Citizen Cider

Citizen Cider started in 2010 with three founders, a borrowed press and a plan to make cider from Vermont apples rather than concentrate, and it has since become one of the defining drinks businesses of the state. The Flynn Avenue press house is where the fruit is actually pressed, and the Press House Pub attached to it is a relaxed room serving cider-inspired pub food alongside the full range, a proper bar and a set of non-alcoholic choices.

The alcohol-free one is The Clean Mayor. Citizen's Mayor line has been its best-known cider for years, and this is the logical extension: the cider dealcoholised to a true 0.0% and then blended with real ginger and lemon juice rather than left flat and stripped. The result carries a lemon aroma, a clear ginger note and a crisp apple finish, and it does the job a good NA drink has to do in a room full of drinkers — it looks and behaves like the thing everyone else is having.

There is a broader Vermont story sitting behind this address. Citizen co-founder Kris Nelson also worked with Zero Gravity to develop Rescue Club, the non-alcoholic beer line launched in January 2021 and brewed a mile north on Pine Street. Between Rescue Club, The Clean Mayor and Switchback N.A. next door, three of the alcohol-free drinks Vermont producers are best known for trace back to a few blocks of Burlington's South End, and two of them to the same person.

The pub is family-friendly, open from noon every day, closing at 9pm Wednesday through Saturday, 8pm on Sunday and 7pm on Monday and Tuesday. It is a five-minute walk from Switchback's tap room, which makes an afternoon of it entirely possible without a drop of alcohol.