Growing Pains Part 2

The last blog I published was in June, called Growing Pains Part 1. In it, I described some of the big projects we’d undertaken in 2021, which led to serious growth and serious growing pains (namely, always being on the verge of running out of cider).

In that blog, I promised to write a second part that was less of a report on what was causing the growing pains and focused on more how businesses can manage big growth phases. Of course, we’re a relatively young and small business, so this blog about big growth is coming less from the place of ‘this is what other businesses should do’ and more from a ‘this is what we’re trying to do’ place.

Here are some of the pitfalls of big growth and how we’re attempting to manage them.

1. Growth costs a lot, and usually it costs a lot before you’ve actually grown revenues.

   In late 2019 (let’s just forget 2020 happened, because we remained at a static state for most of that year), we were flirting with the edge of maxing out our production equipment. That meant that we couldn’t really make much more cider without having to make major investments in our infrastructure and equipment. Over the years, Joseph had come up with work-arounds and tricks to squeeze more cider out of what equipment we had, but if we wanted to make any more cider, we’d need to put hundreds of thousands of dollars toward it. This was because we couldn’t just buy a new tank. If we increased our tank capacity, we’d have to cut a new concrete pad that could handle the extra weight. If we did that, our glycol chiller wouldn’t be able to keep up with new tanks, so we’d have to get a second chiller. But if we did that, we’d have to upgrade the electrical service and the power to the building. And if we did all of those things and could make more cider, our bottleneck would be Pasteurizing it all, so we’d need a better solution there.

   A lot of small businesses find themselves in similar situations. You either have to stop when you’ve maximized your equipment, or you practically have to double everything at once, which costs lots of money and is based on the general ~vibe~ that you’ll be able to grow your sales enough to cover the added expense of this growth. If you are able to find the money to do a major expansion, there are still several possible outcomes. You might find out that it’s going to take longer for sales to pick than you expected and you might run out of cash or even go out of business because your debt burden becomes too much. You could adapt and start offering other services to cover that gap in revenue until sales pick up, like making cider for someone else, or canning cold brew coffee for a local business. In the best situation, your gamble that the demand is out there turns out to be true, and you’re very grateful you had the equipment to handle it.

   We are really fortunate to have a lender we’ve worked with since we opened who believed us when we said we needed money to capture this anticipated interest. Luckily, we were right that the demand was there and that the sales would be there on the other side. PHEW. But these major growth periods present a super risky phase for any company, and it puts of lot of promising companies out of business.

2. Growth means a lot of new people, and potentially, a change of culture. One thing that’s been really important to us since we opened is our company culture. We have a short mission, vision, and values statement as a company, and one of the few values that made the cut was ‘Be nice.’ We want to provide excellent customer service. We want to provide good wages and a good work environment. And we also really want our employees to be nice to each other; to assume the best of each other and give the benefit of the doubt when there are conflicts. To say, “Hey, how are you?” when you see each other instead of, “Did you do this yet?”

   We knew, as we were on the verge of opening the restaurant, that we were about to hire a bunch of new people and that our culture could change pretty quickly if we weren’t on top of it. We had a very intentional meeting with all of our manager-level staff to reiterate what our values were, how we expect managers to behave and handle conflict, and how we want lines of communication to flow. This meeting definitely helped remind everyone of what our expectations were.

   A couple months after we opened the restaurant, we started to sense some tensions rising in our staff, both within small teams and across teams. It happens - any time you double the number of people in your company and ratchet up the stress several notches, the culture is at risk. We had to model ourselves the kind of conflict management we want to see in our managers in a few tough conversations. We had to let some people go who just didn’t fit into the vibe we were trying to cultivate. And we had to publicly acknowledge some of the ways we needed to do better.

   This is the kind of thing that we’ll have to pay close attention to for as long as we’re in business, but a strong culture of people who support each other is worth the effort it takes.

3. Growth means most, if not all, systems have to get redone. We have never been the best at creating replicable systems, but we were managing. Then, we added 8 farmers markets every week, a new full-service restaurant, a huge cider subscription program, and grocery sales onto our tenuous-at-best-processes, and most of our systems buckled under the pressure. We’re doing our best, gritting our teeth and holding on as we get through this extremely hectic and stressful busy season (people love cider in the fall!), but we know that we have a whole lot of shoring up to do during our down season this winter. We’ll (hopefully) have some time to review what worked in 2021 and what didn’t, and to create new systems. So while 2020 was the year of Pandemic Pauses and 2021 was the year of Big Growth, we hope that 2022 will be the year of Replicable Systems and Delivering on 2021 Promises. It’s not so catchy, but it will be pretty important if we want another growth phase in the future (2023??)

