Seattle Cider: Maura Hardman Talking Cider
Maura Hardman is my guest for this episode.
Maura is the Marking and PR Manager for Seattle Cider Company. We talk about Seattle Cider and how the company creates ciders and
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Maura Hardman Seattle Cider Episode Transcript
Maura Hardman [00:00:00]:
My commute should be about seven minutes door to door. So forty five was a little bit Oh, my. Okay.
Scott Cowan [00:00:24]:
Welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. Here’s your host, Scott Cowan. This episode is sponsored by Thing. The Seattle Theatre Group and Sasquatch Festival founder, Adam Zacks, present Thing. From August 26 through the ’20 eighth at historic Fort Wharton in Port Townsend, you can enjoy a vast musical lineup, including Jungle, Modest Mouse, Father John Misty, and many more. The Thing Festival features two primary stages overlooking the Puget Sound, not to mention a variety of camping and parking accommodations. You can either book a one day or three day pass, and kids 12 and under are free, making this an event for the whole family. Come enjoy live music, art, and beautiful Fort Warden with us.
Scott Cowan [00:01:10]:
To find out all the details, visit thingnw.0rg. This episode is sponsored by Thing. The Seattle Theater Group and Sasquatch Festival founder Adam Zacks present Thing. From August 26 through the ’20 eighth at historic Fort Orton in Port Townsend, you can enjoy a vast musical lineup, including Jungle, Modest Mouse, Father John Misty, and many more. The Thing Festival features two primary stages overlooking the Puget Sound, not to mention a variety of camping and parking accommodations. You can book either a one day or three day pass, and kids 12 and under are free, making this an event for the whole family. Come enjoy live music, art, and beautiful Fort Wharton with us. To find out all the details, visit thingnw.org.
Scott Cowan [00:02:05]:
Alright. Welcome back to this episode of the Exploring Washington State podcast. My guest today is Mara Hardman. Mara, you before we, quote, unquote, went live, you said I could ask you anything. So we’re gonna start off with a question you’ve never been asked on an interview. How was traffic today?
Maura Hardman [00:02:23]:
Well, it was, perfectly Seattle traffic.
Scott Cowan [00:02:26]:
Perfect. Quintessential Seattle
Maura Hardman [00:02:27]:
traffic. It was rainy. I didn’t get the bridge on the way, so I will say that, but I did get a train that sort of stopped things up for a while.
Scott Cowan [00:02:38]:
Nice.
Maura Hardman [00:02:38]:
And, yeah, traffic is back in in full force.
Scott Cowan [00:02:40]:
So how long did it take you to get from from home to the office today?
Maura Hardman [00:02:44]:
It took me about forty five minutes.
Scott Cowan [00:02:46]:
That’s not terrible, but you only live three blocks away.
Maura Hardman [00:02:50]:
My commute should be about seven minutes door to door. So forty five was a little bit Oh, my gosh.
Scott Cowan [00:02:55]:
Okay. Wow.
Maura Hardman [00:02:56]:
When there’s no traffic, I’m seven minutes door to door. Wow. So it was pretty intense, but I made it.
Scott Cowan [00:03:02]:
Alright. So, Mara, in all seriousness now, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about your personal backstory before we start talking about Seattle cider. So how did you end up at Seattle cider? What’s your life up till Seattle cider?
Maura Hardman [00:03:16]:
Oh, yeah. That’s a broad question, but I love it. So I’ve been here about five years. Prior to that, my career journey’s been kind of random. I have a degree in psychology and sociology, and then I joined the Peace Corps.
Scott Cowan [00:03:31]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:03:32]:
I lived in Ukraine for two years, which is where I met my now husband. Okay. We moved back to Arizona for a hot minute, in a time where it was really difficult to get jobs. So I worked as a server, got back into the industry. And after that, we moved to Seattle. I worked in the nonprofit world for a number of years. I was coordinating events. That’s also how I got into marketing.
Maura Hardman [00:03:58]:
We, at the time, had to, do some layoffs. My job stayed, but the marketer at the nonprofit that I was at, unfortunately, they had to cut the position, but not the work. We all sort of absorbed the marketing work, and that’s where I learned to love that. Okay. Later, a friend of mine who I had worked with at the nonprofit sort of became my unofficial I have a board of directors. Right. I have a board of directors of friends that I’m like, Okay, career moves. What are we talking about here? Who had moved on to, work at a grocery store as their you know, part of their marketing team.
Maura Hardman [00:04:37]:
And she’s like, you know, this job is really weird, and you’d love it. Right? Which is, like, an awesome thing to hear because I’m a little bit weird, and I thought it would be kinda cool. So I worked in grocery for six years, doing marketing.
Scott Cowan [00:04:50]:
What if you don’t mind me interrupting you, what what chain?
Maura Hardman [00:04:54]:
I worked for Whole Foods Market. Okay. Yeah. So in the natural foods realm, it’s actually how I first heard about Seattle cider because we sold their products. And, we would be part of events like Seattle cider summit. And so I would go and work those events. I’d also attended that prior to, working in the cider realm. And the same friend of mine, messaged me one day after I you know, I’d been there for about six years, and she’d already moved on to another position.
Maura Hardman [00:05:23]:
And she said, listen. I know you’re not looking for a job right now, but I happened to see this position open up, and I think that you’d regret it if you didn’t apply. So I applied, and now I work in beer insider. So that was not something that was really ever on my radar. Okay. I considered myself more of like a hobbyist craft drinker.
Scott Cowan [00:05:44]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:05:45]:
And so getting to do that for a living, my job is to talk about beer insider.
Scott Cowan [00:05:50]:
I could think of worse things to do on a daily basis.
Maura Hardman [00:05:53]:
It’s not bad. I like it a lot. There’s a reason I’ve been here for five years.
Scott Cowan [00:05:59]:
You mentioned you and your husband moved, you said, back to Arizona for a hot minute, which I was gonna laugh isn’t, you know, in Arizona every minute hot. But did you grow
Maura Hardman [00:06:08]:
up in Arizona? I did. Born and raised. Yeah. Born and raised. I all the way through college, I’m a NAU Lumberjack alumni. Okay. And then, yeah, moved to Ukraine.
Scott Cowan [00:06:20]:
Yeah. That’s a that’s a climate change. At least what I perceive. I’ve never been to Ukraine. So, but what I perceive, it’s, you know, cold?
Maura Hardman [00:06:35]:
In the winter, it is. They have actual seasons, whereas Arizona really just has, like, two. On on the fall. But they’ve got the full scope of seasons. Yeah. So it’s hot in the summer, you know, leaves fall in the fall. Okay. And it gets cold in the winter and it snows, and then it goes back to spring and everything blooms.
Maura Hardman [00:06:50]:
It’s a really beautiful country.
Scott Cowan [00:06:52]:
Yeah. Okay. The similarities between Western Washington and Arizona are not you know, they’re not to me. Arizona’s desert I when I think of Arizona, I think like a Phoenix and Scottsdale. And I know that, you know, up up in the north, it gets a little cooler. But I think of the 15 degrees of blast furnace heat from what seems to be, like, from June till May, you know, like eleven months of the year. I know it’s not true. Do you enjoy Western Washington’s damp, dreary climate compared to and I say that because I lived I grew up in the West Side of the state.
Scott Cowan [00:07:31]:
And in 2017, we moved over here to Central Washington because I couldn’t take the gray and the rain anymore. I just couldn’t do it. So do you like the Western Washington side?
Maura Hardman [00:07:42]:
I absolutely do. When I moved here, my husband is actually from here originally. He’s, he’s from Shelton, Washington. Oh, okay. Yeah. And I felt home. I felt at home immediately.
Scott Cowan [00:07:55]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:07:56]:
I’d been to visit in Seattle, and it was actually, you know, kinda on my radar to maybe move here someday.
Scott Cowan [00:08:02]:
Right.
Maura Hardman [00:08:02]:
And when I did, you know, it wasn’t super planned out to make that happen. But, yeah, I absolutely love it. I can deal with the gray. I do frequently try to plan my visits home to Arizona. I still have family there. I try to plan that home in my visits home in the peak of gray season because it gets a little rough. You got to break it up a little bit. Yeah.
Maura Hardman [00:08:25]:
But the summers here are just unsurpassed. They’re phenomenal.
Scott Cowan [00:08:29]:
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I mean, I poke fun on Seattle a lot, but there’s so much to do in the area. And, you know, if if traffic was no problem, which we know it obviously is, but traffic was no problem. I mean, literally, you could go from the Pacific to the tallest mountain in the in the 48 states in in a day. I mean, when you think about the the variety that we have in the state, it’s pretty cool. So enough about Seattle and all of that. Let’s talk cider.
Maura Hardman [00:08:56]:
Okay.
Scott Cowan [00:08:56]:
What’s the backstory on Seattle cider? How long has it been in business? How’d it get started? All of that stuff.
Maura Hardman [00:09:03]:
Sure. So Seattle Cider started in 2013. We actually have a sibling company, that’s a brewery.
Scott Cowan [00:09:10]:
Mhmm.
Maura Hardman [00:09:10]:
And the reason that it started, was, you know, looking into a gluten free alcoholic beverage option. And interestingly enough, so we started in 2013. We are the first cidery that opened in Seattle proper since the repeal of prohibition, which is like, you know, 1933. So eighty years later, in a very apple friendly state, someone finally found a way to make some different use of some really amazing apples. That’s kind of why that’s the Seattle cider is not your standard cider. And the reason being behind that, you know, you could start finding in 2013, you could start finding, some cideries in the area, or you could find some cider at grocery stores. In general, it was really, really sweet, sometimes to the point of, like, cloyingly sweet. And, you know, as starting with the sibling company that’s a brewery, it’s like, okay.
Maura Hardman [00:10:07]:
Well, we could make cider, but let’s do it a little different. Let’s let’s try for a drier option. Let’s try for something that sort of bridges that gap between wine and beer. And, you know, that’s that’s how it came about. A lot of a lot of trial through the process and just making drier ciders, but they don’t have to be sweet to be palatable. In fact, I personally prefer a much drier cider.
Scott Cowan [00:10:30]:
Okay. Alright. Yeah. My taste run a little not not not I don’t want my treetop apple juice with with alcohol in it, but, I do tend to like semi sweet maybe. Maybe it’s what we would call it. Not not not, like you said, cloyingly. That’s that’s a really good word to describe it. Sometimes you’re like, fuck it.
Scott Cowan [00:10:54]:
But when they’re, like, dusty, dusty dry, I I don’t like dusty dry wine either. So Mhmm. I don’t I guess my palate’s just not as sophisticated as it should be. I mean, not should be, but it it, you know, it can it can improve.
Maura Hardman [00:11:12]:
I don’t, you know, I don’t think that that makes your palette, you know, sophisticated or unsophisticated. Your palette is your palette. Your palette’s not wrong. Right?
Scott Cowan [00:11:21]:
Yeah. Some people would argue that my palate’s wrong.
Maura Hardman [00:11:24]:
Okay. I won’t be that person to argue and say that your palate is wrong, but you like what you like. Right. That being said, though, I will frequently tell people that you know, if they’re adamant that, oh, I I really just don’t like cider. Well, try more. Try more cider. You maybe just haven’t found one that you like.
Scott Cowan [00:11:43]:
That sounds like a marketing person.
Maura Hardman [00:11:46]:
Try more. That’s fair. Right? Try some new things. Oh, you don’t like this one? Great. Try another one. You know?
Scott Cowan [00:11:52]:
But absolutely, that’s fair because just you try, you know, brand X dry cider and you’re like, no, I don’t like it. Well, try brand try brand wise dry oh, this actually is there’s something here I like. So, yes.
Maura Hardman [00:12:07]:
Yeah. You, mentioned as as a your preference for wines. Do you like, you know, a sparkling wine? Do you like a, do you like champagnes at all?
Scott Cowan [00:12:17]:
Not really. I
Maura Hardman [00:12:18]:
Not for you. With wine,
Scott Cowan [00:12:23]:
I’d be that person that you could literally take to a blind taste test and sit me down and have me and and and present the wines properly too, by the way. Not just, you know, in a in a mason jar type thing, but just present the wines properly in their prop appropriate servings, all these things, and blind taste test. And you could run me from a box wine to a super high end wine. I wouldn’t bet on me picking the high end wine. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t I I tend to
Maura Hardman [00:12:56]:
I think that’s pretty frequently, like, the case with a lot of people, though.
Scott Cowan [00:12:59]:
I did have one time I had a a wine tasting experience down in Texas where a friend of mine brought something out of his cellar, and we were having dinner at their house. And great steaks. It was a great meal. Right? And he brings out this bottle, and he’s he’s like you can just tell it’s like he’s, like, the guy’s glowing. He’s radiating. He’s, like, like, almost shaking to, like, bring this thing out. And I’m like, whatever. And I can’t remember what it was, but it was delicious.
Scott Cowan [00:13:26]:
I mean, it really was a an amazing glass of wine. So we finish the wine, and I can tell he’s, like, wanting to tell me because he’s he’s not a name dropping guy, but he he could I could tell it. So he he starts telling me the story of the wine and okay. Okay. Mhmm. Mhmm. And he goes, and it’s 1,200 a
Maura Hardman [00:13:47]:
bottle. Wow.
Scott Cowan [00:13:49]:
And I realized that I I just had a, you know, 300 glass of wine. And I was like, I’m never gonna buy a $1,200 single serving because wine to me is a single serving. You’re gonna open the wine. You’re gonna consume the wine with by yourself or with friends. It’s not like a bottle of whiskey that you’re gonna put back on the in the in the counter. That was a delicious wine, but I’m never gonna pay $1,200 a bottle. So I but you could
Maura Hardman [00:14:16]:
same, honestly.
Scott Cowan [00:14:17]:
But, you know, I’ve tried stuff in the, you know, 50 to a hundred range, and I’ve tried a box wine. And honestly, the box wine’s like, yeah. I like it. I just I don’t I don’t pick up on the tasting notes, so I don’t drink wine.
Maura Hardman [00:14:28]:
Okay. Well, so with regard to cider, though, I think, like, that’s one of the things about craft cider and what we’re doing with craft cider is an accessibility piece. Right? We have it in cans. Yep. That seems pretty easy. You can pick up cans at your grocery store, you can get it on draft. And it’s a really, really good product. It’s also not $1,200 a can or for, you know, a four pack.
Maura Hardman [00:14:55]:
So somebody who’s picking up a beverage, like, you can just pick up a four pack and try that.
Scott Cowan [00:15:00]:
That’s not cost effective. Marketing is, like, put out a $1,200 4 pack just to see if you could get that ultra premium cider market.
Maura Hardman [00:15:09]:
Just one. Just one. Just one that’s available.
Scott Cowan [00:15:14]:
And and I can’t drink beer anymore because if I have a beer, the next day I wake up like I had 20 of them. And I just beer doesn’t so it’s like I’ve I’ve I’ve moved to cider, and I don’t I mean, I enjoy it greatly, and that’s why we’re we’ve been talking to so many of the cider makers around the state because you guys all have interesting stories. And because the state, like you said, you know, we’re kind of an apple friendly
Maura Hardman [00:15:38]:
state. Yeah. We are in apple country.
Scott Cowan [00:15:40]:
Yeah. So when Seattle cider launched their first cider, you mentioned cans. Have you guys always canned, or did you start just on draft or with bottles, or what’s the evolution to where we’re at today?
Maura Hardman [00:15:53]:
Yeah. We went, out the gate directly into cans.
Scott Cowan [00:15:57]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:15:57]:
Part of that is that, you know, it’s an accessibility piece. Part of that is that we’re a very outdoor focused company. So that idea of pack it in, pack it out, we were talking about the accessibility, of, you know, beautiful green spaces to go and visit your hikers, your climbers, your kayakers, folks who’ve, you know, kind of put in their work doing some outdoor fun activities. You might want to celebrate a little bit after that. And you don’t necessarily want to bring a glass bottle out into and it’s in fact discouraged, highly discouraged to be bringing glass bottles of things when you’re going to, you know, state parks, national parks, when you’re going on trails. Don’t do that. So if you bring a can of something, you know, you pack it in, you pack it out. It’s it’s just easier that way, but that it doesn’t have to necessarily be.
Maura Hardman [00:16:47]:
It can be something really good. Right? You know? You can you can bring something that’s absolutely delicious that, you know, when I first started drinking craft beverages, they weren’t coming in cans. That dates myself a little bit, but that was that was an early and newer thing. Mhmm. You know, when I’m in college, like, your craft beers, they came in bottles. You were always getting them in bottles. And so the advent of being able to get a really good beverage that comes in a can, that’s still relatively new if you think about it. Or I wanna think that it’s new so it doesn’t make me feel so old.
Maura Hardman [00:17:22]:
But
Scott Cowan [00:17:22]:
myself, craft beer when I was in college was right near. It was, you know, we didn’t actually, I Red Hook had just just started and it was like, like they call it it was Ballard Bitter was one that they had. That was their IPA and it was like, we found Ballard Bitter. I was like, oh, this is expensive. I’ll go back to Rainier. But so I predate you as far as that. So I’m looking on your your website. And so what did you got what was the initial launch? What was the initial cider that Sail Cider came to market with?
Maura Hardman [00:18:00]:
Yeah. We launched with, with dry and semi sweet. So we were talking about, different flavors. Our dry is still our flagship. That’s, has absolutely zero residual sugar. So, it’s it’s bone dry. Mhmm. But it also, you know, has a really nice complex but balanced flavor and drinks a little bit more, you know, like a sparkling wine or almost champagne like because it has, like, a really nice carbonation level.
Maura Hardman [00:18:26]:
Don’t need any sugar to have that be nice and balanced, and it’s done really well for us, and it’s continued to be our flagship. Semi sweet, that has a little bit more We talk about the sweetness of our ciders in terms of Brix, which is also really similar to wine. There’s a lot of parallels there. We actually have a winery license. It’s fermented the same way that you would make wine, except you’re using apple juice.
Scott Cowan [00:18:49]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:18:50]:
And our semi sweet, that’s one of the sweeter ciders that we make. It’s semi sweet as a flavor profile, but it’s one of the sweetest ciders that we make, which is 2.6 Brix.
Scott Cowan [00:19:01]:
Okay. And what’s the one?
Maura Hardman [00:19:03]:
The dry is zero Brix.
Scott Cowan [00:19:04]:
Zero Brix.
Maura Hardman [00:19:04]:
Okay. There’s no there’s no residual sugar left.
Scott Cowan [00:19:07]:
Okay. Alright. And I’m looking here now, and you have more than two.
Maura Hardman [00:19:14]:
We have quite a few. Yes.
Scott Cowan [00:19:16]:
Quite a few. Before we start talking about what you currently have, did you guys ever try one? You came up with this idea that you’re gonna do I know somebody’s I know a couple of people who actually tried to put coffee and cider together, which is I love coffee. I love cider, but I don’t think I don’t know.
Maura Hardman [00:19:36]:
We have done a cold brew cider before.
Scott Cowan [00:19:38]:
You have?
Maura Hardman [00:19:39]:
Yeah. We have done a cold brew cider before. We didn’t can it. That was only available on draft. It was delicious. Really? Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:19:48]:
I wanna believe it. I truly do. I really I mean, because it’s like but at the same time, try to walk me through why why you thought it why you thought it was delicious.
Maura Hardman [00:20:01]:
It had everything to do with the flavor profile. Right? So it was everything that I love about cider and everything that I love about cold brew nicely meshed together.
Scott Cowan [00:20:10]:
K. It
Maura Hardman [00:20:11]:
was a good it was a good balance. It had that, like, little bitterness that you get from coffee that we’ve come to know and love. Mhmm. And then it still allowed the apple character to shine through.
Scott Cowan [00:20:21]:
Interesting.
Maura Hardman [00:20:22]:
So, yeah, it was a best of both worlds situation where we have a couple of different flavors too that you know, if I’m out at a festival or if I’m happen to be behind the bar and people are asking for recommendations, a lot of times I will start with, okay, it sounds like a strange combination, but it really works. I feel that way with our basil mint cider. That one’s been really popular. It started out as a seasonal and became so popular that we do it year round now.
Scott Cowan [00:20:52]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:20:52]:
Basil and mint and apple, It sounds like an interesting combination. It’s really lovely. It pairs well with a ton of different foods. It’s one of my favorite go tos that we still have, and we co ferment it with 100 pounds each of fresh basil, fresh mint, and then, of course, the apple juice.
Scott Cowan [00:21:13]:
So when you’re using a hundred pounds of of those, how how big a batch are you producing?
Maura Hardman [00:21:20]:
So we do, typically, 200 barrel batches at a time. You You’ll have to come by for a visit sometime and see the tanks. They’re pretty massive.
Scott Cowan [00:21:28]:
Yeah. That’s those are big tanks. Yeah. Stuff them full
Maura Hardman [00:21:32]:
of basil, stuff them full of mint, and then, we stuff bags full of them. They look kind of like laundry bags. And then you throw those in
Scott Cowan [00:21:39]:
like tea bags. A giant tea bag,
Maura Hardman [00:21:39]:
if you will. Yeah. Yeah. Well, then you can pull them back out and it’s a little bit easier on the tank cleaning aspect for all of our cider makers. So they’re appreciative of that concept too.
Scott Cowan [00:21:50]:
Right. Yeah. So what we got a I got a little derailed. But so it was just I was making fun of the idea of coffee and cider, and you, you know, you threw me a curveball and said, do you like it? But have you guys ever tried, like, putting a couple items together that in theory sound good but didn’t quite make it?
Maura Hardman [00:22:09]:
Oh, sure. I think there’s a fair number of things that kind of, you know, hit the cutting room floor.
Scott Cowan [00:22:14]:
Okay. Yeah. That’s a great way of putting it. So what’s hit the cutting room floor that you that you personally thought might have been like, oh, that sounds good, but just, yeah, it didn’t work?
Maura Hardman [00:22:23]:
Oh gosh. And to think about some things that Well, so let me give you a little bit of background story about how we determine what ciders, like, what ciders go where. Right? Because we have, currently, we have a team of three cider makers, and then we also have a research and development manager, who also makes cider. And they’re, you know, constantly working on, like, the things that we have that are going out and sell well, but they’re also always working on innovations. All of our cider makers, after they’ve been with the company for a year, get to, you know, wild card pick whatever they want and make a batch of cider, whatever they feel like.
Scott Cowan [00:23:02]:
Let me interrupt you. Yeah. Not a 200 gallon batch.
Maura Hardman [00:23:06]:
No, no. We have the ability to make some smaller batches.
Scott Cowan [00:23:10]:
Okay. All right. I was going to say, wow, that’s a okay.
Maura Hardman [00:23:13]:
It’s a big gamble, right? So, we don’t do the 200 barrel batches for all of the
Scott Cowan [00:23:18]:
Yeah, 200 barrel. What is that? That’s like over a thousand gallons.
Maura Hardman [00:23:22]:
It’s a lot.
Scott Cowan [00:23:23]:
Yeah. Okay. So we’re not we’re not giving Tony, the the cider maker, a chance to okay. Perfect.
Maura Hardman [00:23:29]:
Yeah. So we are yeah. We’re we’re experimenting and trying to innovate all the time. And, you know, some things work better than others. And sometimes, you know, you make a batch of something, and you’re like, oh, this, like, sounds like a phenomenal combination, and maybe that batch just needs to be tweaked. So we have, we actually put every single one of our staff through cider school. We do regular education so you can learn how to pick out all flavors so you know how to taste cider. And then we have a process where there’s, you know, grading and scoring of ciders to determine, is this good enough to go on draft for customers to try in our tasting room? Mhmm.
Maura Hardman [00:24:07]:
Or even further, you know, those next steps, is this something that we either keg or packaging cans, and this now can go out to our consumers? Because it’s really important that it hits a certain level with trained, you know, with our trained cider makers, with all of our trained staff
Scott Cowan [00:24:23]:
Mhmm.
Maura Hardman [00:24:24]:
To make sure that it is good enough and hits our brand standards for people to taste it.
Scott Cowan [00:24:29]:
Right.
Maura Hardman [00:24:29]:
The ones that don’t, they don’t. Sure.
Scott Cowan [00:24:33]:
No. I mean, without innovation though, you’re not gonna I mean, innovation implies that you’re gonna have failure’s a hard, harsh word, but, you know, you’re gonna, you know, pair something together, and it just didn’t work. And like you said, maybe maybe you tweak the recipe, and, you know, version five makes it to the where it was.
Maura Hardman [00:24:54]:
And that’s actually a lot of what happens is that, you know, we aren’t necessarily going to completely discount a cider with x y z flavor combination. Mhmm. It just might require some refining and then further refining and then further refining beyond that. And so sometimes we’re, when we’re doing, like, our quality, you know, QA, QC, when we’re doing those processes, we might be comparing four different batches of this particular cider to see which one we like best, and then moving forward and further refining. So getting something to By the time something comes to market, it might have gone through 10 different iterations for us to get to the specific recipe and dial in the process to make sure it’s exactly where we want it to be. So there haven’t been any I don’t know. The other thing is, like, what we were talking about with Palette, there’s a couple of ciders like me personally that I’m like, well, well, that’s not for me, and that’s just my palette. Right? That other people absolutely have loved.
Maura Hardman [00:25:57]:
And so I just don’t drink the ones that I don’t like. Thankfully, it’s few and far between.
Scott Cowan [00:26:01]:
Give me an example of one that just doesn’t work for your palette.
Maura Hardman [00:26:06]:
Let’s see. We haven’t made this one in a while. We made a spruce cider, and we actually took an entire spruce tree and put it in a tank with the cider and co fermented. I’ll have to find I have a picture of this somewhere I’ll have to send to you because it’s pretty funny to see. For me, it just wasn’t for my palate, but it’s a fan favorite for some.
Scott Cowan [00:26:26]:
Really?
Maura Hardman [00:26:27]:
Yeah. And then likewise, you know, one that I do absolutely love, but that’s, you know, maybe not for everybody. I love our three pepper cider. So we make a cider that has poblano, habanero, and jalapeno peppers in it. It is a little spicy around the cidery on the cider pad when they’re making it. You can tell there’s capsaicin in the air. I love that one. I think it’s phenomenal.
Maura Hardman [00:26:53]:
I drink it as is. I make it into cocktails, and it has this, like, wild cult following to the point that, like, we decided to start canning it, and we sell it in our tasting room, and we sell it on draft. I think it’s delicious, and but not everybody loves it. But those who love it really love it. And so there was a call to, like, put it in package. We can’t get enough of it. You know?
Scott Cowan [00:27:19]:
Do you like spicy foods?
Maura Hardman [00:27:22]:
I do. I’m from Arizona.
Scott Cowan [00:27:23]:
Okay. That okay. Yeah.
Maura Hardman [00:27:25]:
I don’t know that that’s an inherent Arizona quality, but
Scott Cowan [00:27:29]:
I walked into that one.
Maura Hardman [00:27:31]:
But, yes. I when actually, this is kind of funny. When I first started working here, I would always have bottles of hot sauce at my desk. And I would determine how long, I could almost tell how long I’d been there by how many bottles of hot sauce I had gone through.
Scott Cowan [00:27:50]:
Oh my gosh.
Maura Hardman [00:27:52]:
That’s about one bottle of Valentina per month.
Scott Cowan [00:27:56]:
So what do you like for have you found any hot sauces made up here in Washington that you like, or are the hot sauces that you appreciate coming from the Southwest?
Maura Hardman [00:28:08]:
I am particularly obsessed with the pineapple habanero salsa that comes, at El Chupacabra. Okay. I love it. Like, I could drink it. As far as ones that I buy at the store, though, like, you know, it’s we go through at my house, we go through a lot of Frank’s, Red Hot, a ton of Valentina. That’s my go to.
Scott Cowan [00:28:30]:
I see.
Maura Hardman [00:28:30]:
Lots of Sriracha because that’s great on everything as well. Cholula, Tapatio.
Scott Cowan [00:28:38]:
And Tapatio seems like table steaks. That’s fancy ketchup. A little
Maura Hardman [00:28:45]:
bit. Yeah. But if you’ve got it, like Yeah. If that’s the only option for hot sauce, I’ll use it. But absent of that, typically, I’m going through the Valentina pretty quickly.
Scott Cowan [00:28:57]:
My son likes the ridiculous stuff. The ghost peppers infused with nuclear waste. Just the stuff that are like
Maura Hardman [00:29:09]:
The ones that feel like feats of strength to consume them. Yes.
Scott Cowan [00:29:13]:
And you’re miserable. And you’re miserable. And you’re miserable. And then have you ever been up to, in Montlake Terrace, have you ever gone to Double D Meats? No. So there’s a meat a meat a butchery up in Montlake Terrace area, and they have a full aisle dedicated to hot sauces.
Maura Hardman [00:29:32]:
Oh, nice.
Scott Cowan [00:29:33]:
And I mean, hundreds of them. So I’m not a hot sauce and wine, you know, like, my palate, you know, but the the sheer, it’s overwhelming to walk in there and see the hundreds of varieties of hot sauces that you can torture yourself with. So you might check that out.
Maura Hardman [00:29:56]:
I will have to check that out. Typically, when I travel anywhere, what I bring back as souvenirs is hot sauce because everybody has enough stuff, but you can never have too much hot sauce.
Scott Cowan [00:30:06]:
Right.
Maura Hardman [00:30:07]:
And fun fact, this is like We’ll pull it back to the cider realm again for a second. Cider is a really good palate cleanser.
Scott Cowan [00:30:15]:
Yes.
Maura Hardman [00:30:15]:
So frequently, we will often pour our ciders at beer festivals, and we actually stay pretty busy in our tents when we’re pouring at beer festivals. And folks will come by after they’ve had something either really heavy or that was a little more flavor forward than they were expecting. And you get that really nice reprieve. You get that palate cleanse from drinking some cider.
Scott Cowan [00:30:37]:
That’s actually a really good point. I like that. Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:30:40]:
It’s refreshing. Goes with everything.
Scott Cowan [00:30:43]:
Okay. So circling back to your cider. So we’ve kind of talked about the basil mint. We’ve talked about the dry. We’ve talked about the semi sweet. You brought up three pepper because I was gonna bring it up. You brought up the spruce one, which is not on this, but you have a gin botanical.
Maura Hardman [00:30:59]:
We do. Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:31:01]:
And so help me out here as I’m reading this. What so so when I read them so when I read the the the the description for your basil the basil mint says fermented with fresh basil and mint leaves.
Maura Hardman [00:31:16]:
Mhmm.
Scott Cowan [00:31:16]:
The gin botanical says fermented with fresh basil and mint leaves.
Maura Hardman [00:31:21]:
So Oh, well, then then there’s something incorrect on our website, call. Sorry.
Scott Cowan [00:31:27]:
Sorry to publicly
Maura Hardman [00:31:28]:
No. That’s okay.
Scott Cowan [00:31:29]:
But it starts out it says, yeah. It’s you know what? It’s the exact same text between the two of them.
Maura Hardman [00:31:35]:
Yeah. Well, so that’s not correct. Our gym botanical
Scott Cowan [00:31:38]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:31:38]:
That’s good to know. Well, I’ll fix it after. That’s an easy fix. No, that’s okay. Hey, at least now I know. Can’t fix it if you don’t know what’s wrong. Right? With our gym botanical, we make it with spent botanicals that are used for making gin. So you’re getting juniper, verbena, lemon.
Maura Hardman [00:31:56]:
It’s that one’s a really lovely cider that’s very, gin on the nose and then kind of finishes with gin. So it’s almost like having it’s it’s very canned cocktail adjacent, but you’re still getting the same alcohol by volume that a cider is. So that one, I think, is, like, 6.9%. But, yeah, we’re using spent botanicals that are made from gin. So you’re getting that gin character, but you’re also still getting the apple flavor. So I think the best way I can say that, like, that kind of comes across is like a it’s like a gin and cider cocktail together.
Scott Cowan [00:32:30]:
Where are you getting the spent botanicals?
Maura Hardman [00:32:33]:
Oh, that’s a good question. We’ve had some partners before, from distilleries that we get spent botanicals from, and I don’t know who we’re particularly working with on on this most recent batch, because it’s changed over the years. But there’s a lot of really phenomenal distilleries in Washington, and so, you know, it’s just another way that we can kind of repurpose things.
Scott Cowan [00:32:55]:
Right.
Maura Hardman [00:32:55]:
Yeah. That was kind of of us. Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:32:57]:
Right. No. That’s kind of a cool, you know, the fact that, you know, let’s say arbitrarily say big gin, use them and then get the botanicals from them, repurposing them again, more use out of them. I think that’s awesome. Okay. So you’ve got honeycrisp, berry rose, marion berry, pineapple agave, and then you’ve got some sparkling ones. So let’s let’s stop. We won’t go to the sparklings yet.
Scott Cowan [00:33:24]:
So oh, and you have Odyssey.
Maura Hardman [00:33:27]:
Yeah. Odyssey is an imperial cider, so that one’s that one’s a heavy hitter. Imperial, just similar to, like, you know, IPA versus double IPA. We’ve got cider and then we’ve got imperial cider, and it means it’s got a higher ABV. That one’s in at 8.4%. Okay. And we back sweetened that with brown sugar. So to get a little bit more depth of flavor.
Maura Hardman [00:33:51]:
It’s a little dangerous because it does not drink 8.4%. So I like to tell people that before they start down that road. It’s really nicely balanced, you know, but it’ll also it can catch up with you because it’s 8.4.
Scott Cowan [00:34:06]:
That’s actually not because it’s 8.4. That’s not why I’m saying it’s intriguing. The brown sugar is interesting to me. That’s interesting. I’m gonna have to try it. That that that that’s one I wanna go out and I’ll find locally here and and give it a is it available in stores, or is that only available okay. Cool.
Maura Hardman [00:34:25]:
Yeah. It’s absolutely available in stores.
Scott Cowan [00:34:27]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:34:28]:
Still trying to gain some additional placements for that. We released that one. Let’s see. Was that 2021?
Scott Cowan [00:34:36]:
Oh, here we go. We were
Maura Hardman [00:34:36]:
pretty busy with yeah, that one’s pretty it’s pretty new to us. We were really busy with innovation. You know, starting in 2020, we kind of hunkered down and started doing
Scott Cowan [00:34:45]:
She had
Maura Hardman [00:34:45]:
her while. A bunch of fun stuff. So, yeah, we kept busy. Mhmm.
Scott Cowan [00:34:50]:
So you do a lot of, you know, fruit fruit combos here with the Marion Berry and with pineapple. You’ve got the Honeycrisp. So is that just is that just a % honeycrisp apples, or what’s the what’s the honeycrisp?
Maura Hardman [00:35:04]:
That is honeycrisp juice, honeycrisp apples. Yeah. Something so, typically, when we make our ciders, with the exception of dry, which, you know, has no residual sugar, if we’re back sweetening, we typically back sweeten with either pure cane sugar or in the case of Odyssey, we use brown sugar. Mhmm. We do that in part because it allows us a little bit more control over, the final bricks of the product. With Honeycrisp, we did back sweetening with Honeycrisp juice. And the goal with that and that was one that was a long time, in, you know, the r and d process. The goal with that is that your experience drinking Honeycrisp cider is like taking a bite out of a Honeycrisp apple.
Scott Cowan [00:35:47]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:35:48]:
And it is. It really works. If you like a Honeycrisp apple and you, you know, are interested in trying cider, that’s a really good one to try. Because that’s kind of the darling of the palm fruits. Right? Like, everybody knows what a Honeycrisp apple is. It’s got, you know, a household name. It feels familiar. You can find it at every grocery store, a farmers market.
Maura Hardman [00:36:08]:
It’s super approachable. And there’s a reason for it. It’s just really good. It’s a consistently delicious apple, and it’s a consistently delicious cider, for sure.
Scott Cowan [00:36:19]:
So sale cider, you’re not are you you’re not growing your own fruit. Right?
Maura Hardman [00:36:25]:
No. But we do get all of our apples from Washington. That’s been a really important thing for us. We’re in a pretty industrial area. We’re not an orchard based cidery. You know, we’re over here in So to with, like, you know, trains and traffic.
Scott Cowan [00:36:38]:
And You got plenty of room for an orchard.
Maura Hardman [00:36:40]:
We do have two apple trees. We actually have apple trees, and they’re honeycrisp apple trees on either end of our tasting room.
Scott Cowan [00:36:47]:
Okay. So
Maura Hardman [00:36:47]:
our tasting room is, like, located in the same place where we do all our production for the brewery and for the cidery. It’s called The Woods, and we share it. It’s about fifty fifty in terms of, like, what taps have cider and what taps have beer. And we do. We have two little apple trees that are just kind of chugging along.
Scott Cowan [00:37:03]:
Chugging along.
Maura Hardman [00:37:04]:
Because we’re in a pretty industrial area, I wouldn’t necessarily eat the apples from them. It’s sort of more ornamental and, you know, part of, like, our aesthetic for the tasting room. But beyond that, we’re we’re getting all of our apples in Washington. We’ve got, you
Scott Cowan [00:37:19]:
know, a bite of a Honeycrisp with a a a a hint of diesel. Yeah.
Maura Hardman [00:37:25]:
Pretty much. Pretty much. We’ve, we’ve been known to use the apples, like, when we’ll do photo shoots on the marketing team, but we don’t usually eat them after.
Scott Cowan [00:37:34]:
Yeah. I don’t okay. So you are getting your apples in Washington state. Okay. Are you pressing the apples in Seattle, or do you are you bringing in the juice pressed from from wherever you’re getting the apples from?
Maura Hardman [00:37:49]:
We bring in our juice pre pressed. So it comes in, it comes in in trucks. And, you know, there’s basically when you walk around the warehouse, everything is, you know, tanks, hoses, clamps, cans, and lots of boxes. And so, yeah, we’re we’re just pumping it directly into the tanks. When it arrives, we get deliveries that are between, you know, 13,000 gallons of juice at a time. And, you know, plan ahead and then just plan for the ferment. Lots of clipboards everywhere, tracking everything that’s happening, from tank to tank.
Scott Cowan [00:38:21]:
You mentioned cans. So you have your own canning line in the in the warehouse?
Maura Hardman [00:38:24]:
We do. We do. We actually have two canning lines. We have a yeah. We have a canning line that, we use for our beer, and then we have a canning line that we use for our cidery. And the cider side, we’re running that canning line, like, five days a week. Wow. Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:38:41]:
Has anyone ever knocked over a stack of can blanks?
Maura Hardman [00:38:47]:
It has happened. I haven’t seen it happen. I don’t think it’s happened in recent time. I laugh a little bit because my office is I I say to people that I’m located in a can fort. If you walk out of my office, I am surrounded by stacks and stacks, pallet after pallet of cans. And sometimes I have, like, a little labyrinth to get into my office to do some work. I haven’t really seen any get knocked over.
Scott Cowan [00:39:14]:
The reason so back in the nineties, I I had a job with a vending machine company, filling vending machines. And one of the accounts I covered was the Ball Can plant down in Auburn.
Maura Hardman [00:39:27]:
Okay.
Scott Cowan [00:39:28]:
So the giant, you know, where they’re making the making the cans, and they would stack these things up, you know, fifteen, thirty feet in the air. And they’re moving them around with with pallet jacks and or not pallet jacks, foreclose. And one day I was in filling a vending machine and a guy swung his forklift blades and just knocked over, like, three stacks of cans. Oh. I don’t know if anything could be ever louder than that. It was amazing. And the guy is just I he’s still probably ashamed of himself today. I mean, he just it was hanging and they literally had to go and pick them up can by can, you know? Oh, no.
Scott Cowan [00:40:06]:
Yeah.
Maura Hardman [00:40:07]:
Adding insult to injury on that.
Scott Cowan [00:40:09]:
Yeah, exactly. You know, thousands of empty can blanks just knocked over. And it was, it was so noisy. It was Yeah. If they ever do it while you’re at work, you’ll know.
Maura Hardman [00:40:21]:
Oh, absolutely.
Scott Cowan [00:40:22]:
You’ll know.
Maura Hardman [00:40:23]:
I’ve joked about times when the can pallet, like all the pallet stacks have gotten a little close to my front door that I’m like, If you don’t leave me enough space to get out, I’m just going to pull a Kool Aid man and bust through. But I don’t think I’d ever managed to be able to do that because I probably you know, really injure myself on that. So I have not done that, thankfully. No, it’s, you know, it’s like a live action Tetris game around here all the time, bringing in just stacks of cans. And, you know, our warehouse team, they are constantly moving things from one side of the warehouse to the other, whether it’s, you know, bringing empty cans over to be filled and then off packing, case after case of cider and then, you know, bringing those out to the loading dock so those can go out to our distributors. There’s usually a good amount of action happening.
Scott Cowan [00:41:12]:
Well, and it’s not like down in So to, it’s not like you can probably expand too much either because everything’s taken down there.
Maura Hardman [00:41:20]:
It’s pretty packed, but we’ve gotten lucky. Every time we’ve had neighbors move out from a space that’s, like, adjacent to us, we fill up the space
Scott Cowan [00:41:30]:
by talking
Maura Hardman [00:41:31]:
to our landlord, and we’re like, can we have that space? We’ll take it. Because we did a build out in 2019. We added like 7,000 more square feet.
Scott Cowan [00:41:38]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:41:39]:
And we needed it. Then we immediately goldfished that and filled up the space with things. That’s where we brought in our newest canning line that we have, which is it’s pretty massive. Mhmm. Goes through a lot of cans.
Scott Cowan [00:41:54]:
So you you’re you’re currently canning five days a week. Yeah. On average. Yeah. You running that just one shift? You’re running that multiple shifts?
Maura Hardman [00:42:04]:
Right now, we’re doing one. We’ve done it before where we’ve done, like, morning shift and evening shift. Our team running all the logistics, they’re really impressive and have managed to make that work with one. And, you know, our packaging team is really well trained and, like, know how to, you know, figure out all of the all of the very, like, minutia details that need to make all of these things happen. But it it’s a pretty well oiled machine, honestly.
Scott Cowan [00:42:32]:
Okay. One question. And we’re I am not purposely avoiding the brewery because we’re talking cider today. We’ll we’ll we’ll definitely talk beer in another conversation. But approximately how many people work there?
Maura Hardman [00:42:48]:
So there’s a lot of crossover between the two. Right. Our whole staff between the two is about 35 people, which is actually, like, you know, not a not a crazy amount. No. But there’s, you know small but mighty. And if you take out our two brewers, which their job is specific to brewing, everyone else kind of wears multiple hats and works for both companies. So about 33 then.
Scott Cowan [00:43:12]:
And is that including the taproom as well?
Maura Hardman [00:43:14]:
Yeah. That’s our bartenders, our sales team, our marketing team, leadership, admin, packaging, cider makers, our HR, it’s, you know, finance and AP. Like, that’s it’s everybody.
Scott Cowan [00:43:28]:
It’s pretty, you know, it’s businesses, you know, think about that. You’re you’re that company is providing income for 35 households.
Maura Hardman [00:43:37]:
Absolutely. It’s really fantastic. I, you know, I really can’t say enough nice things about the people that I work with. It’s why I’ve stayed here. That and our products are fantastic. I love them. But I do. I work with some of just the kindest and hardest working people that you could ever ask to work with, and they’re really passionate about what they do.
Maura Hardman [00:43:56]:
And there’s, I think, a really strong sense of ownership for the work that they do. And, you know, we’ve got a good company culture, so that those pieces are all really, really important.
Scott Cowan [00:44:06]:
Yeah. That’s absolutely true.
Maura Hardman [00:44:07]:
A really great group of folks that I work with.
Scott Cowan [00:44:10]:
So I’m gonna put you
Maura Hardman [00:44:10]:
on the spot. K.
Scott Cowan [00:44:11]:
You have to pick your favorite. You can only have one cider for the rest of your days. It’s the only cider you’re ever gonna be able to drink again. What’s it gonna be?
Maura Hardman [00:44:20]:
I’m gonna
Scott Cowan [00:44:21]:
go. Ridiculous question. I can ask.
Maura Hardman [00:44:26]:
Oh, I can’t pick two. That is hard. You know what? I’m I’m gonna go with our light cider, which we haven’t talked about yet and which a lot of people haven’t tasted yet, so you’re gonna have to take my word for it. But it is it’s really good. I think the other thing too is because you said, you know, if this is what I’m gonna drink for the rest of my days, that’s we’ll talk a little bit more about it, but it’s really phenomenal, and it’s a little bit lower ABV. So, like, if I’m gonna only drink one for the rest of my days, then I get to have a few Okay. Each time.
Scott Cowan [00:44:59]:
I’ll let you have a second one because you were you know, you kind of like, what would what would the other one be?
Maura Hardman [00:45:04]:
The other one would be our Honeycrisp. Okay. Yeah. That’s that, I was having a hard choice. Okay. Also, you know, I’m a Libra. I’m inherently indecisive. I’m like, oh, you’re gonna make me pick one.
Maura Hardman [00:45:16]:
I’m like, also a little bit of a rule breaker. So I’m like, I’m probably just gonna pick two anyway. So those are my two.
Scott Cowan [00:45:23]:
I typically if I ask, I know I’m gonna get more than one because nobody’s just gonna say, you know, I’m gonna do X. But let’s talk about your sparkling stuff before we go to the light cider because I think the light cider deserves I’ve got questions. So help me out here. So the the sparklings are well, they seem like they’re lower in carbs and sugar than I might expect.
Maura Hardman [00:45:46]:
Mhmm.
Scott Cowan [00:45:48]:
So are these apple based?
Maura Hardman [00:45:50]:
They are. Okay. Basically, like, our plan with making the Seattle cider sparkling was to do something that was seltzer adjacent. Okay. And, you know, you’ve got all your other big names. I won’t say them. Everybody knows what they are and who they are. And, you know, they have a place in the world.
Maura Hardman [00:46:08]:
That market for seltzer has been massive. It was one of the most quickly growing categories, although it’s starting to slow down a little bit while cider is growing. But you know, seltzers came onto the scene, and I think a lot of folks were kind of scrambling to make something that was seltzer or seltzer adjacent. The difference with this being that it is apple based and that we use natural ingredients and things that, you know, occur in nature. And so flavor profile wise, it’s they’re delicious. Mhmm.
Scott Cowan [00:46:43]:
Yeah. So you have to pick just one. You’re gonna go with the blood orange, the papaya, or the Meyer’s lemon?
Maura Hardman [00:46:49]:
Papaya.
Scott Cowan [00:46:51]:
Okay. That was easy, see. That was nice. Alright. Let’s talk light cider.
Maura Hardman [00:46:57]:
Yes. I’m excited.
Scott Cowan [00:46:59]:
Okay. So before before we got on the call today, I I logged no. I didn’t log in to your website, but it was on your website, and I see this this big, big banner, you know, as it rotates through, and you’re having lite cider coming out in July of twenty twenty two. So depending on when you listen to this, it might not be available. It might already have been out for a while. So what was the motivation to create a light product, and how do we bring this to market?
Maura Hardman [00:47:26]:
Yeah. Our motivation with this is essentially category creation. If you look at I know we weren’t gonna talk about beer, but this is important for this part of the conversation. When you’re looking at beer, whether it’s, you know, big beer, or otherwise, and you’re looking at some of the key players, they’ve got their regular and then their light. And if you’re thinking about, you know, imagine if you will, sort of the quintessential backyard barbecue and what people are rolling up with like six packs to share with their friends and grill outside and enjoy, you know, an outside experience. There needed to be a space for that for cider as well. So light cider is our answer to light beer. That’s the most closely adjacent piece to that.
Maura Hardman [00:48:11]:
Okay. It is shockingly simple in, like, in its production. Right? It’s very similar to what we do with dry or with semi sweet. So it’s apple based, and, you know, there’s no adjunct flavors. There’s no, like, co fermentation. It’s just fresh pressed Washington apples. And Okay. It’s a light version.
Maura Hardman [00:48:35]:
So this is sort of that, you know, your lawnmower cider, right, instead of your lawnmower beer. This is your, your porch pounders, this, like, very, like, crushable, drinkable. You can have a couple of them.
Scott Cowan [00:48:49]:
Right.
Maura Hardman [00:48:50]:
And it’s super refreshing.
Scott Cowan [00:48:52]:
So what what are you doing differently to make this light? What’s the I mean, is it yeah. What’s how many calories would be in a can approximately?
Maura Hardman [00:49:08]:
98.
Scott Cowan [00:49:09]:
And how many cans are in Or how many cans? How many calories are in, say, a Honeycrisp can?
Maura Hardman [00:49:15]:
Oh, I gotta look. That one is It’s a little higher, but, that one’s probably like, I wanna say, like, one sixty, one 90, something like that.
Scott Cowan [00:49:27]:
So so almost half off, if you will, Kellard. Yeah. Okay.
Maura Hardman [00:49:30]:
Well, so here’s the thing, though. Inherently, ciders that are not incredibly sweet, right, ciders that are not incredibly sweet are actually pretty low calorie. So our dry, for example, like, you know, it’s, I guess, like, keto friendly. I don’t know. I don’t do keto. But it’s on the, you know, it’s on the lighter side of it’s on the lighter side of calorie content. Right?
Scott Cowan [00:49:52]:
Right.
Maura Hardman [00:49:53]:
It’s on the lighter side of carbs, sugar content, all of those things. But, this is something that has come up pretty frequently with, like, the American Cider Association. That’s a US wide membership, like cider specific, industry specific membership piece. I sit on the marketing committee for the American Cider Association, and it’s something that’s come up frequently, is that cider out the gate was very concerned about talking about apple varietals and some of the more esoteric aspects of cider making. And that conversation hasn’t had the same level of accessibility for your everyday drinker. Light cider, it just is obvious. This is a light version. So this is for the light beer drinkers.
Maura Hardman [00:50:38]:
This is for, folks who want to drink something that’s a little bit lighter, both in terms of ABV and in calories and all of that. So it just it’s easy, and it’s obvious, and it’s super drinkable. Like, there’s just a ton of flavor packed into this. So it’s, like, it’s light without being watered down. You know? It’s light without, like, lacking that flavor piece. The flavor profile is really important. Like, that’s a big part of our brand standard is, like, hitting that really, you know, apple forward flavor profile that makes you want to crack open another. And so with this, it was part in making, you know, this really delicious liquid, but then also, like, creating this packaging that makes it super obvious to what it is because it’s a light cider.
Maura Hardman [00:51:24]:
So we’re we’re trying to we’re trying to creep in and, like, take some of that part of the light beer market with light cider because that just needs to exist. That’s you know, we’re answering a call from, like, our consumer base that’s like, oh, yeah. This is, like, what people want to drink. So we’re excited to be able to be the ones making that. And from our process, one of the things we’ve been talking about a lot is sort of this story of light cider. It’s like, what do you get when you ask your cider makers what they want to drink? What do you get when you ask your cider makers, what do you want to drink after you’ve been making cider all day? Like something, you know, your shift drink afterwards, this is why we have it on a secret tap. We have a secret tasting room and employee taps and things like that, because you gotta be able to try what you’re making. You gotta make sure that it hits those standards.
Maura Hardman [00:52:20]:
This is exactly it. The whole point was like, what would we wanna drink after work? What do you wanna drink after your hike, after you go kayak or ride your bike? Like, it’s just it’s really refreshing, and it doesn’t it’s light. So, you know, it doesn’t feel heavy. It’s all of those things. So the name of it, it was, you know, pretty simple in that. Like, what are we trying to do? Well, it’s a light cider.
Scott Cowan [00:52:43]:
The reason I’ve been kind of smirking while you’re telling me this is the can looks like a beer can. I mean, it looks
Maura Hardman [00:52:51]:
It does, yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:52:54]:
I could see somebody walking into a local grocery store and grabbing this thinking they were grabbing light beer. It looks like it looks like a beer can. I mean, it’s it looks very different than the rest of your packaging.
Maura Hardman [00:53:09]:
Yeah. You know, for that, we’d experimented a little bit with kind of stepping outside of our own, you know, prescribed box of of what our branding looks like when we made Odyssey and, the Imperial Cider we were talking about before, and that worked really well for us. You know, we’ve got kind of our core lineup, with the dry semi sweet, like our our year rounds and our seasonals. And then Odyssey was we were doing something really different. And so likewise, when we, it’s been really fun. This is actually part of what my team gets to do. I have two in house designers who’ve been working really hard on kind of storytelling through the packaging over the course of however many months, to, you know, figure out, like, how do we tell that story of this is like light beer? And so to hear you say that is great. I’m like, okay, mission accomplished.
Maura Hardman [00:53:57]:
I’m checking that box. We did a good job then. That was really what we were looking for, when to have that on the shelf that that people will understand, you know, because it’s not always going to be people in our tasting room where our bartenders know
Scott Cowan [00:54:13]:
all
Maura Hardman [00:54:13]:
of this great information about our ciders, or, you know, we can’t just plant a salesperson in the grocery aisle or convenience store everywhere to be like, Let me tell you why you should pick this one. You know, that, would be kind of funny and, a little bit weird. I think people might be kind of weirded out by having a random person.
Scott Cowan [00:54:31]:
Person inside the beer cabinet. You know, like, when you open the door up and there’s somebody like, hey, try this. You know, this is light cider. Yes.
Maura Hardman [00:54:38]:
And so since that that wasn’t possible, we try to do that through our packaging. So, yeah, that’s I mean, hey. That made me feel really great. I’m excited to tell my team about that response there.
Scott Cowan [00:54:49]:
It looks like a beer can without looking like I’m looking at it going, what does it remind me of? Like, what what light beer is it reminding me of? And I’m not able to put my finger on it, which I think is really good.
Maura Hardman [00:55:04]:
Right. It should be its own thing, but that it looks like it’s part of that category
Scott Cowan [00:55:09]:
is
Maura Hardman [00:55:09]:
part of that storytelling piece. Right? Visually that we’re like, oh, okay. Like, you know, in your brain, like, it’s giving those indications of if I’m looking for light beer, like, this this would work for me. Mhmm. That visually, like, you you get what we’re trying you’re picking up what we’re trying to put down here.
Scott Cowan [00:55:26]:
Exactly. Yeah. I think and, you know, I think it also well, not because my opinion counts or anything, but I think that it might be an easier sale to the grocery store to give you shelf space because it looks like it belongs on the shelf.
Maura Hardman [00:55:45]:
Well, thank you. Yeah. Those are that’s actually I mean, that’s the kind of feedback that I love to hear because I know that, like, my team worked really hard on Yeah. I mean dialing this in. And it was. I mean, it was months long process. Like, that’s another piece where, you know, AB testing and everybody, you know, is Right. Sharing opinions about, you know, changing this piece or changing that.
Maura Hardman [00:56:06]:
The number of just, like, really minute details that go into that piece, it’s it’s an exceptional amount of work. So I’m excited to hear that, you know, just gut shot. That’s what it feels like. Right? When you’re looking at it, that’s that’s what we’re that’s the story we’re trying to tell so that people will get excited and pick that up off the shelf.
Scott Cowan [00:56:25]:
But it also doesn’t okay. I on one hand, I’m telling you it it feels like it belongs on the on the on the shelf, in my opinion, and it looks like a light beer.
Maura Hardman [00:56:35]:
Mhmm.
Scott Cowan [00:56:37]:
But it doesn’t I’m not saying it will blend in and just be it it is it has a distinctive look to it too. So it’s like it’s you’ve done both. You’ve it’s the Seattle cider logo is pronounced on it. I like the I like the green that you’ve chosen for, like, the stripes on the can. And I’ll in the show notes, I’ll put a link to the image so that people go you know, they can look at it if they want. Yeah. I just think it works.
Maura Hardman [00:57:03]:
Thank you.
Scott Cowan [00:57:05]:
So what’s the APV on this?
Maura Hardman [00:57:07]:
That one is it’s 4.2. I’m double checking. I have a can sitting in front of me. We did, these aren’t the official yeah. It’s 4.2%. These aren’t the official cans we had to make. I’m show I’m showing you this. No one else can see it.
Scott Cowan [00:57:20]:
No one else can see it right here.
Maura Hardman [00:57:21]:
Yeah. Actually,
Scott Cowan [00:57:21]:
hold that back up hold that back up again, please.
Maura Hardman [00:57:23]:
Yeah. Okay. So these are our sample ones. These aren’t the printed cans because we’re going into printed cans, but we made, sample cans and, so that we can send them out to people to try ahead of time and add some placements there. And yeah. So some people are gonna be trying those soon. You will be trying this soon because I’m gonna send some your way so you can taste it.
Scott Cowan [00:57:44]:
I will I will get and report back to you candidly too.
Maura Hardman [00:57:48]:
I would expect nothing less at this point. Yeah.
Scott Cowan [00:57:51]:
Pretty much. Yeah. You figure out who I am. So let’s so that’s new. That’s on the horizon at the time we’re recording this. What else might be coming? What you guys still looking at other combinations? I mean, you’re always you’re always innovating and testing, but anything anything new coming, you know, that you can talk about?
