This past month was an absolute blur. Snowstorms, ice storms, flights, bus rides, and cider shares until well after a reasonable bedtime made January an amazing month, but there was barely enough time to sleep in between the work that needed to be done and the events that had to be attended. In past years, January has usually been a bit of a mixed bag. Most years, the month is spent recovering from the holidays the previous two months, with the beginning of the spring semester quietly starting up and CiderCon on the horizon in February.
CiderCon was two weeks early this year, which meant that work had to be done for incoming students that much earlier. In addition, the incubator doubled in size between the fall semester and the spring semester, going from 25 students in August to over 60 registered for the class this spring. I wasn’t expecting such as large jump in enrollment between the semesters — I did too good a job recruiting new students to the program in the fall, and those students did too good a job recruiting their friends. It’s also been surprising how engaged so many of the new students are this semester, as I’ve already had my semester meeting with nearly a dozen students. Normally, most students wait until the fifth or sixth week to schedule a meeting with me. I’m really impressed with the group this semester — we’ll see how they do when assignments come due and the rubber starts to meet the road.
I tried to keep incubator work to a minimum while I was in the Pacific Northwest for CiderCon a couple of weeks ago. Eleven days of cider-related activity and travel, including catching up with people I hadn’t seen since the convention in Chicago the previous February, required my full attention. I wanted to make the most of my trip to that part of the country, as I’d never been to either Oregon or Washington, and I wasn’t going to let the opportunity to explore the area slip through my fingers the way it had just prior to the pandemic, when CiderCon was in Oakland, California. I’m still kicking myself for not spending an extra day or two out there so that I could have seen more of the Bay Area — at the end of the trip, I only had a few hours to see San Francisco, and I was only able to check a small handful of things off the to-do list while I was there.
The flight out there was uneventful, and it was raining when I made the long trek to pick up my rental car for the three-day adventure out into the Cascades. I had booked a hotel in Hood River where there were several different cider makers, but I also wanted to drive a bit to a couple other cider makers and soak in some scenery. However, the weather back in the Midwest should have been a sign that I was packing my schedule too tightly. I managed to escape Iowa between the two massive snowstorms that dumped a combined two feet of snow on the area — just dumb luck booking a flight on the one clear day that week. A blizzard hit Hood River and the Columbia River Gorge on the second day I was out there. I had time on Friday to visit three cider makers — Double Mountain, Working Hands Fermentory, and the Crush Cider Cafe — but was stuck in the hotel all day on Saturday. Luckily, before the snow started flying, I found a grocery store and stocked up on a few things, knowing that I’d probably be stuck until it was time to leave on Sunday morning.
Hood River is a pretty little town perched above the Columbia River, and the snow added to the charm. I was actually surprised that there were so many cideries and breweries in such a small area. There is really nothing but forest and parkland between Portland and Hood River, something I didn’t truly appreciate until the drive back on Sunday in the daylight. If the weather hadn’t been so uncooperative, there were a couple of spots along Interstate 84 that would have been great places to park the car and wander around. However, I had to get the car back to the rental place on Sunday, and I didn’t want to get stuck if they decided to close the road (which they did later in the week when the ice storm rolled through — more on that later.) Before checking into the (first) Portland hotel, I did stop at the east end of town at McMenamin’s Edgefield Hotel, had lunch in the bar, and then went to the cellar where their wine and cider tasting room had just opened for the day. McMenamin’s Edgefield is a resort with a golf course and other amenities that are open in warmer weather and would be a fun place to spend a couple of nights sometime in the future.
Once I got the rental car dropped off at the airport and checked into the hotel, I basically went straight to bed. It was going to be a long couple of days on Monday and Tuesday as I traveled with a group of 20 or so other CiderCon attendees to Seattle by bus and made a handful of stops along the way — originally, the plan was to visit two cideries on Monday, check into the hotel in Seattle, have a dinner with cider pairings at a gourmet restaurant a couple of blocks from the hotel, and then visit three cider makers on Tuesday before returning to Portland on Tuesday evening. However, they were now forecasting a pretty severe ice storm Tuesday afternoon as some parts of Portland were recovering from downed trees and power outages from the last storm (which hit Hood River as a blizzard, dumping 8-12 inches of snow out there.) We only ended up having to cut Greenwood Cider out of the tour. We were lucky — some of the other tours were actually canceled before they even left on Tuesday. We were already on the road and had arrived in Seattle before the weather forecasts started coming in, so it was too late to cancel our tour.
