West Chester’s Artisan Cider Company Brews Success

by Melissa Jacobs

Combine Chester County’s best locally-grown apples with the region’s long-standing brewing traditions and what do you get? Chester County Ciders, a new company creating delicious, hand-crafted, hard cider. Haven’t tasted any of Chester County Ciders’ blends? Better hurry. The company already sold out of many of its vintages.

Located in West Chester, Chester County Ciders launched in 2020 and had its first pressing in 2021. After about six months of aging, the ciders were ready for sale in 2022. Those first vintages – Twenty Ton Press, Gold Rush, Northern Spy, Hop Series-Nelson and Rum Rush – sold out of all 4,200 bottles produced.

“We are thrilled that people enjoy our cider and that there’s an audience for what we’re doing,” said cider master Greg Ott, who co-owns Chester County Ciders with Manly Parks and Josh Lasensky. We enjoyed it … a lot. At a Main Line Tonight tasting, we fell in love with Twenty Ton Press and Northern Spy. Clean, crisp and complex, the ciders were absolutely phenomenal.

We’ve had plenty of ciders in our day, but we’ve never had bespoke ciders like these. Chester County Ciders are different than commercial hard cider. Instead of creating super sweet, one-note hard ciders, the partners decided to make complex, artisan ciders that resemble the flavor profiles of European ciders they love.

Ott – a pharmaceutical chemist by day who started home brewing beer in the 1990s – is Chester County Ciders’ CFO, or chief fermentation officer. With Parks and Lasensky, he created a process (complete with a science-y spreadsheet) detailing the recipes and brewing process for their ciders.

For starters, 100% of their apples come from local orchards, including Highland Orchard in West Chester and Barnard’s in Kennett Square. Little-known apple varieties like Kingston Black, Roxbury Russet, Northern Spy, and Gold Rush create the nuanced tastes that give Chester County Ciders’ complex character and interesting flavor profiles, much like wine.

Indeed, Chester County Ciders are barrel-aged and bottle conditioned. “Final fermentation in the bottle generates carbon dioxide bubbles created by small amounts of yeast and sugar,” Ott explained. “Once you cap it, yeasts break down sugars and generate ethanol and carbon dioxide. That carbon dioxide is soluble in the bottle and can’t escape. That’s the same way that sparkling wine is created.”

Ott prefers cold fermentation in 60 degrees. “It decreases the ability for non-yeast to infect your cider,” he said. “At higher temperatures, yeast can generate different flavor profiles. We want to highlight the apples, not the yeasts.”

It works. Twenty Ton Press – named for the machine the trio used for their first pressing – is super dry but not super sweet, with just the right amount of acidity and tannins, and tastes like a French-style wine. It’s made with Winesap apples and crabapples, Ott explained. “Crabapples are the secret sauce of our cider,” he said. “They are high in tannic content, but using 5-10% percent adds character to cider.”

Ott loves tinkering with the ciders. The Rum Rush vintage was aged in a rum barrel, and one of the 2022 Twenty Ton press was aged in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels. Both experiments added character to the ciders. Hop Series-Nelson was his foray into a hoppier cider, which created lovely floral notes. At the moment, Ott is using British-style pin-casks to age a new blend. “Fingers crossed on that,” he said with a laugh.

Meantime, Chester County Ciders are sold through its website and in many locations throughout the region, including Exton Beverage, Paoli Beverage, Bryn Mawr Beverage, the Beer Yard in Wayne and Below Deck Bottle Shop in Conshohocken. During autumn months, the ciders are sold at Highland Orchards. “We are also starting to keg some cider for sale at bars and restaurants,” Parks said. “We produced a handful of kegs from the 2022 harvest. We are looking to increase that this year.”

Cheers to that. For more information, visit Chester County Ciders.

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