Good Drinks
Go behind the bar with unfiltered chats, wild stories, and industry insights from the people making your favorite drinks. Good Drinks dives into beer, wine, cider, spirits, soda and other non-alcoholic beverages, exploring what drives these legends and their impact on the world and trends.
Oh, and expect some pub recommendations and shenanigans unique working with beverages.
Good Drinks
Save bears--drink cider.
Ever had a bear in your yard? I have, thanks to the apples in my neighbor's yard that drew them in. It's an issue that Farmstead Cider in Jackson Hole is tackling head-on. They handcraft cider using apples collected from the community as part of their mission to protect bears from human conflict.
Join us as we chat with Ian McGregor, co-founder of Farmstead, as he shares how he went from winemaking to launching Wyoming’s only cidery. Ian tells us how homesteading, Johnny Appleseed, and the local wildlife, all shape the dry hard cider-making process of Farmstead. You'll hear how they're working to reduce bear-human encounters while creating unique, flavorful ciders in the challenging Wyoming climate.
Tune in as Ian delves into the art of blending apple varieties, overcoming unpredictable frosts, and his passion for sustainable farming. He shares how his experiences at Front Porch Farm and Stone Barns influenced his approach to cider-making and why preserving historical apple plantings is crucial.
This episode is packed, whether you're curious about the craft of cider, American West adaptation, sustainable business practices or just love a good story of entrepreneurship. Ian dives deep into the connection of the land, wildlife and community and how a business can have a lasting legacy for future generations.
And I had a roommate who was from England and he was like let's make cider, and we started fermenting it.
Molly Reilly:I didn't know we were to do
Ian McGregor:Cold, crashing it, yeah. And it was one of those things where I was like, oh, cider's cool, it's the same thing as winemaking. It's fruit juice and then yeast fermenting the sugars from that. And so when I finally moved back to Wyoming and saw the apples, it was like it's fruit wine. If Wyoming and saw the apples, it's fruit wine. If you love fruit wine as much as I do, then you'll appreciate the craftsmanship and quality of a local vintner.
Molly Reilly:Today's guest is Ian McGregor, co-founder of Farmstead, a unique beverage company that sources ingredients from the backyards of its neighbors in one of the harshest climates in the US. Ian's journey to running a cidery began with selling vegetables and homemade biscuits at the local farmer's market, before spending several years in winemaking and working at the renowned Stone Barns in New York, a leader in sustainable farming and home to the celebrated farm-to-table restaurant Blue Hill. Now back in Jackson, ian and his farmstead team collect tens of thousands of pounds of apples each year from over 200 neighbors, turning potential bear bait into delicious cider and reducing bear and human conflicts throughout the Yellowstone and Grand Teton area in the process. Let's hear all about dry hard ciders and farming in the Tetons from Ian. I hope this doesn't feel like an attack, but you created it to help save the bears. I hope this doesn't feel like an attack, but you created it to help save the bears. But now you're planting apple trees.
Ian McGregor:Yeah, oh, totally, yeah, I get it. Yeah, it's a contradiction.
Ian McGregor:But not really no it's one of those things where we're planting them. You know, bears they're part of the whole mix, yeah, and it's about coexistence and so like having a tree that has a thousand pounds of fruit that drop on the ground, that's going to attract bears. But if, if we're growing trees that are of more value to people than a lot of the crab apples, then the idea is that we can grow them and harvest them. So we'll we'll prevent that here. But if we can promote other people to plant trees that they care about and then harvest the fruit from and make things from, then that's a win too. That's what we're shooting for yeah, and do you?
Molly Reilly:Do you still accept apples from people in town ?
Ian McGregor:ones that you prefer more, yeah, we will take any apples that people want to bring us. There are some that we just can't harvest because they stick on the tree. They're called persistent apples and they don't fall off, okay, and so they're really impossible to harvest. It's a massive tree of tiny little crab apples that you can't shake loose, and to pick by hand would just take far too long, and so there's a few varieties that we don't pick because it's just not. It doesn't make sense from a business standpoint.
Ian McGregor:A lot of times, people will pick their tree themselves. They have some free time or they go out with the family and make an afternoon of it, and it's fun. We'll definitely take those. They have tons of tannins, tons of cool flavors, um, and so we love including them, uh. So, yeah, we definitely accept apples from anyone who wants to take the time to pick them, and, um, we think of it as like we're a place where you can drop it off and feel good about it, and we don't pay for them. You know, yeah, yeah, we don't like trade for them. It's sort of like, if you want to be a part of this whole mission, then jump on board and we'll try and make something.
Molly Reilly:In our neighborhood, we don't have bear-proof trash cans. I've only seen two neighbors with bear proof cans. We've had a lot of bear activity but the bears did not go after the trash, they didn't do anything nuisance wise. They didn't go after dog food, they didn't get into any conflicts but ,t hey went straight for all the apple trees.
