Sutliff Cider Company
Hi there everyone. It’s been a while since I have posted on this page! In truth, not too much has been going on at Millstream. The deep winter is our slow time of the year, so we are busy taking some well deserved time off.
Last Friday, Kevin Buckley and I took some of this time to tour one of our fellow local ‘brewers’ and I thought I would share this with you today. I’m talking about the Sutliff Cider Company, in Sutliff, Iowa (near Mt Vernon and Lisbon). If you are like me, you have seen bottles of this stuff at Johns’ Grocery and wondered… who the heck makes that? I was very curious to find out more about Iowa’s first and only hard cider manufacturer, so I scheduled an appointment to get an official tour.
First a little bit about the ‘town’ of Sutliff. When you enter Lisbon on Highway 30, follow the signs to the Historic Sutliff Bridge. You will drive a ways out of town, and eventually find this:
This old bridge was built in 1897 and is one of the only bridges of its type still standing. There are picnic benches on the bridge that would make an ideal place to sit down and have a bite to eat on a summer day. Unfortunately, it was very chilly when we got there so our time on the bridge was brief (though there was a very friendly dog hanging out there!)
A bit warmer was the Sutliff Store and Tavern. I can attest that while the menu is simple, the food was good and reasonably priced. We had a meal for two for less than 10 dollars! Curious locals were inside playing cards, and on the ceiling there are over 3000 autographed dollar bills, some of which seemed very old!
Just before you get to the bridge you will see a sign for the Sutliff Cider Company. We turned into the gravel lane and saw the ‘ciderhouse’:
Inside we met Scott Ervin, owner and winemaker at Sutliff.
They were in the middle of bottling, which was a family affair. I was immediately struck by the cleanliness and high tech equipment they were employing. Check out the filler:
It was quite a nifty machine. The bottles are rinsed by hand, and then filled with this machine which does a double pre-evacuation of the bottle. The bottles were then being hand labeled by Scott’s wife:
Scott explained the process of making cider to us. First, of course, the apples have to be pressed. The juice is collected, and then it is fermented in and aged in a series of oak barrels. After 6 months or so, the cider has fermented down to a level he described as being ‘bone dry’. Then cider is racked into a large tank, filtered, and some sweet must is added back to give the product some final sweetness.
We were then taken across the yard to the ‘barrelhouse’. This was formerly a chicken coop! It has gone through quite a renovation and is now home to several dozen white wine barrels that Scott obtained from the west coast. Most of the barrels were French oak with a few American oak mixed in. We are considering doing some barrel aging of beer at Millstream so we found this very interesting and exciting! Scott explained the very details of barrel management to us, including the hard work of emptying and cleaning the barrels… it’s very labor intensive! We also learned a little bit about wine techniques and the very mysterious malolactic fermentation that goes on during the wine aging process. This fermentation softens the cider and significantly changes the character of the final product, and it is something you want to entice to have happen in the barrel, not down the road in the bottle. Scott also let us sample some cider straight out of the barrel at various stages of aging. It was all very good stuff!
I guess I should talk a bit more about apples. Scott is currently getting his apples from out of state, but he has invested into two apple orchards on his property which he is planning on using in the future. His cider is careful mix of several apple varieties, each selected for its specific character… not unlike the way wine makers select grapes for today’s modern varietal wines.
The Cider being made here is nothing like the sickening sweet mainstream cider you find in six packs. Sutliff Cider has a slight oaky, Belgium ‘barnyard’ character to the aroma, followed by a effervescent honey flavor. Not unlike a cross between a Belgian Saison and a White Riesling… and at six bucks a bottle I think it’s a real deal!
Scott also talked to us about his other non-alcoholic ciders, which he makes seasonally. As you might know, many supermarkets refuse to sell unpasteurized cider in Iowa. I think this is sad, but Scott expressed his concern over the liability aspect of unpasteurized cider. Since they do not have any pasteurizing ability at Sutliff, that limits them to selling only filtered ’soft’ cider. Scott expressed his hope to some day expand into the ’soft’ cider business, though for now he remains mostly focused on his alcoholic product.
We’d like to thank Scott for taking time out of his busy bottling day to give us such a great tour, and we were impressed by his knowledge and zeal for his product. Its great to know that we are accompanied in Iowa by such talented local artisans, and I hope we can work together in the future!