Thanks for hanging with us as we’ve grown this year; without customers who are passionate and involved, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to take these big steps.

Behind the Scenes Highlights of our 2020 Cider of the Month Gift Box

Did you hear the news? We just released a gift box that features the 12 unique Ciders of the Month that we released in 2020! We wanted to review 2020 through the lens of this gift box in the blog today. This is from my perspective (Andrea) - if you want a LOT more information on how the ciders were made and how they should be consumed, you need to get one of the boxes to access to some awesome behind-the-scenes content written by Joseph, our Cidermaker. :)

The Background: Though we’d done the CoTM program for four years, we had never canned the releases. We decided in mid-2019 that we wanted to go that route, and had spent the latter half of the year designing the label, picking the flavors, and brainstorming how to make the program even more successful. In fact, we’d already decided to save some back and release a gift box at the end of the year!

This gift box is a great walk down memory lane, as each cider is tied to a specific time in a really wild year. Here are a few behind-the-scenes stories from some of the releases.

February, 2020 - Blueberry Lavender - Every year, Aaron and I and several of staff members go to CiderCON, which falls over the first weekend in February. This year, Devour Indy, a city-wide dining event and the Blueberry Lavender release both fell on February 1st, which happened to be a Saturday, and also happened to be when a lot of our staff would be in Oakland, CA. Now that we’ve done this for four years, I get a bit of a spidey-sense when a release is going to be big, and Blueberry Lavender was going to be BIG. In preparation, I even sent out one of the rare Facebook messages to people who were interested in the release, telling them to NOT come on the 1st if they didn’t have to because we were going to be so crowded. We opened up our warehouse and added tables and a second layer of staff to ease the pressure. I compulsively checked the sales from my phone and texted our tasting room staff for status updates from San Francisco. Apparently it was a well-controlled zoo and everyone loved the cider! It’s one of our most popular releases from 2020.

April 2020 - Mango Lassi - This was our first post-shutdown release. We offered carryout cider only from mid-March through the end of May, and we were running things with limited hours and staff. We had no idea what to expect of a cider release during COVID. Luckily, there was a lot of community support for small businesses in April, and our fans really showed up! It was so fun to have our team here, busily getting orders ready, answering the phone as people pulled for curbside pickup, and running cider outside. It felt great to be busy and gave me a sense that maybe we could make things work during the COVID shutdowns after all. Little did we know we’d be doing these same things for the rest of the year!

May 2020 - Margarita - We always try to do a fun cider that could pair with Mexican food for our May CoTM because of Cinco de Mayo, and this year we thought a Margarita cider would fit the bill. But BOY did we underestimate how popular this cider would be!

A little peak behind the curtain on this one: when we process a finished cider, it goes from a Brite tank, through our canning line (which at the time was a manual canning line that did 8 cans per minute), into a hot water bath for 20 minutes, cooled in a cold water bath, and then for the CoTM brand, run through a manual labeling machine and finally hand-stickered.

For some reason, we thought it’d be fine if we canned Margarita starting at 10am on the morning it was released. We’d have the first batch of cans (8 cases worth) out of the Pasteurizer by 11, and they could be labeled and ready to go by the time we opened at noon. We were still carryout only, so how hard could it be to keep up?

Just what we needed during one of our most stressful releases ever - a huge, expensive, long-awaited piece of equipment to be delivered!

WRONG. As often happens, it took a little longer to get started than we thought, and then things didn’t run as perfectly as we hoped once we got going. Meanwhile, the number of online pre-orders climbed over 100, most of which included at least a 4-pack of Margarita and several that wanted an entire case. We were behind before we even opened. Our meticulously lined-up pre-orders were sitting on the bar, but as customers popped in without a pre-order, we stole cans from the pre-ordered pile to keep the lines down. But then someone who had ordered hours before would come in and we wouldn’t have their order ready! Or in the heat of the moment, we’d forget to mark an order as picked up and we’d re-make an order that wasn’t necessary. It was just a mess the entire day. Bartenders who had been furloughed but came by to pick up some cider were immediately asked to help run orders outside, or label cans as they came out of the Pasteurizer. Customers were calling asking if it was okay that the cider they just picked up was still hot.

