In their first year in business, Bill and Michelle Larkin occasionally found themselves with a problem — they were out of cider.
Arsenal Cider House, the cider and fruit wine tap room the couple started in their Lawrenceville home in 2010, proved to be popular enough that the Larkins occasionally had to shut down to allow the ciders in basement tanks to finish fermentation.
Demand for Fighting Elleck and Archibald’s Ado hasn’t flagged a bit, but the basement of the Larkins’ home — which sits across 39th Street from Arsenal Park — is filled with enough tanks to keep cider flowing at not one but two taprooms.
And that brings us to Soergel’s Orchards, the farm and country store in Wexford that has supplied Arsenal with base fruit juices since they got started. A discussion a few months ago turned into Arsenal’s second tap room, back in McIntosh Hall. The space is appropriately rustic for a Civil War-themed cider house, and there is plenty of room for outdoor tasting in a large, shaded patio in front of the hall.
The new location isn’t the only way Arsenal is marking the fifth anniversary. If you like outdoor drinking in the North Hills, chances are pretty good that you’ll like it even more at the newly completed cider garden, behind the original location. And if you show up on a weekend, chances are pretty good that you’ll also find one of Pittsburgh’s food trucks and maybe even a band back there.
Finally, I was happy to hear that the Larkins have plans to handle the demand that will likely come with the new spot. Mr. Larkin said they just bought a building in Penn Hills that will serve as a production facility when it gets running sometime in the next year. Arsenal’s staples will move to that spot, leaving Lawrenceville and Wexford available for small-batch experiments.
To summarize five years of Arsenal Cider: a garden, a second tap room and a way to ensure there’s plenty of cider to go around. And that sounds like a great anniversary to me.
Post-Gazette coverage of Arsenal Cider House: