Seattle Cider Co. was founded in August of 2013 by Joel Vandenbrink, and holds the distinction of being Seattle’s first cidery since prohibition!
After founding Two Beers Brewing in 2007, Vandenbrink decided to expand into cider making a few years later after being diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease – the high gluten content of beer tends to exacerbate the symptoms of the illness, making cider a welcome alternative option. Seattle Cider Co. uses a blend of Washington grown apples and a strain of white wine yeast, and no artificial flavorings to produce their craft ciders. Seattle Cider’s ciders are also sold in cans in an effort to make craft ciders more accessible to cider newcomers. Since their debut in 2013, Seattle Cider Co. has expanded their distribution to 10 states and has quadrupled in capacity.
Seattle Cider produces three year-round ciders, four seasonal flavors, two limited releases, and three harvest ciders. Their tasting room, charmingly named The Woods, is located in SoDo and shares space with Two Beers Brewing.
Ciders at City Fruit 2015 Cider Taste:
2014 Washington Heirloom – Made with Newtown Pippin, Gravenstein, Esopus Spitzenburg, and 10 other varieties of French and English cider apples.
Oaked Maple – Made with a blend of Smith, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Fuji, and Gala apples. ermented with raisins and oak chips and back-sweetened with pure Vermont maple syrup.
Cold Brew
Taste these ciders and more at City Fruit’s 5th Annual Cider Taste Fundraiser on November 12th at the Pike Place Atrium! Buy tickets here.
This year, City Fruit and Seattle Cider Co. have launched a new partnership in order to put more city-grown fruit to use. Throughout the harvest season, City Fruit’s harvesters have been setting aside apples that are unfit to donate to food banks, but are ideal for cider making – while many apples have blemishes or pest damage that render them less than ideal for donation, these apples can still be used for cider. In previous years, we have composted these apples to clean up city sidewalks, prevent pests from over-wintering, and prevent them from ending up in the garbage. Converting these apples to cider goes one step further to prevent apples from going to waste entirely and supplying local fruit to a local producer.
One harvest season and over 5,300 pounds of apples later, the City Fruit/Seattle Cider Co. cider is set to be released in late May of 2016. A portion of the proceeds from cider sales will go towards City Fruit’s 2016 harvest!