Molly Reilly:Yep, totally, that's all they wanted, in fact this mom, and her cub hung out for days. The mom was so smart, so fish and wildlife, or rangers came and they put up the trap and they stood guard while the kids were going back and forth from school on the bike path and the mom just took the baby up the tree and then when fish and wildlife left and she came down and went straight back to the apple trees. She just sauntered around people's yards, no problem, there was no interaction. Finally she had to be relocated, tranqulized but safely relocated to the park with her cub.
Ian McGregor:There was, you know.
Molly Reilly:But then the next day another ,no no no a black bear, it wasn't a grizzly, it was a black bear.
Ian McGregor:I hadn't heard of too many grizzlies, but yeah, they've been around. But yeah, it's kind of a conundrum too If we pick all the apple trees, then will they get into the trash cans? Oh, you know, if there's not a food source for them to be focused on, then maybe they'll go to other ones. But the general trajectory of the county is to try and reduce the attractions across the board. So a combination of picking apples and having bear proof trash cans could be, you know the solution. But you know we're unable to. Currently, with our staffing, and you know the income that we have, we're not able to afford much help, and so we're looking into trying to, you know, maybe try to find another source of grant funding to pay for labor during this time, because it's just especially this year. We've realized it's the same amount of labor to get 20% of the apples that we normally would get, and so if we can have help to pay for the labor to do the service of removing apples, that might be. That's the solution we think needs to happen in order to be able to more uniformly cover the whole county, because it's a big county and there's lots of trees and it's like getting to all of them has been impossible thus far, and so is that I feel like we're effective in certain areas and places where people have been really proactive and given us permission and let us know that their, their fruit is ripening and things like that. And then other areas we don't have permission on some trees, so you, just you know, you, you can't pick those and all that sort of goes to like hopefully we're I. I always say, say bears drink cider is our tagline, but in many ways we're just we're trying to be an educational source for people to realize that their tree, the existence of their tree, can have an effect on the animals around them, and then they'll care more about their tree and then maybe they'll take the opportunity to pick it, or maybe they'll cut their tree down if they don't want to deal with it, and that's totally cool too. Like we don't. We want people just to to learn and be aware of how much we coexist with the natural world here, and so that's been a big part of our I'd say that's been maybe the biggest part of our whole mission is to help connect people to what they have on their property and how that is.
Ian McGregor:Coming out of school with this terrible job market. I was like, well, I'm just going to kind of do my own thing here for a little bit. And I started this garden that's out here now in 2009 and took a bunch of things to the farmer's market, started selling veggies, just, you know, for fun and sort of to make a little extra money and just be out in the community and just see what it was all about. And I also brought some baked goods and so, between those things, things started to sell. Well, and my business partner, orion, he was a big baker back in high school and he showed up and he said, oh man, you've got a little bakery going on here, like what's the deal with this? And I told him about it and he said, well, can I bring some pies? Because he makes pies like fruit pies. And I said, sure, and then the next week, I think, he showed up with 20 pies and I was like I don't know if we're going to sell all these and they were like 25 bucks a pop and I was like, man, this is, I don't know if you're going to how this is going to go, but we sold them all and it was like, okay, wow, that was, that was good it was, uh, you know, kept people coming back to the stand. They bought other things, and so he joined forces with me for that whole summer and we just sold.
Ian McGregor:And I really fell in love with the whole the whole world of bringing some, making something or growing something and bringing it to people and sharing it with them and then having them come back with good feedback and and come back again and again.
Ian McGregor:And that was my first time really in sort of the the capitalist world of making something or crafting something and then bringing it to people and then getting the response. And so I just after that I said you know, I want to learn more about farming, learn more about making things. And I had a friend out in Napa and called him up and he said, yeah, there's tons of jobs during harvest. You can come out and work for three months and put a bunch of money in the bank and have fun. It's like a pretty it's very rigorous, crazy time of work, but it's also a lot of fun. You meet a whole new crew of people for that harvest season and then you all bond in. You know the first week of just the struggles of harvest and then you go out and explore the world with them and make new friends.
Molly Reilly:So were you picking grapes.
Ian McGregor:I was working on the cellar side, so in the wineries, okay. So that first year was just all grapes would show up in the morning, huge stacks of bins, and we'd process them all and then put them into tanks or put them into barrels or wherever it was going. And then after that I was really into it. After that I thought that winemaking and fermentation in general was just amazing. So I was like all right, where's the other part? So I ended up getting a job at a diversified farm where we actually ripped out a lot of vineyard in order to make room for olive orchard and fruit orchard and we grew heirloom grains and flowers and we had a couple acres of veggies and a whole bunch of livestock Still in Napa.
Ian McGregor:Yeah, that was in Sonoma County, okay, so near Healdsburg, and that was I call that. It was called Front Porch Farm and I call it the University of Front Porch for me because I got to experience all the different facets of, you know, sustainable agriculture. It was a biodynamic farm. I actually got it certified biodynamic over time, because it takes a long time to do that yeah, same with organic certification and went through all the processes of installing new plantings, you know, from these orchards to building fences for livestock and things like that. So it was really cool. It was me and a team of five brothers, none of whom spoke any English, and so my Spanish got much better over those few years and I just really kind of was able to sink my teeth into the world of farming and into the world of winemaking a lot more. So I'd work in the wineries. You know we'd be making wine in the fall, but I'd work in the vineyards for the rest of the season.
