Considering he makes cider in a building that used to be an abattoir, it’s only fitting that Mitchell Hawse decided to put the word ‘slaughterhouse’ in the name of his Prince George cidery.
Slaughterhouse Craft is a new player on the craft brewing/vintner market and the seeds of Hawse's livelihood were planted shortly after he and his wife Emily, a medical student in the Northern Medical Program at UNBC, bought a 20-acre property about 24 kilometres west of the city on Highway 16. It was the commercial meat-packing base for A&B Meats until it closed in 2017.
“Slaughterhouse Craft shows we’re a bit more rustic and gives people a bit of a warning in advance we’re not some primped winery, we’re a bit more rough around the edges and we like to embrace that,” said Hawse. “I still get the odd phone call from people asking if I process animals.”
Making cider started out as a hobby but Hawse soon became obsessed with it. He found a business partner, Sam Shenk, and together they built a business plan and applied for a winery licence.
When Mitchell and Emily first moved in there were two apple trees in the yard. Acting on the advice of Emily’s mom, a hobby wine maker, they used their apples to make a batch of cider, which turned out better than expected.
The following summer, Mitchell was hired to work in the cellar of Northern Lights Estate Winery, which taught him the basics of what he needed to become a vintner. He devoured an iconic how-to book on cider-making written by Claude Jolicoeur and made contact with the Quebec man to ask for suggestions about what trees he should plant in a northern B.C. climate to produce the best possible results.
Slaughterhouse’s Traditional Dry cider uses 16 varieties of apples and the experimentation process of finding the perfect blend is ongoing. Hawse is always on the lookout for apple growers in and around the city who don’t have a use for their apples and he will gladly come by to pick them.
“I want to make good cider from apples that grow in Prince George and thrive here,” he said. “ You can grow a lot of apples here, but can you grow all the apples I really want to make cider? We’re trying. but it’s yet to be seen.”
Mitchell studied physics at UNBC and after earning his undergraduate degree he completed masters studies which focused on the city’s biosolids energy heating system. His father is an autobody mechanic who has his shop at the family home north of Vanderhoof and Mitchell has similar hands-on ability he developed as a young boy watching his dad work on classic cars. Emily is in her fourth year of medical school and she handles the bottling and labelling process, whenever she finds time to break from her studies and her motherly duties helping Mitchell raise their two young kids.
The 60-foot by 40-foot building where cattle used to be led to meet their final fate is where they make and bottle the cider and mead. The building’s history as a place to butcher animals serves Hawse well in his cidery, where cleanliness is of utmost importance. It has a good water supply, plenty of sinks, floor drains , washable walls and a robust power supply.
Slaughterhouse makes four types of cider - Traditional Dry, Modern Dry, Modern Semi-Sweet and Ice Cider - and two varieties of mead – Braggot and Sima.
Mead is made from the fermentable sugar in honey produced by in beehives that are on Hawse’s land. The sweeter tasting sima has about half of one per cent alcohol , while braggot is 12 per cent alcohol.
Slaughterhouse is among the 15 northern B.C.-based craft brewers and vintners whose products will be featured in the Kiwanis AleFest, Jan. 27-28 at Two Rivers Art Gallery. Slaughterhouse products are available at College Heights Liquor Store, Homestead Liquor in Vanderhoof, Trench Brewing and Nancy O’s restaurant. The products proved popular at the Prince George Farmers Market and Hawse is looking forward to the exposure AleFest will bring to his business.
