It’s happening:

By Jeff Zeitler on Tuesday, March 29th, 2022

People are doing things again!

If you haven’t been out lately, you may not have noticed. But people are doing things again! Our taproom has actually been busy a few times since we reopened at the beginning of the month. We’ve hosted a 50th birthday party, we’ve seen a book club congregating at our tables over cider and a pizza. We’ve noticed nervous, fidgety couples that we thought might be on a first date, as well as old friends meeting up for the very first time in over two years.

It’s wonderful to see. We even had a trivia night (Minnesota native and invasive plants) where the attendance was underwhelming, but everyone who showed up sat together crowded into the comfy couches in the corner and played against each other in a (mostly) fair-handed and (entirely) enjoyable and, at times raucous, night of trivia.

Despite the snow and despite the rain, people are coming out of their bubbles, out of their homes and safe spaces to meet and greet and mingle with their fellow humans, and we’re thrilled to be a small part of it. It’s been fun to see, and we anticipate that this long-anticipated spring will be even more sproingy than a typical Minnesota spring.

To spring it up even a wee bit more, we have our fruity ciders on tap this week! Lots of natural fruit flavor is popping up on our taplines, including pear cider, blackcurrant cider, semisweet, with it’s full apple-y rich sweetness, and hopped cider to round out the bunch with the Midwest’s favorite fruit of the vine.

It’s a refreshing lineup, and we even have a mead and a soda on tap on our shiny new two-tap kegerator that we purchased during the height of the pandemic. So, yes, we have six taps now. Ok, so it’s not a lot when compared to a national chain bar in the suburbs, but do they make everything that they have on tap in their own basement winery? I think not.

As it is spring, we are also doing a bit of spring cleaning. We are clearanceing two items on our online store: hopped cider and currant seltzer. Both are $6 a bottle while they last. Why? Well, the hopped cider is a tad flat. Perfectly fine by our tastes, but beer drinkers want more plenteous fizz, so this batch gets clearanced. And the seltzer? Well, it never sold that well anyway and it’s starting to get a bit old, so we want it out of here. Still drinkable, if you like that sort of thing, but we’re just not that into seltzers. If you are, it’s $6 for a bomber while it lasts. Find them both here.

And trivia? What topics? Good question. This week (Thursday at 7 PM) it’s Gilmore Girls. They we skip a week and return April 14th with longtime hit Friends. After that on April 21st, it’s Harry Potter. Who knows how we’ll dig even deeper into the books to figure out how to stump you —at least a few times— but we will.

Need a valet to park your car while you’re here? Well, we still don’t do that. But if there’s a space on Lake Street in front (and there are six of them) take it and ignore the sign that says you can only park for a half hour. It’s routinely ignored and never enforced. When the garage on the corner left a car in one of the spots for a month, yes it eventually was towed, but it took a month. If you stay for two hours, we promise you’ll be fine.

If you’re really worried, you can park around the corner on 31st Street where there are no signs, and a 24-hour McDonalds drive through that will keep an eye on your car while you’re visiting us. So you’ll be fine.

We’re open three days a week for now: Thursday 4-9, Friday 4-9 and Saturday 1-9. Wednesday and Sunday hours will be coming in mid-April.

Cheers, and welcome back.

Jeff and Gita Z.