The whole time it was happening, I was thrilled that we were making money and getting people a cider they were excited about, but I was STRESSING about the lines outside.

Oh, and did I mention, right as we opened and started to realize how nutty the day was about to be, a freight truck with our new canning line arrived, which pulled three of the production guys from canning into one of the most intricate, time-consuming, and stressful forklift removals we’ve ever had?

Yeah. It was a wild day that I will never forget.

Watermelons coming in fresh from the fields! They were in the cider within 12 hours.

August 2020 - Watermelon - This was a fun one! We try to use local fruits as often as we can, and hoped to do so for our watermelon cider. I found out that Hackman Family Farm was doing their first watermelon harvest on July 27th, 4 days before the cider would be released. I drove down to Seymour, IN in the morning, and arrived when the first truck of watermelons was being brought in on a tractor. They were hot from the sun. I could tell that everyone at the farm was excited to get the watermelon season started, as one of the workers ran a watermelon over to a table and the Hackmans cut it open, chopped it up, and handed it around for everyone to taste. It was SO GOOD. I’ve never had a warm watermelon before, but it was still so refreshing! Truly the best watermelon I’ve ever had.

They loaded up my car with 37 watermelons and I headed back up to Indy. I didn’t realize how heavy my car was, and at the very first stop on the way home, a rogue watermelon came flying into the front and smashed my hand a bit. I drove a lot more carefully after that!

I got back to the cidery around 1, and the production team quickly unloaded my car, started chopping up the watermelons, and running them through the juicer. The fresh watermelon juice was added to the cider that night. From field to cider in 12 hours!! You can really taste the freshness in this cider - I think it may be my favorite one.

December 2020 - Cranberry Rum - We didn’t realize until after we’d announced our that our gift box would be released on Black Friday that it meant we had to have Cranberry Rum finished in enough time to can it, Pasteurize it, sticker it, and put it in the box several days before the official release date. Luckily, our production team was able to switch some things around and make it happen for us, so Cranberry Rum is the first Cider of the Month that was done DAYS EARLY. It made the release in the tasting room really smooth, which was great because this one had a lot of traction on social media. Thank goodness we didn’t have a repeat of Margarita!

I hope you enjoyed some of these stories as much as I enjoyed telling them! Part of what makes supporting a small business worth it are stories like these - you get to know the people that make the cider, the team in the tasting room, and the customers you see every week. We hope that 2021 brings more in-person gatherings and shared stories, but for 2020, this is about the best we can do. We hope you get one of these gift boxes and create some stories of your own too. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

The Flow of Culture

We have a guest blogger today - our fantastic Assistant Cidermaker, Joseph Kilbourn. Take it away, Joseph!

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As a citizen of our fine modern city and the world, I regularly think about what defines culture. Culture is often a mix of blending current trends with unique ideas. Beyond society at large, a good share of personal culture is explained through stories and myths. I accepted the job of Assistant Cidermaker at Ash & Elm because of how the company has blended both sides of culture within its business plan and its story. It's summed up in the slogan, "Rooted in Tradition, Crafted for Today" and it shows in our first two limited edition releases, the Oaked Imperial Headlong and Del Camino tepache.

Microbrewers Festival lineup.

The Oaked Imperial Headlong debuts during the VIP hour at the 21st Annual Indiana Microbrewers Festival as an homage to the craft beer scene. I would've never pursued cider making without the influence and culture of craft beer -- where you can always try something new, and you can even try your own hand at homebrewing with loads of support from a community of artisans. And now craft cider has a chance to take off in Indy because of road paved by microbrewers. With nods to some of our brewing heros, like the intensely Citra-hopped 3 Floyds Zombie Dust and fond memories of enjoying a Tequila Barrel-Aged Fistful of Hops from Sun King, we oak-aged and tripled the Citra hops in our dry-hopped house cider, Headlong.

To stand up to the quantity of hops and smooth vanilla notes of french oak, we bumped up the ABV by blending it with an Ice Cider made with fresh cider from Tuttle Orchards in Greenfield, IN. The Ice Cider style was invented in Quebec and uses cryoconcentration to remove some of the water from the apple juice before fermentation. After our careful blending, we arrived at a subtle yet powerful ABV of 9.2% for the Oaked Imperial Headlong, which we offer as a sincere 'thank you' to everyone who has created a culture of craft in Indiana.