Maura Hardman [00:58:12]:
We always have something new coming up. There’s a couple of things that we will have on the horizon that we can’t really talk about just yet. But I will let you they are Apple related. Yes. And I will let you know when we do. So if we need to have a follow-up conversation about them, I’m absolutely game for that. One of the things and it’s new every year, and it’s one of my favorite things to talk about. But we just released our annual city fruit cider.
Maura Hardman [00:58:38]:
That is one that does come in a bottle. It’s one of our few. And that is one that sort of breaks the mold of other things where we actually do press those apples in house. So we do have an apple press. It’s relatively small, and, you know, we’re only pressing, you know, a couple, like, bins of apples. It usually ends up being maybe, like, one or two tons of apples, but we work with a local nonprofit, and and they give us the apples that they can’t use. Otherwise, the apples go to food banks.
Scott Cowan [00:59:11]:
Okay. And so where’s that available at?
Maura Hardman [00:59:16]:
So that one is available in our tasting room, so in our soda tasting room in the woods. You can also get that one online. You know, one of the things that we that is nice about having, like, a winery license, we can ship to multiple states. So we ship to 39 different states. We’re distributed in, like, 15, and we can only ship to 39. Like I said earlier, there’s a ton of regulations, and we’re abiding by them all. So someday, if we’re allowed to ship to additional states, we will. And you can look that up at seattlecidercompany.com.
Maura Hardman [00:59:51]:
We’ve got a cider finder for folks. Like, if we do distribute to your state, you can put your, ZIP code in there and see where you can find our ciders and, like, how close they are to you. Otherwise, you can look and see if we can ship them to you, if your state is one of the 39 that we ship to.
Scott Cowan [01:00:08]:
Yeah. I’m looking I’m looking in the the the city ciders not currently on the website.
Maura Hardman [01:00:13]:
That one’s not up there? Okay.
Scott Cowan [01:00:14]:
It’s currently on there.
Maura Hardman [01:00:15]:
There should be some details about that, both, like, you know, on our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, because it’s a little bit smaller. Although, if you look on I’ll just double check. I was gonna say if you look are you looking on the shipping side?
Scott Cowan [01:00:28]:
I am.
Maura Hardman [01:00:29]:
Okay. Well, there we go. I guess I’ve got my work cut out for me after I get off
Scott Cowan [01:00:33]:
of this interview.
Maura Hardman [01:00:33]:
Sorry. I didn’t mean to work. No. That’s okay. I’ll make sure it’s up there so that by the time people are listening to this podcast, that they’ll be able to get that. But we will be doing we actually had an off year where we didn’t end up being able to do our city fruit release, which was 2020, and nobody is super shocked by that, I’m sure. So we’re doing two releases this year. We just did, we just did one in April, and then we’re doing a second one for our anniversary in September.
Maura Hardman [01:01:02]:
So timing wise, that’s kind of nice. It’s around, you know, when harvest is starting. It’s one of our most, you know, quintessentially Seattle cider ciders because all the apples are picked from Seattle proper. These are apples that are coming from, you know, people’s fruit trees in their backyard, public spaces that City Fruit is allowed to, harvest from. It’s a really great nonprofit organization, and, you know, they’re teaching people about farming and agriculture. They’re harvesting fruit that then goes to food banks or their CSAs. We take their ugly apples or apples that aren’t intended for feeding people. Crab apples make phenomenal cider, but nobody wants to eat them.
Maura Hardman [01:01:43]:
So we take them. K. Yeah. And we’ve been making cider, with city fruit apples for, gosh, I wanna say, since 2015.
Scott Cowan [01:01:52]:
Okay. So one, to wrap up the whole Seattle cider thing, let’s talk about the woods. Okay. Because the idea that you’re sitting in So to and you’re calling it the woods is kind of funny to me. But, you have two you have two trees growing there. So, I mean, I guess it is technically for the city, it’s the woods. Yes. When did the taproom open? And give our audience kind of an overview of what they could expect if they were to go.
Maura Hardman [01:02:17]:
Okay. Yeah. The current iteration opened in 2013, with the start of Seattle Cider. So it was there was a lot happening, where it was a build out of a new tasting room along with launching Seattle Cider. There were previous iterations of the of the woods, which was the tasting room, you know, for the brewery, that was just in the brewery. But we expanded size when we were able to expand warehouse space. It’s got a really good atmosphere to it. It’s the woods because it’s partly off the beaten path.
Maura Hardman [01:02:51]:
You kind of had to know where it was for a while. We really only first got a sign up that says the woods tasting room in 2020. That was a big deal. We’ve been working on that for a while. So you had to know where it was. It was like the secret escape. Yeah. It’s got a very it’s a nice laid back atmosphere.
Maura Hardman [01:03:10]:
It’s lots of woods looking, wood paneling and things. Okay.
Scott Cowan [01:03:15]:
We’ve
Maura Hardman [01:03:16]:
got games, like a little arcade space. We have over 30 taps. We’ve got food from, we have a little brick and mortar food spot that is also a commissary kitchen for some local food trucks. So Bread and Circuses does all the food. It’s kind of, you know, upscale pub fairs. Very good. They make, one of the best smash burgers I’ve had in a long time. I think I’m having that for lunch today.
Scott Cowan [01:03:39]:
Okay.
Maura Hardman [01:03:40]:
But, yeah, you know, we’ve got a patio. We, also, actually, we could talk about this. We are working on, we had built out some extra patio space, you know, in 2020 because people could only sit outside. And that was up for a good year and a half, and then mother nature had some other ideas. We had built it out with, like, pallets, and we were using, you know, old wine barrels and things for tables. And, it was, you know, very on brand for, like, the look and feel. We had a couple of pretty gnarly windstorms that took it down. So we’re doing a new build out for that that’ll be coming, hopefully before it gets real warm out and give, you know, some additional seating outside.
Maura Hardman [01:04:20]:
We do have patio space out there right now, but this just adds to kind of the outdoor seating, which is really nice.
Scott Cowan [01:04:27]:
And it looks like so you can rent the the you can rent the space out for events. Right?
Maura Hardman [01:04:33]:
Mhmm. Yeah. We we do, like, rentals for, like, partial space. We do occasionally do, like, a full buyout, but in general, you know, we want it to be open to customers who might be visiting from out of town and not know, you know, ahead of time. So we try not to, like, do a a full close too often, but we’ve got a great little mezzanine space. We see people, you know, doing birthdays, retirement parties, engagement parties, bachelorette and bachelor parties up there. So you kind of have, like, your own little space. It’s counter service, so it’s super easy.
Maura Hardman [01:05:05]:
Like, if you’re doing something that’s, you know, work happy hour and you’re like, oh, we’re gonna do a hosted tab or you’re like, no. We’re just all gonna meet in this space, and everybody does their own thing. So, yeah, it’s it’s really nice and laid back. Oh, one thing I will say that I love to talk about that’s in our tasting room is we make cider slushies, and they’re really good. So that’s such a summer treat. We’ve been starting them earlier and earlier each year. In the winter, we do a mold cider. So you drink a hot mold cider with mulling spices.
Maura Hardman [01:05:35]:
And when it’s cold and rainy and gray outside, it’s just kind of nice to wrap your hands around a warm mug. Sure.
Scott Cowan [01:05:43]:
Yeah.
Maura Hardman [01:05:43]:
No. By June, it’s nice here. I know. You’re just trying to keep people out of Seattle, which is fine.
Scott Cowan [01:05:48]:
I’m just Yeah. Exactly. You
Maura Hardman [01:05:49]:
don’t want them to know what a hidden gem it is or not so hidden gem.
Scott Cowan [01:05:53]:
I don’t think Seattle has that problem. Everybody knows about Seattle.
Maura Hardman [01:05:56]:
Everyone knows. We’ve got good summers. So, yeah, this year, as soon as we took the mold cider off, we, like, plugged in the slushy machine, and we’re like, alright. It’s go time. And so we change up that flavor every week. It’s really good. We have fun naming them and coming up with different combinations and flavors there. So, you know, we’re always trying to do something a little bit new, and we do cider cocktails and things like that in the tasting room.
Maura Hardman [01:06:20]:
Yeah.
Scott Cowan [01:06:21]:
Okay. So I’m reading something here, and I’m confused. Hopefully, you can clarify this for me.
Maura Hardman [01:06:28]:
Is this gonna be another thing I have to fix on our website?
Scott Cowan [01:06:31]:
I don’t think so. Okay. Good. Okay. I’m confused.
Maura Hardman [01:06:33]:
Okay.
Scott Cowan [01:06:33]:
So I’m looking at the part where, you know, the rental information for the woods.
Maura Hardman [01:06:39]:
Sure. Right?
Scott Cowan [01:06:39]:
And you’ve got, you know, children. It’s 21 plus, so no kids. There’s a deposit, blah blah blah food. There’s this thing about decorations, so I’m a little confused.
Maura Hardman [01:06:48]:
Okay.
Scott Cowan [01:06:49]:
It says no pins or nails are used to attach the items to the wall, only blue tape. Yeah. I understand that. Yeah. All decorations are taken down and disposed of at the end of the event. I get that.
Maura Hardman [01:07:00]:
Okay.
Scott Cowan [01:07:01]:
This is the line I don’t get. Absolutely no glitter, confetti, or open flames. None. So I can’t use glitter? I can’t
Maura Hardman [01:07:09]:
No glitter.
Scott Cowan [01:07:10]:
What? I’m just a little confused.
Maura Hardman [01:07:11]:
I just
Scott Cowan [01:07:11]:
read that. I started laughing.
Maura Hardman [01:07:13]:
No glitter.
