For this episode I’d like to jump into a production story that has stuck with all of us after almost 6 years in business. That is the story of our first batch ever, where pretty much everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, how we dealt with it and the magic that came out of it. It just shows that even on the worst of days, you can always find a way though. Let’s go!

MUSICAL INTERLUDE

Hello!!

Welcome to Courage and Other C Words! I’m your host, Jenn Root Martell. Thanks so much for joining me today. So the last few episodes have been a fun and reflective series around sales that I will definitely continue to revisit in the future. But for today, I’d like to move beyond that side of the business and dabble in some production reminiscing. In particular the catastrophe that was our Batch #1 of cider - a batch that we can definitely laugh about now but at the time was anything but funny. 

But before I get started I’d like to thank all of you who have rated this podcast over the last few months of its existence. The feedback that I’m getting from listeners has been so validating and I have enjoyed meeting people from across the country, brought together by cider and production, and starting a business. If you have a moment and use Apple Podcasts, please consider giving this podcast a 5 star rating. You don’t even have to write out a review. Just one or two words, Hi or Cider is awesome! Or what’s up?! I’d appreciate it so much and it really helps. 

So with that said - I feel like most projects, no matter how well planned, have that moment when you can’t imagine anything else going wrong, but then Oh wait!, it does. It’s Murphy’s Law in action right in front of your eyes and there’s very little that you can do to stop it. You think you have your shit together, you’ve done all the planning and bought all the things. But for some reason, the equipment fails you, or you misjudge a certain variable, or luck is just flat out not on your side. You just do everything wrong or everything just goes wrong. I wouldn’t say this has happened a ton to us but it is usually the case that when things do go wrong, they end up costing so much money! It has always been my hope that at some point we’d still have lessons to learn but that they would stop being so damn expensive. I can tell you, that point never comes. But like most entrepreneurs will tell you, they have learned so much more from the failures than the successes. That even though things have gone awry, there is something to take away to hopefully fix in the future or do differently or do better. 

So let’s turn back some time, to spring of 2015. I enjoy this story because for me it was so formative and like all good memories, I know that if you asked the three of us how it went down, you would get three very different answers. But this is my podcast, so you will get my side of the story, however blurry and possibly skewed those memories may be. And honestly there were a few batches that didn’t go so hot in those early days so it’s very possible that they have all merged together. So much of that experience still seems so fresh in my mind - the excitement, the frustration, and the anxiety all rolled into one. For all of you who are getting started in this industry or just starting a new project or hobby or other company, yes, absolutely everything might go wrong at first. But there are always ways to turn it around or at least learn from those mistakes. Don’t let it get you down too much. 

It was March 2015. We had spent the last few months building out our new production space in San Bruno. Our one fermentation tank was tucked away in the corner, and our force carbonation tank known as a brite tank was sitting next to it. The two-ton glycol chiller took forever to get here because of a workers strike at the LA docks, but finally had arrived from Italy. We had gotten juice at the end of February and had kicked off our first fermentation. This tank was unique in that it was one more typical to the wine world. It’s called a variable capacity tank which means that the top is separate from the body, has a seal around it, and an arm like a tiny crane on the top that helps lift it up and down. Now, in our industry, oxygen is typically the arch nemesis of cider as it brings with it particulates that can cause infections and off-flavors that you obviously don’t want. So variable capacity tanks are great in that the top can be adjusted down to make for a smaller volume of space if you are not fermenting that much. That cuts down on what we call headspace and thus, reduces potential exposure to infection. Since this was our first batch we were definitely not going to use the entire 1000 gallon capacity of our fermentation tank so we adjusted the top to make the space that we needed. I don’t remember much about the fermentation so I guess that was one of the things that went right… But that’s really where it ended. 

And thus begins the comedy of errors. 

From that beautiful fermentation, and as new cidermakers, we were overly concerned about the seal that went around the top of the tank, worried that any little leak would mess with our fermenting cider. One day, one of us went to crank some air into the seal to make sure that it was nice and tight. Well, they cranked too hard and we heard a huge boom noise. As you might have guessed, the seal completely tore apart and the tank was as good as totally open and exposed, with even some of the seal hanging down into the must. Perfect.


