Cidermaker Ryan Burk — previously head cidermaker at Angry Orchard and vice president of innovation and quality at Blake’s Beverage Company — is launching a new cider brand this month called Occam Cider. A biannual subscription club based out of New York’s Hudson Valley, Occam is named for Occam’s razor, a problem-solving principle attributed to 14th-century Franciscan friar and philosopher William of Ockham. The principle suggests that the hypothesis requiring the least assumptions is generally the most likely solution. This philosophy informs Burk’s cidermaking, he says, in the sense that he’s “trying not to impose more on [my cider] than is required.”
Occam Cider will release product twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring, to coincide with the natural rhythm of cidermaking. “Each cider will only exist once,” says Burk. “The goal is to reveal rather than decorate.”
Occam’s focus will be on naturally fermented products made with minimal intervention. But while each cider will be a one-off, Burk says similar ideas will return. “We may work with the same orchard, variety or process repeatedly.”
Above all, he seeks to embrace the art of fermentation as “a portal to the natural world.” Subsequently, his goal is for each product to reflect a particular harvest, orchard or collaboration. “I’m less interested in deciding exactly what a cider should taste like before the apples arrive than I am in understanding what the fruit is capable of becoming,” Burk says.
Occam is radically different in scale and approach than Burk’s previous cideries, but he says his work at Angry Orchard and Blake’s nevertheless directly informs Occam’s development. At Angry Orchard, Burk’s focus was making beverages consistently over time rather than intentionally singular, but he says his experience learning about orchard development, fermentation, blending, sensory evaluation and scaling ideas has been invaluable in starting Occam. Likewise, he credits his experience creating systems and maintaining operational discipline at Blake’s Innovation Cider House for the chance “to test ideas at meaningful scale while still working experimentally.”
While club membership is the primary way for customers to access Occam, Burk says the brand will have retail placements in New York, restaurant placements in select states, and will host and co-host dinners and tastings throughout the United States and internationally.
