Northwood’s New Food Partner And Chilly Weather Drinking Plans.

Written By: The Gnarly Gnome

We all really like to eat while we’re drinking.  I should clarify.  If we want to stay somewhere for more than a few minutes, we like to have some food while we’re drinking.  Most places get that at this point, but the difficulty in providing their own food programs is often too much for a new place.  Sometimes, a food business just isn’t what they want or are able to manage as well.  If you are a brewery (or cidery) and you want to make sure that your customers have food available, what else can you do?

Enter the food partners.

Places all around town have discovered the value of teaming up with a food partner so they can have food available while they’re supporting another local business at the same time.

If you haven’t guessed by now, that’s what we’re discussing today.

Northwood Cider Teams Up With Fire On High

A long-term partnership between Northwood Cider and Fire On High is precisely what cider fans needed!  The organic food truck will be on hand every Thursday-Sunday serving up their excellent food while you enjoy all Northwood has to offer.  Their menu can be viewed over here, but some of the highlights that jump out to me:

• Smoked Turkey Legs – this is right where my eyes went first.  they’ve got one wrapped in turkey bacon, hit with their spice blend, and then based in sauce.  Oh, man.
• Waffle Melt Sandwiches – you can get these loaded up with cheese, turkey, bacon… the works.  It’s a sandwich slapped between two Belgian Waffles.
• The Cheeseburger Spring Rolls – it’s exactly what it sounds like… perfectly seasoned ground beef, pickles, onions, and melty cheese, all wrapped up in a crispy spring roll wrapper.  A light… snackable cheeseburger?
• Of course… there are also burgers on the menu and some veggie offerings as well.

You can experience the new partnership starting next week (11/2/23) – and when you do… make sure you let me know what you think!

Cider… Bombs?

As we head into chillier weather and upcoming winter drinking, we all have fun things we do to change up our seasonal drinking habits.  Northwood is adding a new menu to its taproom that aims to build its own fun drinking customs for cider fans.  The menu?  Cider Bombs.

A cider bomb is pretty simple… booze in cider.

The menu that I saw included five different cider bombs that all sound freaking great.  You can pair them up however you want, but they provide some hints at which ciders go best with which “bomb.”

• Flower
  • St Germain Elderflower Liqueur
  • with Floral or 1903 ciders
• Apple Pie
  • Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey
  • with Gem, Harvest, or Becky 2.0 ciders
• Caramel Apple
  • Crown Royal Salted Carmel
  • with Gem, 1903, or Harvest ciders
• Berry
  • Chambord Raspberry Liqueur
  • with Bomberry, Chime, or Hoppin ciders
• Sour Apple
  • Apple Pucker Schnapps
  • with Gem or 1903 ciders

I absolutely love this.  While I’ve always been a fan of traditional “stuff” – and love a good traditional craft beer or dry cider, maybe even more, I think I like fun ways to make drinking memorable.  Especially as we head into the holidays, I crave customs and traditions and love that Northwood is working on more and more ways to keep building experiences around what they’re doing!