Nov 3, 2015

Hard cider: Unknowns abound but there’s potential for profit

The hard cider industry has sustained 75 percent annual growth for more than five years in a row. That pace might slow a little bit in the next few years, but hard cider will still be the top growth segment in the alcoholic beverage sector “by a huge margin,” according to Mike Beck, president of the U.S. Association of Cider Makers.

The major beer corporations have taken notice of this growth, and are investing heavily in the cider sector, said Ian Merwin, an emeritus horticulture professor at Cornell University.

It’s an exciting time for cider makers – and growers, too. If you’re an apple grower who’s wondering how to take advantage of this potentially profitable trend, Fruit Growers News asked a few questions on your behalf. The answers (edited and sometimes paraphrased) come from people who’ve been studying hard cider for a long time, some of them for decades, but despite their experience they all gave the same caveat: Nothing is certain and there’s much, much more to learn.

Let’s say I’m a grower, and I’m thinking about growing apples for hard cider. Which varieties should I choose?

Mike Beck (grower and cider maker, St. Johns, Michigan): English and French bittersweets are highly desired by cider makers, but as a grower I would feel horrible to say to another grower, “Hey, put these in the ground,” because there’s very little information about how they do here in America. There’s maybe 200-300 producing acres of English/French bittersweets in the whole United States. Growers could end up with half a crop, destroyed by fire blight, poor pollination – there’s a host of issues we just don’t know about. A lot of those English and French varieties are lightning rods for fire blight; many tend to be biennial; some are tip bearers. That being said, one English variety that grows well in several orchards is Dabinett. That one shows the most promise. It’s consistent, a big cropper, the trees are easily managed – though it is susceptible to fire blight.

The only thing after bittersweets are American heirlooms like Winesap, Golden Russet, Baldwin and Grimes Golden. At least there’s data for those varieties. They’ve been grown in America.

David Doud (grower, Wabash, Indiana): I’ve grown several English/European cider varieties, usually just a tree or two of each, and nearly all have been discarded. Generally, these varieties are very fire blight-sensitive and ripen in late August/early September in my climate – during hot weather that is not conducive to quality development. Ripening is uneven and the varieties drop. Where these traditional varieties hale from, the dropping is a feature, not a flaw. Historically, cider orchards were mixed use, with livestock grazing under tall trees. When the season came, stock was excluded and apples gathered from the ground. That is seldom the situation now, but the varieties still carry this baggage, which make them difficult to integrate into modern orchard systems. Yield and efficiencies are low, and I doubt Retain or Harvista treatments are desirable for cider apples.

These varieties are suited to “standard” modern culture: GoldRush, Golden Russet, Ashmead’s Kernel, Newtown Pippin, Hudson’s Golden Gem.

Steve Wood (grower and cider maker, Lebanon, New Hampshire): Much depends on your growing conditions, but on the bittersweet side I would plant Dabinett, Yarlington Mill, Chisel Jersey, Ellis Bitter, Harry Masters Jersey; on the sharps side Spitzenburg, Ashmead’s Kernel, Wickson. Ida Red is a good backup. We’ve used Elstar, but those are getting hard to find. As a general, broad fruit, Golden Russet is good.

Which rootstock?

Nikki Rothwell (Michigan State University Extension educator): The debate is out in the industry. People think that a semi-dwarf, self-standing tree is best just because of lower input costs. However, if you want to get into the cider game faster, high-density systems would give you an edge that might secure you a long-term contract. The grower on the semi-dwarf may not get there in time. However, to invest $20,000 in a system for varieties we are not 100 percent sure of is a big gamble.

Ian Merwin (grower and cider maker, Trumansburg, New York): Whatever rootstock a grower is used to growing and comfortable with. I recommend tall spindle or vertical axe plantings, so G.11, G.41 or G.935 would be good among the Geneva rootstocks, or Bud.9 and M.9 of the older rootstocks. Many of the cider trees are quite vigorous, so best to avoid vigorous stocks like MM.111.

Wood: This is wicked contentious. We are still growing cider fruit on big trees, 111s and 106s, but not because we’re Luddites. I’m telling people to grow on 111. You can imagine the look I get from colleagues on that. It’s a hard shift to make. We grow with the intention of picking fruit off the ground. We’re not worried about E. coli, because the apples will be fermented. We’re looking for maximum ripeness. The most valuable apples on our farm look like hell because they’ve been on the ground.

Real (commercial) growers are planting cider fruit now. They’re getting horticultural attention. I’m happy about that. It’s good for people to play with this stuff. But if they’re growing cider varieties like they’re Honeycrisp, on tiny rootstocks, they’ll find the actual quality for cider making is lower than it otherwise would be. We want a well-anchored, deep-rooted tree that can handle stress. It’s another purpose. If people plan to pick the apples off the tree like they normally would they’ll end up with under-ripe fruit, from a cider maker’s point of view.

Beck: That’s more about grower preference. A lot of those English and French apples don’t like manipulation. They don’t want to be trained or pruned. They’re finicky. If you put them on a planting system that’s all about manipulation (like modern high-density systems), it could be problematic. They’ve never done it in Europe. They’re all on big trees there. Some U.S. growers are trying, but nobody knows. It’s a big question mark.