Molly Reilly:And coming from Wyoming, were you a farming family? Were you ranching?
Ian McGregor:No, no, I did a lot of work on ranches around here. It's like the obligatory branding, but I grew up next to Olaz.
Ian McGregor:And so I always was out there cruising around with them. They weren't doing much heavy hitting ranching but learned a lot about irrigation and things like that. Fell in love with being in touch with the land through that, through just life, in Jackson too. And then farming I think the reason it attracted me so much was the sustainable farming movement was really getting going. You know Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan had come out and there were a lot of conversations about that and I was really into food and cooking and trying things, but also caring about how it was made, how it was produced and how that affects the natural world, and so it was like I want to learn about sustainable food production. And then winemaking was just a really good way to sort of couple the field production with, you know, turning it into something. So I just really got into the winemaking whole thing.
Ian McGregor:But in the end the wine world was just very competitive and very expensive and very sort of intense. I didn't really see a good future for me to be able to sort of have my own project and got back together with my college girlfriend, who's now my wife, and that was that was a year where I went to New York and worked in a really cool farm called Stone Barns just out of the city in Westchester, and it was all about growing food for a really fancy restaurant. And it was all about growing food for a really fancy restaurant, but then also we had I think it was 80,000 students come through that farm every year and it was all about educating and like connecting people to their food and that was the whole thing. It was an old Rockefeller property. They donated a bunch of the land and funded a bunch of the startup costs and then the point of it was to be able to bring people kids from New York City or any of the surrounding areas to then see kale growing for the first time and pick stuff and try it and all that.
Ian McGregor:And once I did that, that's when I sort of I said, all right, I could be a market gardener and have a market garden that would produce some income and then I could bring kids and teach them about it, the same way we were doing at Snowmarns. And so when I moved back here, my wife and I were like, all right, let's get out of the city. And she'd been there for a while. I knew I wasn't going to stay for that long, but I was open to it. But it was like all right, where do you want to move? She said, well, would you want to move back to Jackson? And I was secretly like, yes, let's do that.
Molly Reilly:Was she from here?
Ian McGregor:No, she's from Connecticut and we met at Skidmore where I went to school, and so then, yeah, moving back here was sort of like, all right, we'll start, I'll start a garden, see what else is going on, we'll maybe do some education, and I really got started there. But in that same year that I came back, I started seeing all the apple trees and realizing how much fruit was out there that was just being ignored. I'd never worked with a crab apple before. I had made cider before with, you know, like a dessert apple variety that we could get in California, usually someone's tree, you know, like a dessert apple variety that we could get in California, right, usually someone's tree. You know, would press it for sweet juice and then ferment a little bit. And I had a roommate who was from England and he was like, let's make cider. And you know, we started fermenting it.
Molly Reilly:I didn't know we were going to do that.
Ian McGregor:Cold, crashing it, yeah. And it was one of those things where I was like, oh, cider's cool, it's the same thing as winemaking. It's fruit juice and then yeast fermenting the sugars from that. And so when I finally moved back to Wyoming and saw yeah and it's one of those things where it's almost simpler with apples than grapes in many ways, just because they have a lower alcohol content, so the yeast doesn't die off if the alcohol gets too high.
Molly Reilly:Sometimes you want to use really alcohol really alcohol tolerant yeasts with wines that have high alcohol but apples never get there, right?
Ian McGregor:yeah, yeah, so our most of our stuff is around seven and a half percent, versus a wine which can be anywhere from like nine to sixteen um, and so that's you know. It was in many ways as we started to move into the world of natural cider making and using wild yeast. The yeast is just on the apples when you press them instead of inoculating with yeast from a lab, we found that apples were really conducive to that.
Molly Reilly:Beer is very consistent. You want a High Life, you want a Bud Light, you want a Urquell to be the same every time. It should taste be the same every year, every year, you know it should taste exactly the same totally but cider. Is it like vintage, like wine, each year? Would it be a little different? Or at least at farmstead ciders.
Ian McGregor:We take a wine making approach to cider making. Whereas cider's funny, it's the gray area between beer and wine, and I say that because it's, you know, a small category that is often presented like a beer in a can and consumed, maybe in the quantities like drinking a whole 12 ounce can, like beer, but it's, it is a wine, like a fruit wine, as you said, and we've taken a winemaking approach. That's why we make so many in bottles as well as cans, and we've always wanted to embrace the vintage approach, like each year being a different year, so you'll get a different product. And then I think it's even more extreme with apples coming from such a varied range of sources rather than, say, an orchard or a vineyard which has specific varieties, all farmed the same way and things like that. So from the beginning we've always wanted to embrace the differences between the years and then.
Ian McGregor:So we're kind of, we're kind of staying in the gray area where we produce bottles that have a lot of differences each year based on the season, and then we try to produce cans that have some level of consistency so that people can rely on it, although the way we make it, with no chemicals, you know, no sulfur or any of the other laundry list of things you can put into stuff. We get variation based on whatever yeast was predominant that year and you know how long they're in the barrel, and in all the different ways that things can mature in their own way when not inhibited by a chemical intervention. So we, we embrace variation across all of our products and I think a lot of our consumers are into that. Certainly, some wish it was like really consistent all the time, but that's just not who we are. So you know, hopefully they can find some joy in the change, yeah, or, and if not, then maybe they'll find something.
