West End Ciderworks & Distillery coming

The West End Ciderworks & Distillery will soon add a new dimension to Athens, Ohio’s craft beverage offerings. Coming in July will be a new distilled spirits and cider tasting room and retail outlet, located about half a block from its sister operation, the West End Ciderhouse.

After recently receiving its final licenses and permits, the West End Ciderworks & Distillery is already busy producing a variety of distilled spirit and cider products. Previously, business founder Kelly Sauber had been making the spirits and ciders at a much smaller, rural Meigs County location. Now, all those operations have been transferred to Athens.

West End Ciderworks & Distillery is really two operations sharing the same building. The cidery produces hard apple cider, which it primarily markets through the West End Ciderhouse, an establishment operated by his business partner Deanna Schwartz. The distillery produces vodka, gin, whiskey, liqueurs and fruited brandies. These spirits are sold at the Ciderhouse, as well as through several Ohio retail liquor stores. For the past few years, these products have been marketed under the Fifth Element Spirits label, but all of these products will soon be rebranded as Athens West End Distillery, in order to take advantage of the increased visibility of the new distillery.

Sauber originally founded his distillery in 2012 to build a new independent boutique line of Ohio-focused ingredient products. With the opening of the West End Ciderhouse, he added cider production, and it quickly grew in volume. For the past five years, he has primarily focused his distillery’s and cidery’s output on supplying products for the growing popularity of the West End Ciderhouse.

Now, with the much enlarged Athens operation, Sauber hopes to produce enough distilled spirit product to expand distribution to more Ohio bars and liquor stores. Recent changes to Ohio liquor control regulations will also allow West End to self-distribute its distilled spirit products directly to Ohio on-premise retail liquor licensees (bars & restaurants). It’s an opportunity that Sauber plans to take advantage of.

It takes a lot of equipment

Over the past ten years, Sauber has collected a bunch of fermentation and distilling equipment from a variety of sources. He puts it all to use somewhere in his production processes. One real nice piece is his primary still. This perforated plate distillation column will produce up to 95 percent pure alcohol, which is needed for producing vodka and neutral grain spirits, but by adjusting the plates, it will run at a lower efficiency, which is needed to make whiskey.

“This still is capable of running any way you want it. If you want pure alcohol, great. If you want to make it really flavor positive, you can pull it off at 40 percent alcohol. It’s a nice versatile still.”

Building renovations take time and money

Sauber has been working on renovating the distillery-cidery building for the past couple of years. The project proved more time consuming and expensive than he had originally planned. That so often is the case with renovating old buildings to new uses. There was the installation of all new electrical and plumbing, adding fire suppression and ventilation, redoing the floor, putting in a new sewer line to hook up with the city sewer, installing entrance ramps and fencing, new bathrooms, etc., etc.

With most of the work now complete, everything looks great inside the facility. Besides the cidery and distillery production spaces, a large room at the main entrance contains what will become the tasting room and store. An impressive glass block and wood bar dominates the space, along with a spiral staircase that leads to a loft. Once the tasting room is open, you will be able to purchase cider in pints and and sample spirits produced at the facility. Bottles of distilled spirit products will be sold for off-premise consumption, as will growlers fills of cider.

Another separate, large section of the main building, containing approximately 2,500 sq. ft., remains empty at present. Sauber and Schwartz are considering various options for its utilization, including possibly leasing it to a food vendor for a bakery or coffee shop, or maybe bringing in several small vendors and turning it into more of a marketplace concept.

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Watch for the opening of the new tasting room during Ohio Brew Week

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Growing the distillery and cidery means adding employees. They recently hired a production assistant to help out with all the increased work. Sauber also expects to hire a person to run the tasting room and store, once it is ready to open.

“I’ve been the sole employee of the distillery and cidery since inception,” Sauber said. “I’m getting tired.”

Spirits aging room added

At the far end of the distillery building, Sauber had a 15 ft. deep addition built to hold his barrels of aging whiskey. This rickhouse is not heated of cooled, allowing the whiskey to age properly.

“I have some apple brandy in there that has been aging for almost six years,” Sauber says. “I’ve got two barrels of malt whiskey aging now. I’m going to play with all kinds of styles.”