Our two Monday stops were Locust Cider in Gig Harbor, just south of Seattle, and the Yonder Cider taproom in Seattle proper. The folks at Locust Cider were in the middle of canning one of their ciders, so we got to see their facility in full action. Locust was the smallest operation we saw during the tour since our trip to Greenwood Cider was canceled, even though Locust distributes to multiple taprooms between Washington, Colorado (which I’ve been to), and Texas. If I lived in the area, I’d probably spend a decent amount of time and money in the Gig Harbor tap room.
We all got back on the bus and traveled into the city of Seattle to check out the Yonder Taproom, which they share with a brewery. To circumvent a licensing requirement so that a cidery and brewery share a space, they actually have a small still that they use to produce a small amount of distilled product each year — enough to meet the minimum requirement set by the state of Washington. Yonder has come a long way since their humble beginnings in a garage, with over a dozen different ciders on tap and more available to go in the front room of the facility. I wish we’d had time to sample more cider, but we had to get checked into the hotel and ready for dinner.
Dinner was hosted at A Stir, located in the former Capitol Cider location. We had a three-course meal, each with an accompanying cider paired with the food. My favorite course was the steak on top of this creamy, cheesy polenta, but my favorite cider was the pommeau that was paired with the desert. I do love ice ciders and pommeaus, but they can be quite dangerous in large quantities. The dinner was a great opportunity to chat with several of the people on the tour with me — mostly cider makers, but there was one cider enthusiast who joined us at the dinner and had not been on the first part of the tour. There was an option to join the tour when it reached Seattle, and I’m glad at least one person took them up on that offer.
While it would have been fun to explore Seattle that evening, I was pretty tired, so I went back to the hotel and settled in for the night. The room was really nice, and I knew the next day was going to go by pretty quickly. The next morning, I went across the street and grabbed a cup of coffee before we all piled back onto the bus and left for our first stop of Tuesday morning, Seattle Cider Company. Their tap room was enormous and there was a lot of cider and other merchandise available to purchase. They were discontinuing the beer brand from which the cider company sprouted and they were trying to get rid of everything with that logo, so I picked up a coffee mug for $3.50 before we left. We also got a tour of their production facility, which just seemed to go on forever in a maze of rooms — they gradually took over different parts of the building over time, which turned the facility into a bit of a labyrinth. Three of the four ciders that we tasted were ciders I’d had previously — Seattle Cider Company enters a lot of their stuff in GLINTCAP, so I’m familiar with much of their product line just from stewarding that event in the past.
We all had to quickly get back on the bus in order to get over to our final stop, Schilling Cider. I decided to skip the production facility tour, so that I could enjoy my lunch and the handful of ciders they had available for us to try. I was in the middle of eating a soft-shelled taco when I received a call from the hotel I was supposed to check into when we arrived back in Portland informing me that they’d had a water pipe break and the hotel was closed until further notice. I had to panic book another room for the duration of my stay in the Pacific Northwest, so I opted for a full-service hotel with a restaurant, bar, and coffee shop if I was going to be stuck inside for any length of time, even if it cost a few dollars more. The hotel was about five blocks from the convention center along the light rail line — a perfect spot if not for the weather.
My favorite cider at Schilling was actually their non-alcoholic option, a cherry-flavored cider. With cherry ciders, you usually have one of two outcomes: either it’s amazing or it tastes like cough medicine. This beverage fell in the former category and is something I wouldn’t mind drinking in the summer after working in the yard or in the garage all day. While I enjoyed a second and third taste of the cherry cider, I took a few glances through the windows at the vast production floor located below the tap room. The Schilling canning line is huge, and I’m sure the production space that I didn’t tour was equally as massive.
