It's easy to love hard cider made throughout the Triangle

The first time Deniz Chen made hard cider was an accident five years ago, when a bottle of opened apple juice started fermenting in the refrigerator he shared with his fiancée.

“My fiancée was like, ‘Should I throw it out?’ and I was like, ‘No, let it finish fermenting,’ ” Chen said. “And then after it was done fermenting, we drank it.”

Chen enjoyed that accidental homemade hard cider so much that he decided to get more serious about brewing it – intentionally. In 2013, he founded Sourwood Brewing Co., one of nine hard cider producers in North Carolina, and one of two in the Triangle with another on the horizon.

Hard cider is becoming increasingly popular, with new cider producers popping up in apple-producing states and large beer companies looking to purchase cider makers or launching their own brands. National cider sales have increased nearly 100 percent in a recent 52-week period.

Part of cider’s rising popularity is the increase in people following a gluten-free diet; cider has become the go-to beverage for former beer lovers abstaining from gluten.

Restaurant owner and entrepreneur Matthew Beason has plans to start Brave Cider later this year in Durham. He sees nothing but potential in the cider industry, especially with the region’s long-standing tradition of growing apples. North Carolina ranks seventh in apple production, and Virginia ranks sixth, based on the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“There’s nowhere to go but up, and there’s a lot of room for up,” Beason said.

With apple orchards nearby, cider, Beason said, “is in my opinion the most sustainable agricultural product that we can get into in booze and produce an excellent product.”

Beason, who owns Six Plates Wine Bar and Mattie B’s Public House, is looking to work with orchards in Virginia and North Carolina to produce his ciders.

Chen, owner of Sourwood Brewing Co., sources his apple juice from Barber Orchard in Waynesville and brewed his cider until this fall at SilkHope Winery in Pittsboro. Chen has halted production for now while he looks for a new location.

Meanwhile, Durham-based Bull City Ciderworks sources its apples from Lowe Orchard, an apple producer in Moravian Falls, north of Charlotte, that has been around for six generations. The cidery was founded in 2013 by John Clowney, Ryan Bogard, Ben Ingold, Grant Griffith and A.J. Nelson. Bogard, who mostly oversees the production of the cider, grew the yeast used to ferment his cider.

Clowney said it’s not unusual for him to meet people with completely wrong ideas about what hard cider is. Most hard ciders have an alcohol content from 6 to 8.5 percent and can be made still or sparkling with a similar taste to wine.

“A lot of people think hard cider is this grossly sweet drink in grocery stores, and we’re trying to change that,” he said. “But traditionally, cider was consumed in this way. We want to encourage growth in the industry and get back to traditional cider again.”

Joe Carey, the inventory manager at The Pig restaurant in Chapel Hill, said the cider has sold very well in the barbecue restaurant.

“It goes well with the food, and it’s so much better than all that sweet stuff,” he said.

A hard start

Chen’s determination and experience from a decade of home brewing have helped him develop his business over the last year.

“I’m trying to take a craft brewery approach,” he said.

Sourwood got its official start in 2013 when Chen was looking for a job and realized that he was sitting on a business plan for making hard cider – because he had already been doing it for five years. However, he still faced quite a few challenges when he entered the hard cider industry.

“My biggest challenges were with licensing and permits,” he said. “It takes at least six months for the federal government to give cideries permits, and you have to pay for a space the whole time while that’s being processed. But you can’t make cider in that space. And you have to get permits from the state and local governments as well.”

Chen later lost his space at the winery when the winemaker needed the tank for his own production, but he hopes to resume brewing cider in August and unveil new products.

Bull City Ciderworks also found that the road to making hard cider wasn’t an easy one.

“With any startup, you’re going to have problems with lack of funding,” Clowney said. “It’s hard to say, ‘Yeah, I believe in this so much I’m going to put my house on the line.’ ”

Bogard and Clowney were avid home brewers who brewed hard cider in their backyards before writing up a business plan to recruit the other guys. In March 2014, the five of them moved to a new brewing facility on the Chevy campus in downtown Durham.

“Durham embraces people with new ideas,” Clowney said. “There’s kind of a growing brewing culture on the east side of town. We’re kind of on the industrial side.”

Looking to expand

Bogard, who is in charge of the brewing process, said Bull City Ciderworks is working on experimenting with new types of hard cider.

“Our flagship cider, Off Main, has a very crisp and fresh flavor,” he said. “It’s super refreshing. Our dry cider, Brightleaf, isn’t very sweet. And we’re currently carrying Hops cider, which has a nice aroma at the beginning. It’s tart with a touch of bitterness.”

Clowney said the company is looking into expansion and getting into more bars.

“We also want to offer our customers more varieties, including barrel-aged cider and caramel apple cider,” he said. “We also want to get into cans once we have the funding. I also really want to add a cider garden and tasting room to our facility so people can come by and enjoy the cider.”

On the immediate horizon is a collaboration between Bull City Ciderworks and Brave Cider; they plan on getting together next week to make a batch of cider.

This story was originally published January 1, 2015 at 8:00 PM with the headline "It's easy to love hard cider made throughout the Triangle."