Molly Reilly:Got back here.
Ian McGregor:Yeah, yeah, moved back here, started pressing apples with Orion, again, the pie maker, and it was like, oh, and we enjoyed being in business together in those early years and so it was like we're pressing apples together just for fun, making sweet cider for us and friends, and then fermenting a little bit on the side. And then it was like this is cool and we realized there's no other cidery in the state and it's a fledgling industry. That resonated with a lot of my experience as a maker and a lot of Orion's experience as, like, operating business and he's really great with a spreadsheet. I'm terrible, you know. So it's like these compatible skills. So we started to, you know, try to envision a business, and that was 2017 and, um, you know, 2018, I think I might mix up the numbers but we we talked to someone who said there's an issue with bears and we didn't realize while we were picking apples that there was this issue with bears eating apples. So after the first two years of kind of just playing around, we submitted a grant to Teton County Conservation.
Molly Reilly:The bears were going into people's yards that had apple trees right. And crab apple trees.
Ian McGregor:Yeah, mainly.
Molly Reilly:And certain years were worse than others, when there weren't berries. Yeah, like this year, they're all over. The bears are all over our neighborhood, which isn't common. I'm not in one of the bigger neighborhoods.
Molly Reilly:I don't have a huge yard yeah, and they're just crawling all over
Ian McGregor:When we were, when we first started this in 17, 18, 19, they weren't in that area. Yeah, they were more on the fringes. Or up north by the airport, there was this particular neighborhood that was having a lot of issues with. Well, you know it was. So it's been a combination of funny us wanting to start a cidery and looking for local apples and then simultaneously realizing there was this need to remove apples in certain places, and that's what made us really start using crab apples rather than looking for just sweet apples to work with, and that's kind of what has become.
Ian McGregor:Our flavor profile is the crab apple flavor is present in all of our ciders, and so it's high acidity. There's often a lot of tannins in some of these apples. They're also really high in sugar, so they can actually be a higher alcohol potential and you know. But they they offer just such a unique flavor that we felt like it was calling to us to sort of represent the terroir of this area as the flavors of the apples that can thrive in this climate yeah, and crab apples are are very able to thrive here.
Molly Reilly:The growing season is short here.
Ian McGregor:Yeah.
Molly Reilly:And helping all of us. It's like whoa, like what he's done is amazing.
Ian McGregor:Yeah.
Molly Reilly:I didn't know even this zone existed. You know, I kept looking on, trying to look up like what plant things in my backyard.
Ian McGregor:Yeah.
Molly Reilly:It's nuts. It's like three months.
Ian McGregor:It's like northern Canada Two and a half months or whatever. Yeah, or whatever, yeah. When you look at that map, the map has like a tiny little light blue section right here. That's just like it matches the same as Northern Canada. You're like, oh my gosh.
Molly Reilly:Because it's we're so far north and the altitude the altitude, yeah, and dry, we get tons of sunlight.
Ian McGregor:Yeah, I think it's the altitude mostly. It gives that variability at night temperatures and when temperatures swing from low to high it can have a big effect on everything growing. But you know like, for example, I love the cold temperatures. When they hit the carrots they start to sweeten up the carrots and it's the temperature swings that give us really high sugar in all of our apples here, because sugar is like an antifreeze and so as the plants experience these cold temperatures every night all summer, as the plants experience these cold temperatures every night all summer, they put more energy into preserving their fruit through sugars and so we get higher levels of everything here because of those temperature swings.
Molly Reilly:But we have less bugs then too.
Ian McGregor:Yeah, a lot less disease pressure here between the dry, which helps with fungal diseases, and then also the cold temperatures in the winter and at night, for that matter, the that set back a lot of insect life cycles that would otherwise be and it frosts, the first frost and last frost yeah, I mean, like this year, the last one was on the solstice, that was super late.
Ian McGregor:That's june 21st, I guess, right yeah 20th, one of the two, and then usually I'm seeing frosts in the first week of June and then they stop, but this was much later and then we'll we'll often get frosts in August. So we're talking a month and a half and I think you can get a frost anytime, right, so it can happen in July. It's definitely happened in the past and it's just one of those things where it's kind of timing, like the blossoms are out, they're the most susceptible to frost, but once some fruit has started to grow, then a july frost might not be as damaging because the fruit is able to survive the frost much better than a more fragile blossom. And so that's you're kind of embracing all those things and hoping for the best and and then, like, for example, growing other things. You know a lot of things love the frost and so we grow those here. You know greens handle it and all the allium family loves, loves cold and can handle that. So we're not growing a lot of tomatoes outside, but you can grow a lot of other things and so that's kind of what you have to embrace when you're, when you're doing it and with apple, like, for example, in my orchard, you know I planted tons of different varieties.
