Sheffield's first ever 'cider-centric' bar The Cider Hole to open in Shalesmoor next week

Owner Mike Pomranz will welcome punters to his new bar, The Cider Hole, in the Krynkl shopping container in Shalesmoor, for the first time on September 17 and 18.

Mike, an American food and beverage journalist, says that while the bar will be ‘cider-centric’, visitors will also be able to enjoy ‘interesting beverages of all sorts’ including craft beer, natural wines and American hard seltzers.

"My hope is that The Cider Hole can elevate people’s opinion of artisan cider,” said Mike, who is a Certified Cider Professional.

He added: “Personally, I drink more beer than cider, but I love cider, and it upsets me that it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves as a diverse and complex beverage.

“With the explosion in craft beer, most people understand that beer doesn’t have to be a fizzy lager, but cider is still waiting for a similar reckoning."

The Cider Hole has a dedicated cider list featuring cans and bottles from across the UK and around the world.

The cozy bar has space for 22 people, and drinkers can expect to hear an eclectic mix of “Buffalo boom-bap, aughts indie, and anything Thin Lizzy” spun from Mike’s personal vinyl collection.

Everything sold at The Cider Hole will be available for consumption on premises. Alternatively, punters will also be able to purchase drinks to take away.

To bolster his offerings, Pomranz also launched Quality Ferments Imports to bring in drinks from outside of the UK.

His first two products are Cold Hand Rheum – a sparkling rhubarb wine from Denmark – and Zapiain Gure Sagardoa Gorenak – a Basque cider from Astigarraga, Spain.

For now, both bottles are exclusive to The Cider Hole in the UK.

Through his role as a freelance food and beverage writer, who is still on staff at the American magazine Food & Wine, Mike has covered the beer industry for over 15 years.

But in 2015, what Mike describes as an ‘enlightening cider assignment’ ignited a new love of fermented apple juice.

Mike and his family moved from Brooklyn to Sheffield five years ago; and since then he has continued to experiment with fermenting his own cider, using fruit gathered from residential trees.

Later this year, Mike hopes The Cider Hole will become Sheffield’s only urban micro-cidery, producing up to 600 litres of cider on-site, which he intends to serve to customers directly from the fermenters.

He says working with ‘locally found apples will be a major focus of the cider produced on site’ at The Cider Hole this autumn.

The Cider Hole will be open 5pm and 11pm on Friday, September 17, and from 3pm and 11pm on Saturday, September 18.

Mike will be running the bar entirely by himself, and as such, he says The Cider Hole will not keep ‘regular opening hours’.

Instead, the hours for the following week will be released each Monday on The Cider Hole’s website at: istheciderholeopen.com