Episode 171 - Kyle from Hudson North Cider

[00:00:29] The bushwhacks were some of the worst days I've ever had in the mountains, or life really. Whereas Pantsy Mountain is totally opposite, it's a mountain on top of a crater. I think the weather challenges on this incident were particularly difficult. It is really the development of New York State. Catskills will respond to it.

[00:00:52] You're listening to Inside The Line, the Catskill Mountains Podcast. Alright, so we're going to have to do it one, two, three. So, who's going to go first? It can't be me because I don't have anything tonight.

[00:01:17] For real? Alright, so I'll go first. Here we go. Hold on. That's up for Kyle in Hudson North. Nice. Pineapple. And Kyle just from the angle. Nice. Kyle, go ahead. Do your thing. Yeah. Oh. Damn. That was pro-level. Alright, and now you go back to the audio settings and change it to auto. We're outmatched tonight, Stosh. Let's just end it there.

[00:01:47] But, Tad, do you hear the last one? The last one that I had that we thought was bad was actually really good. Yeah, but it didn't have the snap and the echo that Kyle had. Right. Been doing this a long time. I can tell. You want to open up like a little cider place, you know, get into the business. Yeah. Come up with a cool name like Hudson South or Hudson West, you know, and do it. I'm more of a Hudson East guy, you know. Hudson East? Yeah. You're like Beacon. Is that you?

[00:02:17] Yeah. Alright. So welcome to episode 171 of Inside the Line, the Catskill Mountains podcast. Tonight we are joined by Kyle Schur. How do you say it again? Jesus. Cher. Beautiful. Cher. That's easy. Like the singer. Is that it? Sonny and Cher? Yeah, that's, look, might as well. Like at least it's a recognizable name. There you go. So Kyle joins us from Hudson North Hard Cider.

[00:02:40] A brand that's just as passionate about his trail stewardship as his crafting crisp post-hike refreshment that I have been loving so much for the past, I don't know, three years that I started this. We dive into the, his origin of Hudson North and their deep ties in the Hudson Valley to Catskills. And all about how he has built a brand that rooted in the community, conservation and the outdoors. You know, Kyle doesn't just make hard ciders.

[00:03:07] He makes the community stick together and he benefits, does some great stuff for our trail. So welcome to the show here tonight, Kyle. Thanks. Glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me on. Yeah. You know, it's good to have you. Glad we got connected. And also, did you know that it's cider week? I did. I didn't know. I was someone, someone told me somewhere and it just happened to click, but you know, it's been, it's always good to, you know, show off. Our agricultural roots.

[00:03:36] Like at the end of the day, you know, at, you know, New York is known as the empire state and the, you know, the big apple. And, you know, I think it's nice that, you know, even though we're, we're out competed by Washington, as far as our growing acreage, uh, we're still number two. So, you know, just don't tell anyone else that on the, on the West coast. Number one. No real hearts. Yeah. It's about 60% on the, on Washington and about 25% is New York's apple crop.

[00:04:06] Um, but you know, got to keep it up for the Northeast, you know? Yeah. Well, that's cool. So happy cider week. And we're going to be celebrating it here tonight on the podcast, talking with Kyle about his, uh, Hudson North cider. And we're going to be talking also about his, uh, his, uh, his trail stewardship that they provide with his company.

[00:04:29] And sorry, once again, uh, you know, I'm going to say minutes before we started recording, probably five, 10 minutes, my power went out and then I had no internet. And now there's fricking just cops and, and, uh, uh, authorities going by. So I don't know if like something happened down the, down the thing, but we had a nice thunderstorm coming through the area. So, yeah. So I'm very glad.

[00:04:55] Cause I was like, I'm going to have to hit the hotspot up on this thing and it's going to be so stuttery, but we got it. Everything's going hopefully. So, uh, so once again, when those talking about some, some rain and some stuff like that, we got high flowing water. And we have a lot of streams that are becoming crazy. Crazy. Crossable right now. Uh, I went out today and I had a bunch of instances today where, uh, streams were passable, but it was, it took a require. It took a little bit of thought to get past it.

[00:05:25] So once again, this is recording Tuesday, but once again, this is going to come out Friday, but still, we have a lot of high flowing water. Our creeks here are insane with high flowing water. And, uh, just check it out. Be sure that, you know, if you can't go through turnaround, it's not worth it. The mountains will be there another day. They're not going to frickin' erode in frickin' five days or a week or something like that. Get back.

[00:05:51] And also one of the crazy things that I frickin' hate in life is goddamn ticks. Two ticks on the way back. I feel, you know, that little tickle on my frickin' arm and I see a tick and I immediately slam on the goddamn brakes and throw it out. And then I, I run out like a Chinese fire drill and I'm just going insane looking for ticks. I had two ticks on me today for not even traveling probably over two miles. Yeah. Were you at a lower elevation though?

[00:06:19] Uh, I'd say so. I mean, Barnum road is where I was at for a little bit of a hike. And then I went down to, uh, Pratt'sville. So the ticks are out and I, I wasn't even on the trail for probably a total of an hour and a half. Not even so. Well, you drove more than you, you hiked. Oh yeah. It was, I, it's a crazy, crazy chat. We'll have that chat later. So bad news.

[00:06:49] Of course, of course, with all this stuff going on in the, in the world and, and in our great nation, uh, Doge cuts one. We're going to AmeriCorps New York, which threatens some of our volunteer programs. So the decision by, uh, Doge terminate funding for AmeriCorps will profoundly impact public trail lands across our region.

[00:07:09] AmeriCorps is the independent agency of the United States government that engages more than 5 million Americans service through variety of stipend volunteer work program and sectors. Now, the New York, New Jersey Corral Conference, a lot of their stuff is, uh, partners with AmeriCorps. And, uh, as part of their conservation core program, since 12, 2012, two corpse members have trail building initiatives. Native had a bit that restoration probably programs, uh, expanding access to nature.

[00:07:37] And, uh, they kind of teach the next program of our, our funders are people that, that come up with, uh, the next, uh, way to. Teach everybody else. So now this recent decision by Doge was. What? What? Twenty six million dollar grants for New York state.

[00:07:59] Thirty six hundred AmeriCorps members in New York state had been affected leading the suspension of numerous community service projects, including those focused on trail maintenance and environmental environmental conversations. Uh, New Jersey, uh, New York, New Jersey trail conference has definitely exposed some deep concern. Adirondacks, uh, the wild center in Tupper Lake, which hosted the only AmeriCorps program in the area has directly impacted.

[00:08:24] Uh, it relied on AmeriCorps members for outreach and environmental stewardship programs. Uh, this is definitely going to impact some of the areas. We don't know how much so far that's, that's the whole thing right now is it's a big question mark as is with everything in this goddamn day and age. It's a big goddamn question mark.

[00:08:42] And it definitely could do a lot of damage to our stewardship programs, especially when within the past five to six years, we've had a lot of stewardship programs arise and like, uh, kind of just a blossom with what's going on in the past. Yeah.

[00:09:07] And I've, I've seen red reports that halts your our governor's is, uh, gonna like protest against this, not protest, but revolt against it and stuff. I don't know what the hell to say. I'm not a politician kind of guy. I don't know this stuff. Uh, but all I know is that it might have an impact on our stewardship stuff here. And I hate, sorry to Kyle.

[00:09:34] I think that I say this for the past six months, I hate to bring people in on this shit, but you know, it's, it's reality. It's what we face and, you know, with, yeah. And, you know, luckily we have companies like you to, to benefit back into where trailhead, trailhead steward programs, stuff like that. Stewardship programs that help benefit to, to keep these trails maintained and stuff. So I'm glad to have you here on this. And what are, what are your thoughts?

[00:10:02] Had you looked into this or you kind of ignoring it to be like, Jesus Christ, this is. You know, you just, it's easy to find focus on other things, but I mean, to, to, to, to your point, I mean, like, uh, we had, we had just had a meeting not too long ago with New York, New Jersey trails, and they brought all this to our attention. Um, and it, yeah, it's extremely troubling. Like the fact that, you know, they're going to have trouble bringing in new people and engaging and they've even, you know, we've been initial talks with them.

[00:10:32] Just, you know, what can we do as, you know, a hard cider company? Obviously there's the, uh, cultural aspect of being able to bring people together. Um, is there anything we can do through events, um, or stuff like that to get, make up for where losing AmeriCorps, you know, which we'll never be able to fill that gap. I mean, it's, it's, it's a mountain you can't climb, but you know, what can we do to engage the younger generation to keep bringing in the volunteers and getting them engaged past.

[00:11:01] Volunteership into making a lifelong, uh, advocacy, uh, piece for them. So it's, it's tough, man. You just cut it. I mean, luckily I live in a 16,000 square foot warehouse and I go pretty much, you know, back and forth between my house and then there most of the days. So just keep your head down. It's tough stuff though. Yeah. And this is times when, of course the community has to come together and we kind of have to just join each other and help each other out with this.

[00:11:31] You know, as a community, which I find that the Catskills is one of the tightest communities that we have. The Hudson and the Hudson Valley area is starting to kind of like, we're all kind of joining together to, to just help each other out with all the stuff that's going on. Not just with the overflow of people going into our hiking trails and stuff, but just the shit that's hitting the fan with the world and stuff like that. And that's what I love. And that's, you know, that's why we have people like you on here and stuff too.

[00:12:01] Once again, you can't, you don't just have to sit back and make some money. You can help out your local community and stuff like that and, and join in and benefit, you know, of having this, this awesome people that we have here in the Catskills and the Hudson Valley. You know, just it's, it's, it's amazing. I find it phenomenal what we had be in the podcast, you know, we're, we're 171 episodes in, and I'm just flattered that, that people still listen to this. That's a, that's the thing. It's just, they still listen.

[00:12:30] It's funny, but you know, that they, you know, people are like, Hey, you know, I joined this volunteer program because Tad made me when he saw me on the hike or something like that. You know, like he made me, he told me you'd better join this program or whatever, but Tad, what are your thoughts about this buddy? Well, I, I see very few people when I hike and maybe that's by design.

[00:12:51] Well, I, you know, look, I think it's sad and I understand everybody's discouraged and despondent and there's a high degree of uncertainty out there, but, uh, you know, let's just hang tough. Remember that the constitution does say we, the people, um, that's how it starts off. So it, uh, the appropriate time we, the people need to hook up, get together and exercise our voting franchise to bring about change.

[00:13:19] And probably the most important thing you can do right now is target your Republican representatives in Congress, the Senate and house of representatives by bombarding them with all sorts of communications, letting them know that you're pissed. You're off and you're not going to take it anymore. And you're going to vote them out of office. So if that's what you want to know what I'm thinking, that's basically it, man, right there.

[00:13:47] Let them know, let them know that election day is coming. And everybody, everybody, regardless of the candidate, man, just vote Democrat down the line, whoever they are. Okay. If Stosh is running for office upstate as a Democrat, I don't care. Vote for them. So. Wow. That's powerful words. Let's get some rage against the machine plane. Right now. Yeah. There we go. Crank it up. I'm ready. Play a, what's that? I forgot the killing in the name of the end of that.

[00:14:17] I think Kyle, you probably know that song, right? Absolutely. I'm not that young. I'm not that old at this point. And you know, Tad has no clue what we're talking about. Yeah. I'm that old. I will send you the link for the ending of that. It is actually appropriate for this. So awesome. So awesome. Thanks. Thanks for the great words, guys, on that, this crazy situation.

[00:14:39] Once again, benefit, like a donate, whatever you can do to help out your local areas to benefit the trails that can be neat and clean. Just do it. You know, Tad, what's your, your piece of advice? It's a leave five, take five. Yeah. So I, I'm actually, um, I'm going to change that name to from take five. Uh, cause I think it's been taken by other people, uh, for other subjects to pack out five. And so it's a little game.

[00:15:07] I play where you're hiking along and you should strive by the end of every hike to pack out five things that don't belong to you, that, uh, other folks either intentionally or unintentionally left behind on the trail. And so you'll find out as the year progresses. Um, you start off with some large things like, uh, last week's hike. I, uh, found a, one of those, you know, clear plastic ponchos. So that's rather large.

[00:15:35] I mean, I should get bonus points for packing that out and some other things this week. There were a lot of smaller items. Um, but I still managed to pack out five, uh, things. And that doesn't mean once I get to five, I stop, you know, I'll keep picking up stuff as I go along, but you'll find yourself in the summer. Like, you know, getting these almost little microscopic pieces of plastic, but I think they still count, you know, leave no trace. Correct.

[00:16:01] And, you know, I would have to say that when I went and hiked slide with James Hobson, uh, the last time going to the viewpoint, I stood there at the slide mountain trailhead. And I was just like, you know what, I have trash bags. I have plastic gloves. Let me just clean up some of this stuff. And took them more than like eight minutes to clean up a lot of the trailhead to make it look brand new. And, you know, I have a pack of 200 plastic gloves in my car.

[00:16:25] I have a big, huge thing of those 33 gallon trash bags and it, and it's lasted me for years upon years. So do what you can do. Eight, 10 minutes is nothing. And it makes us, you know, makes, it makes a whole world of a difference. And it brings that impression upon other people that, wow, this trail, it's really nice. Maybe I should leave it that way. So whatever. So definitely. Yeah. So good, good pieces of advice, Ted.

[00:16:50] So also we got a little bit more news on this cat mill Catskill mountain railroad that we talked about last week, the, uh, Ulster Delaware County, stuff like that. They apparently had their grant suspended by an uproar from the county. So last spring, the railroad, uh, Catskill mountain railroad tourist attraction, uh, that brings from Kingston to the foothills of Catskills were awarded the three grants.

[00:17:14] We talked about this 4.5 million with 675, uh, thousand going to, uh, the plaza and stuff like that. They were supposed to conduct right before the Shokin reservoir. However, the documents obtained showed that Ulster County needed to cos, cos cosign parts of this grant for it to be valid. We didn't fully go into this, but we talked a little bit about this. The county would not comply, but the Catskill mountain railroad applied for cash anyway, and was rewarded that $667,000 in funds.