Scott Cowan [01:07:14]:
Absolutely no glitter confetti or open flames. Period. None. Period. I love that.
Maura Hardman [01:07:19]:
I think I mean That was
Scott Cowan [01:07:20]:
actually pretty funny.
Maura Hardman [01:07:21]:
I think it’s pretty self explanatory. Yes. Don’t worry. So listen. Because of that, when I send you a box of ciders to try, I will not be using glitter as part of the packing material.
Scott Cowan [01:07:31]:
Thank you. I appreciate that. That stuff is a nightmare.
Maura Hardman [01:07:35]:
I mean, yeah. Once it’s in your space, it is there forever,
Scott Cowan [01:07:40]:
I think.
Maura Hardman [01:07:41]:
And I
Scott Cowan [01:07:41]:
was thinking like if you’re having a bachelorette party or a bachelor party, that the likelihood of something like that is just
Maura Hardman [01:07:48]:
Right? Like those little popping cannons of glitter and things. We would be cleaning glitter out of every surface for the rest of our days. So, yeah, no glitter, no open flames. It is the wood. So, I mean, you have to be very careful about, about burning and things like that. So we’ll handle any open flames, which is pretty rare. There are very rarely any open flames. If there are, it’s a problem.
Scott Cowan [01:08:14]:
Exactly.
Maura Hardman [01:08:15]:
Please let your bartender know if there are open flames. They’ll probably already have-
Scott Cowan [01:08:19]:
Do you have live music there regularly?
Maura Hardman [01:08:22]:
We do. Yeah. We started doing this a while back, and then have been getting back into it. And so usually once or twice a month, we’ll do live music. So we’ve got local artists, lots of, like, singer songwriters. It’s just a nice piece. We don’t ever do a cover charge, so you can just show up and enjoy, but we pay the artists instead. So we pay the artists.
Maura Hardman [01:08:42]:
You just get to come and enjoy ciders. But yeah, it’s been a really nice way to We try to do a lot of things that involve supporting other local folks. So, you know, that’s bringing in local singer songwriters, local musicians to perform and, you know, share our space and get people excited about what they’re doing. We also work with other local companies like, The Works in Seattle. We sell some of their, DIY kits. We will sell, you know, different different products from other local folks because, you know, we wanna we’re a local company in Seattle, and so we’re trying to help support other local folks in the community. And it’s a really important part of what we are doing, and it’s a nice space to be able to do that in our tasting room, because we stay pretty busy, so it’s good visibility when we can bring in more people into the fold.
Scott Cowan [01:09:37]:
So, when you’re not marketing Cider, what do you like to do for fun?
Maura Hardman [01:09:43]:
I love to go see live music.
Scott Cowan [01:09:45]:
Ah.
Maura Hardman [01:09:45]:
Yes.
Scott Cowan [01:09:46]:
What was the last show you went
Maura Hardman [01:09:49]:
to? I just got back from the Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis. But my last local show that I went to, I saw Valerie June, who actually is, like, from Memphis, at Showbox At The Market, and that was really phenomenal.
Scott Cowan [01:10:05]:
Hate to ask, but how was the Beale Street?
Maura Hardman [01:10:08]:
It was amazing. Although, I it was really amazing. I went all three days. It’s a it was a really incredible lineup, just, you know, a really great, like, diverse number of acts to come out. Mhmm. I missed a couple of the folks that I went to see, though, because there was a really gnarly rainstorm, and they evacuated people briefly. And we my friend that I went with, we we left and then got a message on, the on the festival app that said that those shows were in fact going to go on, but it was like, well after the time that the concert normally would have ended. So the show was over by 11:30, maybe midnight tops.
Maura Hardman [01:10:50]:
And two of the acts that I was there to see and really excited about weren’t starting until 12:45. I was already in my jammies. Like, I was like, okay. That’s not happening. We were home. We’d, you know, we’d already, like, had snacks and watched a show, and we’re like, oh, they are going back home. Okay. Mhmm.
Maura Hardman [01:11:09]:
But it was really good. It was a really, really good show. Memphis is fun. I will be back. Yeah.
Scott Cowan [01:11:13]:
Memphis is fun.
Maura Hardman [01:11:14]:
Mhmm.
Scott Cowan [01:11:14]:
Let’s let’s talk Seattle music scene, though. Yes. Where do you like to see music in the Seattle area?
Maura Hardman [01:11:20]:
Showbox is great. I particularly love, you know, Numos, Barbosa, Neptune. I haven’t been to the new Crocodile space yet, so that’s definitely on my list. I go see, you know, local shows. There’s actually so I live in West Seattle, and a friend of mine runs the local Barley and Vine, and they do music every Wednesday, which also like local singer songwriters. And so that’s a much smaller venue, but live music anytime. Right. Here, obviously, too, like, at the woods, like, I will see our shows as well.
Maura Hardman [01:11:55]:
So, yeah, I mean, really, any opportunity that I get to see live music, I’m I’m pretty stoked on that, and I will seek that out.
Scott Cowan [01:12:03]:
Any local Seattle Musicians you wanna give a shout out to?
Maura Hardman [01:12:08]:
Oh, our next, like, upcoming folks. I’m trying to think. That’s a alright. I’m gonna fail on that question.
Scott Cowan [01:12:15]:
Dylan and Sarah?
Maura Hardman [01:12:16]:
Yep. Thank you.
Scott Cowan [01:12:18]:
You’re welcome. Here to help.
Maura Hardman [01:12:19]:
Thank you. I didn’t pull up our, like, website stuff because I would get distracted, and I’d be, like,
Scott Cowan [01:12:27]:
looking at, like It’s on the other monitor over here, so I’m always, like, you know, looking over here. Like, you’ve you know? Okay. Do you drink coffee?
Maura Hardman [01:12:35]:
I do. I live in Seattle. I think it’s a requirement, isn’t it?
Scott Cowan [01:12:38]:
Well, and you and you did, like, the the coffee cider. Okay. So I’m gonna challenge you. Tell me a coffee shop in Seattle that I should try that I I haven’t tried.
Maura Hardman [01:12:50]:
Oh, that’s an easy one, actually. Fulcrum Coffee. So I have tried Fulcrum. Yes. Fulcrum has just the it’s gorgeous. Their space is gorgeous. Their brick and mortar coffee shop is, like, over in Westlake area. Mhmm.
Maura Hardman [01:13:05]:
And they also, fun fact, are our neighbors one door down from us, at the cidery. And I drink a lot of their coffee, not because I’m driving to Westlake all the time, but because they are roasting their coffee next door to us. And they provide all of the coffee that we have in our break room for our staff. We drink an astronomical amount of coffee here.
Scott Cowan [01:13:27]:
As you should.
Maura Hardman [01:13:28]:
As as we should. Yeah. We gotta we gotta keep the cider makers and the packaging team and the bartenders. We keep everybody really well caffeinated, with the highest quality coffee. And we do we love the Fulcrum team. We’ve actually, you know, they’ll come and have meetings, like, in our tasting room and and bring folks by. We’ve, hosted them for tours in the back and talked them through, like, the cider making process. And we have a really great relationship with the folks over there and, what they’re doing, like, with their company is just phenomenal.
Maura Hardman [01:13:58]:
So it’s nice, right, like, that their coffee is delicious, so I’m gonna wanna drink it anyway. But then, like, the more you learn and kind of peel back the layers of, like, the story for Fulcrum, the more you would wanna drink their coffee. They’re just really, really great folks.
Scott Cowan [01:14:11]:
Okay. Well, to wrap this up, this is this is how I get away with everything. What didn’t I ask you that I should have?
Maura Hardman [01:14:20]:
Oh my gosh. That’s a good question. I don’t know. Should is hard. Right? Like
Scott Cowan [01:14:26]:
Well, it’s just, you know, did we did we did we unintentionally overlook something that we should bring up?
Maura Hardman [01:14:34]:
No. We got to talk about light cider. We talked about our core lineup. You know? We talked about not your standard cider, all those fun things. I mean, there’s always more to talk about. I could talk about I mean, can and do talk about cider all day. That’s my job. Right? Sure.
Maura Hardman [01:14:49]:
But, yeah, I think that the one thing for me was that I, missed the boat on sending you some samples ahead of time so that you could taste through with me, even though we started this in the morning. That’s okay. I mean, that’s fine.
Scott Cowan [01:15:03]:
It’s 05:00 somewhere. Yeah. That’s what I think. Yeah.
Maura Hardman [01:15:05]:
The other thing actually though is that, when we do a lot of our QA and QC, it’s small amounts when you’re tasting it, but you actually want to do it earlier in the day, like when your palate is fresh, like not after lunch when you’ve had onions on your salad or whatever.
Scott Cowan [01:15:22]:
All right. Where can people find more about Seattle Cider online?
Maura Hardman [01:15:27]:
Yes. You can find us at SeattleCiderCompany.com. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, sometimes on, TikTok, occasionally on TikTok, and it’s all at SeattleCiderCo. So lots of information to be found on there. We love, you know, talking about our products. We get to show off our staff and show you little peeks behind the scenes. We’ve been getting more into, like, doing video and fun things like that. So if you wanna learn more about us, those are great places to check it out.
Scott Cowan [01:15:56]:
Alright. Alright. We’ll put those in the show notes where people can click on them. So thank you for taking the time to talk about CIDR with me today. I enjoyed myself, and hopefully this was good for you.
Maura Hardman [01:16:06]:
This was great. Thank you so much for having me.
Scott Cowan [01:16:08]:
Appreciate your time.
Maura Hardman [01:16:09]:
Alright. Take care.
Scott Cowan [01:16:22]:
Join us next time for another episode of the exploring Washington state podcast.