At the other end of the cultural spectrum, we created Del Camino based on a drink of culture that my wife, Jennifer Delgadillo and I had while traveling in Oaxaca, Mexico last year. Jennifer and I had just visited a traditional family textile business in the smaller village of Teotitlan del Valle where they loom fabrics from scratch on their goat farm. As we traveled back to Santa Lucia Del Camino, we saw a vendor selling a drink from a barrel by the side of the road and pulled over to try some. It was a homemade traditional tepache with pineapple rinds floating in it and bees swarming around it. My wife's cousin who lived there said that you know it's good when the bees want it. The vendor garnished the rim of our cups with a chili powder, salt and lime mixture and skimmed a few bees out for us. While we rode in the back seat of the car, we enjoyed the tangy fermented pineapple tepache. It was bursting with the flavors of piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar with notes of molasses), tamarind (a tart and sweet plant used in many Mexican candies that are coated with chilli powder and salt), and some hints of other spices.

Authentic Mexican tepache from Oaxaca.

Aaron and I recreated this experience as closely as any Hoosier could with a wild-fermented pineapple cider sweetened with piloncillo and Mexican spices. It came out just as tangy and sweet as the original (bees not included) with an ABV of 3.2% that makes it refreshing to drink on a hot summer's day. Ours also comes with the option to garnish it with a dash of adobo/cayenne chili powder, dried tamarind, lime and salt for an extra kick. I can't wait to see how Jennifer thinks Del Camino compares to the tepache we had from the street when it debuts as a refreshing treat for the patrons of the Microbrewers Festival.

Things get a little crazy around here sometimes...

So as Ash and Elm endeavors to become ingrained in the cultural landscape of Indianapolis, we will continue to convert our own cultural experiences into drinkable form so you can taste the ancient, growing, and fresh culture that flows through us.

Stay tuned for information about a special release of both the Del Camino and Oaked Imperial Headlong in our tasting room in the coming weeks.

Five Things We've Been Working On

Hey cider fans! Things have gotten really busy for us over the last month, and they will only continue to be so. Now, we have great intentions of a few blogs related to the cider-making process, but before we delve in, we’re going to ease back into blogging with a snappy Top Five list so that we can all get on the same page with each other. Deal?

Here are five things we’ve been working on over the last two months:

5. Permits – Truly, ‘permits’ will probably be in every top five list we ever write about our progress. Since the last blog a month and a half ago, we’ve applied for and been granted a sign permit, an encroachment license, a construction permit, and some sort of elusive ‘electrical upgrade certificate’. As of today, we actually HAVE all of these permits!

4. Production Space – Our production space is 90% finished! Right now, most of what we’re waiting on is simple and not totally necessary for the production of cider. For example, we still need to put in a couple of sinks, wire the walk-in coolers, etc. But, our tanks are set, the coolers are built, the floor has been epoxied (twice!), so we’re almost ready to show the space off to visitors.

Look at those pretty fermentation tanks and unfinished floor drain!

3. Tasting Room Décor – Finally, the fun part of a build-out! We’ve been scouring websites and taking weekend trips to Ikea to get light fixtures, plan out the bar, get the right draft system, and build tables. Our bar and tables are being built by Matthew Osborn (check out his website – he’s awesome!), and seeing them built has been a blast.

Parsons table for the tasting room.

2. Paint Parties – We have some good friends and family in town who have graciously showed up several times to help us paint our space. It’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint will do for a dingy old warehouse, not to mention that it’s really nice to share our business with the people who care about us.

Wes is good with a roller and a ladder.

1. Test Batches – While we’ve been not-so-patiently waiting for our electrical upgrades that will allow us to use all of our fancy equipment, we’ve been doing some recipe tweaking. Aaron will have a full blog about yeast trails in the next few weeks to outline the process.

Aaron's ideal evening - doing science-y things mixed with alcohol-y things.

0. Merchandise – Woohoo, we have some merchandise! Tasting room glassware, shirts, coasters, and stickers are here and ready for the sharing. Thanks to Amy McAdams for her awesome designs.

Heyyyy...A&E Shirt Selfie!

Alright! We're caught up with each other! Stay tuned for some blogs about the actual cider-making process and news about our grand opening!

Everything is Happening!

