Cider

Former Angry Orchard head cider maker Ryan Burk has joined Blake’s Beverage Company as VP of quality and innovation. Burk has been advising Blake’s and its portfolio of brands – Blake’s Hard Cider, Austin Eastciders and AVID Cider Co. – for a couple years, including through the launch of its most recent innovations.

The latest installment of Brewbound’s A Round With – a weekly Insider-exclusive Q&A series with industry leaders – features Caitlin Braam, founder and owner of Yonder Cider and The Source.

Schilling Cider has no plans to jump on the hard tea train, but the Pacific Northwest cidery still plans to meet similar consumer demand with its latest product launch: Schilling Hard Lemonade.

Vintage Wine Estates (VWE) has concluded another round of layoffs, the fourth time the company has done so in the past 14 months.

The Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) was the first industry event I ever attended, so I see it as the unofficial start to a new year. It’s also a great pulse check on how the industry – and all the folks you catch up with – have changed and evolved since the last CBC.

Blake’s Beverage Co. is looking to be a leader in not just hard cider, but all “fruit-forward fourth category innovation,” founder and CEO Andrew Blake told Brewbound.

After a decade in business, Stormalong Cider is finally creating the taproom of its dreams and that its fans have been requesting.

A lawsuit filed by Boston Beer against a former employee alleging that he violated a non-compete agreement by working for a competitor has been dismissed. The complaint was “dismissed with prejudice as to as to all claims against Brian Soudant, without costs and fees and without right of appeal,” according to a document filed February 9 in the Massachusetts Superior Court for Suffolk County.

Boston-based Downeast Cider is following the more-is-more philosophy when it comes to innovation in 2024. The cidermaker’s big bet for this year is the Overboard family, an 8% ABV line of unfiltered ciders.

More than 1,100 people gathered in Portland, Oregon, this week for the 14th annual CiderCon, hosted by the American Cider Association (ACA).

Schilling Cider continues to grow, despite abstaining from adding new markets for the immediate future, and making just one distribution change in 2023.

In October, cider grew its share of beer dollars in Circana-tracked off-premise channels +0.25% month-over-month (MoM) – an improvement over the segment’s typical fall seasonal declines. The trend change is primarily due to the efforts of National Cider Month, according to leadership at Schilling Cider.

Blake’s Hard Cider and Austin Eastciders are merging under the Blake’s Beverage Company umbrella, bringing together the top-selling cider brands in Texas and Michigan and creating the second-largest cider company in the U.S, the company announced today.