Not many cideries can say they've stood on the podium at the Oregon Fruit Cider Challenge three years in a row. Slightly Furry can. It started three years ago with a third-place finish for No Plum Intended, their plum slushie cider. Last year they moved up to second with Strawng Boi, a strawberry slushie. And this past weekend at Cider Summit Seattle, they claimed first place with their Key Lime Slushie—a cream-kissed, citrusy stunner that had already caused a scene at a pre-festival pairing event before the competition even started.
What makes that run more remarkable is where it started: a wedding gift.
Aaron, co-founder of Slightly Furry, got a homebrewing kit from his brother when he got married. A visit to his parents' bar introduced him to hard cider, and he was hooked. He started making batches for friends, got better at it, and eventually friends started offering to pay. Better ingredients led to better equipment, and by 2019 he was taking it seriously. When the pandemic hit in 2020, he was overwhelmed enough to bring in a business partner, Ray. What followed was a name change, a cross-country move from Chicago to Washington, and a first keg sale to a Seattle bar on November 19, 2022—a keg that set the record for fastest sell-out the bar had ever seen.
Three years later, Slightly Furry has a taproom, statewide distribution, a devoted following, and apparently a knack for winning cider competitions.
The thing about fruit
Ask Aaron what separates a good cider from a forgettable one and he'll tell you: it has to taste like the actual fruit. Not like candy, not like an extract, not like a vague fruit-adjacent impression—like the fruit itself.
Every recipe at Slightly Furry is built around that idea. They use whole fruit or purees, skip the essences and extracts, and try not to layer more than one fruit at a time so nothing gets muddled. That philosophy is also why they landed on Oregon Fruit. When Aaron was developing new recipes, he'd scroll through our product list and look for what jumped out—and three years in a row, what jumped out became a winning cider.
The slushies that won
Slushie-style ciders are their own thing—thick, intensely fruity, and built to be served cold, closer to a smoothie beer than anything else—and they've become something of a Slightly Furry signature. Each of their three Oregon Fruit Cider Challenge entries has been one, and each one has placed higher than the last.
No Plum Intended, their debut entry, was playful and put them on the podium. Strawng Boi, the strawberry slushie they brought last year, moved them up to second. This year's Key Lime Slushie, finished with a touch of cream, went all the way. It had a memorable debut even before the competition—on the morning of September 12th, Slightly Furry joined Dahlia Bakery for a pre-opening cider and cupcake pairing event at Cider Summit, four pairings for sixty guests with Jennie Dorsey of the American Cider Association as guide. Oregon Fruit's Chris Hodge was there too, sitting down with Aaron to hear the story behind the ciders. By the end of the weekend, first place.
Making room at the table
Slightly Furry has also put real thought into who gets to enjoy their taproom, not just what's on tap. When a lot of their friends gave up alcohol after the pandemic, Aaron didn't want them to feel like an afterthought. So he started building non-alcoholic options with the same care as the rest of the lineup.
The cream soda came first—made from scratch with vanilla syrup and citric acid, then eventually upgraded to hand-made syrup from Madagascar vanilla beans with filtered water. It tapped out within two weeks and never really slowed down. Now they're making 40 to 60 gallons a month and fielding requests for it at every festival they pour at. There's also a ginger beer made from their ginger cider base, and a tepache-style cider called Musky Boyfriend, brewed from leftover pineapple pulp and cinnamon sticks from other batches—nothing wasted, everything flavorful.
What's next
Their cranberry cider made its debut for the 2024 holidays and came back again in 2025—an alcoholic take on cranberry sauce, less sweet than the can, timed perfectly for November and December. People are already asking whether it's coming back this fall, which probably tells you everything you need to know about whether it will.
Between the Cider Swig medals, the three-year podium streak at the Oregon Fruit Cider Challenge, and growing distribution across Washington and beyond, Slightly Furry is on a run. And the through-line across all of it is pretty simple: use real fruit, don't cover it up, and trust that people will notice.
At Oregon Fruit, we've believed that for a long time. What Aaron and Ray are doing in Seattle is a good reminder of why.