[00:17:44] Now the terminal was supposed to be, uh, the money for the terminal was supposed to be suspended before it was paid out to Ulster County notified by the state with the grant. Additionally, the railroad had no claim of land leading to the site of the proposed terminal. Although they did have a little sketch, uh, uh, overview of where it was supposed to be. And it was an, I remember that it was old, like, uh, abandoned carved, uh, like dealership area.

[00:18:10] Uh, the company has a permit from Ulster County to operate on the land within 1.8 miles. We talked about last week, but it would need land rights for the 1.8 miles that connected the two areas. Now it is referred to under designated section as a subject of intense and ongoing debate that's still going on in Ulster County.

[00:18:29] An advisory committee is saying that it should be a hiking trail or it should be somewhat widened to include both, but they're just having so uncreate a crazy time going about it. Uh, the railroad company have filed a lawsuit against Ulster County in 2013, and the two parties reached a negotiated settlement. Where the section of the rail company currently operates would be a co-located with public trail wherever feasible.

[00:18:56] And now it's still hasn't come to that 1.8 mile section is still sitting on a empty and will require further investigation for is feasible with rail or trail. Now it's still debating about this. Uh, they applied for three serious grants 2.2, 2003, and they just keep going on and on and just stuff is hitting the fan base. And they're going back and forth. Tad and I talked about this last episode. They just, they just keep going back and forth with this.

[00:19:26] And, you know, I would see, you know, them having kind of like a terminal area would be pretty cool. But once again, Tad said, you gotta be, I wouldn't say special to take a train ride, like a two hour train ride going from Kingston all the way up there. But it's just, it doesn't, it doesn't appeal to me to, to take that long of a two hour train ride on an old train and just be like, yeah, can we, can we kick this up a little bit more? And they just keep going slow and slow.

[00:19:56] So it's just, it's still hitting the fan. And I just wanted to bring that out there. So what else, Tad, you, you threw some info about the, about some other stuff, right? Tad I just look at all the money that they're gonna, uh, they need to spend. And in addition to what they need to spend, there's a lot of money that they, you know, would like to spend on the project. They don't generate on their current ridership enough revenue to support the improvements they need.

[00:20:25] And I look at where that money could go towards other projects. And so one of the things I, I noticed that this section that they want to improve to make the contiguous rail line from Kingston out to the Boyceville area, you know, they're missing a couple mile segment to do that. And it's going to cost them, I apparently like a few million dollars to make all this work, if not more.

[00:20:55] And with that money, they can add on to the already existing 750 mile empire state trail, which runs from New York city to Canada from, and also from Albany to Buffalo. Uh, there's some segments of that, which are on existing roads as opposed to rail trails or the old canal towpath for the Erie canal. So money should be spent on that.

[00:21:21] There's also in Kingston itself, there's a midtown linear park, which is about a mile long of, uh, improved old rail trail. That's missing a seven tenths of a mile segment to the Owen W rail trail, which then hooks up with the Hurley rail trail to the Kerhonks and trail to the, I think the DNW rail trail, which goes about 20 miles out of Kingston down to Kerhonks.

[00:21:49] And they're just missing that one little seven tenths of a mile segment and some others. So you would think for a few hundred thousand, they could finish off that local rail trail and make it something nice for people to use with their bicycles, take their kids. They can use it anytime or year to go skiing and whatnot.

[00:22:10] I just see this existing train project is being kind of extravagant to keep this old, uh, nostalgic railroad alive. And there's already one in Arkville, you know? Yeah. So I don't want to, you know, look, I know these people that, that run the railroad out of Kingston really have their heart into it and it's a passion of their theirs. And without that passion, nothing would be going on with it.

[00:22:39] Uh, cause it's a labor of love, I suppose, but it's just, you know, there's just a lot of problems there. And if they want to do something, like I said, last episode, use a smaller scale, uh, transportation device. That's kind of like a fake train, but doesn't require the rails, the timbers, the, you know, elevated and stabilized track. And it's safer to run next to a rail trail and probably cost millions less.

[00:23:07] So that's my three cents. Or you can use the money to build a bridge over the east branch of the never sink at slide mountain trailhead. What a stupid idea. Who would ever think of such a thing? That would be great. Wouldn't that be great? Or why not just like a gondola? You know, you could like, you just get out of your car, you get all geared up and then you have like a little gondola ride over the west branch. Right. Then you get off and you start the hiker after a long hike, you've done the traverse.

[00:23:36] You need to get back to your car. You just like up at that, like that, the road that goes through there before you drop down onto the trail, you just get on a gondola there and it takes you right to the parking lot. Yeah. That'll be true. That one, one day, maybe you can clean out your backpack, like all the tissue and, you know, used wrappers. You can throw them out as you're up in the air. Nobody will know that you're doing it. Yeah. That idea. Yeah. Kyle's there shaking his head, wondering what he's gotten himself into tonight. I know. Right. I completely agree.

[00:24:06] I mean, slide mountains, probably my favorite hike that I've done in the Catskill just for that, that boreal forest at the top. You know, it's so simple. I agree. I think, and a lot of people like under, like, don't think that that view is phenomenal, but I think it's just, you're at the, you're, I hate to say you're at the top of the Catskills and it does feel like it. You're just over top of everything. You're over power and everything just has that. Ugh.

[00:24:33] We could on a sheet of paper list all of the views in the Catskill and, uh, none of them, you know, are above tree line. Uh, some of them you have to get up in fire towers, but in the Catskills where there's a view it's, it's worth getting to it's worthwhile. So. Right. Agreed. Even if it's not from the summit itself. Correct. Yeah. So let's go on to hiking stuff.

[00:25:00] So I have to bring these, these two instances up from New Hampshire. Now there's been with, with us, we've had all of our snow melting with up in the higher peaks region. We're talking about lead on the Adirondacks, New Hampshire, Maine. They haven't had that, uh, as, as much they, they're starting to bring down, but we, you know, they are, they don't have that.

[00:25:20] So on May 4th in Berlin from the Kilkenny Ridge Trail, approximately 345 New York fishing game conservation officer were no debate. No vated with that. Notified about a hiker had called a 911 after become lost on the Kilkenny Ridge Trail between Mount Weeks and Middle Weeks for us. Now I bring this up because he was missing wet and cold and did not possess a light source.

[00:25:43] So later on, they got to him, uh, about 4.5 miles later, which was six hours later. And they arrived down at the staging area at 1 45 AM. He has started his hike at 8 AM at the pond trailhead. And upon reaching the Kilkenny Ridge, he found himself deep snow condition and kept losing the trail as he continued on.

[00:26:09] Now they are going to, I want to bring this up because this is a significant time in New Hampshire that they actually charge for people that they are ill prepared on the trails and that they can, you know, face consequences if not prepared for these kinds of conditions. So they are actually looking into this and making him so that he might have to pay for this.

[00:26:33] And it's, it's pretty crazy as over 25 years of hiking experience, but was unaware of the snow conditions still present in the upper levels of the white mountains.

[00:26:43] Now that's something that if you have 25 years experience, I'm thinking you would look into that, especially with nowadays where we have the internet, where goddamn trail conditions comes out daily, you know, and especially in those areas where we're in the Adirondacks, the white mountains, you know, even higher. We're going down over in the Colorado and stuff where conditions are just posted daily and people like snow rails are insane.

[00:27:11] So good for the New Hampshire fishing game. Once again, rescuing someone like they, they do all the time, but good for them also to, to actually charge this person because, you know, that's what we got to do. And we saw this last episode kind of with an ill prepared person up on sugar, Loaf, Minkalo area where they called twice to, to get a rescue. So they're just like, Hey, you know, I'm lost. And then they had to call again.

[00:27:40] Hey, I'm lost again. You know, we already told you how to get the hell out of here. So good for them. So, and then there was a, you know, I, I brought this up because I was once here in the area. So I may second two days before, just before midnight, fishing game conservation offers were made aware of a hiker needed assistance on the Garfield Ridge area. Now this is a Pemi Gossett loop. It's a, it's a 34 mile hike that requires, I think like seven to nine peaks.

[00:28:11] He had just north of the trail on Garfield Ridge, unprepared hiker who counted snow and ice on the trail, make it difficult heavy winds. The hiker taken shelter under a lean fly. Uh, 1 30 AM. They reached a hiker 4.2 miles from the trailhead. And then they actually got to him totally at 4 20 AM. The hiker was guided back to the trail and it was made to the trail had 9 35 AM uninjured.

[00:28:37] But once again, this guy might be penalized for ill prepared on the mountains. And we see this a lot. And I just, one of the things I do not understand is how with this day and age with the internet and stuff like that, how you can become ill prepared on the mountains. You know, Kyle, I can order fricking like eight, six packs from you and have it shipped here within three days on the internet.

[00:29:06] But these people can't look up conditions up on these crazy mountains. When you look outside, you can see snow on the top. Ah, I don't need micro spikes or, you know, it might, it'll rain. There's a 90% chamfer rain. Now I don't need to take precautions on this. Or you have the, the Mount Washington Observatory, which gives you detailed information about hiking. And it just, it just bothers me that stuff like this happens.

[00:29:35] And we'll, we'll talk about this later on my hike, but I don't understand. Kyle, like, are you like, do you, do you hike a lot? Do you do this? Like we do, you know, prepare for the oncoming situations.

[00:29:47] I mean, I would definitely say, probably don't hike nearly as much as you guys, but I definitely do my due diligence before I get out on the trails and know that, you know, if I'm putting myself at risk, I'm also, you know, taxing the people in charge of maintaining the mountain and all that other stuff. And that's, that's a serious cost, you know, that's something that you shouldn't be incurring on people when there's plenty of information out there on the web and multiple sources. Yeah.

[00:30:17] Lanty. Like it's, it's, it's insane. Like, Ted, I know you're still living back in the eighties and stuff like that. So what do I mean? You do the day before, like, do you think these people even do that? It seems like they don't. Oh, I, I mean, I do the day before the morning of and change my plans on the fly where it's appropriate.

[00:30:39] Look, I can't speak to this fellow's background and you know, why he was as prepared or as prepared to be unprepared as he was. And if you, you know, you read the article, you can see that there were some few, a few noteworthy things that he wasn't prepared for.

[00:30:58] And today, as you point out, Stosh, with all the technology that the, an information that's available to you at home, you don't have to be right there on the mountain looking up to see what's going on. But you can get a lot of data at home as I did before my hike on Saturday, you know, I collected or, you know, looked at a color radar and some other things to get a sense of what the day was going to be like.

[00:31:23] And it was helpful later on in the day, but if they're going to punish somebody, or I say punish, if they're going to make somebody pay the cost of the rescue. I think it's important for them to really get the word out what that cost is and that this is the consequence of going out there unprepared like that. So people can then really take stock of the fact that it costs this fellow X dollars.

[00:31:50] I mean, if it's just a hundred dollars, it's kind of a slap on the wrist, but if this bill is like 2000 or $3,000 and a big percentage of the hiking community up there hears that this is what happened to this guy. Because he did not have a compass, did not have a map, you know, had no, took, took no, uh, effort to find out what was going on and heed to the prevailing conditions.

[00:32:18] Then maybe that'll, you know, get 10% or 20 or 30% more people to take stock in those things and act accordingly. But if, you know, if nobody hears about it, it's hard to expect it to be a deterrence or a learning experience for others. So that's why here on inside the line, we report these things because we want our listeners to be informed. And not get billed. And not get billed.

[00:32:45] And, and then they have plenty of spare time at home to vote for the podcast. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And we'll talk about that in a second. So vote for the podcast. Uh, chronogrammies. Definitely. Uh, if you have the chance to, so once again, uh, once again, the can check the conditions that the day before the day of, like Ted said, you know, the Catskills, all the snow has melted.

[00:33:12] I didn't see a single piece of snow except for when I saw it on window mountain where they had smoke makers. And there was like a, a five foot strip of that. Other than that, there was enough snow. It was all wet. It's insane wet out there. Luckily we're getting the rain, but it's, it's actually like doing some crazy damage out there. So we'll get down to that later. So thank you for shooting the shit guys. Let's get on to the amazing monthly supporters.

[00:33:39] Chris Kirby and Jeff Jotz, Vicki Ferrer, Mikey S, John Comiskey, Summit Seekers, Desert City Radio, Betsy A, Denise W, Tom H, Vanessa, Jim C, and Eric. Wow. You guys, thank you so much for supporting the show. Believe in the show. Really appreciate it. And let's not forget our amazing sponsor of the show. So this show is brought to you by Camp Catskill in Tannersville, your ultimate hiking store. Find top quality gear, apparel, and accessories for all your outdoor adventures.

[00:34:07] Our experts stash you here and help every hiker from beginner to seasoned pros. We also carry a variety of unique Catskill souvenirs and gifts. This is online at Camp Catskill or in the store to gear up for your next journey. Adventure starts at Camp Catskill. Also, you can vote for them on the Crown of Grammys. I will post a link for them as well. Also embark on a transformative journey with another summit. Another summit is dedicated to serving veterans and first responders with free outdoor activities.

[00:34:36] Activities like walks in nature, paddling, hiking, and even backpacking. Join our supportive community to rejuvenate nature's embrace. Experience commodity, adventure, and healing at no cost. Take your next step with another summit and ascend to new heights of resilience and joy. Apply today at anothersummit.org. So who's outdoors? Mention the podcast on one of your hikes through social media and we'll chat about it in the show.

[00:35:01] Tag us by typing at ITLCatskillMTMpodcast on your post. So, our friend Joe Koplowski, J.K. LaPow, Clow, it's different to say, went to the Catskills for the opening of the Bramley Mountain Fire Tower right near me. It was probably like 30 minutes away. Beautiful day to go for a walk in the park, although cardio is non-existent. I mean, I got to admit, this hike is like 1.6 miles with 800 feet.