Ian McGregor:I grafted all these different varieties and then the plan was to watch a lot of them die because they were on the margin of like being able to survive the cold here.
Ian McGregor:So I over planted, you know, put the spacing way too close in order to have a lot of options to for that adaptation and realize, whichever ones survive the cold and the moose and the elk and the bulls and all the different pressures, those are the ones I want to try and grow on a larger scale. So, as the orchard has been slowly dying off, the handful that are doing all right or thriving, those are the ones that I'm going to propagate even more down the road. It just takes this trial period to. You know, no one's ever planted like this many different varieties here before, and so it was a trial period to see which ones could handle it, and so that's kind of that was the experiment. It's definitely not super scientific, but at the same time when you see some, some trees that can handle it and some that can't, it's like, okay, I'll promote the ones that can and there we go, we find some new varieties and we can't control the weather, despite what some people yeah, yeah and let's not, let's not control it.
Ian McGregor:Maybe let's mitigate climate change or let's not get too deep into controlling um you, we don't know.
Molly Reilly:You don't know what, it will be like next year yeah so if you tried to, if you found the perfect one that it, that would be perfect for today. It might not be for tomorrow, so that yeah kind of sounds like a great plan.
Ian McGregor:It's also embracing climate change in some ways and saying like, well, if it can survive here now, then it can probably survive here in the future if temperatures keep warming. So in a way, climate change has opened some options for things to yeah grow here that might not have survived before.
Ian McGregor:But yeah, it's those unpredictable frosts and those cold snaps that happen too soon, when the plant still has all of its leaves out, and that's when it can be more susceptible to those. So you're absolutely right, there can be. The volatility of the changing climate is a concern, but at the same time trying to embrace the fact that we're not getting 40 below anymore here.
Molly Reilly:Yeah.
Ian McGregor:Like when I was a kid, really you know it'd be 35 below pretty consistently, and now I feel like the lowest I've seen in years is like 25 below. So there's a 10 degree difference right there and that can make a big difference for a plant's ability to stand.
Molly Reilly:So honeycrisp became so popular and I feel like other apples don't have as much flavor as they did when I was growing up. Is that in my head from marketing or did did things change? Is something going on with apples?
Ian McGregor:well, they're definitely, breeding different types of like the honeycrisp is ap is a really successful cross between two apparent varieties I'm not sure which that produce this like large, sweet, delicious apple, and so you kind of. But it's also been, you know, chosen, selected for the sweetness, and I actually find that the diversity of the apple flavor out there is just it's infinite. Any number of combinations of pollen can create. You plant any apple seed, you'll get a unique apple every time. It's called extreme heterozygosity, I think, but it's where if you plant a hundred seeds, you get get 100 different apple varieties. That happens every time.
Ian McGregor:Now, sometimes they'll mimic their parents more than others, but they're not going to be the same and that's just the survival of the fittest tactic that apples and many other fruit trees have chosen to use over the years. Rather than passing on your traits, really similarly to yourself, in order to evolve and adapt, that way they're going with, just, you know, a shotgun fire of different options that can be picked up by a bird and flown, you know, into a different climate and dropped and maybe that one will survive, and it's sort of like a. It's a lottery that produced so many seeds that hopefully one or two will take somewhere, and that's sort of the beauty of these cool extreme genetic diversity that a lot of these fruit trees do, and so that's why we were grafting it on Olas' land. We're using a root stock that's proven its hardiness and its ability to survive in this climate and in these soils, and then you graft on the variety that you want, because you can't get a macintosh or a honeycrisp from planting a honeycrisp seed. You can only get it from pruning off a bud and grafting that in, and that's the only way to get a clone, essentially, which is really cool. I mean, it's an amazing thing that grafting is an option, but if you think about orchards as being actually just a giant field of clones yeah, their susceptibility to disease and things like that, depending on whether there's diseases now or in the future that show up that suddenly hit Honeycrisp, then you're going to lose entire orchards.
Ian McGregor:And so cider making for me is a really cool opportunity to promote that genetic diversity that lives in apple genetics anyways, because we can use a whole range of different apples with different flavors.
Ian McGregor:They all produce sugar that is fermentable, and you know, some of the most, I'd say, interesting ciders that I've ever had have been blends of dozens of different varieties, and that's a little different from the wine industry and I think it's it lends itself to a more resilient industry is if we could see orchards that were planted that have a thousand trees in it, that have a thousand different types of apple in it, that'd be, that'd be pretty cool.
Ian McGregor:And you know, going back to Johnny Apple's seed, he was planting seeds and so every orchard he planted grew unique apple varieties and some were real hits and some were so bitter that you couldn't close your lips afterwards and you know everything in between. But you could always make cider from those, those fruits, no matter what they were for the most part, and so that was that. For me, that's a really big attraction to the adaptability of the cider industry, as opposed to, say, the wine industry that has all its money in cab and pinot and you know a select few clones. Yeah, that then if something were to come along say that the climate were to change or a disease were to come along it could threaten that whole industry yeah, so talk about the different um ciders that you have, and how you come up with the recipes, and sure yeah yeah.