Now I will say, for some cidermakers and brewers, open top fermentation is a thing. IF you live in a nice natural environment with plenty of fresh breezes and happy wild yeast bouncing around in the air. There are farmhouse ciders on the market that have that perfect bite of funk at the end and still a smooth finish. That, however, is not what we go for in our ciders and not our process. Nothing wrong with it, just not our jam. 

Unfortunately, not really factoring in all the variables - we had decided to build an urban cider company, in the urban space. And our little cidery is literally right across the street from a waste management transfer station where on good days, or bad days I should say, you can smell quite acutely all of the death and decay that comes from a ripe bag of trash. Except that it’s truckloads of it, making a mountain of it at the end of the street on a weekly basis. I’m sure you can imagine the smell… So for us, our air is chalk full of all the lovely bacteria and yeast that you can possibly think of that are just itching to come in contact with some yummy fermentable sugars found in our apple juice. Hence the overprotected-ness of our seal for that tank and for our fermentations in general. Cider is extremely prone to infection at the early stage of fermentation and with nothing to hide behind like hops, any infection can be quite unforgiving, potentially making a cider that is undrinkable. That is why I say as part of my education pitch at festivals - it is really easy to make cider. You can throw a bucket of apple juice outside for 2 weeks and you will get hard cider. It might not be very good but it will be alcohol! However, it’s much more difficult to make a clean cider consistently. Comes down to winning the battle over infection and keeping your system and your fermentations super clean.  

So moving on from that side note - we all knew deep down that something had gone wrong. We couldn’t smell or taste it, but we knew that our fermentation had been exposed. However, not having many other options, we pushed forward, filtering it through our plate and frame filter. Which, if anyone has worked with one is onerous, time consuming, and prone to issues. That being said, we used one successfully for many years though were always concerned that batches weren’t getting all the filtration they needed. So into the brite tank the fermented must went, along with a sizable amount of fresh pressed apple juice to sweeten it up and bring down the ABV. This is how we make most of our ciders in a process called back-sweetening, but it does always add a level of uncertainty as you add fermentable sugars to a product that is otherwise pretty stable. I will get into this later. 

So into the brite tank, crashed the brite to just above freezing and got the carbonation started. In general, the colder the liquid, the faster the carbonation will happen as it is held in suspension better. The warmer the liquid, the easier it is for the CO2 to fall out of suspension and leave your product flat. I’m sure you’ve had such an experience with sodas. So having the brite tank cold is super critical. Cold temps also inhibit growth of any yeast or bacteria that might have gotten past the filter.  

Here we were with a batch in the brite tank, crashing and getting all carbed up. A date had been set with the awesome ladies over at the Can Van for our first canning run and we built our cidery around accommodating a mobile canning unit. There is no way we could have afforded one ourselves in those early days. We were super excited and anxious. When the canning day came around, Greg made it to the cidery first. Alex sent him a text while we were on our way and he came back with - the Brite is at 50F. Well, remember what I said about the importance of the cider staying cold? 50F is not it. Not even close. And on top of that, to can, we needed the product to be between 34 and 38F so that it wouldn’t be a foamy mess going into the cans, causing all types of loss. Yeah… way off. The Can Van was almost there so we all converged at the cidery to find that our brand new chiller had completely shit the bed. Would turn on but would not chill. The fan or pump wasn’t running like it should. I can’t quite remember which. Or maybe it was both. But in crapping out, it had allowed the brite to come to room temp. So Can Van ladies ended up heading home and pulling an admin day and we were left to our own devices to sort out a piece of machinery that we knew absolutely nothing about. The fact that the Italian-translated-to-English instructions were the most impossible things to read also didn’t help the situation. The hits just kept on coming. 

After many chats with the supplier and even an AC repair man’s attempt to make sense of the Italian-made glycol chiller, it turned out the compressor was shot and we would need a completely new machine. The turnaround on it was actually not that long and before we knew it they had sent us a new one and we had the brite tank up and running again. A week or two later the Can Van was back and we had our first batch of awesome little silver cans with our snazzy new compass logo filled and ready for the next step. We were so proud. 