[00:35:31] That's still pretty significant. I think you could get some cardio going with that. He also went, I don't know if he went the easy way, but he didn't show his tracks. But you go the other way. It's pretty nice. It's like 900 feet of gain in 1.6 miles. He's been to all six fire towers and this being his seventh, this is the only second time he's been in the cabin. So, this happened on a Friday at 1 p.m.

[00:35:59] I was a little disappointed because being 30 minutes away, I would have joined it, but I was at work. And they said they had important people that they had to bring up there that could only join them during the week at this time. So, that donated towards the show. So, I understand. I definitely understand. But this is a half an hour away, you know, like you guys, you know, Tad and Kyle. I know you have like Mount Beacon right there and stuff.

[00:36:22] You guys have excellent, amazing viewpoints from like 30, 40 minutes to where you live. This is kind of the only place that I have that will give me an amazing viewpoint to where I can be like overwhelmed with what I have. And the other spot that I will drive up to, but if you have a low profile car like mine, you'll rip it to pieces. So, I'm ecstatic of this.

[00:36:51] And, you know, like awesome show for you to make it out there. And hopefully, Kyle and Tad, you guys can come up here and check out Bradley Mountain because we should just go up there. We should just have a whole cider fest going up there with North Hudson, man. Yeah. I'll bring the – well, Kyle, I'll ask you what goes well with cider. What would be a nice food accompaniment to go with the cider?

[00:37:19] Typically anything, you know, fatty or like rich. You know, most cider drinking like cuisine actually came from Spain. So, think of like fatty pork shoulder or obviously like any carbohydrates like bread or something like that. What about pizza? Can we just bring – I was about to say and, you know, worst comes to worst. Pizza is always a great stand in for almost anything, I think. Yeah.

[00:37:48] Pizza works with just about anything from coffee to champagne, cider, or just shots. What not. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. So, we'll get up there. We'll get up there. We'll have a time up there, hopefully. So, awesome time. That's number one, definitely. Todd Bold was volunteering at New York State on Love My Park Day with Riverkeeper. Went up to Norrie Point State Park at the shores of the Hudson North River. So, awesome job.

[00:38:17] Todd, once again, volunteering with New York State Love My Park Day. I think Love My Park Day was the Friday. So, I was unfortunate to not get out there. So, I've got to keep this job crap going on. I've got to quit my job. I've just got to go all out in the podcast and live in poverty. Yeah. Yeah. Let's, we'll work on that for you. Kyle's going to supply you with the ciders. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:38:42] I'll do some dumpster diving for you and hook you up with some good grub. Nice. So, also, who's, I mean, who's outdoors? I can't talk about Tom. Who's outdoors? So, he went on a 0.6 mile stroll to his favorite, Hidden Gemarano. But that wasn't it. He went ill-advised and popped the ideas in his head that he needs to blue line this bitch all the way to the ridge. I like where you're going with this, Tom. Dog looked at him and said, we wanted this. Didn't want to disagree.

[00:39:12] So, they went 4.5 unplanned miles, which usually fine. You know, Tad, once again, has this kind of thoughts in his head. Let's blue line everything. He's not the biggest, but they're beautiful and secluded. Definitely some of his favorites. Right now, we're in the areas that, down in the Catskills, the Hudson Valley, at such, the Red Fs are coming out. And they are stunning creatures to see.

[00:39:41] They just slowly crawl across your path. And you are just blown away by their little beauty and stuff like that. So, Tom had a bunch of them on the trail. So, he ripped it up. And, you know, good job, Tom. Thank you for tagging the show. And always an honor to hear his journeys out throughout the Catskills and the Hudson Valley, Delaware watercrap and stuff like that. So, he's been ripping up. He always does.

[00:40:10] Yeah, Tom's having a good time out there. And he takes some great photos. He does. He always has those bald eagle photos. I'm jealous. I could have got some today. I'll chat about that. So, also, Todd Bold also tagged me in something in one of his stories, but it went away before I could actually copy it. So, sorry, Todd. But I'm having this Hudson North for you. So, once again, we'll talk about that in a second. A big pineapple. God, it's delicious.

[00:40:37] So, speaking of ciders, buy us a hard cider to support the show. If you think we're doing a good job and you want us to support the show, buy us a coffee hard cider. Buy me a coffee slash hard cider. I named it the hard cider because that's what we do on the show. So, also, rate the show. Any format that you use, you know, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, stuff like that, rate us on the show. Five stars is preferred.

[00:41:06] Under five stars, not preferred. Don't give it your energy because it's just not fun. If you don't like the intro, skip it. It's 18 seconds. I checked it out. It's 18 seconds. It might be too metal for you or, you know, too nickelback for you. I'm sorry. Nickelback's an incredible band, but whatever. All right. So, we already cracked open. Kyle and I already cracked open. So, Kyle, what are you having today? It's got to be a Westkill. Yeah.

[00:41:36] You know, yeah. You know, if it's not a Westkill, it's standard cider. So, it's just our standard cider. I mean, we called it that. And someone was like, well, why do you call it standard? Is it just because it's boring? It's whatever. It's like, no, it's because I think for, like, New York, we wanted to set the standard for what cider should be, which is a little drier, a little more rugged, in line with kind of like, you know, the northern climate that we live in. I think, you know, we're a little more tough than, you know, people down south.

[00:42:05] I don't know if they agree with that, but that's the way we're going to take it, I guess. And I agree. So, Kyle, because I'm just having my go-to cup of coffee, how is it that you go about coming up with that standard flavor? Is it in the mix of the apples, the yeast that's used to start the fermentation? What's the secret recipe? Yeah, that's a fair question. So, I mean, you know, the most important one, I think,

[00:42:35] is the fact that we use apples. Most of it, I mean, 100% gets pressed 40 minutes away from our cidery. So, I think as the crow flies, it's like 18 miles. Minard Family Farms, sixth generation press house has been pressing for us since we started, pretty much. And I think, you know, just being in a place that is known for growing such high-quality apples leads us to such a great cider.

[00:43:04] Now, people say, what is your apple blend? And we use a blend of different culinary apples. And the way we make it even more special is not only do we use, like, local apples for all of our base, but then we also focus on, A, having a drier cider. So many ciders out there are just, like, so sweet. I mean, obviously, Angry Orchard is, like, the market leader. And their stuff's, like, 23 grams of sugar a can, which is, I think that's, like, a fourth of a can of sugar

[00:43:34] or something like that. But even when I was starting to get into cider, that's way back. I mean, it's been 13 years. Hudson-Orrh has only been around for, like, five years now. But I've been doing cider a long time. And even when you would try the dries, they were still quite sweet. So we wanted to find some of those a little drier. And the one thing that we do do to kind of, I guess, build a really strong, beautiful flavor profile

[00:44:01] is use higher tannin apple varietals. And that gives it, like, a bite. Almost like when you drink a red wine and you're drinking it from someone that's barrel-aged or the tannin of the grape skins themselves. Like this bittering kind of backbone that gives the cider a little more of a bite and a little more that balances itself with the dryness. Gives a little more character than just something that's sweet and apple-y and tastes like a jolly rancher, you know?

[00:44:28] So before Stosh tells us about the cider he's drinking, what apples fit that bill with the higher tannin property? So typically you're looking at a lot of... So the most beautiful apples in America were the ones that were very early on established. So you know the story of Johnny Appleseed. He was going around spreading apples and everyone assumes because they see apples in stores they're for eating apples.

[00:44:55] But the real story is apples are built to have permutation. So you plant a Red Delicious. Thank God you're not going to get a Red Delicious apple. Everything's based on grafting. So when Johnny Appleseed was out there spreading the apple seeds all around, it was for hard cider production and probably for creating sustainable drinking water and just making a food source and all that other stuff back in the day. And it was big business.

[00:45:24] Well, as big as, you know, making random apples, apple trees grow on the ground business could be. But, you know, I think it's that... It's the actual crab apple itself that brings a lot of tannin. Typically your most sturdy apples that bring the highest tannin are typically your smallest, ugliest apples that you'll see. Things that you wouldn't want to see in the store. Like a great example is

[00:45:53] if you've ever had a Red Delicious, it's the most tasteless, boring apple. And if you like Red Delicious, I apologize, you have terrible taste. It's like drinking, it's like eating an apple essence water, right? But the ones that have higher tannins are typically ones that would not be the best to be eating. And they're meant primarily to be grown for cider. So they have crazy memes. A lot of them also, so if they're not crab apples, which are pretty much just, a lot of them are derived

[00:46:22] from these rare permutations. They were growing lots of cider apples in England and France. They've got great names like Brown Snout or Ellis Bitters or Harry Master's Jersey, like just crazy names as the English do. And these make some of the best cider apples. But too much is too much. There's a blend and there's a balance. Sure. Last thing I want is a hairy apple. Yeah. All right. Jesus. How, like, I mean,

[00:46:52] let's, I'll save this question for later. So, awesome. So I'm having, of course, a Hudson North Big Pineapple. So, Kyle, I hate to say this, packs a punch. Yeah. 8.2%. It's, the big series has been like a big deal for our company recently. For whatever reason, everyone's drinking, not everyone, but there's a segment of the population that prefers high BV and value products. You know, I think,

[00:47:21] sign of the times, right? You know, we're in a questionably silent recession right now. Like, people want to get banged for their buck. So, you know, we go, we go with, might, what makes sense. But the big pineapple, like, we always try to do, like, interesting things in the background. So the big pineapple, the biggest goal with that one was to make it sure it didn't just taste like pineapple juice because, you know, pineapple juice is great and everything, but it's, you know, it's, it's a little boring as an alcoholic beverage.

[00:47:50] So we actually utilize a little bit of spice in the background. It uses, like, nutmeg and ginger as well as a little bit of, we use artificial almond extracts so we don't have allergic reactions, but utilizing kind of a tiki concept and approach to making it as well as a little bit of, like, brown sugar as well to give, like, a well-rounded taste. But you shouldn't be able to taste any of that. It just tastes like a really great pineapple flavor, but the goal is with all these little

[00:48:19] background notes, it's building this complexity that you wouldn't normally find from a pineapple juice, let's say. It's, it's cider. That's, it's a pineapple cider and it's delicious and, you know, I have a, my wife is a very tough person to, like, please with, with ciders and stuff like that. Mine as well. Yeah, and she's just like, and she's like, wow, this is really good and I'm like, just don't drink all of it because you're going to get, pretty wasted

[00:48:49] with her. She's a, she's lightweight. So, but, very good and I've, I'm pretty sure I've had all of yours so far. Of course, I can get a decent amount of mine up here, but I can get them more in the Catskills and I've gotten more in the Catskills. So, if you're anywhere, check out your local, local goods, Ted. Once again, I stopped at Hickory Hill and they had some Hudson North up there. So, it was really cool to see that

[00:49:18] and try to get them wherever you can because it's delicious. Oh, excuse me. And, this big pineapple, I had strawberry rhubarb the other day. A couple days before that, I had your, I think it was the orange creamsicle one. Yeah, a little, a little off the beaten path of that one, but, you know, we like to make things that are interesting and kind of catch people's attention, make them think a little differently about what cider can be. It's about summer. It's about summer. I think that's about summer.

[00:49:48] It's great. So, awesome. Delicious stuff. Thank you. Tad, what are you having? It's depressing. Yeah, thanks a lot, Stash. Um, I'm just having a cup of coffee because it is the first Tuesday of the month. So, I go dry on the first Tuesday of the month to be in solidarity with those listeners who don't drink. Thank you, Ted. Cheers to that. Yeah, cheers to water.

[00:50:18] I got some water right here. All right. Yeah, so do I. I got some seltzer. Oh, nice. All right. So, previous hikes. Kyle, have you done some previous hikes in the past like week or so or something like that you want to chat about that you want to preach about? I think the, I wish, I wish, you know, at the end of the day, you know, running a small or mid-sized cidery takes up quite a bit of time. But the last time I did was the one that is closest to us and that's Snake Hill.

[00:50:47] It's actually, it's maintained by not the New York New Jersey Trail, but Cina Hudson. And it, well, it almost mirrors the Beacon Trail where it's overlooking from the opposite side of the river. Maybe not as high of a mountain, but a really beautiful view over top of Newburgh and New Windsor and it looks onto the Beacon side and it's, it's near and dear to my heart because it's literally like a half mile,

[00:51:17] quarter mile away from the cidery. And there's like a little, there's a water preserve there and all that stuff. Not, nothing crazy. It's like a 40 minute easy hike, but one you can just get out and get done in the work week, which is really nice. Wow. Yeah. And you're located on the west side of the Hudson, correct? Correct. Yeah. On the Newburgh side, obviously known for its mountains and, you know, if you call it beauty, right? Yeah, definitely. Ted, you know about that area? Yeah.

[00:51:47] About 15 minutes down the road from me. You guys. Wow. Okay. So I guess we're going to have another co-host here. Kyle's going to be joining Ted and Ted's going to be getting, they're both going to be like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I cut you off. I got to cut you off. I'll be in the sidecar. Yeah. I live down the road from one of Kyle's competitors. Which one? There's so many. There's so many cideries. I know, This is the big one with a lot of sugar in their juice.

[00:52:17] Oh yeah. Well, the good news is, you know, that's just, it's all a marketing. Yeah. It's all for show. Yeah. I have not had an angry orchard in my life just because I don't want to, because I'm just like, it's too mainstream. I'm not like that. I'm punk rock. All right. just remember Kyle. I didn't mention the name of the place. Yeah. I appreciate that. Although you didn't send me the big box of cider. That's okay. Yeah. Oil tea has not been rewarded and I apologize.

