Beer-loving Raleigh will soon add its first cidery. Here’s where to find Shady Grove.

Raleigh’s days as a brewery-only town are numbered.

Shady Grove Cider, Raleigh’s first cidery, will open next year as part of the city’s East End Market development. The new cidery pairs two beer industry vets looking to set the record straight on cider.

“Most people are introduced to cider as Woodchuck or Angry Orchard and never give it a second though,” said co-owner Oliver Koch. “There’s nothing in Raleigh that has anything to do with cider.”

With Shady Grove, Koch said he hopes to get ahead of the cider game and offer something new to Raleigh.

He looked at downtown spaces and ultimately joined the East End development as one of the project’s first publicly announced tenants. Triangle restaurateur Giorgios Bakatsias also has signed on to the development, with plans to open a new French restaurant called East End Bistrot.

The $30 million East End Market is owned and developed by SLI Capital and Atlas Stark and will become a 67,000-square-foot mixed-use project east of Five Points on Whitaker Mill Road.

Its owners say a cider house helps set it apart from other current developments in the city.

“Cideries are a significant national beverage trend Raleigh is a bit behind on,” said Gabe Guillois, managing partner of Atlas Stark in a release. “Shady Grove Cidery will continue to expand East End Market’s presence as the food- and beverage-oriented destination we envisioned.”

The ciders made by Shady Grove initially will be poured straight from the tanks. Koch hopes to have cider to serve by this September, which will end up on taplists and pop-ups in and around Raleigh. The cidery itself aims to open in March 2022.

While cider will be the focus, Shady Grove will have cocktails, beer and wine. Its space at East End will include a 3,000-square-foot production facility and taproom, plus a 3,000-square-foot patio.

When it opens, Koch said Shady Grove will lean into its name, filling the space with greenery.

Koch comes to cider from the beer world. He’s spent the last decade-and-a-half as a beer rep for Rogue Ales out of Oregon and his hometown brewery Terrapin Beer Co. in Athens, Ga. Currently Koch is the general manager of the Trophy Brewing-owned bottle shop State of Beer.

Koch declined to name his business partner in Shady Grove, saying his partner planned to continue working as a brewer at a large national brewery while the cidery comes together.

Though the Triangle is one of the busiest parts of the state for breweries, cider houses are few and far between. Bull Cider Ciderworks and Botanist and Barrel are among the most prominent.

Some drinkers love ciders for their sugary sweet pucker, and for others it’s that same sweetness that keeps them away. Shady Grove will specialize in dry ciders made from local North Carolina apples, Koch said, staying away from the sweet side of cider in favor of tastes that are tart and crisp.

Koch said the sweetness of some ciders comes from added sugar used to speed up fermentation. Shady Grove, though, will take its time, he said.

“The process is closer to wine than beer,” Koch said. “Cider takes longer than beer to make. It’s the time that’s expensive, it’s not the equipment.”

Koch said while there’s a local brewery in every town these days, the beer itself is rarely local, usually coming from hops and ingredients grown far away. Cider, at least in North Carolina, is much easier to call local, Koch said, pointing to the 450 heirloom apple varieties grown in the state.

“With cider we truly mean local,” Koch said. “I love the natural aspect of it. It’s really just fermenting juice. There’s seasonality to it. It’s a living, breathing aspect of our special state.”