From Farm to Bottle: ‘Yip’ is the New Cider with Old Roots
A new cider on New Brunswick’s craft brewery scene is having a hard time staying on shelves.
Yip Cider, crafted on the Mackay Apple Orchard on the Kingston Peninsula, has quickly become a local favourite since it made its debut back in April.
“The reception has definitely exceeded expectations. The first indicator was our first farmer’s market in Kingston. We just couldn’t believe it,” says Joe Mackay, president of Yip Cider. “We had to go back to the farm to get more and sold out of that. We basically sold out twice in one day. Since then it’s been very steady and it’s tough to keep up.”
Besides the Kingston Farmer’s Market, Yip Cider is available at some NB Liquor stores and several bars and pubs throughout the Greater Saint John area. Though it’s only recently made its commercial debut, Yip Cider’s roots have been planted in New Brunswick for decades.
“‘Yip’ was our grandfather, that was a nickname, everybody knew him by ‘Yip,'” says Mackay. “He bought the farm in 1964 and it’s right beside where the camp still is today where our cousins go, his father bought that. The farm is adjacent to where he spent his summers.”
Back in the day, the farm would, and still does, sell its apples and apple juice. Yip would also make fermented cider, but it was never sold commercially.
“It wasn’t for commercial [sale]. The stuff he always sold was just the juice,” says Mackay. “We’d sell that at the farmer’s market along with our apples, but we never actually sold our fermented stuff, because that was just for the family.”
Yip’s son (and Joe Mackay’s father) Chas, switched careers and joined the apple farming business in 1980. Yip died in 1986, but Chas and his family – including his sons Joe, Hugh and Sam – have continued the business ever since.
The idea to bring Yip’s apple cider to the commercial market came when Joe Mackay travelled to New Zealand in 2015 after graduating from university.
At the time, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to join the family business. He started working at a vineyard, where he fell in love with the work and the lifestyle. It was here when he realized there was a big opportunity.
“I could replicate that in New Brunswick. The infrastructure was already there because of what Yip had done and what my dad has done,” says Mackay.
“Cider was a growing market and a lot of people were getting to know what it was and drinking it. From that standpoint, it seemed like a good idea. I basically researched it, found a course in England on Cider making. So me and my brothers, Sam and Hugh, went to England and took a course there.”
From there Mackay experimented to find the right blends and ordered the necessary equipment to the farm. Back when his grandfather was making cider, it was pressed a vertical rack and cloth press. Today the cider is fermented in a modern farmhouse using a vertical hydro-press.
“We have a cottage winery licence, which is a unique licence,” says Mackay. “To have one of those licenses, you have to have an orchard or a vineyard [for example] … basically, it’s New Brunswick trying to give an opportunity to farmers to do a value-added product. So a cottage winery licence is key to our operations.”
Yip Cider is made with the apples Mackay Orchard grows. Mackay says any additional apples or ingredients they need, like hops, come from other New Brunswick farmers.
“We’re going from farm to bottle,” he says.
“When you’re drinking Yip cider, you’re drinking something that’s all New Brunswick. A lot of hard work has gone into growing these apples and taking the risk of having a farm and producing something from that.”
The Mackay Apple Orchard also holds its annual U-pick every fall where thousands of people come to the farm to pick apples. They also sell their regular apple juice. But Joe Mackay says he views Yip Cider as a leader in the orchard’s overall business with lots of room for growth, saying bars from as far as Ontario have reached out for orders. But for now, he says, they are planning to keep Yip Cider local to the Saint John area as they slowly expand to build capacity.
“Right now we’re keeping it pretty local … We’re doing that as best we can. As we get more product and supply, we’ll be able to meet the demand,” says Mackay. “But for now, we’re just focusing on the local Saint John area and then southern New Brunswick and then hopefully get all of New Brunswick then expand from there.”