[00:52:48] It might be, it might be. So Ted, how about you talk about your, your recent experience on the trail? I'll talk about my awesome experience. Yeah. So, you know, we went over that story about this guy that was at least not acting as if he was well acquainted with the prevailing weather conditions on the day of his hike. And I had some trepidations about going out hiking on Saturday, knowing that the forecast was for a storm to blow in around two

[00:53:18] o'clock. But nonetheless, I mentally prepared myself to go out. I was intending to hike Panther, uh, and do a hike up Panther, which I had planned on doing or I've wanted to do this hike for quite some time now, but just haven't gotten around to it. Somewhere along the way, I think it was somewhere along the way up to the parking lot on Woodland Valley Road, I decided not to hike up Panther and I was going to

[00:53:48] bushwhack, um, Cornell from the Woodland Creek. And so that's what I set out to do was to bushwhack Cornell from the Woodland Creek. And somewhere along the way, I ended up on the ridge going to slide. So I bushwhacked slide and then made my way over to Cornell and Wittenberg. And I have to say, I've hiked these mountains a lot. I've bushwhacked the Burroughs Range quite a bit.

[00:54:17] and this was a fantastic hike. And this harkens back to what we said in the last episode about, if you believe it or not, about Mount Everest and whether or not you can have a quality experience summiting Mount Everest with all the data and support that you have available to you today compared to what folks had way back when, when the routes weren't well established, you didn't have a support network and

[00:54:47] yada, yada, yada. And how do I tie this into my very, very impromptu bushwhack up slide mountain? And that is I hadn't been up this ridge before Danny Davis had told me years ago that it was ledgy. And I inferred from that that I would encounter a number of those Catskill ledges, rock out croppings on my way up. And let me tell you I did.

[00:55:16] Was there eight? Was there nine? Was there 15? I don't remember. I do remember they started relatively low, right around 2,600 feet. I ran into my first one. It wasn't so bad. I also have to point out, man, the bugs were out of control. I mean, they were just off the hook. I did have a hat with the net over it that protected my face and my thought was going up as these bugs

[00:55:46] were, like I said, out of control, that they were so young, so fresh, they had not yet acquired a taste for human blood because they weren't biting. Okay? So I was thankful of that. So at any rate, I just started hitting one ledge after another ledge. Thankfully, the forest wasn't all that thick, so you could see and plan your ascent up and over these ledges, but the nice thing was I had no

[00:56:16] data on which ones are going to be more difficult than the others and which way to go as opposed to which way not to go, et cetera. And so that's what kind of made it a great experience is when I got to the third ledge and I looked at it, it was rather ominous. I knew that that was like the point of no return. If I got up and over that ledge, there was no turning around that day and heading down because I would not be able to go down that ledge.

[00:56:45] I had a couple others that were like that afterwards, but I was able to get up and over everything. I did a few what I call leg hooks. You know what a leg hook is, Stosh? It's where you're climbing and you throw your leg over something like a hook. And you use that to pull yourself up and over. So yeah, there were some spots where the scrambling

[00:57:14] got to the relatively technical side. But like I said, I did make it up and over all these ledges. It was very cool. The forest was very cool. Once you get to about 3,600, you're through the ledges. There's a lot of view of Cornell and Wittenberg going up through there. So eventually I made the trail up and over slide. I was aware that these storms were coming. I got a signal on

[00:57:43] my phone, checked out color radar, and sure enough, my estimation was that the storm would be going right over the Burroughs range at about 2 o'clock, and my aim was to get over Wittenberg by 2. Because I could see in the color radar that there were some red spots designating thunder activity. So sure enough, a couple minutes before I rested Wittenberg,

[00:58:13] you could hear it coming, you could hear the rolling thunder coming, and you could feel the pressure drop, and it just downpoured, man. I was within minutes, everything soaked right through my gear. I was just completely drenched. Right in the bullseye of this storm, the thunder was overhead, no lightning, just decided to push through instead of taking cover. The trail coming off of

[00:58:42] Wittenberg was like a river. So thank goodness I had my shoes with the Vibram Mega Grip soles on them, man, because I was just flying along without slipping. In that river. And then, as luck would have it, I got down around 35, 3,300 feet coming off of Wittenberg, and the clouds were gone, the sun came out, blue skies, the birds were chirping. And then you started seeing all these people coming up the mountains, like really the first time I saw

[00:59:12] people all day were on their way up all giddy. Here I was like soaked to the bone, you know, gnarly bushwhack up, just looked totally out of place compared to these people. But I will say all in all, it was a fantastic hike, but like I said, bugs out in full force. Uh, I was grateful I had a net, uh, to wear, uh, get your bug spray handy, treat your gear for

[00:59:41] ticks because it's that time of year. And also, you know, I had just the right amount of water with me. I did consume a lot on my way up. I think I looked at my, um, my data at one point when I was cresting slide and in four miles I had covered 3000 vertical feet. Nice. So, yeah, I mean that climb up that ridge was, it was steep. It was relentless. Um, it was a great cardio workout. So, so that's, that was my hike.

[01:00:11] Nice. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Nice. Sounds fantastic time. I've been up one of the arms of slide going up the, I call it John Burroughs route. That's where he went up, uh, one of his routes and he just kept naming it precipice after precipice. And it was just, and the way he described it was beautiful. And it just, uh, it's just phenomenal, phenomenal route. Uh, once again, just going up through there. I gotta say the forest

[01:00:40] was remarkably pleasant. You know, sometimes you run into a lot of blowdown, which makes it hard to spot routes up and over these ledges. Uh, sometimes you have a lot of talus beneath the ledge that makes it hard to get around and pick out the route. Really not a lot of that here. So I was able to identify reasonably safe routes pretty quickly and, um, get up and over them and move on. With the bugs, I think I had my

[01:01:10] own personal entourage of 20,000 bugs with me. Oh yeah. Maybe that's a little exaggeration of it. It might've been around 19,500 bugs. So I'm embellishing, I'm embellishing a little bit. So it's, it's that time of year where they're freaking going to attack and attack and attack. It's just, yeah, yeah. They, they had, they had learned the attacking part of the bug life cycle, but they had not yet learned how to like pierce your flesh and

[01:01:39] start gnawing at your body. So I was, I was, I had more abrasions from, you know, contact with the rocks and trees than anything with the bugs, but that's about to change, you know, any, any day now they'll be ready to eat you alive. So yeah. Correct. Correct. It's, it's a, it's a time of year. Yeah. So, so Stash, I saw you posted some, some photos of what looks like an amazing hike. You want to tell us about that? Oh yeah. It was a,

[01:02:09] it was a, it was a fun day. So today I decided with my friend, John, we would go up to Thomas Cole mountain and do my trail maintenance that goes from Campbell's hump. It's Thomas Cole. My friend, John has been sort of kind of regaining from a previous injury on his knee and we get no longer than 0.3 miles into the trail. I mean, we all know that trail going from Ronham road up to Campbell's

[01:02:37] hump is a wet messy trail, but we're 0.3 miles in and I hear him laughing and I turn around and he's slipped on a rock and he's like encased in water. and I'm like, my first reaction is I feel like a dickhead. I'm like, you already freaking fell. I'm just like, oh wow, that's a horrible reaction. I'm sorry. I'm like, are you okay? I immediately respond with you? You're okay? Because John's been my friend

[01:03:06] for the past 20 years, best friend. And I'm just like, wow, that was a dick move. And he's like, I'm okay. He gets up and he's just suffering. His face, you can tell, is just not having it. And he's like, ooh. And I'm like, yeah. We're not even in. You know where you go up to? There's the sharp turn that goes up to the kiosk, the sign-in area. You hadn't even made it that far? Not even that far. You know that

[01:03:36] there's like a little area of flat rocks. That's where I told him. I specifically told him. I'm like, stay off the flat rocks. They're slippery. I look back and he's in water and stuff. Besides saying, are you okay? And you fell already. I say, get out of the fucking water. And he's just like laying in it. And I'm like, get up. So he gets up and I'm like, all right, we can't do this. You are not having a good time. And it took us

[01:04:06] a while to get that 0.3 miles back down to the Barnum Road. And he was suffering. And it sucked because every step was a critical step. And I'm guiding him, I'm helping him. And I'm just like, wow, this is, this is a serious, I'm like some serious shit. Like you guys should have called in for a rescue. I was the rescue. I was the rescue. I was just like, I got this. But what fun is that? Yeah. Are you going to send him a bill? Yeah. He will. He will get me some, some Hudson

[01:04:36] North. That's it. I told him siders. Actually, to be honest, he did buy me some at Hickory Hill. So, uh, but like, other than that, like he was having like a difficult time and I'm like, you know, I'm glad this happened. This shortened into the hike because like, just imagine, you know, you get up to that one part before Cloddles Hill where it's like, you know, nice and steep. It's an awesome, beautiful climb. Just imagine if it hadn't had up there, like we would have hit some like, like

[01:05:04] difficult times, but it's, it's a long way back. And I was just like, man, I'm very happy that it happened here. You know, it sucks that it, you know, broke up the hike and we had to bail, but you know, like what could have happened especially up higher, you know, with that and, uh, you know, he, on the way back, I was just like, you know, I gotta, you know, I gotta at least get out and hike. I'm good. So I went to a place in Pratsville called the Hunter's Field Creek Trail

[01:05:35] and this was newly acquired within the past like six months and it goes along the hundreds, Hunter's Field Creek in Pratsville that has crazy, like four sets of waterfalls that are like 30 to 40 feet high. And it's absolutely beautiful right off of the Pratt Rock Trail. It's tough to find parking. If you want parking, let me know. You're going to have to either park on the road going to, I don't, I don't know if there's an official trail head parking because it looks like it's all mowed lawn.

[01:06:06] So like I, I, I went up in there and I, I immediately second guess. I'm like, I'm out of here. I'm going to park over on the other side where, you know, it shows parking. So the creeks and the rivers are absolutely flowing like crazy right now. I mean, I, an Oneonta right now, you know, we just got some lightning and thunder and it's creeks are flowing here. But when you go down in the Catskills, they are brown. They are flowing there going like crazy. So once again,

[01:06:35] creek crossings, you know, this is Tuesday. We're still getting rain and we've gotten supposedly about like three to four inches of rain within the past three days. That's a, that's a significant amount of rainfall and these waterfalls were flowing. I mean, if anybody's ever been from Pratsville to, uh, to Wyndham, you've seen Red Falls and seen the Batavia Kill. It's always high flowing when there's these rain amounts. And it just, and it just blows my mind how, you

[01:07:05] know, when I, when I live, you know, 30 minutes give or take to the kind of like the foothills with the Catskills, you know, Pratsville, stuff like that, that these rivers can be six to eight feet higher than what I have up here. So it shows you the crazy, oh yeah, you know, I live down in the Hudson Valley, the Hudson's not flowing that high. But once you get in these small flowing rivers up here, these creeks, they are intense and they can blow you over and they can take you down.

[01:07:34] And, you know, I've, I've said this before, flooding, you know, the rivers, the waters is the most, I hate to, I don't know how to say it, but the most undetermined natural phenomenon that we have that you cannot, like, you cannot determine what's going to happen because it's just going to tower you over like crazy. So it's, it was crazy. It was nice. You know, my, my John let me run up the hundreds field Creek area. I got this little awesome experience, beautiful falls.

[01:08:04] I took a video of where someone actually has like a hundred foot staircase to the base of the falls and like a little pool. And I'm jealous as heck because they get to swim in that area. that's on private property. It is. Okay. It is right along that edge, right along the Creek, like the, it's kind of like the Southeastern side of the Creek is all private, is all access, but you cannot go upon that. And it's just, I'm jealous.

[01:08:35] It was cool. It was a cool day. Yeah. Once again, I told John, like, screw you. I got to hike at least a little bit. I was going to drop him off and be like, listen, walk home. I'm going to hike up bear pen. And like, he's a, he, he actually went to a urgent care. So. Wow. Yeah. He busted his knee really bad. It was a bad slip, but I, I still feel like a dick because I said, you fell already. And then we were 14 minutes in the night. That's, that's pretty harsh, man.

[01:09:05] It's not good for a search and rescue volunteer, but I'm real. I keep it real. Kyle. We're, we're not always like this. All right. We are, but okay. I keep it real. Yeah. Just keep voting for the show fans. Yeah. Right. All right. So yeah, that was my experience today. I can't, I hope to get out soon. Yeah. Well now today was the day to go chase some waterfalls as long as you, you didn't have to get in the water. Um, it was a good day to be out there watching that flow. Um, and those shots you

[01:09:34] posted, it looked like it was, uh, worthwhile for you. Maybe not John, but yeah. So volunteer once again, 3,500 club cats, go stroke who cats, go mountains called visitors center. Jolly rovers. Stroke who braille me out and fire tower, uh, volunteer wherever you can. Kyle is going to be talking about volunteering tonight. So let's get onto that. Also, if you need stickers, let me know, send me a private message or go to camp catskill and get a free sticker.

[01:10:04] Also, 3,500 trail store program has begun and it is live. So go on. And if you want to volunteer for a weekend for the 3,500 trailers through a program, please do so. Are we doing that this year, Stosh? You and I, I think you, me and Kyle might do that and we'll, uh, we'll get some, uh, Hudson. Kyle brings, yeah. Sponsored by Hudson North. Yeah. Easy enough. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

[01:10:33] Bring that donut flavor. What? There's, he has a donut flavored cider. Is that right? I saw that. No, we do. We do. We have, well, we had a whole donut shop pack last year. So we're doing pumpkin patch this year. Three different pumpkin flavors. Wow. God damn. You guys are all over the place with this and you don't have like, uh, I mean, we'll talk about this later, but you don't have like an established like center like yet. Not yet. Not yet. Wow. That's unbelievable.