Ian McGregor:So basically, with crab apples being such an intense flavor, they take a long time to mature and even when they've been in bottle for two years a lot of their nuances come out, but they're still really aggressive, and so we blend a lot of what we pick here. Sometimes we'll put 100% crab apple in a bottle and then other times we'll blend it with orchard fruit that we're buying from regional orchards around, and so we try to source fruit that matches our high intensity apples here. So in the sense that if we have really high acidity and high tannin apples from what we harvest in order to make a product that's more approachable to a new cider drinker, hopefully at least, hopefully at least we'll blend that with a lower acidity apple from an orchard, in the hopes that we can offer our unique flavors in a way that's more accessible to, say, new cider drinkers. And then, as people get more and more interested in cider, especially dry ciders, which are more rare than sweet ciders, and all we make is dry cider as people enter that world, more they start to want to try the different flavors that are out there. So we try to make something that appeals to a whole range of palates and say, hey, if you like something that's a little more mellow and easy drinking, you can have a few cans of it. Try this one. If you want to really explore the crazy crab apple world of Jackson Hole, you can have this bottle that's 100% crabs from Teton County and has been aging for three years and is a whole different ballgame from that other side.
Ian McGregor:And so that's how we come up with our recipes and we basically just make them based on what we harvest. We taste everything, try and find some balance and then give it time. That's another thing is, if things are really intense, we'll give it time. That's another thing is, if things are really intense, we'll give it time. If we want to release some things earlier for uh, you know, for quicker turnaround in production, we can blend that more with some orchard fruit from, you know, macintosh apples and and um Montana or things like that.
Molly Reilly:What's the shelf life for cider?
Ian McGregor:We found that it all depends on, like, the chemistry of it. So the crab apple ciders can. I think they'll get better and better for the next 10 years. Wow, I really think that they'll be able to age like wines, because they have a low pH and often have tannins and they have all these sort of components that provide for more preservation, whereas a more simpler, easier drinking cider might not have the chemistry to last super long. Drinking cider might not have the chemistry to last super long, but we found that even our most, I'd say, short-term, shortest shelf life product can still do two years out there and be functional, as long as it's been kept in the right conditions, like a cellar temperature, not left in the sun or things like that, or in a hot car.
Molly Reilly:How many varieties do you have?
Ian McGregor:Of ciders yeah car.
Molly Reilly:What's?
Ian McGregor:Four to eight different blends at any given time. A lot of times like, for example, we've had this one called the Yellowstone for a while and we're running out of that we've had the next generation of yellowstone that's been aging in bottles for two years, ready to release pretty much now. So we try to always have two cans available and two bottles available, and then we'll do much smaller production, like small batches that'll be around for a few months and others that will age for years. So it's kind of a moving target.
Molly Reilly:How far do you distribute?
Ian McGregor:We distribute as far as California for certain products. We try to sell cans and some of our bottles as far as California. But then Montana is a big consuming state and then we sell a little bit in Colorado, but it's still beer country so it's tough to really find space on the shelves there. But Wyoming's been a pretty solid consumer as well since we joined the liquor division and they're doing the distribution through the state for us and it's much easier for people to buy our stuff that way. Rather than calling us and arranging for shipping from us, they just get it straight from the Wyoming liquor division. So we've seen a lot of growth in Wyoming, which has been awesome, and Montana.
Ian McGregor:We don't have a distributor in Idaho currently, unfortunately. It's just a tricky state to navigate the distributor world. But yeah, I'd say Montana, wyoming and California is our main outlet and we do ship to Washington State a little bit. One distributor is really small but their site are specific and so we work with them a little bit too and then we'll ship all around the country. I think it's 43 states that we can ship to.
Molly Reilly:Oh direct.
Ian McGregor:Direct, yeah, so from our website.
Molly Reilly:Do you have a desire to grow bigger.
Ian McGregor:I'd say our desire is to be able to maybe grow a little bit bigger and then be able to. We'd like to see the growth happen in more direct-to-consumer consumption, because we make the best margin on that. But also it's a good way to just connect with people who are looking for our stuff, and so it's nice to have that community. So we have like a cider club, and it's not a huge club.
Molly Reilly:How do they find you?
Ian McGregor:Yeah, I don't know. All sorts of different ways. We go to CiderCon, we do the different tastings of traveling around and you never know how people are going to find you. Maybe just they're on the internet Is it an email or a. Yeah, they basically would sign up on our website, join the club, and then they get four shipments a year, that type of thing. Farmsteadcom.
Molly Reilly:Farmsteadwyo. com
Ian McGregor:WYO Like Wyoming.
Ian McGregor:Farmstead was already taken
Molly Reilly:Is it probably like a cheese company, or?
Ian McGregor:Yeah, I think it's like a food distribution company in California somewhere.
Molly Reilly:So Farmstead WYO.
