Cidery, brewery make good neighbors

BOULDER — It takes a circuitous path to find it, but one corner of a light industrial area in east Boulder is trying its best to become a mecca for lovers of craft adult beverages.

Jason and Rebecca Spears opened their sixth Locust Cider taproom on July 20 in a space on Conestoga Court, northwest of 55th Street and Arapahoe Avenue and just a couple of doors west of Jake and Erin Evans’ Wild Woods Brewery, which will celebrate its seventh birthday in September.

The Evanses “work really hard,” Jason Spears said. “We’ve built a good relationship with them. We’re talking about ways we can do things together. We could do a lot of events, since there’s a lot of space in that corner, a lot of parking. We may be collaborating on some liquid as well.”

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Any collaboration might carry a note of irony since Spears became interested in hard cider because “I developed some sort of allergy to beer. I believe it’s hops related,” he said. “I learned about cider from a friend of mine who’d been drinking it for some time and had similar issues. I fell in love with bottle-fermented French and English ciders. So I started making my own and learned more about it.”

While attending Colorado School of Mines, Jason Spears met Noah Westby, who was running a little coffee shop in Golden. They stayed in touch, and when plans for the Boulder cidery developed, Spears tapped Westby — who now owns the Dugabi Cucina Mediterranean restaurant in north Boulder — to be his general manager. Westby’s wife, Tanya Bonino, “is our cider maker for Colorado,” Spears said. “She has an amazing palate and is working on some really cool flavors as we speak.”

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If you go

Locust Cider and Taproom
5446 Conestoga Court, Boulder
303-356-8151
locustcider.com

Wild Woods Brewery
5460 Conestoga Court, Boulder
303-484-1465
wildwoodsbrewery.com

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Among those flavors are honey pear, vanilla bean, dark cherry, watermelon and an original dry.

Although most of the apple juice for Locust ciders comes from the Northwest, Spears said, “making cider this far away from Washington, it makes sense in terms of cost and environmental footprint to integrate with local ingredients, find local sources we can work with, and make us more relevant than just being some brand from another part of the country.”

Rebecca Spears, a graduate of the University of Colorado Denver’s business school, serves as vice president for marketing, but “like in any family business, she does a little of everything,” Jason Spears said.

He built experience owning restaurants, coffee shops and a concert venue in Colorado Springs, but was working with Starbucks corporate in Seattle when he got the idea to open a cidery.

“Washington state grows 60 percent of the apples for the nation, so that’s where we started,” Spears said. “Woodinville is barely northeast of Seattle. It’s a heavy wine- and beer-producing part of the state. So we built our first production facility there in March 2015 — myself and my brother Patrick.”

The Woodinville taproom opened first, followed by locations in Seattle’s Alki Beach and Ballard neighborhoods, then Tacoma and Fort Worth, Texas. Spears’ Fort Worth roots sparked the name for the cidery — in an unusual way.

“I wanted a name that had a personal tie, something that related to the motivating parts of my life,” Spears said. “When I was a teenager, 14 years old, I was attacked pretty brutally in Fort Worth. I thought I was going to die. But while I was waiting for an ambulance, I was listening to the sounds of the locusts in the summer heat. That sound gave me a calming moment — and it started me thinking about how life is short and I’m gonna make the most out of everything I do, take everything to 100 percent, not accept half of anything anymore.”

Another personal challenge drives the Spears family’s charitable ventures: Their daughter Lucy was born in 2015 with hydrocephalus, which Jason Spears described as “an incurable brain condition that has outdated treatments. Patients have shunts implanted in their brains but they fail regularly. In the best case, it causes headaches and vision problems.

“Lucy’s had three brain surgeries and a skull surgery, and she’s only 4. She was born a month before we started the original Locust Cider, and I spent pretty much of my company’s first year of existence in the hospital.”

So when Locust Cider holds its grand opening on Aug. 16 — complete with food trucks, locally made ciders unique to Colorado, music and prizes — there also will be a raffle, with proceeds going to the Spears’ nonprofit that partners with a national hydrocephalus foundation.

Those attending the event also can sample brews from the cidery’s neighbors at Wild Woods Brewery, whose backwoods theme extends from the taproom’s décor using lots of beetle-kill wood to its beers’ ingredients, often including subtle uses of juniper berries, jasmine flowers, herbs and fruits to, as its website proclaims, “add a touch of the wilderness to each beer.”

Selections on a recent visit included “Wild Flower Pale Ale,” “Berrypatch Wheat,” “Treeline IPA,” “Campfire Red,” “Ponderosa Porter” and “Smores Stout.”

Wild Woods’ 32-ounce “crowler” cans even come with instructions on the label about how to turn the can into a camp stove.

Wisconsin natives Jake and Erin Evans had backgrounds in electrical engineering and nursing, respectively, but the outdoor enthusiasts came up with the idea of “nature-inspired beer” while sitting around a campfire near Crested Butte, according to the brewery’s website. They worked for five years in their basement to perfect recipes on an all-grain professional brewing system, then opened Wild Woods in September 2012 with a two-barrel nanobrewery. They expanded to a seven-barrel brewhouse in 2014.

The brewery works to introduce a new brew on Thursdays and also occasionally hosts trivia nights and live music.

According to the website, “Charlie and Kristen Rilling are family and part owners of the business, share similar passions, and have helped bring this concept to life.”