Down the road, you can expect more production of aged spirits from West End Distillery. Before he shifts his focus to bourbon and other whiskey production, however, Sauber says he needs to get caught up on his clear spirits (vodka and gin). Because his equipment is small, he says producing enough whiskey to fill one barrel takes him about a month of work. Then, he would age the whiskey for several years before selling it. This makes small batch bourbon a very long range project.

Right now, Sauber is busy making a lot of vodka, gin, and liqueurs to keep the Ciderhouse bar supplied and to get ready to open the distillery tasting room and store. Even this is a fairly slow process because everything he does is small batch. He doesn’t cut corners on his ingredients. All his grains and other ingredients are non-GMO.

• His vodka features grain from the local Cowdery Farms.
• He produces a unique Spicebush Gin flavored with locally foraged spicebush berries.
• He has made a brandy flavored with local pawpaw and another flavored with local elderberry.
• He has made a wonderful coffee liqueur using Athens-based Fair Trade Coffee and sweetened with local honey.
• Maybe his best vodka was one he made from Vidal grape pomace from the local Shade Winery.

You get the picture. He likes local agriculture.

Sauber plans to have the tasting room and store up and running by mid-July. They want the tasting room’s premier to take place during Ohio Brew Week, July 12-20.

Ciders getting better and better

Prior to entering the cider world, Sauber spent 14 years as a commercial beer brewer. He thought with all that brewing experience, making cider would be a piece of cake. But he discovered that making ciders is its own discipline, which you can only learn over time by doing it. “I think my ciders are improving every year,” he says. “I think I’m making better and better cider all the time.” The public sure seems to agree, as witnessed by all the folks who regularly flock to the West End Ciderhouse to drink his ciders.

Sauber says because Ohio orchardists are raising almost none of the special cider apple varieties that have higher tannins and acids, he had to learn how to make good cider out of the apples that were available. His base cider is made with a blend of up to 40 different apple varieties. He sources all his ales form small Ohio orchards. Sauber has learned that he prefers to do a long cool fermentation for his ciders that helps produce a pure, clean flavor that is nice drinking straight or can show off fruit additions very well.. His cider will initially be fermented dry. Then, a lot of it will be lightly mellowed by mixing in some fresh apple juice to produce semi-dry and semi-sweet final versions.

Much of the West End cider is also fruited. To the base cider, Sauber will add fresh fruits—such as persimmons, cherries, cranberries, blueberries, sumac, or grapes—to boost the flavor and add balancing tannins and acidity. He will also flavor cider with fresh herbs and spices. His popular Zingerber cider includes fresh ginger and lemon grass as a key flavor components.

Beyond the fruited ciders, he likes to produce single varietal ciders. He has made ciders with Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, and GoldRush varieties, to name a few. Most West End ciders run 6% to 7% ABV.

West End also produces things beyond whiskey and cider. Schwartz already makes several different kind of bitters that are used as flavorings in cocktails at the Ciderhouse. They also make their own vanilla extract. They are considering producing them in larger quantities and developing his own line of bitters and vanilla for commercial sale.

As much as anyone else in Ohio, Sauber supports local agriculture by buying nearly all his ingredients locally. His grain is primarily corn from an Athens County farmer; his apples are from regional Ohio orchards. He purchases over 1,200 bushels of apples a year.

West End Ciderhouse celebrates 5 years in business

The sister West End Ciderhouse recently celebrated it 5th anniversary. When Schwartz and Sauber opened the Ciderhouse it was the third cidery in the state. The Ciderhouse has proven to be very popular with Athens citizenry. People love its solid selection of house-brand ciders, creative cocktails, and curated selection of Ohio craft beer and guest ciders. The Ciderhouse always has a well-trained mixologist behind the bar, who is equally adept at making the latest trendy cocktails or old-time classics. The cocktails feature either their own brand spirits or other Ohio-made spirits, or can be ordered with about any popular premium international spirit brand. The shaded outdoor beer garden is a hit in warm weather too.

Links

Ciderhouse Website
Fifth Element Spirits Facebook
Sauber’s role in the Ohio Pawpaw Festival

Ciderhouse Facebook Page