We had to leave in a flash to get back to Portland before the freezing rain moved in off the coast. I’m still pretty thankful that we got as much of our tour in as we did — a big thanks to the organizers for making everything run so well. Once we got back to Portland, hauling all of my debris five blocks to the hotel was probably my least favorite part of the trip. A couple of blocks hadn’t been shoveled, even though the snow had moved through days before. The other sidewalks were clear but untreated, so they were slick in spots even before the ice moved in. Do they not have the same liability laws in Oregon as the rest of the country? Why wouldn’t you attempt to clear snow off of a sidewalk? Do they not believe in shovels?
Ice accumulated all night into Wednesday morning and the complete lack of activity outside the hotel that morning was surreal. No effort was made to pre-treat anything other than the main roads, completely baffling all of us from the Midwest visiting for the convention. If we shut down our major cities due to some weather, we would be shut down eight months a year. Even the light rail system — something that should work no matter the weather — was shut down for the majority of the time we were there for CiderCon. I highly doubt anyone used the transit passes that we were all given at registration, as the first time I saw anyone on any of the buses or trains was Friday. The only people I saw between the hotel and the convention center were fellow attendees, a couple of tweakers slow-motion falling to the ground, and a bum burning a mattress for warmth behind the Denny’s a block from the convention center.
Once I got checked in at the convention center, I slid back to the hotel room and spent most of the day trying to triage emails and answer student questions — remember, the spring semester started while I was in Oregon for CiderCon, so some students were trying to add the incubator class at the very last minute. The cider share was still scheduled that evening, so I made sure to leave plenty of time to slide back over to the Hyatt, right across the street from the convention center, for that event. They broke the share into two rooms — Pacific Northwest cider makers in one room, and everyone else in the other. I didn’t really have a chance to spend much time in the Pacific Northwest room, as I kept getting pulled toward other cider makers as I ran into one friend after another. I ended up pocketing a couple of unopened ciders on the way out of the share as it ended and enjoyed one of them in the lobby. All of a sudden, the cider caught up with me and I made a quick exit before things turned south that evening.
The next morning, I took it easy and made it over to the convention center before lunch was served. It was still pretty icy on Thursday, as only as couple of blocks had finally been treated with a bit of salt. The unshoveled blocks were still unshoveled. There were still almost no people or cars out and about, and the trains were still not running. Lunch was a hangover-killing Indian buffet, and that was followed by my first of two tasting sessions, this one focusing on perries from around the world. Later that evening, I took part in this year’s New York Cider Association cider share, complete with mini-donuts and charcuterie boards with meat flowers. I managed to try every single cider available, along with a pommeau created by Angry Orchard. Several of us from that event went back over to the Hyatt for a cider exchange, similar to the one I attended last year at a random location in Chicago. I made a bunch of new friends that evening and ended up shutting the place down around one in the morning.
Friday was the final day of the convention, and another tasting was on the agenda, focusing on cider makers pushing boundaries around the world. My favorite cider from that session was a Spanish desert cider that combined ice cider — a process that concentrates the alcohol through freezing the juice or apples and removing the frozen water — and fire cider — a process that concentrates the alcohol by boiling off the water. It was dark-colored and incredibly tasty. Unfortunately, all of the bottles of that drink had been opened, so I couldn’t run off with one of them. I hadn’t heard of the fire cider process until this year, but if it’s responsible for drinks like this, maybe it should be utilized more often! After this tasting, the convention was really starting to wind down, so I went back to my hotel room for a couple of hours and triaged a few more emails before the convention after-parties kicked off.
I wanted to hit a couple of events that evening — first, there was a Canadian cider party in one of the top floor rooms at the Hyatt. Most, if not all of the Canadian cider makers who were attending CiderCon were in attendance, and I got a chance to talk with them. Many of them had actually been on the Seattle tour on Monday and Tuesday, so it was nice to see many of them again before they left the United States. There were a lot of the usual suspects who had been at other special events throughout the week there as well. The folks organizing the Canadian event are trying to get some similar to CiderCon off the ground up north, and it sounds like it might be an online event this year with in-person events scheduled for future years. I wouldn’t mind adding that event to my list of cider events each year!