As part of our process of quality control and so that we don’t have to add any more sulfites or chemicals than we need to, we make sure to bath pasteurize all of our packaged products. As you might imagine, pasteurizers, whether bath or tunnel, are extremely expensive and take up a ton of space. So being a scrappy little start up we took the plans for one off the cider google group and decided to build it ourselves. Our bath was composed of a macrobin seen regularly outside wineries stacked in tall columns waiting for harvest. With that as the base, the rest of the bath was a concoction of direct heating elements and electric heaters with pumps used to keep the water circulating. Though by the time the cans were ready for cooking, the bath was still not completed. The reasoning for this was a combination of other priority tasks, delays in electric heater supplies, and general procrastination with a project so imposing and a little overwhelming. At any rate, the product was abused once more, waiting more time in their cans until they could go through their last step toward shelf stability. 

Here we were, several weeks later, and it was time to finally cook the cans that had been through hell and back. We were still doing some tastings with cold ones to try to get some of those initial sales, but we were noticing that the cider was starting to taste off. On top of that, the cans seemed to be getting taught-er. Both were clear evidence of an infection stewing - it seemed as though something had made it past the filter and started to go to work on the back-sweetened juice we had added. This means that our product was re-fermenting. Yeast and bacteria feed off of sugar, and apple juice usually has a lot of it. Especially ours. The taught-ness was coming from the fact that a byproduct of yeast or bacteria eating sugar is the creation of CO2. So not only was the sweet juice flavor getting consumed and off-flavors created, CO2 was being added to an environment where it had nowhere to go inside the sealed can. At least on tanks there are pressure relief valves on the top to help equalize the tank and prevent cavitation. Not so much in cans... 


You might be interested to know what happens when an over-pressurized can gets placed in a very very very hot bath of water. Well I will tell you - the can explodes. And this isn't just a nice passive pop of the top. Oh no. It is a forceful, loud, and very destructive process that you can hear from a mile away. Luckily macrobins come with matching tops that clip on. Critical for our needs for the bath so that heat doesn’t escape from the top, but now doubly important to keep the cans from flying out and cider and very very very hot water from spraying everywhere. As a good illustration, exploding cans in a macrobin with the top on might remind you of a bag of microwave popcorn being heated to perfection. It starts with a few pops, then crescendos, then slowly slows down until there are no more victims left to pop. Though with popcorn, that is the desired result. With cider, this is as far from perfection as you can get and watching that macrobin top shake from the assault from within still haunts me to this day. It would make any producer breakdown into tears. Or, maybe just me. But it is enough to make your heart break a little. At the loss of product and energy and money and time.. You get the picture. 

But what choice did we have? We had over-pressurized cans that would make a mess and explode on their own if they weren’t cooked. So we pressed on. Every drop of 300 cans or so, another nightmare. In the end we were left with something like 50 cases of cans that somehow miraculously made it through unscathed. The rest I got $13 out of at the recycler vendor by the local grocery store across town. Devastating. And what to do with 50 cans of a product we couldn’t sell? The cider had gone sideways and was in the cans that we were hoping to hit the market with and that would carry us into the future. We couldn’t launch our semi-sweet flagship with this mess, that was for certain. AND you might be thinking - but Jenn - you said earlier that some farmhouse ciders have a lovely funk and can be quite enjoyable. Yes, I did say that. And let me tell you, this cider was not one of those. Envision a metallic-y sweetness paired with a pretty intense funk that reminds you of the elephant house at the zoo. Paired with a finish that we call in the industry as mouse - which hits you maybe 3-10 seconds after swallowing and is equal to what one might taste if you licked the bottom of a well-used mouse cage. What one would imagine it would taste like at least. I do not suggest anyone actually trying that out on their own. Turned out it was cloudy too so it didn’t even look nice! Absolutely ruined was probably the best word for it. 

