Crisp, flavorful apples are one of the best parts of Fall. Picked from orchards, baked into pies and cakes, or sliced with cheese, we’ll take it all. But one of our favorite ways to enjoy apples is fermented and with a kick. Colorado local ciders range from crisp to sweet, made with pure apples or blended with other fruit, and there are plenty of craft options from skilled cideries.

We’ve listed autumn-appropriate options from three of Boulder County’s most well known cideries and from one cidery that requires a road trip. Then we finished it off with our favorite apple-based winter warmer, that’s also made in the state.

St. Vrain Cidery
350 Terry St. #130, Longmont

St. Vrain Cidery has been operating out of a taproom and production facility just off of an Alley in Terry Street since 2016. Enjoy their ciders in their taproom, or find it at select restaurants or in liquor stores.

Ginger cider – Dry but with a kick of ginger, it’s tart, refreshing and citrusy. Perfect for those fall days that still feel like summer.
Gingerbread – Showing off the sweeter side of ginger, this is the cider to turn to when the weather cools. With cinnamon and dark sugars, it’s less refreshing, more apple pie.

The Old Mine
500 Briggs Street, Erie
4035 NE County Line Rd, Erie

With two taprooms both based in Erie, The Old Mine is a locals favorite. The main location includes a full menu and is packed with families and parents during farmer’s markets, parades and other community events. A second, adults-only location called The Factory, opened a few blocks away next to it’s production facility for imbibers who want a quieter night out.

Handlebar Cider – The Old Mine’s flagship cider is on the sweeter side, but still offers crisp, refreshing flavor. It also works well blended with other cider flavors, with dark beer, with kombucha or in cocktails.
Dry Hopped Vanilla Colorado Sunshine – A lighter, more refreshing version of the Cidery’s original.
Vanilla Bourbon – This is the cider version of a winter warmer. It’s the Old Mine’s Handlebar cider, aged in Bourbon Barrels with Vanilla.

Acreage by Stem Ciders
1380 Horizon Ave., Lafayette

Cider makers don’t get any larger than Stem Ciders. With a full menu and an uplifted outdoor town that boasts a bonfire, playground and elevated views of Lafayette, it’s a place families and singles can relax with friends. If you can’t get to their taproom and production facility, their cider is packaged and widely available

Off Dry – This is stem’s pure take on hard cider. No fruit additions, just fresh pressed apple juice that’s fermented. It will please drinkers who like their cider on the sweeter side but not cloying.
LaChene– Stem has pressed juice from four carefully selected varietals including the Jonathan heirloom apple. It’s fermented dry and aged in charred red wine barrels for 2 years. It’s dry, complex and interesting.
Pommeau – Apple-based dessert wine, originally made in France from fermented apple juice and apple brandy. If you’re trying it for the first time, expect tastes of baked apple, winter spice and brown sugar and a warm, alcohol-laden finish.

Big B’s
39126 Highway 133, Hotchkiss

Though many front range drinkers know Big Bs for it’s juice, including ciders, it’s production facility and taproom site is a satisfying Fall road trip destination for hard cider lovers. The taproom is accompanied by a farm store, restaurant with a full menu, a performance stage for musical acts, u-pick orchards, and camping sites located right in the orchard.

Harvest Cider – A semi-sweet cider made with fresh pressed, organic apples. It’s a traditionally classic approach to hard cider.
Grizzly Brand – Bourbon Barrel Aged Hard cider is unfiltered and bottle conditioned, with a combination of bourbon, apple, wood and vanilla.

Spirit Hound Distillers
4196 Ute Highway, Lyons 

Boulder County is lucky enough to have proximity to this award winning distiller, located just outside of downtown Lyons. Though the company just expanded into Denver, we have a preference for the original location with has been newly renovated with expanded seating.

Bourbon and warm, Big Bs non alcoholic cider – Bourbon and fruit are a winning combination perfect for the cooler fall season. We’ve found that warming high-quality, rich apple cider and adding a shot of smooth bourbon is simple and ideal. Spirit Hound’s Bourbon was made in a copper still and aged on American oak It goes perfectly with a nonalcoholic cider, no need to add anything else or use a hard cider.It’s dessert in a glass.

The post Apples for Adults | In the Cups appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Relief from the hot days here often comes in a glass. Enter – the cider slushie. While the other “slushie” was a gas station item meant just for children, the adults are getting in on the fun.

