use dessert apples to make their cider. We plan to, too, for a lot of our products. But having traditional cider apples available can bring a complexity to cider that is hard to get with dessert apples alone. Can’t we have both?

Luckily, our friendly neighbor to the north, Michigan, is an apple powerhouse. They are usually tied for second place in the nation with New York (behind Washington) in apple production in the States, and they also have the infrastructure to package, store, and ship their apples. They have a seemingly endless supply of dessert apples, but they also have a lot of folks growing traditional cider apples as well plenty of apples that are good for cider-making as well as eating, like Northern Spy, Jonagold and Gold Rush.

So, what’s our plan? For the majority of our ciders, we’ll ship juice down from Michigan. We can get different blends to fit with the style of cider we’re making and get a good mix of sweet, tart, and bitter to make a flavorful cider with a lot of complexity.

We’ll also work with those Indiana orchards as much as possible. The busy season for apple orchards usually runs from Labor Day weekend through Thanksgiving, but come December 1st, people aren’t thinking about apples anymore. Unfortunately, plenty of apples are still on trees in December, so orchards end up pressing the juice to stock their shelves throughout the winter or having an excess of apples that they can’t sell. This is where we hope to come in and help them extend their growing season by buying up those late winter apples so that we can showcase the orchards around the state and make a truly local cider. We can’t wait to share it with you!

Deciding to Start a Cidery

A lot of people ask us why we decided to start a business focused on cider. It’s off the beaten path just enough to assume there’s a reason other than, ‘We like it.’ To be honest, it’s true. Here’s how we came to the idea of starting Indianapolis’ first dedicated hard-cider company.

Like a lot of other cider-makers around the States, Aaron found his way to cider via the craft beer world. He went to grad school in the mid-2000s near San Francisco. While the craft beer boom hadn’t really hit in Indianapolis at that time, it was big business on the West Coast, and Aaron jumped in full-force, seeking out different beers and starting to homebrew. He moved back to Indianapolis in 2006 with a couple years of brewing under his belt and a desire to open a brewery. But, like a lot of other people, he had student loans and bills to worry about, so it wasn’t an option. A few years later, when craft beer started to pick up steam in Indy, he again had fantasies of opening a brewery, but wasn’t able to convince himself to take the risk.

Around that time,  Aaron and I got together. Aaron realized that, while he loved craft beer, his interest in exploring other beverages had grown. I was game for an adventure, and we brainstormed what skills we each had, what would be a good business idea, and what we were interested in. A few years before, we'd traveled to Ireland and had a cider unlike anything we'd ever had in the States, opening our eyes to the possibilities of different styles. We’d already been making wine, and added cider to the mix too. As we brainstormed about their business ideas in the spring of 2014, cider quickly rose to the top. The growth in the industry over the last couple years around the US was incredible, the skills from brewing beer and making wine transferred well to making cider, and, important to both of us, apple trees grow well in Indiana, meaning not only could we make a truly local product, we could support farmers in our community through the business. And of course, the fact that cider is delicious and we still had so much more to learn about it got us excited about the challenge ahead.

What followed were months of research: drinking as many ciders from around the world we could get their hands on and making batch after batch to perfect our recipes. We took trip to cider hotspots like Portland, Seattle, and Michigan. We visited local orchards to talk with farmers about their perspectives. We conducted market research. Each step along the way, all signs pointed to this being the right business idea at the right time.

It’s been a whirlwind trip already, and we haven’t even opened yet. We hope you’ll join us on the next phase of our journey!

Why Ash & Elm?

As we meet people and tell them about our business, we always get asked why we chose Ash & Elm Cider as our name. It’s a great question, with a bit of a long answer.

Originally, we formed the LLC for the company with a different name. We registered a website, got our email addresses set up, and had our graphic designer start working on our logo and branding guide. Everything was running smoothly.

One morning, I got a text from a friend. It was a picture of a sign of a new brewery opening near her neighborhood that had the exact. same. name. We thought our name was pretty unique, so we were extremely surprised and disappointed. After going back and forth with our lawyers, we came to the sad conclusion that we’d have to change our name and come up with a new one.

For a few weeks, we were hung up on the idea that our new name had to be similar enough to the old one that we’d at least be able to keep our logo and branding, because it was awesome and we’d grown very fond of it. We shot ideas back and forth around the same theme, sent contenders to the lawyers who were helping us verify the ability of the names, and got shot down over and over again. Womp womp – it was going to be time to say goodbye to our beautiful logo and branding.

We rallied, though, and started thinking about names that weren't related to our first one. We listed things that are important to us and our family, and immediately knew that something relating to trees, nature, and the outdoors would be our answer. Aaron’s dad is a botanist in Indiana and could identify nearly any plant or tree that he stumbles across within the whole state. My parents live near to a state park where they spend hours every week, hiking and bird watching. Because of this, both of us are pretty passionate about the outdoors. Ash and elm trees are both species native to Indiana, but because of recent pests, they’re endangered. We love the idea of having a business that isn’t necessarily centered around conservation efforts, but uses its platform to support the businesses and nonprofits that are engaged in that work.

It works in another way, too: cider is a natural product that wouldn’t be possible to make if the earth isn’t cared for– apples grow on trees, in orchards, and they grow well in Indiana and Michigan. We’d love to see them continue to grow, and for more apple trees to be planted.

The link between these ideas and our name makes a lot of sense to us, and we’re excited to see how our love for the outdoors can translate into our business. Cheers!