It’s about time for an update on our progress, wouldn’t you say? I’ve been meaning to write a blog about what we’re working on for a while now, but so much happens in a day that that update is old news after just a few hours. But you know what, the people deserve to know! So, here’s an update on a few key areas:

1.       Construction – We are majorly, deeply in the thick of construction on our production facility right now. Concrete floors are being excavated, re-poured, grinded (ground?), and epoxied. Internal walls are getting put up and wired so we can have an office, kitchen, and bathrooms. Electrical work is being patched in so that we can run great big machines and tiny little laptops. And, we’re digging a moat around our building, too, just for kicks (just kidding, that's electrical work too).

You're looking at what will be two bathrooms, a lab, a commercial kitchen, and a walk-in cooler.

Still to come on the construction side of things is the tasting room next door, which will get moving as soon as the production space is finished.

2.       Production – All of our permits have been granted, and we’re starting our first test batches of cider in the space. We started with a small batch (330 gallons) of our flagship Semi-Sweet cider to make sure everything runs smoothly before we size up.  As of this morning, things are fermenting away and creating a nice apple-y smell underneath the drywall dust and dirt smell.

Aaron pitching the yeast in our test batch. 

We also have some nice heirloom apple juice bubbling away that we’ll age and release sometime in the fall, and some juice from our friends at Tuttle Orchards in Greenfield as part of our local orchard partner lineup. Altogether we have about 415 gallons of cider in process right now.

3.       Marketing – In addition to the brass-tacks of getting our production going and construction managed, we’re trying to spread the word that we’re coming for Indy in a matter of months. We’ve had a bit of media buzz already, which we really appreciate! The Indianapolis Star featured us as a business to watch in 2016, and Indianapolis Monthly had a nice little article about us too! We love that the word is getting out there and would love YOU, our FANS to continue that good work. Retweet us on Twitter, come to events we’re pouring at (Indy Pies and Pints and Corks and Forks are your next opportunities!), like us on Facebook, and gather up your cider-drinking pals and let them know that we’re on our way!

4.       Grand Opening – So…we’ve keyed in on a date for our GRAND OPENING! Of course, we can’t share it with you yet because it’s just a little bit too touch-and-go with construction at the moment, but know that we’re planning a killer party, at least four cider flavors, giveaways, and tasty food. Go ahead and black out your calendar for May, because it’s probably going to be sometime in that month, and if we’re all lucky, you’ll be able to drink some of our cider on tap at your favorite downtown bars and restaurants well before that.

Stay tuned! Like I mentioned, as soon as I post this, something will change, but we're circling the end of our 'startup' phase and moving toward our 'operational' phase really soon. Cheers!

We Have a Space!

If you’re connected with us on Facebook or Twitter, you may have heard snippets of these updates already, but we wanted to give you a more thorough status update on Ash & Elm. So much of our progress occurs behind the scenes and isn’t necessarily that interesting (submitting multiple tax documents, anyone?), but today, we have some big progress updates to share.

We have a location! I (Andrea) quit my job a year ago because I thought we’d find a location within three months and then get going, but finding our location turned out to be one of the most frustrating parts of our fledgling business to date. We looked many places, talked to many realtors, community development organizations, architects, and business owners, but finally found a spot that is better than we imagined. It’s on the Near-Eastside of Indianapolis, which is where we live and has always been our ideal scenario (Aaron’s commute will someday be a 15 minute walk, as opposed to his 1 hour commute that he’s been doing for TEN YEARS now). We have more space than we need for now, and a beautiful historic building to have a stellar tasting room in.  Lastly, we get to be a part of revitalizing an up-and-coming neighborhood, which is something we care a lot about.

Future tasting room greatness to happen here.

We got the attention of the Indianapolis Business Journal in their Property Lines Roundup, which was exciting, and we had a successful rezoning hearing, getting approval to sell alcohol, food, and have a parking lot. Those in the know about city planning know this was a big hurdle, and kudos go to our landlord and his real estate agent for leading the rezoning charge successfully.

A Word on Alcohol Laws As I’m sure most of you know, starting a business includes a lot of paperwork. especially a business that sells alcohol. We’ve mentioned before that we needed to submit our Federal Tobacco and Trade Bureau (TTB) application, which takes about 3.5 months to process. We got that taken care of exactly two and a half months ago, so we’re hopeful we’ll be approved by the TTB sometime in November.

After that, it’s time to file our State application to the Alcohol and Trade Commission (ATC), which will take about three weeks to be approved. That means, in our ideal scenario, we could be licensed to sell our product by the first of the year. Wow! If you know either of us, you’ll know that – of course – we already have the ATC permit application completed and are just waiting to send it in the second we hear that our TTB permit is approved. We should be able to hit the ground running as soon as we get ourselves legal.

