While most of us can enjoy a pint of beer without major recourse (aside from the occasional hangover), an increasing number of people cannot. With celiac and gluten allergies on the rise, we wanted to create a safe, enjoyable experience for everyone. Amongst our 22 options of craft drafts at both our bars are a handful of dedicated taplines for housemade hard ciders and sparkling meads. Just like in our kitchen, we take all precautions to ensure each cider and mead tapline only has gluten-free draft pours running through them. Besides being a growing issue globally, offering GF options is personal for us. Our owners have a number of family members who are celiac or have severe gluten allergies. Knowing their struggles when dining out, the decision was easy to make our operations allergen-friendly. Creating an atmosphere where everyone can find menu items both in food and drink has always been a central focus for us.
Making all our offerings in-house ensures us complete control over sanitation and safety. Though we can’t guarantee a completely gluten-free facility, we keep all our ciders and meads in a designated room away from our brewing operations, utilizing clearly marked, separate equipment to minimize potential contamination. We clean all our equipment and taplines meticulously, so we can control as much as possible in the process. Our entire crew, from our brewers to our cooks to our front of house staff, is trained on allergen safety and the severity of contamination.
Keeping with the theme of historic brews, our meads and ciders often have origins in old-style processes, much like our beers. But we also like to shake things up. Whether it’s brewing a mead based on our Head Brewer’s favorite cocktail, an Old Fashioned, or a Viking mead with an adult lemonade twist using Meyer lemons and Juniper berries, we love playing around with ingredients.
The next time you’re in, be sure to ask about our allergen-friendly options. Looking to try all our gluten-free drinks? Try a mead and cider flight with five different 5 oz pours. If you’re one of the many people that have to steer clear of gluten, check us out! We’re here to make going out feel safe again.