Ian McGregor:Yep, and you know, the whole thing about growing is like we definitely don't have ambitions to grow a whole lot. We want to be able to produce a consistent amount and then sell that at a regular pace and not have things sitting in our cellar for too long and not have things sitting in our cellar for too long. So if we're going to intentionally age something, that's great and we'll put it away and crack it open every couple months for a year or two. But I think finding that balance of aging some products and then moving some products more quickly based on how they mature, is the balance we've been trying to strike. And so I think if we can strike that balance, we don't have to grow much more to be a business that can last the long haul. But for now we're still navigating a lot of that and we still have a whole bunch of product, one product that we wanted to age and we're just letting it age longer. So it's like we're just holding on to that and sitting on it.
Ian McGregor:It's like frustrating from a cash flow perspective, interesting from a maker's perspective, but yeah, it's definitely striking. That balance will be the key to our long-term health and then ultimately, we'd love to be able to build a business that is strong enough to be passed on. If our kids have any interest in it, that would be awesome. If they don't, that's fine too's just a to be able to build something that's resilient to the many changes and fickle nature of the beverage industry and not outgrow our our shoes too quickly. Um, which I think has been the, the demise of a lot of the the industry, if they get too ahead of themselves and too much into debt and then can't keep up with the, with making payments on things, and they go under. And we're trying to, we're trying to build ourselves very slowly up so that we don't fall into that trap do you still enjoy it as much as you?
Ian McGregor:did? Oh yeah, I definitely do. You know what? I think I might enjoy it more. I have a really voracious appetite for learning new things in general, and so I didn't know that I would become interested in sales and I thought that I wanted to just be making it.
Ian McGregor:But it's so cool to connect with people who are really into the product and even to connect with people who don't like it. I mean, we do make some strong flavors and we're using wild yeast and we're allowing it to go to places that most producers are trying to inhibit. Now we don't want things to turn to vinegar, but we don't mind if there's more of an opportunity for the microbes in the juice to do their thing, and so, yeah, we try to strike a balance there. But I just love connecting with people who are like I never knew cider could taste like this. I've never had a dry cider, or I've never. I've drank cider my entire life and never had one that tasted quite like this. Or people come from, often from like Europe, where there's a rich history of cider making, with less than tasty apples and cider there is known as a slapper's drink.
Ian McGregor:I don't know. If that's still the case, what does that mean?
Molly Reilly:slapper is like um, I'm gonna get in probably so much trouble for this, and um like, um like a lot maybe I'll leave it for it, yeah yeah um, and it's kind of specific to like a type of gal yeah and she would hang out with like a guy in what would be like call it wife beater oh
Ian McGregor:sure, yeah, yeah and she would get in a lot of a little more of a lowbrow situation,
Molly Reilly:a lot of fights, yeah maybe in edinburgh, like after you know, with her girlfriends yeah, yeah, yeah, I think.
Molly Reilly:Well, also, I won't name brands, but yeah, and, and it would be a good time, yeah,
Ian McGregor:absolutely there's always a good time in there somewhere, yeah, um, there's also lots of bad times in there somewhere too.
Molly Reilly:Right, right, yeah, but no, like it's past two o'clock yeah yeah, we're good to go.
Ian McGregor:No, we. We've met a bunch of people from the uk who try our ciders and they're like oh, finally a cider in the us that I like, because they're not. They don't have such a strong history of like sweet ciders as we do, and they're used to drier, you know, funkier flavors and more higher alcohol, more more tannin, more acid. Well, maybe not. They're. Actually a lot of the European producers have lower acid but really high tannin. But they're just so used to expecting sweet cider from America that when they encounter a cider that's dry and has a full depth of flavor, they're like whoa. This reminds me of the ciders I used to drink back home.
Molly Reilly:Yeah, and they make good cider. It's just that it would, I guess you know, stereotypical. This is yeah, decades ago sure the lads would drink a pint and the gals would drink cider yeah and maybe they would all stay out too long um sure, and the cider was on tap yeah
Ian McGregor:yeah, and usually in the similar you know way of a little less carbonation and a little warmer and things like that.
Ian McGregor:Yeah, no, it's, it's it's interesting to see how actually the craft, uh, cider world is blossoming in all those places that have such a long history of it as well, and it boomed here for a while and then maybe there was a view that it might have busted.
Molly Reilly:but it boomed like it. Oh, it definitely busted, yeah.
Ian McGregor:It was like the number one drink in the US for a long time, and then a lot of people accuse prohibition. I think it was a combination of things that made cider fall out of you know the top tier of beverages and has been slowly clawing its way back these last 25 years maybe, or 30 years.
Molly Reilly:Oh. So then I'm thinking there was even like a re. Yeah, there was like a.
Ian McGregor:So there's been booms and busts, like yeah, although I think the first cidery opened since Prohibition was, you know, in maybe the 90s.
Molly Reilly:The big brewers all acquired cideries 10 years ago or something, and then they kind of faded .
Ian McGregor:You don't hear, you don't hear as much about them yeah, yeah, no, there's all different trends going on and yeah, yeah and the and the small producer is is what's been growing steadily and not having too much of a bust. It's been yeah it's. There have been some ups and downs, but in general, you know, small producers are taking more of the market share from some of the more well-known cider brands that have, you know, you see on all the shelves, and so that's a good sign for us.
Molly Reilly:Yeah, yeah.
Ian McGregor:Yeah.
