As cider grows more popular, it’s easy to cash in on the wave. Cideries will be born, books will be written and blogs will be created, each hoping to latch on to the momentum spearheaded by other people.

But Cider Riot! is not one of those upstarts. Cidermaker Abram Goldman-Armstrong has been making cider each year for nearly 20 years, and he’s finally decided to turn his small cider-making hobby into a commercially-viable operation located right in his own garage.

I’ve been able to try a few of Abram’s offerings thus far, and they are fantastic. English-apple based Burncider leads the way, with the rest of his offerings following close behind. Now that his Kickstarter project to convert his garage into a commercial cidery has been funded, we’ll all be able to sample his fine wares in the coming months.

Hopefully, this time I’ll be on a real invite list, instead of crashing the event like I initially did at Cheese Bar a few weeks ago. You see, my Willamette Week buddy Martin Cizmar knows I dig cider, so he lets me know about any press events that come through his email. A few weeks ago, he texted asking if I was going to attend CiderRiot!’s cheese pairing event, and I replied that I hadn’t heard of it.

Cizmar ended up going, and sorta crashed it. Turns out the event was invite only, and only beer writers were invited. But Cizmar stayed and then encouraged me to show up as well. Feeling out of place, my wife and I made our way to Cheese Bar, hoping my status as a Kickstarter backer and actual author would warrant our attendance.

Thankfully, it did. Abram was a great host — he even gave his presentation for a third time — and the ciders we had were great. My favorite was a 2007-2009 (could be 1763) blend that I’m sure is gone by now. But Abram’s more popular and plentiful stuff tastes great too.

I did see Abram, Rev Nat and Rob from Virtue Cider at Bushwhacker’s the other day. Good to see local guys already working together.