By Triana O'Keefe – editor, Australian Hotelier
The Brunswick Street Cider House in Melbourne has opened a pop-up backyard cider garden just in time for Australia Day celebrations.
The Brunswick Street bar was forced to turn away hundreds of people from its AusFest celebrations last year, and founder Ben Day vowed this year would be different with the addition of the new space.
“We’ve completely redeveloped a vacant concrete space at the back of our cider house into a beautifully grassed garden bar with white picket fences, French provincial seating, traditional English hedging and old pallets transformed into a herb garden which line the back wall.”
AusFest 2015 will see visitors get their own personal stein, a slow cooked pork roll (or vegan option), traditional Apple Crumble with calvados creme anglaise and vanilla ice cream and access to the new cider garden.
Practically everything served on the day is made on site from scratch in the Cider House, which prides itself on being the next evolution of pub dining, serving quality food which caters for all dietary requirements, including its cider, which is gluten free.
The cider house has 17 ciders on tap, including ciders poured from traditional English engine pumps, and Kelly Brothers farmhouse cider served fresh from a French Oak Barrel, which is mixed on site.
There are also 40 bottled cider varieties from local and international producers, including traditional methode champagnoise ciders, boutique wines and craft beer.
True Cider is made APPLES, and PERRY is made from PEARS (no such thing as pear cider!)
I sincerely hope Cider House stocks AUSTRALIAN Cider and Perry.
Victorian pubs have snubbed our own industry for too long, preferring the inferior New Zealand, and sickly-sweet fakes from Holland which are not cider.
Hopefully Cider House will stock the excellent Coldstream & Bulmers for patrons who want to drink good Cider, not lolly-water for kids.