Midland Makers Series: Spotlight on area craftsmanship

With a region rich in entrepreneurial spirit and ever-expanding talent, there are some world-class businesses creating unique and local fare that travels well beyond the confines of your local zip code. In our second iteration celebrating local craftsmanship, we take a look inside the walls of three local makers.

Forgotten Ciders
With the explosion in popularity of craft beer and local breweries, some lesser-known fermented beverages are hoping to position themselves as strong contenders for what people are toasting with.

Eastman’s Forgotten Ciders is an orchard and brewery looking to introduce people to hard cider through a “tree-to-tap” experience. Located in southern Midland County at 1058 W. Midland-Gratiot County Line Road, the 16-acre plot of land growing the apples used in the cider has been family-owned for over 100 years. Walking to their barn-red tasting room, you walk through the orchard and can touch the trees responsible for the cider. The orchard boasts over 3,000 trees and over 1,000 different varieties of apples, with the tasting room open on Saturdays from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Locals enjoying a glass at Eastman's Forgotten Ciders.

After buying the farm from their grandfather in 2007, Nicole and her husband Rafe started out by focusing on improving the health of the apple trees. Then when that effort was well underway, they started experimenting with hard cider production through homebrewing in 2010.

“We used to have these get-togethers, where we were hand bottling one at a time,” she says, “and we started to think, ‘Hey, we’re pretty good’ and could make a run at this.”

And “pretty good” they were - winning awards in multiple competitions from 2012 through 2014.

Eastman's Forgotten Ciders has been intentional about letting the apple varieties speak for themselves.

Most of that success has come from a philosophy to “focus on the apple.” While there’s a trend of breweries introducing new and possibly bizarre ingredients to entice customers, Ward says that their focus is on growing a great apple and letting it take center-stage.

“We never try to outshine, overcompensate or overproduce a cider, when we have such a great product to start with,” she says. “I’m not saying people are doing that stuff for a gimmick, because we like certain things and we’ll try to put them in cider. That’s how our habanero cider came to be. My husband likes spicy things, and that was his baby.”

“With the orchard, we can do things that no one else can do, we can do 150 different kinds of apples in a cider. We’d rather let that speak for itself,” says Ward.

Nicole and Rafe Ward talk to customers about cider in Eastman's tasting room.

And the apples definitely do the talking - the ciders taste earthy, pleasantly tart and are an appreciably different approach to cider than the super-sweet versions you’ll find in the grocery store.

You can find Forgotten Cider at Eastman’s Party Store, Opperman’s Cork and Ale, and Ideal Party, but Ward encourages everyone to stop by the orchard at least once.

“Hands-down, I think the orchard and tasting room gives the truest representation of who we are and what we do. Our look, our feel, our vibe, all of that you get out here. It really is ‘tree-to-tap.’”

Helios Hops
You might think that studying nuclear physics and growing hops couldn’t be two more unrelated fields of work, but for Nick Goodman, owner of Helios Hops, the sun is the reason he’s standing in the middle of telephone poles, wires and hop vines.

“The sun really got me into hops because my background is nuclear physics and my thesis had to do with stars and nuclear fusion. I was watching a webinar talking about hops growing because of phototropism, or being attracted to the sun. That’s what really triggered it for me, so I named the business ‘Helios’ after the Greek God who pulled the chariot of the sun.”

Nick Goodman, owner of Helios Hops with some of his crop.

While the sun got Goodman interested in starting a business, the dirt helps keep him in it.

“I absolutely love being outside,” he says. “It’s rewarding, because of all of the hard work that you put in. The hops show it. If you put in hard work, they will say, “Okay, thank you.”

The love for being in the dirt extends to his wife, Abby, and their kids.

“My wife has been a huge support to me. And my kids, they enjoy coming out here and helping or just playing over a sand hill while I’m working, which is fun.”

Helios Hops grows two varieties on the property.

From growing just four plants last year to 2,400 this year, the numbers could give the impression that Nick’s goal is to rapidly expand the business, but he says that now that he has a large enough number of plants to be able to supply breweries, his focus is to grow quality hops.

“I want to be in that realm of hop growers that are using good, quality practices to really help establish Michigan as a respected hop-growing state,” says Goodman. “For me, it’s all about growing a quality hop. Some people might want to do quantity: just get the most yield. I would like a large yield, but not at the sacrifice of quality.”