[01:11:03] Like freaking killing it. All right. So let's get onto the, uh, I mean, once again, again, I talk about the, the mountain weather forecast and you know, I, I hate to say, but this mountain weather forecast like makes me over prepare for whatever it is to come. because today when hiking up Thomas Cole, I was like over prepared. I had all my, uh, like rain gear and stuff like that on

[01:11:33] me just in case. And to be honest, right when we started in, there was like that little mist, you kind of call it a little mist, but it's, it's actually pretty heavy. So mountain weather forecast might, might not be 100% accurate on like the temperature and the wind and stuff like that, but it helps you over prepare for what's, what's to come. And, you know, this weekend it looks like Friday and Saturday, we're supposed to have some heavy rain and, uh,

[01:12:04] temperatures in, uh, the, the mid forties to low thirties at night with rain, uh, accumulating until at least two inches on Friday and, and just below an inch on Saturday. Uh, at night it's supposed to clear up on Saturday, but Sunday it's supposed to be absolutely phenomenal with a high of 46 and a low of 48 sunny and clear. So if you're going to plan once again, keep researching day after day, uh, with the day before and such, because

[01:12:33] Friday and Saturday it looks shitty. Kyle, did you catch that? He said a high of 46 and a low of 48. Well, that's in the morning. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. High of 50. Kyle, what are you putting in those ciders, man? What's going on? What'd you do to stosh? I mean, it's all. It's all. Yeah. All right. All right. We got to look at that, that alcohol content and maybe there should have been a one in front of the eight. And once again, this is, this is mountain weather. This is, this is, it's all over

[01:13:03] the place. Yeah. Blame it on the high altitude. It's a high Q. It's clouds, you know? Yeah, exactly. You know, today, like we went to the, the, the, the trailhead and I was just like, oh, high of 56. It was a high of 61 already at 9. AM. And I'm like, ah, that's a little off. And yeah, well, it's warmer out there this time of year than you think, because there's little to no canopy, the further up you go. So true. That was beautiful, but all right.

[01:13:30] So let's get onto the last set of sponsors and then we'll get onto you, Kyle. How about that? That sounds good. That sounds fantastic. Yeah. So capture your love story against breathtaking backdrops with outdoor Chronicles photography. Molly specializes in an adventure of couple photography and she'll immortalize your moments amidst a stunning landscape of the Catskills, Adirondacks, and White Mountains. She'll craft timeless images that reflect unique bond in nature's grandeur.

[01:13:59] Embark on an unforgettable photographic journey with outdoor Chronicles photography. Don't hesitate to get a hold of Molly on all platforms. Author discovered the wilderness with Trailbound Project. Our expert led hiking and backpacking education programs offered on paralleled outdoor experiences. Whether you're a beginner or senior adventurer, join us to learn essential skills, explore stunning trails, and connect with nature. Start your journey today with Trailbound Project and unlock the wonders of the great outdoors.

[01:14:29] How about we get on to the guests of the night? Let's go! So Kyle Scher joins us from Hudson Northsiders, not only just because of the delicious cider he makes, but also because of this community volunteerism that they have here in the Catskills and the Hudson Valley. So welcome to the show, Kyle. You've already been on it for an hour and 20 minutes. So thanks for having me on. Appreciate it to be here and I appreciate the invite. Thanks. Yeah.

[01:14:58] It's been a great time so far. Let's dive into a little about yourself. First, talk about, you know, you, your background and such, hiking, whatever you want to go, go all out. Yeah, sure. I mean, on the hiking side, I mean, as a business owner, I definitely don't get to hike as much as I would like to. But I'm from Maryland originally, and I don't know if you know much about Maryland hiking, but there is none.

[01:15:26] I think that speaking, I have to drive three hours really to get to anything decent. And my first cider was actually down in Maryland. I came out of college, started my first cider with my dad. He was, came from UC Davis, which is, has a, is known for its viticulture and winemaking courses and had been a winemaker in the area. And, you know, we had started a company back in 2012 called Millstone Sellers, was doing all oak barrel aging,

[01:15:55] fermentation, like very different from the Hudson or stuff we make now, along with some other brands that we do, but actually was brought up to the Hudson Valley on, on more of a, I guess, basis to where I got to know the land a little more. When Glenwood, I don't know if many people know about Glenwood, but they do a lot with agricultural and farming and bring people to get to know, you know, bring people to the roots of where their food comes from. And they invited a bunch of cider makers

[01:16:25] throughout the East Coast up to their, their facility. And I just remember driving through just the Hudson Valley and going through those back roads and just seeing how beautiful the Hudson Valley was. And, you know, knew if, you know, when you start a business, you're kind of married to the location. I knew if I was to do something else that I would, you know, consider the Hudson Valley. And now I'm here and, you know, try to get out whenever I can.

[01:16:52] I can't say I'm like the most avid hiker in the world, but when I do get out, you just realize how special it is to be out in nature, to get, remove yourself from the day to day and just experience what everything, everything, you know, just the beauty of the Hudson Valley. And the biggest reason why we give back to those things is because it's like as an, you know, as a business, how do you create an impact?

[01:17:20] Like, how do you do more than just turn a profit or make a product? It's about doing something to care about. And for us, it's about preserving, you know, the nature that we love. And for us, what better way to do that than to maintain trails and give people the access, the opportunity to get out there, see the trails. Like I said earlier, my favorite mountain I've done in all of the U.S. probably at this point, you know, is Slide Mountain.

[01:17:49] It's just an absolutely gorgeous hike, you know, and outside the U.S. done like, you know, some stuff, you know, about to actually do a full through hike in the Dolomites, which will be quite an adventure. I'm pretty excited about that. And that's going to be really cool. I've been the Dolomites once before. Technically, I have an Italian citizenship, which is requires, you know, signing a couple papers, but, you know, I don't speak a lickable language, but I have a passport.

[01:18:18] So I guess I think I see ice knocking on your door. Yeah. I mean, an escape plan until I showed up. Right. Jesus. Oh, my God. We might as well just keep going. All right. So now, Kyle, with your experience, do you like have much experience in the Catskills? Where have you hiked besides Slide Mountain? You've done everything? No, not everything. Just, you know, honestly, the Catskills is,

[01:18:47] you know, about an hour, you know, an hour from where we're at. So I've mostly done the gunks more than anything else. Like, done a lot around Mohonk Mountain. We actually maintain a trail as a company at Mohonk, which is the Millbrook Mountain Path. So every year we do a retreat as a company. And, well, we also go in off days as well because, you know, trails require maintenance. But we always make sure that our entire, you

[01:19:15] know, team gets to go out and, you know, cut the archway, cut the path, clean up the trail, make sure it's usable by other hikers. But Catskills exclusively, not nearly as much as I'd like. If you have any great trail recommendations, I was, I've been writing down everything you guys have been talking about actually throughout this because I'm like, oh, I got to go there. I got to go there, you know? You'll be blown away. It'll... Give me your top three. Like, if I'm missing out, I need to know.

[01:19:44] So just going back to the gunks, your company maintains the trail that generally goes from Lake, uh, Minnewasca past Patterson's Pellet out towards, uh, Gertrude's nose. I believe so. Yes. Yeah. That's, that's pretty cool. That's a heavily traveled. Yeah. Very popular trail. Yeah. Trail to get out to Gertrude's nose. So kudos to you guys. If you haven't checked it out, the trail that runs, it's not a carriage road.

[01:20:13] It's a foot trail that runs from Millbrook mountain viewpoint back to, or to the north to 4455, right along the top of that ridge, the Millbrook Ridge. That's a spectacular trail over there. Doesn't see a lot of traffic, but it's a very impressive part of the ridge. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a nice, it's got some like views along the way. A lot of just like rock covered areas, which is like really beautiful. It's like almost like, obviously it's very

[01:20:42] Catskills, but also it was like Japanese a little bit in its aesthetic. It's, it's really beautiful and it connects obviously up with a lot of other bigger trails. Um, so it's, it's, it's a nice trail to maintain. I must say like every time we do the hike it's rewarding. Absolutely. Now rewarding as in terms of, do you see a lot of like heavily bad traffic there? Like that you can say you've done an absolute amazing impact. Cause I know I haven't been down there, but

[01:21:12] I know Gertrude's nose is an absolutely heavily trafficked area. So now you can say that you guys are a maintainer of one of the most popular areas down in that area. Yeah. And I mean, luckily for better or worse, we don't see much trash. It's it's, it's, that's, that's a blessing, but you're definitely cutting in making sure that there's like good drainage. I think that's one of the biggest problems with that trail is just getting adequate drainage or bringing, you know, we go on

[01:21:40] with a bunch of shovels and, you know, just things to cut back the trail, but it's, it's always a rewarding experience for the trip. You do there. Good. And then like, when you do this, do you meet a lot of people on the trail and you like preach, teach, I don't know so much about teach, but everyone always gives us the attaboys as we're walking along. I'd be like, Oh, thanks for doing this. Yeah. I should do that. I'm going to do this next time I go out. If I didn't live so far away, I would do this.

[01:22:10] You've got to do a promotion where you're just like, like somebody is going to say something and you're like, here you go. And you throw them a Hudson North and they're like, Whoa. And then it's a whole like, like thing. And this is like, if you main trays hit a main trace Hill. Ah, if you main train, maintain trails here, you can get Hudson North cider. You say it five times fast and you get two shirts. Oh God. All right. Yeah. Good Lord. All right. So now you've like, you talk about our,

[01:22:40] our five experiences. Uh, Tad has been to Cornell mountain. That's a difficult hike. That's a great thing. Slide is, is one of my favorite. Ah, God. You talk about like other, anything on the blackhead range is absolutely phenomenal. So I would say go to the blackheads. They are just absolute area. This is phenomenal, especially from Campbell's hump to commerce coal. Whoever maintains that area is just absolutely phenomenal.

[01:23:07] Uh, anything on devil's path just packs a punch. It's one of those areas that you'll feel. I would say in the Hudson Valley area that you have some sort of scrambling and some sort of a difficulty, but there's also a reward there. You find a good, uh, through hiking areas and castles. I mean, I got the experts on, so might as well ask for like, just like not nothing crazy, but like a week, something you do on a weekend.

[01:23:36] A weekend. Oh yeah. Escarpment devil's path. I mean, yeah, the Western cat skills, a lot of trails out there. Which I, do you want to be secluded? Do you want to be like have views? What do you want? I mean, I would say like the most magical experiences are things that transport you and just like take you to things you wouldn't normally see. Like obviously it's beautiful to walk and get the Zen aspect.

[01:24:05] It was walking along a trail for hours and hours, but I do like it when there is a distinct change. Uh, maybe not rapidly, but you know, every couple of miles you get something unique and interesting from the hike. Escarpment. Escarpment's the one they do. Oh, and you know, Huckaberry Luke, that doesn't offer that crazy change, but it does somewhat, I would say, Ted, if you have the vegetation right. Yeah. You're not going to get anything that you

[01:24:34] see at a higher elevation on the Huckleberry loop. Um, I think a fun hike would be if I was going to do some backpacking, I would maybe start at Alder Lake, head out to Balsam Lake, go north on Drybrook Ridge, end up at Margaretville. If you have two cars. Yeah. You could do, you could, I mean, you know, that's a day hike for a solid person. It's a, you could do that in a day. Yeah. It's an overnighter.

[01:25:04] Um, you know, if you want to spend the night out there, you can do it in two nights. You could, you really want to throw an interesting vibe into it. You could start further to the West, you know, out towards beach Hill, Mary Smith Hill, and then go to Alder Lake, uh, head north on Drybrook. You could then spin off and do the Huckleberry Ridge loop off of that and still end up in Margaretville.

[01:25:32] So, yeah, I mean, there's just a lot of versatility in the Western Western cats without doing the, you know, more hand and foot scramble up the devil's path. But if you want to do that with the backpack on, God bless you. You can do that as well. Right. Yeah. Just bring an extra cider and everybody will be happy. Exactly. We're going to have to start trading a cider for trail, trail information. Yeah, we can do that. We have a program that you qualify for tonight

[01:26:02] and tonight only. It's two, two, two cans down one a week for life. And we can give you some trail info. If you can supply like one where the medium point on the devil's path with some cider, I mean, I will guide you free of anything because that would be fantastic. That's why I have the backpack, right? I'm a little cider. I don't have any actual provisions or things to survive. It's just exactly. The cider guy's here. He's half dead, but he's here and he's got cider.

[01:26:32] I'm half dead. You are young. All right. You don't have any gray on you. Do not talk about that. All right. So let's get away from this. Let's stop. Let's stop talking about hiking. All right. I love dog. We go, we go, we can go on and on. So Hudson North, how did that come about? What's the story behind that? As you know, I, you know, I, I, I went back to it a little bit. So I've been insider for about 12 years now. I started my first cidery down in Maryland,

[01:27:01] you know, family business being what they, they are, you know, eventually parted ways. Um, and you know, had, we were selling up and down the Northeast as well as the West coast. And, you know, I guess that when you're, when you start a business, you're kind of locked into your area. And I wanted to find a place that was beautiful and preferably on the East coast. Just cause I, I like East coast far more than West coast. So I mean, West coast has got the weather. East coast has got the people and the cat skills,

[01:27:32] obviously. And, you know, decided to move up here. I actually started with another cider company and we still, that's still around. It's called graph cider. Um, and it's more of like a European cider meets like crazy flavors and like ideas. Um, and we did that for about four years and we still do. And it's, uh, been, been kind of more of like a higher end cider. Um, but Hudson North came about because we were talking to our distributors.

[01:28:01] We talked closely with them with, you know, anything. And, you know, there's, there's a couple of cider companies that are now there's some big ones are down East and there's Austin East. And we're like, what's with all these East things. So it Hudson North literally was like, it's all about being about the land is up being a New York cider. We can be proud of a little drier again. Like I think the rugged nature of the Northeast lends itself to a drier profile and, you know, just something that has a little more character

[01:28:29] and a little more structure than just Jolly Rancher, I think. Um, so the name kind of came with that juxtaposition to all those other cider brands that were out there. Also tongue in cheek, like with global warming, everything else going on, I think it's, it behooves everyone to go North. Um, you know, so that's one of the reasons I came up here, uh, you know, future proofing, um, you know, where you're going, you get to go. Yeah. Right on.

[01:29:00] So Kyle, how long have you been doing this full time? 12 years, longer than 12 years. Yeah. Right. Right. After I left college, uh, I've been running cider businesses ever since then. Um, so yeah, like I said, 2012 started. Oh shit. It's longer than that now. Yeah. Like quite a few. I don't even know. Yeah. Someone tells me what's the day of the week. I'm like, I don't know, man. I'm living in fall. Like I'm talking about pumpkin patch ciders, stuff like that. You got to live three. Get me all confused. Yeah. Trust me. I'm good.