And what was the culprit of this disaster one might ask? It helps to live near wine country with some really great wine analysis labs nearby. We ran down a bunch of samples to them to find out what exactly was in our cider. What it came back with was on May 11, 2015 (and yes I of course kept all of these reports because I’m a pack rat), the lab found: 

Acetic acid bacteria <40 cells/mL 5/11/15 (That’s fair - it doesn’t taste like apple cider vinegar)

Perfect. That is an acceptable range. But then - 

Oenococcus oeni 3,800,000 cells/mL 5/11/15

Ah ha! This was not actually a huge surprise. Oenococcus oeni is a lactic acid bacterium that occurs naturally in fruit mashes and related habitats. It is often used in wineries to carry out malolactic fermentation which is a critical secondary process in the production of wine after primary fermentation. Critical in wine, not so critical in our cider. And apparently abundant in our air. So there you have the imposter in case you were curious. We also caught special acclaim because the lab had never before had a can explode during analysis. So that’s special. 

So what does a budding cidermaker do with 50 cases of ruined product you might ask? I did what any frugal, conscientious, proactive business owner would do - I put them in five stacks in the corner and ignored them for months in the hopes that I wouldn’t have to deal with them and they would just somehow miraculously go away and cease to be an issue…

Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, that’s not how things work out and problems like these must be addressed at some point. So… let’s see, we put them in time out in the corner in the middle of April. Three months went by and we realized that something needed to be done. We had moved on to better batches, were dialing in our processes, and needed the space for other things. So before we started cracking them open and pouring them down the drain, we threw a couple in the cold room just to see how bad they still tasted. Well, turns out cider can be aged in cans, and that mouse aftertaste I was talking about earlier can in fact fade. To our complete surprise, the cider that we poured out of those cans at the end of the summer, though still cloudy, had turned into a lovely sour cider. One with a little bit of sweetness, a little bit of funk, and a little bit of acidity at the end. It actually tasted pretty good! Who knew that given some time, that funk would mellow into something wonderful? Maybe if you deal with this type of thing on the regular this is an obvious part of the process, but for us, we were pretty convinced that all of it was a lost cause. So OK, maybe the drain wasn’t the best idea with this new information. They were still in the South City Cider flagship cans and were still definitely not the flagship cider we had been selling for more than a quarter now. 

Well, when you have a bunch of lemons, what’s the best thing to do they say? That’s right - make lemonade! And so we did. Thus - Better Luck Next Time was born. I made a ton of little labels to go on top of the can to help us differentiate them from the good ones that we had on pallets elsewhere at the cidery. We still couldn’t sell them out in the market, but fortunately we had enthusiastically signed up for every beer festival and alcohol event that would let us pour that year. It’s what one does when there is no marketing budget… So along came Better Luck to events. It became patented as the happy accident and people loved it! Needless to say, after enough events, we blew through all of those cases within the next six months. Some of those events were donations which was a bummer but some did compensate us for the cider, making that batch not a 100% loss financially. And we got a funny story and a bit of a cult following out of it. Not too shabby at the end of the day. 

What I love most about this whole catastrophe, is that we still get people asking about it. Even 5 years later! And of course ask if we’ve been able to do it again. Though the answer is a disappointing no, it’s honestly not for lack of trying. We did have a small amount of juice that we tried at one point as an experiment. And only last year I did a small fermentation in a tank that was too large so I couldn’t temperature control the process and the must went sideways. So we have definitely been successful on the infection side. Unfortunately none of them have ended up quite like Batch 1. That batch is now one for the history books that we can only look back at and laugh, or maybe still cry a little if you’re me. All I know is that it was quite the learning experience that we spent the next 5 years trying not to replicate, with decent success I would say. I am still sometimes frustrated that lessons have to be so expensive, but they do always provide some insight into our processes and procedures that only makes us better cidermakers. So for that I have to be continually grateful for situations like our catastrophic Batch 1 and how they have impacted us as people and as a company. 

And that’s a wrap! Have you started a project or a business and have a funny story of when everything went wrong? Maybe not so funny at the time? Any lessons learned from failures or mistakes that you’d be up for sharing? Please send them on over to info@othercwords.com. I’d love to hear about it!