It’s best to experience the cider slushie in a cidery, surrounded by experts in the field and with socially distanced cider fans. Cideries are meeting the demand and marketing their new drink to the masses. Patios grew to accommodate singles and families, and restaurants entice us with a lush slice of cider heaven. If you don’t have time to sit, just get one to go. 

Local restaurant staffers agree this trend is on target. “The slushies are extremely popular here, especially with how hot it has been. Who doesn’t love a good frozen drink?” Sara Timmer from Stem Ciders asks. 

“If you take a look at our Instagram, you can see how excited our guests get for a new slushie. Aside from releasing a new cider, slushie posts usually get the most traction. It helps that they are quite vibrant and beautiful as well.”

Indeed, the colors pop on social media as much as the flavor does in real life. Stem Ciders offers a Watermelon Lime Basil Slushie, with more in the pipeline.

In Longmont, another cidery has entered the slushie dialogue. The more the better.

With stone fruit season in full swing, the St. Vrain Cidery in historic downtown Longmont has blended a Colorado Peach Slushie with their dry ginger cider. It’s a perfect tonic for warm evenings on the porch or on St. Vrain Cidery’s own patio. They also sell the Berry Cherry Freeze, which is a berry blend mixed with a dry chokeberry cider. 

“They have definitely been a fun item to have on the taproom and perfect for the ninety plus degree days,” Jordan Lind with St. Vrain Cidery says. He reminds guests that the slushies are seasonal and are prepared for dine-in customers right now.

With dozens of cider blends on tap at local cideries, the possibilities are endless. There are options for all cider fans, such as stone fruit, herbs, spices, floral, and citrus flavors. They are evocative notes of childhood, fun, and comfort. Maybe it’s the tonic we didn’t know we needed. 

We think the adults are gonna be alright, thanks to the power of cider and ice.  

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Centering on fun, sophisticated beverages brimming with local ingredients and history, The Old Mine is Erie’s one-stop pub for community, mustaches, and apple cider made sexy. Sporting a rustic-sounding name, The Old Mine Cidery & Brewpub boasts a beautiful space inside the old mercantile building in Erie’s historic downtown, surprisingly bright for an establishment whose name holds the words both “old” and “mine,” or really anything that calls itself a pub.

“The reason it’s called The Old Mine [ties] in with Erie’s history as a coal mining town,” explained Tom Marbois—sales, marketing, and distribution guy for the cidery. He stated that the building it occupies is “typical” of the area’s history. “There’s bricks that were laid back in the 1800’s right there,” he said about the exposed-style walls in the pub. “And in fact, here is the original building. Behind you, that’s the old mine.”

One member of the owners/founders duo, Mike Yeager, had an uncle whose interest in collecting mining paraphernalia infused the cidery with its influence. He was also, apparently, really into handlebar mustaches, which Tom explained is now something of an Old Mine “mascot.”

In fact, their flagship beverage, the Handlebar Hard Cider, is so named for this reason. Tom described the beverage as “a kind of adult apple juice.” But at 6.8 percent ABV, you might not want to drink it alongside breakfast the way you used to (or maybe you do. We don’t judge). Tom listed off three things that distinguish the Handlebar: the first is that they choose the very best apples out of over 700 varieties. The second is that, unlike a lot of other cider brewers, they aren’t using grape or wine yeast, because those tend to have a drying effect on the apples. Instead, they use beer yeast, which “gives it a different mouth feel.” Lastly, their cider is unfiltered, leaving actual, delicious “apple particles” in the beverage, or what Tom has dubbed “apple goodness.”

The Handlebar also provides a base for their other ciders, like the Hopped Up Handlebar, which is affectionately referred to as “the love child of an IPA and a dry fruit wine.” As its name suggests, Hopped Up is brewed with “hops, big hops,” a tricky element since the flavor can quickly become overpowering, especially in ciders, which typically don’t carry the same level of bitterness as beer. But according to Tom, the locally-sourced organic citra hops “balance out that sweetness. They dry it out and it yields a more complex flavor profile.”

As they geared up to celebrate The Old Mine’s fourth anniversary this past Saturday, March 10, Tom discussed origins. “It’s a Cinderella story,” he explained. Mike was a homebrewer of beer but “the beer market was saturated, and he wanted to create something for himself to enjoy—and his friends, his community. He turned his attention to cider.” Then, at the 2013 Erie Brewfest event, Mike crossed paths with John Jacquat, who had dreams of starting a cidery and community space in town. John, who handles finances at the The Old Mine, said their main inspiration was a desire for “people to come into Erie, versus leaving Erie to go to other places.” Tom shared that this is still a big goal for the colorful cidery: “We’re a little bit irreverent, but we’re just looking to help people have a good time—help people enjoy something that’s very high quality.”