Molly Reilly:Well. So I'm curious is cider something? So I had these, yeah, these thoughts about cider from 20 years ago, of working with global brands and But now I'm thinking about it more like like a wine. Is cider something you can have with dinner and does it pair oh yeah, yeah,
Molly Reilly:I think it's, What are the occasions for cider?, Usually you know you're getting tart, crisp flavors from ciders that are so overpowering.
Ian McGregor:no, it's generally. I think it's really good with
Molly Reilly:Ooh Asian maybe
Ian McGregor:. Oh yeah, I think Thai food is probably my favorite pairing of all, because there's a lot of rich dishes in Thai food and then also a lot of spice, and so I think cider blends or pairs really well with Thai food, but you know even things like ribs and barbecue and like really rich foods. You can cleanse that palate with a tart, more acidic cider than, say, a beer. I think it really does a great job of balancing out your palate and so it's fantastic to pair.
Molly Reilly:It seems like cider would do well on Bourbon Street in New Orleans With all those rich.
Ian McGregor:I would love to see more wine lists. Have cider lists as well. That seems like a very uphill battle. Unfortunately, you go to these, I mean I seek them out so I'm able to find the places with a good cider list, and they're very few and far between who has them? Well, there's a handful around the around the country really, but um, like is it?
Molly Reilly:like Per Se,
Ian McGregor:the all those really fancy spots. They'll feature a cider here and and there, but almost none have a dedicated cider list. If you go up to the Northwest, in Portland, there's a lot more awareness around cider and cider consumption in general, so you'll find places with a few ciders on their list. Well, as I've traveled around, for example, when you go to Cider Conference the Cider Con a lot of places will make a cider list for that week. But yeah, I mean there's a.
Ian McGregor:There's a place in in salt lake called scion cider bar and it's just dedicated to it. There's a place in portland called the thing or no, it's called the place, and there it's a cider bar where it's only cider and they have a whole huge, amazing list of options from all around the country, all around the world. Um, in oakland there's a place called redfield cider bar, so it's mainly bars, um, and then you know, a handful of restaurants I've encountered will have a, a cider or four on their list and that's always a great. Usually you'll find one right, but it's rare to find four options or more, and every once in a while I'll sniff them out, depending on where I am.
Molly Reilly:What type of apple trees are good for someone who wants to plant a tree who's just getting started Does the tree matter for the region? Because when you and I planted them, you were grafting this type of tree with that type of tree?
Ian McGregor:I was, like that's not for everybody, like no but also you.
Molly Reilly:If you pop into like a home depot like you're gonna end up with sometimes is it a tree from china and should you be buying, just you know you're ending up with some tree that you shouldn't plant yeah, I I would say that I feel like any tree you plant is is going to be a great thing once you take care of it.
Ian McGregor:Like trying to figure out where it came from is is one step and that's a good step to care about, but I don't know people planting fruit and planting food for themselves it works for you, no shame yeah, yeah and as someone tells you that, yeah, and I would say like home depot is not so good about knowing what the climate for that or any particular area.
Ian McGregor:They kind of order a whole bunch of things and then they'll sell it to you even if it won't survive there, right? But smaller nurseries generally are really much more attuned to what grows in those areas, like, for example, some apple trees that grow here can't survive warmer places because they need cold. They need, you know, it's a number of hours. They're called chill hours. Some trees need 500 hours below 40 degrees in order to produce any fruit. So you plant that in Texas, you're not going to get anything, but you plant it here, it'll do well. And then vice versa, if you plant one that's really good in Texas, it'll probably die in the cold here. So, checking out nurseries but yeah, planting apple trees is, it's like they always say, you know, like you're planting a tree for the next generation.
Ian McGregor:I feel like that's a cliche, but it absolutely is true and we've been benefiting from that, because we started farmstead and named it farmstead because so many of the trees we were picking were from old plantings, from homesteaders, or you know people who were here in this valley earlier on in the sort of like westward expansion by law.
Ian McGregor:If you were homesteading, you had to plant fruit bearing trees and take care of them, and so a lot of times we find these trees of four trees in a row and that met the standard of four fruit bearing trees, and we'll find them next to an old, you know, foundation of an old building that has since fallen down, but the trees are still there and they're huge and they're producing massive amounts of fruit and they've proven that they can survive the miserable cold of 100 years ago and are still thriving. And so those are such cool discoveries and that's why I take that cliche really seriously. It's like I'm the next generation, or even the third generation that's picking these trees and so planting them. I think you can only do good things to expand, uh, people's connectivity to where their food's coming from and their drinks yeah and who planted it?
Molly Reilly:your, your mom, your dad, your aunt, your uncle or whoever owned the house before you bought it.
Ian McGregor:Yeah, in some ways, a lot of times that's the best moment when people who aren't even interested in that inherit something and suddenly they're like I love my apple tree and they start taking care of it themselves, and so it's a beautiful thing to discover these gems of food bounty that sometimes people don't even know are growing around under their nose, and then, after that, the next step is for them to start to care about it and take care of it and things like that. So, yeah, plant, plant a tree, absolutely any kind. Thank you.
