Inside North Center's Hidden European Cidery

By Ben Kramer in Food on Jan 11, 2016 8:50PM

Tiny sour apples going into Old Hat, a Broken Nose Cider.

Within North Center's Begyle Brewing, there’s more than just beer going on. As a matter of fact, there’s more than just Begyle going on inside Begyle. Broken Nose Cider, a company focused on making European style ciders, currently operates within the brewery, and is even featured in their taproom. But who is Broken Nose, how did they get here, and what is the difference between American and European cider?

Broken Nose is an establishment co-founded by Paul Cade, Kevin Cary, and Brendan Blume. They have three flagship ciders: Old Hat, a dry cider sourced with local crabapples to add bitterness, Bog City, a tart, dry, cranberry cider, and Bright Lights, a cider dry hopped using, “Falconer’s Flight and Cascade hops to add both a bright fruit aroma and a slight hop bitterness,” according to their website.

Though Broken Nose is housed inside of Begyle, is served on tap at Begyle, and shares two of the three co-owners of Begyle, they are separate entities. Broken Nose does not fall under the umbrella of brewery projects, and neither Cary nor Blume dreamed it up. The idea came from Cade.

Back in 2010, Cade was studying abroad in England, where European cider stole his heart. He loved the dryness, the astringency, and the complexity of it, which is reflected in the three flagship products. Upon returning home, he couldn’t wait to get at some American ciders. Once he did, they disappointed him.

American ciders typically have a sweet flavor profile, while European ciders, again, are dry, astringent, bitter, and even farmhouse-funky. Unfortunately for Cade, the American ciders lacked the European characteristics he desired. Two years later, still frustrated by the absence of Old World cider in his country, he quit his job, determined to open his own place.

Before diving in blindly (though he’d home brewed ciders of his own), he decided it’d be best to learn from the best. Booking a flight to Europe, he spent a season traveling the continent learning the way. He spent time in England, France, and Normandy, absorbing as much information as he could, working at various cideries, including a stint at Welsh Mountain Cider in Wales. After completing his pilgrimage, he had the idea of moving, he said, “out to the countryside, start my own orchard. [But] I kind of backtracked…away from that after realizing running an orchard is a full time job in itself…and I have no knowledge of how to plant a tree.” He decided to stick with the cidery instead.

Tiny sour apples going into Old Hat, a Broken Nose Cider.

Usually, finding a place to start can be challenging, but for Cade, he lucked out. A high school friend happened to be starting a brewery. That man was Brendan Blume of Begyle. Cade reached out to him and said, “I’d love to come in and learn from you guys about the equipment, the tanks, the setup, the business going on because I’d like to start my own cider thing.”

Again, as luck would have it, Begyle also had interest in cider, so they invited him in. Cade became an intern in 2014, and eventually started working there full time. Then, in October of 2014, he, Cary, and Blume decided to do the cidery together. After receiving their winery license in 2015 (because cider is classified as wine by the federal government) Broken Nose could finally start production.

Since then, Broken Nose has had a few focuses.

“Everything we’re doing is going to be 100 percent dry,” Cade said. “No sugar whatsoever pretty much.”

Sugar can be found in most American ciders, providing it with a sweet flavor profile. It’s added after fermentation, a process called “Back Sweetening” which creates extra sweetness. Typically, adding sugar will reactivate the yeast, so companies pasteurize their product, either with heat, or chemically with potassium sorebate to prevent the yeast from acting up again. For Broken Nose, sweet cider does not match their focus.

Instead, fermentation is the goal. It’s crucial to these dry ciders because they need the yeast to ferment out. Ferment out means that the yeast eats all of the sugar, leaving no possible sweetness. Just apple flavor, and dryness. A great example can be found in their flagship, Old Hat.

Alongside traditional fermentation, Broken Nose has been dabbling in "mixed fermentations" as well. Mixed fermentations involve working with bacteria’s such as Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus, and wild yeasts such as Brettanomyces and Saccharomcyes, to develop, acidic, sour, funky flavors. Currently, Cade has been working with Jake Guidry, a homebrewer who works the taproom at Begyle, on these mixed fermentation ciders, which they keep at home in oak barrels. (They can’t keep them at the brewery due to contamination concerns.) They’ve been experimenting, aging the barrels for months now, playing around with the concept until they can unleash them to the public. At the moment, the public can’t try them, but that will change in the future.

In the coming months, the company plans on connecting with local orchards so they can work with their apples. Currently they use must (apple juice) from the Pacific Northwest, but hope to work with nearby orchards soon.

In the meantime, between scouting locations for its own facility, Broken Nose just wants to make great cider for the people of Chicago, and let them know this European style exists because to Cade, “There’s not that much exposure to those kinds of ciders.”