So…when are you opening?  GREAT QUESTION! I wish we knew the answer. If everything goes smoothly, March. If it doesn’t, which is more likely, sometime before June. The best way to stay up to date on our progress is to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or drive by our location at 2112 E. Washington St and poke your head in the door. :)

We appreciate all of the interest and excitement we’ve been getting from you all, and are excited to share a cider together soon.

Working for the Weekend: Our Visit to Blake's Hard Cider

Since we started this business, Aaron and I have been itching to spend some time in a large-scale cidery to get our hands dirty and have a bit more exposure to the day-to-day operations. We’ve visited countless cideries around the States, but finally got our chance to work a couple weeks ago when we visited Blake’s Hard Cider in Armada, Michigan.

Blake’s Hard Cider is a really great place – a family-owned orchard for decades, one of the sons, Andrew, decided to add hard cider their already bustling business. Not surprisingly, the cider part of the company has grown by leaps and bounds in the first couple of years, and now they’re neck and neck for the largest cidery in Michigan. We reached out to them to see if they might be interested in some weekend day-laborers, and they responded with great interest and warmth. Our trip was planned!

The night before we left, we decided that, instead of getting a hotel nearby, we’d camp out at a local park. It was beautiful, relatively serene, and the price was right ($25/night). We’d definitely do that again – for a weekend spent working, it was nice to also feel like we were on vacation for a few hours each evening.

On Saturday morning, we met up with Rob, their production manager, to learn about the processes involved in running a large-scale cidery. We saw their tanks, canning line, coolers, concrete pads, loading docks, and their expansion plans. After the tour and lots of questions, Rob put us to work labeling and filling bottles.

Intense focus while labeling bottles of cider.

Aaron taking care of business.

We did a pretty good job, and cut down the amount of work Rob had to do on a Saturday. They treated us to lunch in their tasting room and let us try a sampling of their house and seasonal ciders (tasting notes: YUM). Spending time in the tasting room was great – it gave us a lot of ideas about the design and function of our soon-to-be tasting room.

Some good ciders in the tasting room at Blake's Hard Cider.

We spent Sunday morning talking with Robert, the cidermaker, who cut his teeth in Napa Valley and New Zealand working in wineries. He and Aaron hit it off, and spoke about all things fermentation/yeast/clarity while I chatted with Andrew about the business side of things: staffing, HR compliance, pricing, and distribution.

We headed back to Indy on Sunday afternoon, tired, buzzing with new ideas, and grateful for the generosity of our new friends at Blake’s. If you are in Michigan, seek out some of their cider – it’s great!

Brew-Ha-Ha Festival

Last month, we had the opportunity to share our cider at the 20th annual Brew-Ha-Ha Festival. Tied with the Indiana Microbrewer’s Festival for the longest-running beer festival in the state, Brew-Ha-Ha is a fundraiser put on every year to support the programming at the Phoenix Theater. We were really thankful that they let us be a part of their event before we were even open!

One of the benefits of having a name that starts with an 'A'.

We had done several events prior to Brew-Ha-Ha, including another fundraiser, an opening gala, and a few weddings, but this was by far the largest (and most knowledgeable!) audience our cider had ever had. It was important to us that we came off well especially since so many other great breweries would be mere steps away.

After spending some time thinking about what ciders would be the best to bring to a beer festival, we settled on bringing six!

On the day of the festival, we loaded up our compact car to the gills with cider, signage, our jockey box, a CO2 tank, and a couple coolers and drove the mile to the festival.

Overall, we had a great time and were able to talk with so many people who were excited to hear about a new cidery coming to Indianapolis. Some of the highlights included convincing die-hard beer fans to try a craft cider for the first time and hearing them say, “Hey, this is actually pretty good.” On the other range of the spectrum, it was also great to find out just how many people have been looking for a way to get more cider and who loved ours. We had a woman from France who said she’d been looking for a good cider to drink in the States for years and had finally found it in our Dry cider, and we had other people who came back multiple times in an effort to get a taste of the pumpkin cider, which we didn’t tap until halfway through the day. Another great part of the day was sharing cider with several bar and restaurant managers who expressed interest in carrying our ciders at their location in the future.

Thanks to the handful of a friends and family who helped us serve that day, and thanks to the Phoenix Theater for a great event. We hope to be a part of it next year and for many years moving forward.