[01:29:29] That's my life. What did you study in college? Uh, the very boring, but finance. And the reason for that boring answer is because everyone's like, oh, like they are the place I want to, they have an entrepreneurship course, but it's like, do you want to be mediocre at a bunch of things? Or do you want us to know how to do one thing that's incredibly important to running a business successfully and just be really good at that? And then always have that as your back pocket.

[01:29:57] Like, you know, it's always like when you talk about like trades or something like that, like it's always nice to have an electrician around. Like when you're running a business, it's always so good to have someone that runs the books, but the books were never my passion. It just was something I knew I needed to learn a skill in order to actually execute a business at a high level. So studying finance helped you understand how money works in a business and, and what profit really is, as opposed to revenue. And cashflow. Cash.

[01:30:27] Yeah. Um, those are like the, the cornerstones of any business that a lot of entrepreneurs don't understand. And that's in part why they fail. So, especially, especially in the alcohol industry and you're seeing a bit of a reckoning happening right now. A lot of people that are escaped by in the good times, unfortunately are now seeing the, the, the downside of oversaturation and running a passion project that turned into a business

[01:30:54] that now maybe doesn't have the amount of clientele that it used to have. So. So let's, let's talk about the capital that the equipment that you have, you talked about 16,000 square feet. The, the, uh, the apples are pressed at the farm. They're transported what by a tanker truck, something like that. Yeah, absolutely. So we're getting like a pretty much it's a, it's, we call it a farm blend.

[01:31:22] So it's a blend, um, based on the press house. We're also trying to balance for acidity, sugar levels, uh, as well as, uh, you know, just, uh, overall character of what's being provided. So we're getting that in like 5,500 gallon tankers, typically at least once a week. So that shows up. Then we bring it in and we start fermenting right on site. Is that year round or just in the fall or year round that, that, and you know, I would

[01:31:50] love to say we use only the most esoteric, beautiful cider apples that are, you know, something that is almost like a wine. But unfortunately the matter of fact is like when you have to produce a product year round, you're going to need to take field blend in. And, and you know, we really, one of the, one of the beautiful things about cider, and I'm sure you guys drink beer quite a bit, but beer was going through a phase for a long time

[01:32:16] where they were making so many different flavors and beer is great. I think as a beer and some flavors are okay, but malt and hops and grains, they get in the way of other flavors. The beautiful thing about cider is it's dependent on apples. And if you look at any fruit juices out there, well, you know, outside of like the stuff you get from whole foods and it's all organic and it's a hundred percent pomegranate concentrate,

[01:32:44] some of that almost all of them utilize apples in the background. So I think the beautiful thing about apples and cider is it provides a platform for other flavors to shine. You know, obviously not always the case. And one of the reasons why we use better quality apples for our core products like standard and big apple, but it's so nice and refreshing that you can get a natural product, a farm product, an agricultural product that can then also use really unique things.

[01:33:12] Like we just talked about the dream sickle sliders that we've done. And I think it's cool that you can marry really traditional flavors, but then also go a little off the wall and do something that's a little kitsch, a little more interesting, but just fun and, you know, fun and delicious. Well, let's, let's talk about some of the equipment though, without getting into the nuances and boring. Um, but you, you mentioned, uh, uh, 5,500 tanker coming in with the farm blend of, uh, juice or cider. Yeah.

[01:33:43] How, how often do you get a shipment or how often you're going through that 5,000 gallons? How many cans are you doing a week or every other week? Do you have your own canning equipment? Just kind of give us a sense of like, what's the magnitude of the Hudson North operation? Yeah, absolutely. So obviously it's Hudson North and graph cider, um, of which Hudson North is very much eclipsing the graph cider brand, which is more of a European cider meets crazy bonkers idea.

[01:34:13] Um, even crazier than the Hudson North. I mean, I'm sure stash is like, wow, it's not makes crazy shit. I'm like, dude, wait till you see the graph stuff. That's like, yeah, I haven't seen that yet. But we, but we got, we cut our teeth on the graphs up because we've done so many different things that Hudson North is like, you know, it's still, it's still a lot of anyways, uh, on, on to size. And, you know, obviously, yes, we, we absolutely, you know, we're, we're of a scale that I'm saying, I would say we're absolutely midsize. We're the largest cidery in the Hudson Valley.

[01:34:43] Probably the second largest cider in New York state. Um, we do about 350,000 gallons, uh, a year as of right now, which is quite, quite a bit of cider. Um, we're, we're a bit, we're the biggest purchaser of apple juice, um, from our, the press house, which is a sixth generation farm. So we're buying a lot of local apples and, you know, it just feels good to be tied into

[01:35:08] the agriculture in that way, where, you know, that farmers that are ripping up their orchards right now have a, you know, a potential source of income. Like, you know, I think it's tough out there to be a farmer. People are like, Oh, do you guys grow your own apples? Do you press your own apples? I'm like, number one, both of those are completely separate businesses that are really fricking hard, man. Like, I don't want to ever be a farmer that is one of the hardest damn jobs out there and hats off to them. And there's some of the nicest people you'll ever meet.

[01:35:36] I mean, just salt of the earth, just love what they do and care, you know, it's hard to see. Dedicated. Very, you have to be, because why else would you do it? You know? Yeah. And, you know, a lot of, once again, the Hudson Valley go more up north, the more, more to go is more of the apple orchards and stuff like that. You know, I know the Albany County has insane amount of apple orchards and you go further south and all it is ties into the Hudson Valley area.

[01:36:06] So that's, that's just crazy. So how many, I'm curious, how many like people do you have working for you right now? Surprisingly, not a ton. Cause our tanks are like just enormous. So we try to minimize the amount of people by getting very large vessels and bringing in machines as much as possible. And people are like, Oh, you know, is this because you're trying to automate out? It's like, no, it's because I care so much.

[01:36:35] Like the way I view things is you only go through the world once. You spend the majority of your time at your workplace and you want to go to workplace that you don't hate, you want to go to workplace that you may even like, or at least you have the opportunity to like people and have open conversations and, you know, have some sense of camaraderie. Something I think with all like the mega corporations out there right now doesn't really exist. So for us, I mean, we only have 11 employees.

[01:37:02] It's quite small, but we do a lot of work with that. Like the tanker we receive into literally, we will get two tankers back to back, like two 5,500 gallon tankers show up and we fill a 320 barrel tank, which holds with its full volume. What is it? Like 13,500 gallons. And then we start fermentation after the Hudson North and then graph gets fermented separately

[01:37:31] because it's a completely different process. But yeah, we're, we're full bore. We're canning every single day. It's, it's, it's, it's been a lot. We weren't always in a 16,000 square facility. We started about a mile and a half down the road, 4,000 square feet in the middle of Newburgh. I don't know if people are familiar with Newburgh, you know, with this being a Catskills focused podcast, but Newburgh is pretty rough, man. I mean, I'm from the outskirts of Baltimore and lived in Baltimore for quite a few years.

[01:38:00] And we were looking at Beacon actually originally just started the side of it based on recommendations, but you just couldn't find large warehouses with high ceilings is what you need for large tanks. And, you know, Newburgh has a lot of similarities. The Baltimore is only like, I can be in a rough atmosphere. That's not a big deal. You know, in the beginning where we're doing a lot of hiking, I think the most hiking at the most outdoorsy stuff we saw was like the dandelions growing up from the broken concrete around us.

[01:38:29] But, uh, you know, you got to start somewhere. Uh, and, uh, it's been quite a ride since then. Impressive. 4,000 square feet to 16,000 square feet. Wow. I, that's an 11 employees. Holy shit. That's that. Like you said, commodity. And, uh, once again, the conversations you have, the companionship that you have to make this all happen and to make this work and to make this successful just blows my mind.

[01:38:59] And it's just amazing. So now when we, you come out with, uh, a lot of, you know, what's, what's great about ciders is you can have like seasonal stuff. Like you can't really do that with beer and IPAs and stuff. You can get that crazy. I saw that stuff. I work at Walmart and the Bush light apple. That's disgusting. It's horrible. God. Yeah. My, my, my wife literally tried to buy Bush light apple today at our local spot that we always go to.

[01:39:27] And he was like, you just went down two points in my book. And I'm like, I don't disagree with you on that one. Yeah. Oh, I heard. Was that her laughing? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. She knows what she did. Tell her. Thank you for the, uh, the, the welcoming gift. So now how do you come out with your seasonal, like, like ciders and stuff like that? I know a lot of, you know, I, I follow a lot of like local ciders, like still hard cider down east and stuff like that.

[01:39:56] But you guys have unique stuff like that, like creamsicle and stuff. I love it. Thank you. How do we come up with it? I mean, honestly, it's, it's very boring. We look at market trends. We go on Google and we say, does this make sense for a cider? Like there's so many things that I know we could make taste good, like things that with chocolate or like all these things that, but people would just turn their nose up and be like, that doesn't make any sense in a cider.

[01:40:23] So we cast a wide net and then we start just honing it into like, would someone just pick this up without ever tasting this product from the name alone? And then we try to make a damn good cider from that point. So sometimes we start with the concept and then build the cider after the fact, because for us, it's just, it's so important to get that engagement. There's so much noise right now in the market, but as you go out there, there's 5,000 new flavors all the time.

[01:40:52] And for us, it's about making a, an extremely high quality product using local ingredients, but be like catching people's attention when there's so much noise around them. And like the creamsicles and we stick with what, what works. Like we throw a lot up against the wall. We tested it. We know we tested a market. If it doesn't work, we do something new. And that's the beauty of cider is it doesn't get in the way of trialing new things because it's so just, it's such a great blank slate.

[01:41:22] Almost like a tabula rasa for all these other flavors to go on top of. Impressive. Impressive. Yeah. I got to admit your, your selection is absolutely fantastic. And it once again, goes year round and like the blueberry lemonade was fantastic. I enjoyed that. And all these, the, the big, the big apple, the big pine stuff like that is, or big pineapple was so good. So what else?

[01:41:46] Like, how do you, who tests these to, to kind of say like, this is like it, or this is absolute disgusting. No way. I mean, you know, every, every cider has a story and it all starts somewhere. Sometimes we nail the ciders in two tries. Sometimes it takes 50. If it's going to be a core product, like it just comes down to how hard is it to hit that.

[01:42:16] Like, this is exactly what, you know, not exactly what we want, but this is, this has all the characteristics of what we're looking for in a cider. And it's actually funny because we're like, we have like a rubric. Like if it's a core cider and it's going to be available year round, number one, it has to make sense in all seasons, but it also has to have, it has to actually almost be a little more boring than your one-off ciders because it needs drinkability. It needs repeatability.

[01:42:42] And it needs a reason for a person to go back and say, I want to drink that again. Now with your more unique ciders, like the dreamsicles or the, that we were about to do a pumpkin patch. Those need to be impressive immediately. Your first sip. Wow. That was an experience. But after that, you know, after you drink a couple of cans, you're like, okay, that was intense. So maybe I don't drink this every single day.

[01:43:09] So it's about like, as you move from core to seasonal to limited intensity kind of ramps up along the way. And we work really closely with multiple people because group think by itself, I think is a bad thing, but asking lots of different people, um, their opinions and getting feedback is an amazing way to, uh, figure out exactly what's, what works.

[01:43:34] And we have, you know, not only do I take quite a large role in development of the product from start to finish branding, pricing, and the flavors most importantly, but we have a quality assurance QA guy. Um, we do a year like long hold process for every product you make. We test it along the way. And then we bring all the other people with it. You know, I'll just go around and like have people just try little samples of things and be like, what are your thoughts?

[01:44:01] And with alcohol and cider and just food in general, everyone tastes different things. So you can have someone say, oh, this is amazing. It's really great. And then someone else like, oh, there's this one thing that I don't like about this. And we actually do like panels and analysis of what off flavors or other things people taste in order to be able to find out who's a super taster for this off flavor. Who's someone that can identify these things.

[01:44:29] And honestly, my wife's actually like our harshest credit. You talked about your wife. That was my question. She's like kind of the end all be all gatekeeper. At some points we're like, say, just stop. No, no more. But we do take her opinion very seriously. And if she has problems with the product, we will typically go back to the drawing board a little bit. You know, also, I know is Kyle's saying this. I can see he's looking out of the corner of his eye at somebody in the room. Right. Okay. We got it, Kyle.

[01:44:58] We're going to bail you out on this one. So everybody hold silence. Say, say, say hi. Yeah. See, see, she's right there. That's what's my next question. Is she the, the, the high all above all where she's just like, it's good. I'll allow it. I wouldn't say she wishes. She's, she's, she's the one that can gatekeep though. Like if it, if it's not there yet, she'll let you know. Like everyone else. Everyone else will be like, oh yeah, this is good.

[01:45:28] And I'm like, is it though? Like, let's see if say likes it. And then we bring up to say like, and she's like, he doesn't have enough of this. Like, all right. I'm like, all right. How do we rework this? Like, all right. All right. And Jessica knew my wife is the same way. She'd like, sometimes she's like, that's a little too dry for me or something like that. And she so far has liked all the ciders. I forgot what she said. She said the standards is, is dry, but that, I mean, that's a standard. It's a dry. I told her, I'm like, it's a fricking dry. It's a regular hard cider.

[01:45:58] Like, like, but everything else she's like, oh, it's pretty good. It's pretty, really good. It's not like you guys don't have hardcore dries or like hardcore sweets. It's all kind of that kind of balanced level. It's like a, it's somewhere between like a off dry to semi-sweet. It's like right in between. Like really what we think it is, is the perfect level where it's not over the top, but it's just the right amount that you could drink a couple of. And that's like the goal is drinkability.