After the Canadian party wrapped up, several of us hopped in an Uber and went over to Shilling Cider’s Portland tap room for a Michigan Cider Association tap takeover. It was nice to bump into some familiar faces from past CiderCon and GLINTCAP events during the tap takeover. GLINTCAP is under new management this year, and I’ve already signed up to steward the event again this year. I pushed back the start of the Incubator Summer Track by a week so that I can actually attend GLINTCAP for the first time since 2021. It sounds like the week is reset back to the way it was in 2019, with a cider festival in downtown Grand Rapids the Saturday after the competition, so I’m looking forward to heading up there in mid-May.
After spending some time at Schilling, several of us then went over to a place called The Place, a cider bar in the southeast part of Portland. There were several ciders available to purchase at the bar, and a huge selection of beverages in refrigerated cases in the back half of the establishment. I made some great connections while I was there and had a couple of fantastic drinks. These types of after-parties are the best part of the convention — most of the actual convention doesn’t apply to what I’m doing, as the sessions mostly focus on specific cider making topics or marketing of ciders to the general public. The social events are why I make these far-flung trips across the country.
Around midnight, I ducked out and went back to my hotel. Saturday was my final day in Portland, and the afternoon was booked with the Cider Summit Artisans event. This event was smaller than the Chicago event I attend every other year when CiderCon is there and didn’t rely on the ticket system the way the Chicago event does. Many of the cider makers had been at CiderCon events all week, and I’d already tried several of the ciders that were available. However, there were still a great number of beverages I hadn’t sampled yet during the week along with three different pommeaus and a number of foods from local vendors. They even had a couple of book signings during the event. This is an event that would be worth attending in the future, and I hope that they consider bringing this type of event to the Midwest in the future.
I have now found my cider limit: 11 days away from home, 10 of which involved enjoying beverages with others. This trip was an absolute marathon, but it was one of the best trips I’ve ever taken. By the end of the Artisans event, I was ready to pack it in and head home. I went back to the hotel for the last time, packed everything the night before, and got to the airport with plenty of time on Sunday. The flights back weren’t bad with a layover in Denver instead of Chicago. I got back to the airport at a reasonable time and to my surprise, my truck wasn’t completely buried in snow. I had expected the entire thing to be covered in a foot of snow, but only the front half had a couple of feet of snow surrounding it. They had plowed the parking lot pretty close to my back tires, so a quick reversal out of the spot got me unstuck and on my way home. I got to bed around midnight and went into the office first thing the next morning. Students had scheduled meetings starting the moment I returned, so I jumped from the deep end of the pool right into the ocean.
CiderCon will be in Chicago next February, as it always is on odd-numbered years. CiderCon 2026 will be out on the east coast again, but the question remains: what part of the east coast? In previous years, CiderCon has been to Maryland (the year before I started going) and Virginia two years ago. Will 2026 take us to New York or New England? There’s a lot of great cider in both places, so either one will be fine. Also, New York and New England don’t shut down because of a little bit of weather, so we won’t have to contend with that.
I ended up with over 60 students in the incubator for the spring semester — I really can’t believe how many people decided to give entrepreneurship a shot this semester. Many of the new students are in the idea stage, with no products ready to sell just yet. However, a few of them are ready to start selling, and our team is ready to help them get to market. We’ll see how they fare over the next three months, and we’ll see how many of them stick around for the Incubator Summer Track starting in mid-May. I fully expect 30-40 applications for the summer program, and I should have that stuff ready to go by Spring Break.
Between all of the ideation events, conference and competition travel, and pulling everything together for the summer, this semester is going to fly past. My tickets are booked for SXSW in March — I’ll be attending from March 8th to 11th along with a couple of students. A handful of my students have been entering pitch competitions around the country, and in the next couple of weeks, I’ll find out if they made the cut to travel to those locations. I may not be in the office too much in March and April if they all succeed in making the finals. Also, somewhere in there, I’m planning three different Startup Weekend events over the course of this year plus a “follow-up weekend” in September.
I really hope you had a great start to your year and that you’re starting to execute on all of the plans you made for 2024. Spring is right around the corner and before you know it, summer vacation will be here. Hang in there!
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