Stay in the Loop

Get out your calendars and pen this in: November 10, 2018 as the date the long-awaited Minneapolis outpost of Buffalo, Minnesota’s Number 12 Cider House opens. This is a big honking deal.

First, this is cool because Minnesota’s cider scene is in hyperdrive, growing so fast it’s turning us into the Normandy of America. But us city folk always had to drive to the country to get the micro-batch, on-site-pressed orchard goodness, and we are busy. This will be the first time we city folk have a chance to integrate the amazing cider advances happening in the country into our tap-room-hopping city lifestyle. (Yes, I know about Sociable Cider Werks, and their complicated graff lifestyle, don’t at me. Likewise, Urban Forager, the crowdsourced urban fruit winery, is a site of many noble efforts, but not purely about advancing the local art of apple cider.) And now we will have a place with 16 taps of cider—yes, 16 taps! This will allow us to try standard ciders, micro-batch experimental ciders, rare-apple one-off ciders, single-variety non-alcoholic still ciders, non-alcoholic sparkling ciders, and more. Hopefully with downtown crowds, the cider-makers will be able to move the volume that will allow them to do all kinds of fun things.

Second, this is cool because it provides another market for apple-sellers. Number 12 buys apples from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa—and not tankers of apple juice from Wisconsin. This should boost the visibility of our cider scene to draw the attention of any apple-growers in the area. Not least because there’s going to be a wooden cider press visible right through the big glass windows at the back of the cider house, where patrons can see cider being made downtown. (Get adjusted to the new lingo. This is a “cider house” not a taproom, so when you text your friends you will say, “Meet at the cider house?”)

Third, this is cool because all y’all gluten-free peeps are getting it all: a place to meet and drink with all kinds of exciting options (pure cider is gluten free), a place to have events (because this new downtown cider house will open with two private event rooms), and a wood-fired pizza truck making gluten-free pizza!

Introducing: Little Tomato. Little Tomato will be the food truck parked permanently on a concrete pad outside the North Loop cider house, making gluten-free pizza to pair with your gluten-free cider. For a gluten-free destination, it seems as if it will be as food-and-wine-snob friendly as it will be kid-friendly, with games and such on site and the non-alcoholic options.

I write this with a personal refrigerator full of apples: SweetTango, Haralson, Chestnut Crabs, and Firesides. I spent a good part of the past month thinking about how lucky I am to live in apple territory. What a capper to the season!

Open November 10. No. 12 Cider House, 614 N. 5th St., Mpls., number12ciderhouse.com. Hours: M-Th 3-11p.m., Fr-Sa 11 a.m. – 11p.m., Su, 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.