Where can I find them?

Rothwell: Cummins Nursery, Wafler Nursery, Stark Bro’s.

Merwin: Wafler Nursery, Cummins Nursery, Adams County Nursery. But it will take several years to get them, because there is a backlog demand and everything is on a custom-propagation basis. There is a shortage of budwood, too.

Doud: Trees are not available and will have to be custom-propagated. Propagation for 2017 is done, so if someone decides it’s a good idea, it will be 2018 before trees go in the ground. Popular dwarfing rootstocks are scarce. Budwood is scarce for some selections.

Wood: Wafler Nursery, Adams County Nursery. Rootstock can be found at any nursery; varieties are still a little hard to find. We give away budwood every year. We don’t sell it, but we don’t cut it. Budwood is getting propagated more broadly.

Beck: Unless you know a guy that has a few, you won’t find them. That leaves us to make cider with what is actually being grown. You can get bittersweet concentrate from England, but I don’t think that makes good cider. Some nice ciders can be made from Winesap, Jonathan and some heirloom types. Cortland and McIntosh make nice ciders, but none of those apples have tannins, which is what bittersweets have. To get a more complex cider, you need those varieties with tannins.

Describe the growing practices I should use.

Rothwell: We are thinking that a low-input system is going to work for these apples. They don’t have to be aesthetically perfect because they are going into juice. However, we need to keep scab at bay, keep codling moth out and keep plum curculio from dropping apples early in the season. We are planting trees at the pathology farm on campus to help growers develop a low-spray disease program for cider fruit. We are also evaluating the different varieties for susceptibility to scab and fire blight.

Wood: We don’t mechanically harvest, but if we did it would be with tree shakers, picker uppers, windrowers – something designed to pick the fruit off the ground. That’s what the English and French do. I like a big, deep-rooted tree; keep the leader at the head of the laterals; very tall hedgerows. Give the trees every advantage in their early years. As far as pest management, if it’s purely cosmetic you don’t have to spray for it. Fire blight, scab, curculio, codling moth, maggot – you still have to control those. Anything that gets inside the apple or defoliates the tree, you don’t want.

Who will buy the apples?

Rothwell: Currently, I think there is a huge demand for cider fruit, but we still don’t know the perfect variety. However, there are risk takers out there that see the cider market continuing to grow and are taking a chance on a few varieties.

Wood: Cider makers, at the moment. We could sell our crop more than once right now, but I’m not sure that will continue. More people are planting stuff; a greater volume of bittersweets will be out there. I’m curious to see how things will develop, if there will be quality differences between apples and if people will be happy with the juice. But at the moment, people are so frantic to get bittersweets.

Beck: For a grower to find a buyer is not too hard. Each state has its own liquor license commission with a list of licensed facilities. They also can check with the U.S. Association of Cider Makers or a regional group.

Doud: I’ve had a handful of phone conversations with modern cider makers looking for apples/juice. Most have little/no experience with specific varieties and usually little/no experience growing apples. They are fermenting what’s available and gaining experience. The cider makers I’ve talked to want juices to have some distinctive characteristic that is out at the end of the curve in regards to acidity, astringency, bitterness, brix and flavor – characteristics strong enough to telegraph through fermentation, with the cider maker blending juices to achieve a desired result.

Is there anything else I should consider?

Wood: The shift in thinking and practice you have to make to grow good cider fruit is substantial. It violates almost everything you think you know. The value in cider fruit comes from a different place than, say, a Pink Lady.

Cider varieties vary a lot. Some are grower-friendly, some are a son of a bitch. A lot of them can be extremely biennial. One thing I recommend is getting a handful of dormant scions and grafting them onto existing rootstock. You can learn a lot more for a lot less money from grafting than you can from planting young trees.

We’re still muddling around in a dark closet here. We don’t pretend we know what we’re doing.

Beck: If a guy thinks he can become a cider maker and blaze the world on fire, that’s ludicrous. For a young maker, breaking into the wholesale market is extremely difficult. The margins become increasingly lower. You have to navigate the three-tier system. The maker is tier one; tier two is the distributor (you’re forced to go through those guys); the third tier is the retail market (restaurants, bars, stores). Navigating that system is no small task. On the other hand, making a tasting room and building a brand can be profitable and fun, but the buying is limited if you’re selling out of one location.

The biggest thing for a grower is finding a buyer; the next big challenge is finding the right price for your fruit. Another big concern is this: Is that buyer going to be there in 10 or 20 years? You know Gerber will be there, Burnette, companies like that. But will the cider maker be there?

Hard cider is not a fad, because lot of cideries started as farm-based businesses – over 300 cideries in the country are farm-based. But it’s still a new thing.

Doud: Right now, there are people lined up to buy cider apples at fresh-market prices – but as a grower do you want to capitalize cider apple blocks on speculation that the market will be there in five to seven years, as trees come into production? There is no alternative market for many of these varieties. Does a grower use the latest high-density/high-dollar strategies? Questions for a person with more business savvy than me.

– Matt Milkovich