This is the true story of how a punk rock loving graphic artist and his military hero brother home-brewed cider so good it exploded into one of Arizona’s fastest-growing craft beverage businesses.
This is the story of the Duren brothers.
After graduating high school in 1999, elder brother Josh (pictured on left of pg 10) was eager to leave the family’s small hometown of McPherson, Kansas (population 13,000) and hit the slopes in Colorado. He would spend his late teens exploring the Centennial State, as well as Chicago, before landing in Arizona in 2001 to study animation.
“Though I graduated with an animation degree, I tended more toward graphic design, going so far as to borrow my roommate’s textbooks on the topic,” says Josh, who made his way in web and graphic design for the better part of a decade after graduating.
Jason (seen above), younger by three and a half years, took a different route. He enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve and served for several years in heavy machinery at Luke Air Force Base, before being deployed to Afghanistan in 2012 to help dismantle a Taliban prison. While overseas, Jason sustained two traumatic brain injuries as a result of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). He had to spend several months in the marine medical ward before making his way back to Arizona in 2013.
“Oddly enough, we were both introduced to cider – me in British Columbia on vacation and him in Ireland en route back to the States – around the same time,” says Josh, who was intrigued by the extra-bubbly take on cider he sampled. Once home, Jason began the medical retirement process, working through speech therapy and cognitive processing programs to help re-train his brain. Through this, he met famed Arizona-based neurologist Dr. Javier Cardenas, who advised him to take up a hobby that required developing new skills, researching, and attention to detail as a means to further rehab his brain.
“We talked about brewing beer together as this hobby, but realized we were already fans of so many friends’ homebrews and the craft beers in Arizona that we wanted to do something unique to us. Enter cider,” says Josh, who admits it took some time to make something worth sipping, and then even longer to add in enhancements such as mangos, habaneros and prickly pear.
By 2015, a friend who’d become a fan of their garage ciders connected them with Fox Restaurant Concepts. Beverage director Mat Snapp was impressed after a tasting, especially with the pumpkin offering, and said as soon as they transitioned the hobby into a viable, legal business that Fox would be their first formal customers.
“It took about two years start to finish – from getting an LLC and investors to finding a space and getting the operation up and running – but by 2017 we opened Cider Corps in Mesa,” says Josh, noting that during the same time Jason earned a sustainable horticulture degree at ASU to help further the operations side of the venture. “And Fox was true to its word.”
Fast-forward to today and, in addition to their Mesa taproom, the brothers are building out a 14,000 square-foot production facility in Gilbert to keep up with demand, which includes more than 100 bar and restaurant customers as well as retailers including Whole Foods, AJ’s Fine Foods and Total Wine and More. They’ve also gained fans by daring to dream up ciders that walk on the wild side in terms of flavor, notably Mango Foxtrot with infusions of both mango and rose hip; POG that includes passionfruit, orange and guava; Blackberry Grenade that pairs blackberry, morita chile, and habanero; and Blueberry Angels, which combines blueberry with cassia bark. Many flavors are named to honor the military, and beyond even that, the Mesa taproom is adorned with patriotic colors and murals, and serves as a community gathering point for veterans and fundraisers.
“Maybe most importantly, Jason and I are closer than I ever dreamt we might be as adults, and he is a testament to the power of resilience despite seemingly insurmountable odds,” says Josh.
Written by Alison Bailin Batz
Photos Courtesy of Cider Corps