[01:46:28] I think. And a lot of cideries, again, everyone has different flavor profiles. None of those are wrong. Just they're different. Right. And for me, and I think a lot of other people, like just something that was a little more sessionable, especially because not a lot of brands in the market provided something that was on the drier side of sweet is what we call it. Like even down East, which is one of the more popular brands around here is double, you know, pretty much double the sugar of a standard cider.

[01:46:56] And then Anger or just triple that. So it escalates quite quickly as you go up the ladder. And I think offering something that just wasn't available. And obviously, you know, people with a hiking background, I think traditionally like to think about health a little more and not, you know, drinking something that's extremely, you know, extremely sweet and filled with sugar and all that other stuff.

[01:47:19] So that's kind of a tough sell, Kyle, when one of your flavors is dreamsicle, you know, that, that kind of sounds like it's up in the 30% sugar. So I get the, you've got, yeah, you, you've got the equipment, you've got all the cider, you have the juice. I want to know about how do you get these different flavor combinations? Is there somebody in-house that specializes and mixing up the flavors?

[01:47:48] I mean, is that you who has the, the talent to, to come up with the combination to give you the flavor that you're looking for? Yeah. As of right now, I take the lead on the majority of our core seasonal and limited products. I've been doing it for what? 14 years. I mean, we almost look at it as food science. We actually just got a new head cider maker in from Sloop Brewing, who was their production manager over there.

[01:48:18] And I'm actually really working intensely with him to train him because I don't want to be the one doing this forever. As much as I enjoy the process, I do see like, as we grow, I can't be the one. I can't be behind the scenes working on these things as much as I'd like to be and keeping the quality where it's at because I have so many going on. So I am training people to, to, to take on the mantle for sure.

[01:48:45] This is where I ask you, have you ever read the book called the E-Myth? The E-Myth? Yes. I don't believe so. I have not. So I'll, I'll, I'll shoot you the title and the author. It's a must read for somebody who's running a business like you because it breaks it down and makes sense into what you need to do is the CFO, the CEO and bottle washer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We don't use titles too much here. Yeah. Well, that's good.

[01:49:15] Company guide is my current title. Yeah. I like it. So, um, how do you, you keep like, uh, flavor profiles or something to come up with the same flavor time after time, the same recipe and ingredients. Yeah. We call them calculators. They're, you know, glorified Excel spreadsheets that utilize, um, quite a bit, but that being

[01:49:42] said, like, so I, I talked about graph cider a little bit. We also did, we forayed into canned, uh, wine spritzers for a while. We did hard kombuchas. Um, and then Hudson North was in between the wine spritzer, but then before the hard kombucha brand. And I think like collectively as a company, we've made probably about 220 different products.

[01:50:08] So we've just delved into so many different ingredients, flavor profiles, and concoctions around cider and other light dry, you know, light and effervescent products that we've just built, uh, you know, a knack for knowing where to start, where to look, but also being curious all the time. You have to be curious. Yeah. Cause if you're not, you're going to lose.

[01:50:34] I mean, I think one of the biggest competitive factors we have as a company is we know that we don't know everything and we know that we have to keep innovating all the time. Like, so we view ourselves as like an innovation company when it comes to beverages in general, because if we're not innovating, we're getting left in the dust. You can't just go and have someone buy Bud Light every single week for the rest of their life. Um, anymore.

[01:51:04] They always want new, they always want something different. There is no brand loyalty anymore. So if you're not creating interest in sparking curiosity from your customer, you're going to be dead in the water and you won't survive. I mean, we're always looking at what's the next thing, you know, you know, what's the, what's the top, what's the horizon for this product before we need to start looking to the next, you know, to, to just make sure we maintain, can keep our employees gainfully employed.

[01:51:33] And, you know, like, you know, I would never say our business is like a family. I think that's a cop out to say like, oh yeah, it's like a, you know, but I think we, we have a really strong team and we rely on each other. And, you know, I think that's as the owner, I have a responsibility to my team to make sure we keep growing and we keep maintaining, uh, for the sake of everyone that wants to continue on with our journey. Agreed. Yeah. Jesus.

[01:52:02] That sounds, uh, absolutely perfect. So now with all this camaraderie you have here with the Catskills and the Hudson Valley, what is your like most popular brand that you've, you've done so far in the, and with Hudson North? Oh man. So it was, it was a standard for quite some time. We had really great runs with our seasonals like strawberry rhubarb toasted pumpkin was another slam dunk.

[01:52:30] Some of our adventure series, we came out with rocket pop cider donut. Um, all did really well, but our biggest success right now by and large, and just a rocket ship is all the big stuff, all the high ABV stuff, uh, and big Apple leading the way in a huge way. I mean, it literally went from 5% of our business last year to 35% of our entire business this year. It's, it's like bonkers.

[01:53:00] I'm like, we're just going to make big Apple every day. That's going to be what we do. So what led to the like big Apple, big pineapple stuff like that? How did that come about? So again, just keeping our ear to the ground. So on the West coast, Imperial ciders, AKA high ABV ciders have been a thing for quite some time. The Northeast hasn't caught an on yet, uh, or hadn't caught an on yet. And, you know, we brought it to our distributors. We're like, Hey, like, you know, this can be something we could try out.

[01:53:27] Uh, as the innovation brand, we're always trying to figure out what could be next. They're like, Oh, there's not really a proven market, but you know, we started testing, we refined the design over time and it just became, you know, I think it's a couple of different things right now. Like, again, like people looking for value in what they're buying, people have less disposable income, especially the younger generation.

[01:53:53] And, you know, I think just that higher ABV that you're getting more for your, your buck. The other thing with higher ABV is it's more of a concentrated liquids. You're getting more flavor too. And you'll see that in the big pineapple you're drinking right now. It just, like denser liquid. So when you drink a cocktail at a bar, it's a very fulfilling beverage. It's a very little amount of beverage, you know, if you're not going to get slammed, but it does provide, it ticks the box. It lights, you know, it gets the endorphins going.

[01:54:23] So I think those all kind of lead into how we're really doing well with that brand. Yeah. And I got to admit having those, the high ABVs around the like campfire is just one of those things where everybody connects. I know it sounds, it sounds so upstate New Yorkish, I guess is how you'd say it, but I just like, everybody's just like, always like, oh man, this is some delicious shit. Like this is good stuff.

[01:54:51] And then everybody's just starts connecting and sharing those stories. Of course, of when we're hiking out on the trails. After a long hike, you deserve it. Right. You know, you can, you can, you can indulge a little bit after you just fucking slam through eight, 10, 12 miles, like a rugged wilderness. You get to do what you want to do at that point. Are you supposed to wait until the end of the hike to have this? End of the hike. Yeah. I mean, or when you summit or both, you know, responsible. You want to have half and half.

[01:55:20] It goes, it depends on what the, it's a dry day. You can slam it down and be responsible. But if it's a wet day, snowy, icy, no, wait till the end of the hike. Well, wait till when you're at home, you don't want to drive that on the way home. Oh yeah. Kyle, I think you ought to bring Stosh on. There's like a consultant for, you know, what, what people should do when they should do it with their cider. I mean, just how to enjoy ciders in general. Hiking, uh, hiking how to with your cider.

[01:55:49] Make sure you avoid fees and fines when you get lost in the mountain. Cause you drink too many big apples. Parking tickets by parking in the wrong spot. He, you, he needs a sponsorship and I think your Hudson North is the company to make it happen for him. He needs, we need to turn Stosh into a pro hiker. A pro cider hiker. You know what the, yeah, I gotta agree. I gotta agree. No, no, I'm not going to deny that. Why am I going to deny that?

[01:56:15] So how did you, uh, seem to think that like hard cider and the outdoors went hand in hand? Like, I, I, I gotta admit this doesn't like, I don't find like beer and IPAs and stuff to go hand in hand with hiking, but I do find hider like hard ciders to, to, to do that. Why do I? I think is, well, beers by nature, like it's just heavier. Right. So I think ciders and there's, and there's more and more lighter flavor, like, like lighter

[01:56:45] in its bearing products out there these days. Like there's your hard seltzers. There's your hard kombuchas though. There's not many of those. Uh, there's your like canned cocktails. But I think the one thing that makes cider different is it's an, it's a, a historical product, but B it's an agricultural product. So you're drinking something that is grown and is the majority, if not the entirety of what you're drinking.

[01:57:13] So as a hiker, you want to put good things in your body to get good results on the trail. Like when you're, when you're getting something straight from an orchard, can there be a better thing? If you know, you're poisoning yourself a little bit, but it's like, you know, I think Thomas Jefferson said, or Ben, Benjamin Franklin said, uh, beer shows that God loves us. Maybe you should have said God shows that God loves us. You know? Nice. Nice. I mean, it, it, it feels like it, it just flows. I don't know.

[01:57:43] Hard cider and hiking flows, especially with the Hudson Valley area and the Catskills. It just, you know, we were starting to see more and more of that. And we know we have all these, these apple orchards located in the Hudson Valley up north towards that. And, you know, as you go further west, we have, you know, uh, the wine orchards and stuff like that, you know, finger lakes and stuff. So, I mean, up north in the Adirondacks, they don't have anything.

[01:58:09] So we're kind of, we're crushing it down here in the Catskills, Hudson Valley. The Adirondacks had nothing on us. All right. Right. Man, nobody, what can you say you can drink from the Adirondacks? Silence. Water. Ice, glacier water. I don't know. Hudson Valley water. Hudson River water. That eventually lends up into sewer water. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, it's a beautiful thing, you know, local. It's local.

[01:58:39] It's gotta be local. Yeah. Well, the Hudson Valley is known for its apples. So. Correct. Absolutely. Yeah. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, um, uh, wineries and a lot of apple orchards here. And Kyle's brought the, uh, states, you said the second largest cidery in the state. Yeah. Yeah. The other one is, is out, yeah, out in Western New York. Mainly through Wegmans connections just because Wegmans sells. Oh yeah. Wegmans. Yeah.

[01:59:08] Is that in Chautauqua County? It's, uh, well, it's just, I don't know what the county is. I think it's Yates. Is the, uh. It's, it's far west. Yeah. Um, but they're doing a bang up business. Um, but our goal is by the end of 2028 that we eat their lunch. We'll see if that happens. Nice. Nice. Any, uh, like, like crazy experiments that you got done that hasn't made the cut.

[01:59:38] Uh, I don't know about crazy with Hudson North. We try to stay pretty like straightforward, but we've done crazy. I mean, one of the projects working on right now that maybe not doesn't make the cut, but working on apple cider vinegar as like a potential down the road, uh, product just because there isn't anyone making right now, like a, you know, a mid tier, like Bragg's competitor for apple cider vinegar in the Hudson Valley. And it's like, we have access to all these apples.

[02:00:07] We're already bringing in tons of apples. We have vessels that could do these things. Is there an, so I'm reaching out to like all my contacts at whole foods, the Chico's stuff like that. Just kind of be like, what, how big is the market? Is this something we should look into? So you're not going to, you're going to reveal anything now yet. I don't know. It's worth so, I mean, it just started like, we seriously just started like two or three weeks ago. Like we'll try anything like for a while. I'm always like, yeah, we're going to go like all in and try this out.

[02:00:36] And like, there's a 1% chance we actually do anything with it, but let's just fuck around, you know, let's see what happens, you know, roll the dice and see number first and foremost, can we make a really great product, you know? And then we go from there. But the fact that there isn't, you know, a local vinegar that you can buy in every single mid to high tier grocery store that isn't charging an arm and a leg and is like super boutique

[02:01:00] is, you know, and we even do like balsamics, like imagine that like barrel aged and, you know, especially with tariffs going on right now, you know, if you could have a domestic vinegar, now believe what you will about tariffs. I mean, I got no say in them at all. All I have to know is we live in the times we live in. You got to adapt or die. So, you know, there's just some cool ideas. There's, and one thing I do want to take, if we do go that route is my first company,

[02:01:28] Milstone, we sourced everything within 150 miles of the cidery. So we were forced to use what the local land could grow. And I, if we do go into vinegars, which is like, again, just small chance, we're absolutely going to use that approach because I don't want to add like crazy wild stuff. I mean, the cool thing is like with local agriculture and like greenhouses, you can grow like baby ginger and stuff like that. And you could use that. Anyways, I'm, I'm like getting off topic here, but we, we try out, we try a lot of weird stuff.

[02:01:57] I could go on for a long time about the weird shit. We've tried what's worked, what hasn't worked. Well, I get the sense that you're flexible and you're, you're not committed to a particular agenda. You're going to keep, you're going to try to anticipate where the market's going and, and be there, you know, uh, and ready to, to sell product at that point in time. Yeah. I mean, it's like a little, it's, it's definitely business focused, but you know, and then at the same time, it's, you know, it goes back to the theory.

[02:02:26] Like you only go through the world once, like might as well have a good time and not try to be like all the other bootlookers out there. Yeah. Boring. You don't want to be boring. Yeah. Like why? Like that's nettle. You got to have nettle flavored. So graft, like you want, you want something very dry and very unique. We do sake, we do tapaches, we do price. The amount of random stuff we've done with, with graft, uh, is would, would probably blow

[02:02:56] your mind. If you ever want to go in on taps and just look at all the product, I think we've done 160 different ciders just graft alone. Wow. Wow. Wow. It's, it's been pretty wild. And it's where we got our chops to do Hudson North. Like we, well, Hudson North is a little more, uh, easygoing as far as approach and, uh, accessibility. We learned how to make really crazy ciders first in order to make really dialed in approachable

[02:03:22] ciders that can be drier, but still achieve, like you were saying earlier, like a dreamsicle flavor while only being eight grams of sugar. It can, you know? Wow. So talking about, uh, going through life once being a success, let's talk about giving back, right? This is not all about make, making big profits and, uh, spending it on yourself.

[02:03:45] Uh, we understand that you and Hudson North are a big part of the local hiking community, big supporter of the local hiding, hiking community. And I saw on your webpage that in 2020, you, when your company gave roughly $8,200 to local hiking organizations, and in four years, you almost doubled that to 15,000, which is, which is remarkable.

