Sunken Paddle's Cider Culture

Doug Post and Spencer Morse are on a mission to introduce Oshkosh to a proper hard cider. Their base of operation is the tasting room at Sunken Paddle Ciderworks, 544 W. 17th Ave. Sunken Paddle is Oshkosh’s first cidery, and what’s made there shares little in common with the overtly sweet, mass-produced hard ciders one typically encounters.

“We get a lot of people coming in here who haven't had ciders like these before,” says Morse. “So we like to start with some education. The first thing is that these ciders are dry, like certain types of wine. But once people begin to understand it and the complexity of it, they begin to realize that there's depth to cider and a variety of flavors. They’re usually shocked by how much they love it. It ends up being pretty easy to convert them.”

Spencer Morse(left) and Doug Post of Sunken Paddle Ciderworks.

Morse and Post, both now 40, went through their own conversion experience almost a decade ago. The longtime friends were homebrewing together and kicking around thoughts of opening a brewery. Then Morse took a trip to Oregon. There he encountered dry ciders like those he now makes at Sunken Paddle. “It just blew my mind,” he says. “I came back and said, Doug, we've got to start making cider. After that, we just immersed ourselves in it. We basically turned my basement into a working cidery.”

Post says the hobby grew into a full-blown obsession. “We were driving around the state sourcing apples from all these different orchards. We were coming up with different blends and experimenting with yeast and then all of a sudden we've been doing this for like six years. That’s about when we decided to focus on commercial processes and commercial equipment. We were still in the basement, but when Spencer spent two grand on a pump, I was like… uh, okay, this is really happening.”

They opened Sunken Paddle in July of 2022 in a former auto-repair shop in a mixed-use neighborhood near the corner of 17th and Ohio. Morse and Post adapted the 1500 square-foot space to match their vision of an urban cidery, with a tasting room cradled by the production area. “We had to start small,” Post says. “We still wouldn't be off the ground if we were going for a larger version of this. We didn’t even know if there would be a market for this kind of cider. But we found there are pockets of people who are begging for this kind of a product. We made 1,000 gallons that first year and last year we were over 2,500 gallons. That's about the most we can do with our current situation.”

The Cidery at 544 W. 17th Ave.

The scale of production has grown, but their approach to making artisanal cider remains unchanged. “Our number one rule is whole ingredients,” says Morse. “It's all natural, it's all whole ingredients. We're not using fake anything. And there’s zero water in these, it’s all juice. That’s part of what makes these ciders a little more expensive. We’re not cutting corners. I mean if we’re making a blackberry cider, we could go out and get blackberry flavoring. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to use real blackberries and we’re going to try to source them locally. We’ve felt strongly about that from the beginning.”

Their 60-gallon batches use about 900 pounds of apples, and can take up to eight months to produce. Their Heirloom Blend uses more than 300 varieties of Wisconsin-grown apples, some of which have a lineage dating to the 1600s. “We’re picking the apples, we’re crushing the apples, we’re doing it all by hand,” says Morse. “I can’t go to the gym, but there’s something about picking apples that works for me.”

Both Morse and Post continue to work full time jobs in addition to their cider making. “It’s a lot of work, but it's also very rewarding,” Morse says. “We had to do this. I mean our biggest fear was that we’d end up old men without ever having taken a shot at it. You got to give it a shot. We knew we would regret it if we didn't try.”

The best place to sample their work is in the tasting room at Sunken Paddle Ciderworks where there are often six or seven cider varieties being served from bottles or on draught. Most hover around 6% alcohol by volume, about the same strength as a typical craft beer. The tasting room is open Saturdays from 12-5pm. Sunken Paddle bottled cider is also available in Oshkosh at Wagner Market and the Oshkosh Food Co-op.

To receive an email notification when I publish a new post, email me at OshkoshBeer@gmail.com with “Subscribe” in the subject box. Your email address will never be shared or sold.