On his two-acres of land, Goodman grows two varieties of hops — Saaz and Cascade. A hop low in bitterness and high in aroma, Saaz is frequently used in lagers and pilsners to give an earthy, spicy taste. Cascade hops are the signature American hop, smelling and tasting like citrus and grapefruit. He also has a corner of his hopyard dedicated to research — taking notes as to when plants emerge, how much growth have they done, spacing and soil analysis.

Goodman started small and now has more than 2,400 plants.

Along with the focus on quality growing practices, Goodman wants to create strong relationships with local breweries, talking to brewers about what kind of hops they’re looking for and put Helios in a position to provide them.

“I really think of brewing as a form of artistry,” he says. “I love how a really good brewer can just do something so fascinating with these few ingredients and make a drink that just is great. I have so much respect for their abilities, I want to help them do what they do so well."

Mule Resophonic Guitars
For Matt Eich of Mule Resophonic Guitars, success started to happen after losing his job.

After graduating high school and attending the Roberto Venn School of Luthiery, Eich worked at Huss and Dalton Guitars in Virginia, but ended up in Chicago having to work in a factory to pay the bills and was building guitars on the side.

“Then in 2008, I lost my job during the recession and ended up back in Michigan,” he said.

Matt Eich, owner of Mule Resophonic Guitars playing a finished product.

After seeing a musician play a metal-bodied resonator guitar, Eich went home wondering if the instrument was something he had to the skills to create.

At the time, there was only a factory in California and a couple other makers in the world building this kind of guitar, and he saw an opening in the market.

“But it took me a year to make four of them and I didn’t think they were very good, so I ran out of money,” he said. He went to work at a temp agency, but only made it two weeks before he had to quit, because over those two weeks he had received twelve orders and had to start a wait-list.

Mule places the importance on handmade, forging relationships with the future owners is a big part of the job.

Resonator guitars were developed by two brothers in the 1930s. Big band music was exploding in popularity and guitars needed a way to compete with the volume of brass instruments. Amplifiers hadn’t been invented yet, and so they built guitars out of metal with a thin, aluminum cone inside the body of the instrument designed to physically amplify the sound.

Jazz musicians eventually took to amplifiers and electric guitars, selling off their resonators to blues musicians who would typically play in bars and needed a guitar loud enough to compete with a room of people.

Mule insists on doing everything by hand as part of the process.

While many people still associate the resonator guitar with blues musicians, the different sound of a Mule resonator has attracted everyone from Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, to Adele’s guitarist Tim Van Der Kuil, to Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.

“One of the most fun things about Mule is that the kind of musician buying our guitars is so varied. They’re songwriters who are looking for a different sound, something they can’t get someplace else,” says Eich.

Looking back on the beginning of his business until now, Eich has a few thoughts on striking it out on your own. “I think if you get into it with the idea that there’s a set outcome, you won’t have the steam to make it successful. You really have to love the work itself. With guitars, to be able to take a sheet of steel and a block of wood and make it into something that gets strung up and you’re able to hear a musician playing it — to see them go inside that instrument and make songs come out that wouldn’t have come out if they’d had picked up a different instrument — that’s the part that I love, that keeps me in it.”

Matt Eich carves the neck of a guitar in process.

Along with his love for the work, Eich places a high priority on creating a relationship with his customers, many of whom eagerly place a deposit on a wait-list that’s currently 12 months long.

“Typically with makers, the goal is to portray themselves as doing the best work, using the finest materials, doing the most of something, and in the process overstating themselves and what they do. How is everybody making the best thing? It doesn’t make sense.”

When it comes to a person making something for another person, it’s not so much about the assumed perfection of the thing being made, it’s about the connection between people. In an age where machines can make the most perfect objects, why would someone get an instrument from someone who made it by hand? It’s not because I can make something more perfect than a computer — that’s not true.

But if you take the angle that two people are connecting, then the whole game changes. This person is coming to me for a guitar and wants to love the process as much as we love the process, so send them pictures daily of their guitar as its being made. We talk about non-guitar things like their families, or concerts, or share music. That’s the thing. It’s people being excited about doing something together.”