[02:04:14] Uh, so why don't you, why don't you tell us about, uh, the taps for trails program and what you and Hudson North are doing for the local hiking community? Yeah, absolutely. So we started out working with scenic Hudson and New York, New Jersey trails. And after about a year, we decided that New York, New Jersey trails needed our help far more than scenic Hudson did great organization, but they got a ton of funding.

[02:04:41] New Jersey trails is like very bootstrappy and we really believe in the mission. And I think we just connected more with their, their team and their ethos. Um, so everything we generate goes back to them. So 10 cents of every gallon we sell goes back to the trails. And we do this as just kind of our base level give back, you know, obviously there's many ways you can give back to an organization, but at a bare minimum, we wanted to make sure that

[02:05:06] we were providing dollars so they could pay their, their employees and, you know, maintain the trails. Um, because you gotta love the land you live in and maintain it so that people can get out there. The taps of trails. We, we also do like events around it. We've done trail cleanups as well, where we start and we do a trail cleanup and then we end at a, uh, trail head, which is what we just call the bar that we end up at. And, uh, you know, we do the trail cleanup and then every pint that we sell at that a dollar

[02:05:35] goes back to the trails. We also have, uh, sponsored, um, uh, some of the, the maps that they've designed that they sell at, you know, the likes of like REI and stuff like that. And, you know, maintain the, some of the Minnewasca state trail, um, as well. So, you know, between giving back and just trying to figure out ways of, you know, just making

[02:06:02] people aware of the trails, I think the cider in general is a social connector. And one thing is that we've been talking about and say, my wife's actually the most engaged with New York, Jersey trails right now is how do we in lieu of funding provide an opportunity for more, for more of a gathering, especially at these bars, like do a trail cleanup and try to get young volunteers to come in and care about the local trail system.

[02:06:31] Um, I think a lot of young people want to be involved. I think they just lack the outlets. And I think if we can provide that hook, you know, uh, to get them in and get them talking about these things, then they can find a passion for the rest of their life, which I think is, you know, ultimately the goal. And where I think as a business, as a for-profit business, we can provide more than just say, here's some dollars.

[02:06:56] We provide the social lubricant and the reason for gathering, which I think is important. And with the, you know, like you said, like with the funding loss, we want to do more and more of that. Um, I know actually we're doing, um, mountain jam, um, up in, uh, on Bel Air mountain and we'll be actually, we paid for a sponsorship where we'll be like the side, we have a mountain, uh, a mountain cider that we're debuting is a little higher BV than our standard.

[02:07:26] And we're actually bringing the, uh, New York, New Jersey trails in along with our sponsorship. Um, it's June 20th through 22nd. So if anyone goes to this, it's, you know, a lot of great bands, um, put on by radio Woodstock, but we will have New York, New Jersey trails at our station promoting and trying to get volunteer signups. Cause it's like, look as a business, what can we do to help? We know funding's cut.

[02:07:52] We know most organizations that are trying to do good are just getting kicked in the teeth. Uh, the least we can do is try to get people out there and evolved and utilize what makes alcohol, a social lubricant and a connector, uh, to the benefit of, you know, these people doing all this hard work, getting people out on the trails, maintaining the trails, making it the, you know, what, what makes the Hudson Valley so special, I think. And the Catskill region as well. Cool. God damn.

[02:08:21] That's like a spokesperson right there. You gotta go on some goddamn radio shows with that. That's an. Some podcast maybe. Yeah. Right. It's inspiring. It's just, it, it's just the way it should be, you know, like, you know, I, I started this, this podcast for education, you know, just to have fun and to educate, to inform people that, you know, the Catskills is not just hiking trails. You can volunteer, you can participate in local organizations.

[02:08:46] You have local organizations like you that you can find and that you can dissect everything and just everybody can benefit from, from so much. And that's what, what shows, you know, like once again, 2024, you know, you don't, you donated on $15,000 to the New York, New Jersey trail conference. And it just, it just goes to show that, you know, we have heart here.

[02:09:13] Like not all people are just like profit based, like bam, bam, bam. We need to make as most money as we can, but Hey, we need to give back to these people that, that are here for us, that, that, you know, take care of us and stuff like that. You know, it's just, it's absolutely phenomenal. So thank you, Kyle. At least we can do right now. Yeah. I mean, let's, let's once again, help each other out with the, with the times we have right now, volunteer, stuff like that.

[02:09:41] I got to get with New York, New Jersey trail conference to find out which trails that they have. Of course, you know, they, a lot, there's a lot of trails that have, have need maintaining and stuff. They're tough trails, but I guarantee a lot of the people on this, that listen to this podcast can fricking do that. And, you know, once again, let's, let's all work together and get this done. So, uh, local trail cleanups. What can we, where do you guys, you guys said, uh, once again, the mill book trail, uh, towards

[02:10:09] the, what, uh, can, can we sign up? Like, where can we sign up? How, how can we like help out? We're working on, you know, especially with the funding cuts, trying to establish, I mean, something that we've done mostly as a company initiative for the mill book trail extensively, but we are, uh, pushing more and more for the taps for these taps for trails events where we do trail cleanups. And we ended a pub, um, and we plan on doing quite a bit more of these as the summer starts kicking off.

[02:10:37] Uh, so I know we're going to definitely start making more of that available through our social media, um, as well as emailers, people that are on our signup lists. Um, so if you aren't, uh, check out our website, sign up to be on the mailing list and, uh, we'll let you know how you can come out, clean up some trails, do some good, get a cider, learn a little bit more about the New York, New Jersey trail if you don't already, um, and see how you can help out, you know, get people out on the trails and just protect the land that we love, you know?

[02:11:08] And like, you can, uh, go just on your website and check this out and stuff like that, or email you guys straightfully. Yeah, absolutely. You can just go on our contact us page and just sign up right there. Awesome. Wow. We got, we still got a lot of, it feels like we should be wrapping this up, but we're not really like, uh, so Ted, what do you want to go with next buddy? You go ahead. Oh, you know, I don't, I don't have much to go with next myself, frankly, you know, we, we about covered it.

[02:11:36] Kyle, you seem like a really cool person and do a lot of, uh, super interesting things. And you're given back to your community, which is, you know, I've tried to raise my daughters with the mindset that it's, it's easy to complain about the problem. It's better to step forward and be part of the solution. So we see Kyle and his business stepping forward and teaching others to do that, which I think is really cool. Kyle, trying, trying at least. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:12:03] And you guys, once again, you, you, you have a certain part of the trail that you maintain, but then you also want to branch out and do other parts, you know, that you can, you can get suggested by other people. So that's fantastic. And, you know, once again, the community here, I got to admit, you know, connecting with you and your wife, just, it shows how, how, how strong this community is here in the Hudson Valley and the Catskills that we are like, we're just all connected.

[02:12:33] And if, you know, the Tad, you know, you know, this with your, your, your social, the social media connection and with hiking and stuff like that, your social hikes, you know, we're all connected here and we can all combine and we can make a huge impact and stuff like that. So it's, it's great once again. So Kyle, future tap room. I know we, we need a tap room. Is this, when is this, when is this?

[02:13:00] Oh, I know it's, it's something that's like constantly tough. It's like in the start and stop. So like, literally we have a spot. It's really connected to our current space. It was supposed to be open in line with our current space. But right now, man, I, to be perfectly honest, like the on-premise business is quite scary. Like with the, you know, with the, what I call the quiet recession going on, like people have

[02:13:28] less and less money and I don't think the future looks great. So like, if you have money to go out and spend, you know, $50, $100, you know, just to go get a piece of pizza and, you know, a couple of drinks, like the proposition gets tougher and tougher, you know? So as much as I want to bring people out on a weekend, every weekend, what we're looking

[02:13:54] to do in the short term, while we try to figure out is a tap room viable is we're trying to do a pop-up events at our space, bring people into our production facility, learn about how we make cider. We're going to actually be doing one of these in October where we do a pizza party. We have a, during COVID, I bought a 40, $40,000 wood fire Neapolitan pizza oven. And every once in a while we break out, it's supposed to be for the tap room, but every once

[02:14:24] in a while we pull it out, we work with a local provider, Promises Kept, who does a mobile pizza oven and they do great pizzas. And we'll be doing a chance we're going to come out. We'll actually, you can actually press your own apple juice onsite. We'll be doing a lot of our like limited stuff as well as like onsite cocktails that we're actually blending in. And we distilled a bunch of Hudson North two years ago and been aging in Oak. So we'll make like old fashioned from that, have it on, have it available.

[02:14:54] And I just think get people out and seeing what we're doing and not just have like, you know, like, oh, it's a cider somewhere in Newburgh. For now, that's the best I can give and probably the most realistic. I keep like, oh yeah, it's right around the corner. But I'm like, I don't know, man. The economy is scary. Like it's, you know, we're just going to keep doing what we're good at. Like I think gouging people for food and beer when people have so little these days and

[02:15:21] may have even less is not really what I want to be focusing on. Like when I was talking about even like the vinegar project, it's like, we can't be this like luxury product. We need to be something that, you know, your average Allen person can afford because they want to be able to buy local at a reasonable price. So value is always kind of front and foremost in my mind. And while providing experience with a tap room would be fantastic. And I would love to find the right space to do that.

[02:15:49] I just don't know if we're there just yet. But I'm going to give you a totally real answer. Hey, thank you for being honest. Yeah. That's wise, wise position to kind of like see where things are going and not dive in right now and get overextended when, you know, the cash tightens up. Especially, you know, with something I like with cider and beer and stuff like that is food.

[02:16:17] I like to have some food and some places that I know that I go to, it's just like, yeah, we have a pretzel. Yeah. I mean, our food program was good. It was all planned like four years ago. It was going to be fantastic. I'm just like, I don't know, man. Newburgh isn't necessarily like a destination. Like, you know, and to live off of just destination. Like we're eating Neapolitan pizzas and like large, like salads from local farms. And it was going to be cool. But I'm like, I don't know, man.

[02:16:46] Like it's. Well, look, look at what happened to Orange County choppers. Yeah. Oh my God. It made horrible. My insurance was like, oh, we should get that building. I'm like, you're. Yeah. They started off in a garage and, you know, kept getting bigger and bigger. And then they built the chopper Mahal and that's when the bottom, you know, fell apart on them. Orange County choppers. How does that come about this? That's great. I mean, but that's Newburgh, Orange County choppers.

[02:17:14] I just drove by like three days ago. So it's like a, it's like a statute, everything you shouldn't do in life. Yeah. Paul senior and Paul junior, man, those fighting all the time. I use their, their meme platform all the time. Oh yeah. It's a great, it's a great meme platform. All right. Let's wrap this thing up. Uh, I mean, we already talked about post hike brews. I mean, Hudson, of course. Uh, what about bites?

[02:17:42] Where do you, where do you go after a good hike and stuff like that? You want to give a shout out. We love the craft beer cellar. I'm not my wife saying craft beer cellar. Number one, hands down. Easy located next to the trails. You can sometimes see some of the trail conference people there. They're fantastic. Great supporters of the trail. What is it? Yeah. My wife's carrying on for me. I like, I like Ollie's too. Cause it's really close. Like it's not in the cat skills, but it's right below the cat skills.

[02:18:11] So on our way back, I don't know if you guys have done all these pizza. It's really solid. Um, they actually got the people from Roberta's, uh, in New York to train all of their, uh, pizza makers. They carry our graph cider, uh, farm floor, which is a very dry, a European inspired cider. Um, but just really fantastic pieces. You haven't been to Ollie's. Ollie's. How do you, is that Ollie's or a L L I E S? Oh, Oh, L L I E S. Okay. Okay.

[02:18:42] Ollie's. And that's where it's like 20 minutes South of the cat skills. Like when you just get into the cat skills, like Ellenville. I think so. Yes. Okay. All says yes. So I am going to trust her. And then you said graft brew cellar craft craft beer cellar craft beer cellar is down in a more South. Okay. Okay. That those are two. I will throw them in there. So Ted, you got new places to check out. Yeah.

[02:19:11] I'm seeing, let's see, Ollie's pizza and there's one in Kingston. Yeah. So they have a slice shop, but I think you should go to the actual, uh, pizza. The other is like, if you want to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I know where this place is. I drive. I've always wanted to stop there. It's, it's like bigger outdoors than it is indoors. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Every time I, I drive through stone Ridge to get to the cat skills, I go buy Ollie's pizza. So you have to stop now. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

[02:19:41] Going to do it. There are many people roll through with money boots. So I'm not allowed here. If I just want to let you know. Yeah. Oh God. She's awesome. All right. So Kyle, thank you for joining us tonight. I really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Uh, thank you once again to the monthly supporters and monthly sponsors for the show. Keep this show going 171 episodes in, uh, thank you to everybody who's donated and thank you to everyone who's still listening. Kyle, big thank you for joining us.

[02:20:09] And once again, for your involvement in the community and back. And then to put giving back to the trails and such, uh, really appreciate it. And, uh, hope you succeed once again and, uh, love your stuff. Hopefully you'll get a market rise of 200,000% after this podcast airs. For sure. Look at all the smiles on everybody's faces. It's like, yeah, right. I'm looking at the Ollie's pizza photos. Yeah, I've definitely. I mean, that would put a smile on my face. Thank you, Rush.

[02:20:38] Thank you, Tad, for inviting me on the show. It was a pleasure being here and getting to you tonight. Hope you had a good time and, uh, we'll, we'll catch you in the future. We'll see you in October. I will definitely be there in October. Awesome. Love to have you guys out. We'll, uh, send you some VIP tickets. Get you guys three ciders and pizza when you come out. Awesome. Thank you, Kyle. And thank you, Shay. Once again. See you guys. Have a good one. Have a good night. Hi, everyone. I just want to thank you for listening to the show.

[02:21:07] If you enjoyed the show, subscribe and throw down a smooth review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any podcast platform that you use. You can also check daily updates of the podcast, hikes, hiking news, and local news on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the official website of the show. Remember this. You gotta just keep on living in the Catskills, man.

[02:21:38] L-I-V-I-N. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. again.