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In the food and beverage world, it’s easy to dismiss companies with wide distribution as “sellouts”. We expect everyone to starve for their art and if they don’t, they become an object of our ire. Angry Orchard falls into that category. Their hard ciders have become so ubiquitous that it can feel (unfairly) that they’re the behemoth that crushes the little brands. But the story you don’t often hear is the story of the people that make it happen. The ones that have genuine love for the fruit, the process, and carrying on a cider-making tradition that pre-dates the United States.
Enter Ryan Burk, the lead cider maker for Angry Orchard. He grew up in rural New York, in a town known for apples and applesauce. Knowing the varietals of apples and how they tasted came as second nature to a kid surrounded by them. As he got older, he fell in with a group of homebrew fanatics in Chicago – a move that would eventually lead him back to his home state to work with the apples he grew up with.
Aside from the Angry Orchard core lineup of widely-available hard ciders, Ryan is also charged with making limited-edition, single varietal expressions from the wide range of apples in the vast orchards of the property. Many of those special releases are only available at their Walden, NY Cider House. It’s a multi-faceted job with a lot of ins, outs, and what-have-yous. And he’s enjoying every second of it.
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