In addition to giving folks a place to enjoy adult beverages locally, and helping to boost Erie’s commercial life, Tom explained that they’ve wanted to really grow an industry that’s still surprisingly untapped: “I like to think that what we’re trying to do for cider is what was done for the craft beer industry twenty years ago.”

Looking to the future beyond their fourth anniversary bash, the cidery is looking to expand their distribution: “Our hope is to get really big,” Tom told us. They want to take their four seasonal ciders, which have included the likes of Apple Pie and Salted Mango, up to ten, and they’re making moves to up their production capacity from 500 to 5,000 gallons a month. All this in the hopes that their ciders will soon occupy taps all the way “up and down the front range.” From Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, The Old Mine wants to “really show what apples can do, what apples can be.” From where we stand, what they can do is dress up a beloved childhood experience to make it gorgeous, elegant, and satisfyingly boozy.

The post The Old Mine: Because This Cider House Rules appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Taps at The Old Mine, cidery and brewpub.

Cheers to a Taste of Summer

The hotter it gets, the better light beers taste. The taps that poured winter’s porter and stout now pour kolsches and wits. Session beers, or lawnmower beers if you prefer, are often lighter in alcohol by volume (I’m of the camp that any beer above 4.5% ABV isn’t a session beer). With breweries battling to stay fresh with hop-heavy IPAs and bottle-aged sours, it’s always refreshing to find a beer that blows you away with its subtlety. That was my reaction to the Summer Teath IPA by The Post Brewing Co. Its herbal aroma and faint bitterness come from dwarf hops and green tea from Boulder’s Peko Sip House. It pairs with foods well as a palette cleanser, and at 4% you’re welcome to sit on the back patio and enjoy a second or third. It’s not even my favorite beer by Post, but it was the one that reset my taste buds and made me realize it was summer.

Dale’s Ales Pales

The beer world is grumbling about the growth of the brewer known for putting craft in cans. Oskar Blues Brewery has taken hits for outside funding, an expansion into Austin, Texas and its super-size taproom pouring out-of-state beers. Texas brewers cried foul when the Longmont-based brewer didn’t weigh into the fight to reform the state’s arcane distribution laws (which tilt things in favor of behemoth beer brands). However, Oskar Blues did join the Texas Craft Brewers Guild, and may find themselves involved whether they want to be or not.

Closer to home, longtime partners in craft are upset with the direction Oskar Blues is taking, specifically a new Denver music venue with 43 beers on tap. Chris Black, the founder of Denver’s Falling Rock Tap House partner, took to Facebook to write what is essentially a break-up letter to Oskar Blues. “I was your first account outside of your immediate area of Lyons. I’ve been a loyal supporter & account ever since. I feel like such a sucker.” The main gripe is the competition of a (well-funded) brewer acting as a brewpub on their turf. “There are over 4,300 breweries in the US, 300+ in Colorado alone, I have LOTS of choices, & I choose to spend my money on beers brewed by brewers that don’t actively & directly compete with me.”

It’s easy to dismiss the craft brewers’ complaints as schadenfreude, but this issue over the distribution of out-of-state beers and conglomerate craft businesses is mirrors the fight to repeal Colorado’s 3.2% restrictions. If Your Choice Colorado gathers enough signatures by the end of July, voters will decide whether to repeal the restrictions in November. The state’s craft brewing industry has flourished under the Prohibition-era regulations, and is strongly against the change.

Cider Expansion and Cellaring 

The Old Mine is digging deep. The tap room located in downtown Erie will soon have a sibling at the airport. Handlebar Factory is the name of the new taproom and production facility, with enough tanks to product up to 2,500 gallons of cider. Once permits allow them to finish building out the airport hangar, kegs of Handlebar Cider will start to roll out. Owner Mike Yeager has plans on canning their signature cider as well. By the end of summer, we should be able to sip on cider at the airport and stare at the Rocky Mountains.

Old Mine’s list of cellared bottles has grown, too, as currently stands at 78. However, if you pay close attention, as some loyal customers do, you may notice a surprise pop up. Yeager says they sometimes reach into the secret stash during anniversary parties or special tastings. His strategy has been small-scale, going after beers that will be worth the wait. “It is basically trying to get and hold onto the best of the best stuff we can get our hands on,” says owner Mike Yeager. There are plenty of beers off the bottle list, with some Belgians slated to appear after 10 years of aging. “We just want to sit back and get some age on it.”

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