The Juice on Red Rover Craft Cider
When Adam Clawson and his partner Nicola Mason first arrived in Fredericton from England in 2007, they paid a visit to one of the local watering holes.
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Get your Red Rover Fix:
FREDERICTON
The Cider House (Thurs 4-8pm, Fri 2-8pm) (All Year)
Real Food Connections (Mon-Fri 10am-7pm) (All Year)
Boyce’s Farmers’ Market (Sat 7am-1pm) (All Year)
KINGSTON
Farmers’ Market (Sat 8am-1pm)(Mid May-Oct)
ST. ANDREWS
Farmers’ Market (Thurs 8am-1pm)(Mid May-Oct)
SAINT JOHN
City Market (Sat 8am-5pm) (All Year)
Queen Square Market (Sun 8:30am-2pm) (Mid May-Oct)
SHEDIAC
Shediac Park Market (Sun 9am-2pm)
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“I asked what craft beers they had and they said they had this new one called Picaroons,” Clawson says. “I then asked about ciders they had and the guy looked a little confused and remembered that he had one can of a commercial one at the back of the fridge.”
Clearly, back-of-the-fridge cider wasn’t going to cut it.
“We ended up realizing at that point that if we want to get good quality cider, we’re going to have to make it ourselves.”
And make it they did.
“We started making it for ourselves, then my friends wanted to try some,” Clawson says. “We got to the point that we realized it was growing in Europe quite substantially and no one was doing anything here.”
Red Rover Craft Cider was born. Clawson and Mason spent over two years working out how to make a cider that’s truly unique to New Brunswick. The company officially launched last year.
The cider is made with all New Brunswick apples and unlike most of the ciders you find at your local liquor store, they use 100 per cent juice.
Apples are stored, aged, then pressed. Once they have the juice, from there it’s blended and fermented. The cider is brewed in the English style; dry or semi-dry with rich apple flavours, the occasional floral note and sharpness in the finish.
Clawson says it’s the ingredients that separate craft cider from the “new age” cider on liquor store shelves.
“We use 100 per cent juice, whereas the commercial ciders use anywhere down to about 10 per cent apple concentrate, then hide that fact with water, citric acid, sugars and different types of acid,” he says. “The unique thing about that means because we’re only using apples, the flavour and the aroma is honestly apple.”
They don’t just work with apples. Red Rover has experimented with everything from ginger to blueberries … even beetroot.
“What we’re trying to do is not really going for something that’s a novelty, but something that’s truly unique,” he says.
Since launching last year, Red Rover has been a trailblazer for the craft cider market in New Brunswick. Since they’re the first, they have had to work through some interesting hurdles with provincial policy, and creating the market.
“When we first thought of the idea, nobody had any idea what cider was. When we launched, most people thought when we said ‘cider’ we meant the non-alcoholic variety,” Clawson says. “So when we were first selling at farmers’ markets, the mentality was very much ‘is this an apple beer?’ because people weren’t aware that cider was in the same category. “
Over the last year, that mentality has definitely changed. Red Rover is now available at pretty much every farmers’ market in and around Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John. It’s also sold at a few retail locations in Fredericton and is on tap at some restaurants.
“It’s very interesting to be the first of your kind. We really see craft cider being where craft beer was about 20 years ago,” Clawson says. “There’s lots of catching up to do and hopefully we’re going to do it in a slightly shorter period.”
With a successful year coming to a close, Clawson says they’re working on expanding in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. They are also working with ANBL to finally get Red Rover on its shelves.
“What we really try and do is create a product for the people and we’re always trying to get feedback,” he says. “At the end of the day, we really trying to create a product that everyone will enjoy and isn’t fancy and isn’t too craft and everyone can feel ownership of.”