Craft brewers are tapping into cider to appeal to more drinkers

If the beer and cider industries had royalty, Greg Hall would be close to the throne. He spent 20 years as brewmaster at Chicago’s Goose Island, where he created Bourbon County stout, one of the first bourbon-barrel-aged beers and one that remains a cult phenomenon to this day.

But it was on a beer trip to England — years before Anheuser-Busch InBev purchased Goose Island for $38.8 million — when Hall and a group of brewers inadvertently stumbled into a pub hosting a cider festival. Sampling fresh European ciders was “an epiphany moment,” he said, one that would alter his trajectory from beer professional to cider pioneer.