Cigar City Cider and Mead is about to open up a new production facility, and going forward they have some exciting changes in the works and some new ideas that they cannot wait to unveil to the Sunshine State.
Who is Cigar City Cider and Mead?
Cigar City Cider and Mead resides mostly in the hands of cider and mead enthusiast Todd Strauss, who handles the day-to-day operations. Strauss is a mover, a jovial man who talks with passion, respect, and wonder on topics like cider, the creative process, and collaborating with other artists.
In addition to silent partners involved with CCCM, Cigar City Brewing owner Joey Redner and Cigar City Brewing’s Vice President Justin Clark combine forces in this new company. The two handle big picture operations and consult on various projects and ideas, bringing a blend of business acumen and marketing strategies to the table.
Finally, the project would not be complete without the involvement of Wayne Wambles, the head brewer at Cigar City Brewing, a former homebrewer and passionate mead enthusiast.
Both Todd and Joey agree, “Wayne is excited about making meads.” Wambles will have creative input and a hand in shaping Cigar City Cider and Mead’s future. Wayne brings CCCM his expertise as a brewer and his experience as a mead-loving homebrewer. When embarking for new horizons, experience at the helm can be a difference-maker and giving the creative mind behind some of Cigar City Brewing’s most popular beers input on CCCM’s mead project shows how serious Redner and Strauss are about making this company a success.
The New Facility
The new Cigar City Cider and Mead production facility is located at 1812 North 15th Street in Ybor City. This building has a personal and public history, a fact that did not escape Redner’s notice when looking for a new building. This building began its life as a police stable, one that Teddy Roosevelt would have boarded his horses in when he visited Tampa on the road to Cuba. It then evolved into a barber shop, tailor shop, and more recently was one of the first brewpubs in Tampa, Tampa Bay Brewing Company’s home before they moved into Centro Ybor.
Tampa Bay Brewing Company owner and brewer Dave Doble stopped by his old haunt to share memories of the place with Joey and Todd. He also told them of a unique addition to the building in the form of a spiritual resident. Strauss and Redner both agree that the building is haunted, but refused to give further details of their experience with their inherited specter.
As for the liquids that will pour forth from this new facility, Joey and Todd say that CCCM’s new home has a twofold raison d’etre: This will be a home for the CCCM where interested people can both see production and sample from the source.
The source? 30-barrel vessels visible right from the tasting room. These vessels will produce seasonal meads and ciders then tap them onsite in the CCCM tasting room. Patrons will then be able to purchase growlers or buy cans of cider or bottles of mead to go. At first, Cigar City Cider and Mead plans to can some of their ciders with Craft Beer Crew, the mobile canning service that helps Florida breweries can their beers. When demand allows, they will look into a bottling machine for meads, debating on bottling in 750mL bottles and 33 cL bottles now popular in meads.
CCCM was kind enough to share some drafts of label designs for their cans and bottles.
CCCM’s Hard Cider, Fight the Power Sour Apple, Peach InCider, and Homemade Apple Pie ciders will all likely see production with Hard Cider targeted for cans almost immediately.
The most popular cider? Homemade Apple Pie Cider- accounts were blowing through 10 half-barrel kegs in four days, according to Strauss. Due to sheer popularity, this one is also being targeted for canning soon after the production facility opens.
Cigar City Cider is also in talks to produce meads with B. Nektar meadery of Ferndale, Michigan. No specifics yet, but both Redner and Strauss are excited to continue working with B. Nektar Meadery both in collaboration and possibly contracting mead production.
Why Cider and Mead?
“Mead is one of the only products that can be entirely Florida-sourced,” explains co-owner Joey Redner, and Redner likes to include as much of Florida as possible in his projects. Meads, or honey wines, will showcase a product that is made entirely from Florida ingredients. The company’s test batches of mead have utilized Palm and Orange Blossom honey, and one test labels is slated for CCCM Orange Blossom mead.
After mead production was secured, cider was a natural outgrowth as cider production could utilize the same tanks.
You’ve Come A Long Way, Cider!
The idea of Cigar City Cider and Mead is about three years old, but Todd and Joey recount conversations about the project’s origins, then realize how far the Cigar City Cider and Mead Project has come: they sold their first batch in March of 2013.
In a mere nine months, Cigar City Cider and Mead is already striving to keep up with demand, moving into a new facility, looking into contracting larger batches of cider, seeking to purchase a traditional press (in order to press fruit for use in meads and ciders), and receiving increasingly positive feedback on platforms like Ratebeer and Untappd. According to reviews, the project has made 18 different ciders (including treatments) in nine months. This number includes several ciders made for Orlando’s Redlight Redlight’s Johnny Appleseed Day, where the craft beer bar had a cider takeover and CCCM offered several one-off treatments to commemorate the event as well as a barrel-aged cider to celebrate the band Samiam. Redner and Strauss count these as positive steps since their nascent cider project aims to craft cider “with an appreciation for all approaches to cider-making, targeting flavors that balance between sweet and dry, targeting true English-style dry cider.”
What’s Left?
The final word on the new production hive is that construction is underway, and Redner and Strauss are optimistic. “Our goal is to open by March 1st.” Both men agree and commit that the place will be open by Tampa Bay Beer Week, but still to come are wet-zoning hearings and additional construction.
“I know that we are really standing on the shoulders of giants both in Tampa and as part of an international community of cider-makers,” Todd says, then adds, “I am just really excited to get to work in the creative process.”
