Triple-Hopped: On The Ohio Summer Brewery Prowl

Despite signs of slowing growth, craft breweries are most certainly still a thing. According to an article in USA Today, the craft beer industry surpassed the 7,000 operating breweries by the end of 2018, according to the Brewers Association. Furthermore, the Association expects another thousand or so breweries will join the fray by the end of 2019. And while Ohio may not match the sheer numbers of craft breweries found in other states, they are more than holding their own in volume, ranking fourth in the country according to the Brewers Association.

These sheer numbers have made it more important than ever to tune in to their surrounding community. If you can’t draw the locals in on a regular basis, your chance to achieve that next level of destination brewery pretty much rates as nil.

In many ways, that had changed way of writing about the breweries from here on out. A few select ones are going to be just plain outstanding and likewise a few select ones are going to just plain terrible. Most are going to fall in that big bell curve area in the middle, and as long as they’re keeping the locals happy, they can be quite successful.

The Untimeliest of Sunsets

A sunset can be beautiful, even spectacular. Unless this big blue marble we reside on gets flipped off its orbit by some large celestial object, this planet's inhabitants can expect this phenomenon to occur at dusk for the foreseeable future.

Human beings might wish that sunsets on our life on this earth were equally as timely and regular. But mix in luck and circumstance with the complex organisms that we are, and we find some will live into the triple digits, and while others will find that their sun has set far too early.

There's almost always a bit of unfairness in the latter instance. It hurts even more when the person sports a larger-than-life personality and charisma that naturally draws others to them, who are genuinely nice and makes others feel better about themselves. Patrick and Joe, who left this world and my life roughly a decade apart, were two such people.

Two Do Right: Firestone Walker and Russian River Brewing

The welcoming fronts of Russian River Brewing's Santa Rosa, CA brewpub
and Firestone Walker's Barrelworks facility in Buellton, CA

Those who have read my blog before know that we are huge fans of two well-known California breweries in Firestone Walker and Russian River Brewing.  With the former, we had visited their two co-joined facilities in Buellton (their taproom and then their sour-focused Barrelworks facility - this blogpost details how we ended up visiting each separately), and for the latter, their iconic Santa Rosa brewpub seems is something of a mandatory stop when we're in the area, even if it is just to buy a couple of bottles of Pliny The Elder or one of their lovely sours to bring back to Ohio.

One would think that we're traversing over well-trod ground by writing about these two breweries again, but two recent developments for each brewery offered an opportunity to explore some new ground for us, and we were only more than happy to venture in again.

The Even Better CCBW Cheat Sheet: Volume 2 (05/16 - 05/19/2018)

Well, Columbus's Craft Beer Week seems to be off to a fine start, with plenty of fun events and one stalwart person already completing the latest edition of the Columbus Ale Trail. We personally found ourselves at a few events, including The Daily Growler's Infusapalooza and a rare tapping of some Cantillon Beers at the Winking Lizard Tavern and Lizardville, located right next to each other on Polaris Blvd. in Westerville.

The Ultimate CCBW Cheat Sheet: Volume 1 (05/11 through 05/15/2018)

As late as 2014, Columbus didn't have a Craft Beer Week to call its own

Amazing little factoid I'd like to share to you: by sheer chance in 2014, my wife and I stumbled into the first ever craft beer week for Greenville, South Carolina.  This fairly modest city of just over 60,000 people at the time hosted 20+ beer events that year, and we had a good time wandering around and trying out the craft wares of the area.

By contrast, Columbus, a city of more than 14 times Greenville's population and several times more breweries, had yet to have such a week to call its own.

Well, things have changed for certain: Columbus Craft Beer Week (CCBW) launched in 2015 and hasn't looked back since. Buoyed by an ever growing numbers (well over forty are projected to be operational by the end of his year), a highly successful corresponding Columbus Ale Trail promotion (more than 2,300 people earned the truly cool paddle and flight glass combo from 2017's version), and enthusiastic public support, I would say that CCBW has been a smashing success.

Hier spielt die Musik: Valter’s at The Maennerchor

My first encounter with the German culinary hybrid currywurst came courtesy of a
Columbus Männerchor booth at German Village's Village Lights holiday event

For all the influence that immigrants from Germany had in Columbus's early history, the culinary presence these days is somewhat muted.  German Village's Schmidt's is the most prominent purveyor these days, with their famed cream puffs and Bahama Mama sausages, but overall the numbers are/were slim, from the recently closed Juergens Bakery (due to be replaced by another German restaurant), Grandview Heights's German import Hofbräuhaus, the Crosswoods-area Wurst Und Bier, and a decidedly German take on fast food in Polaris's What´s for Döner.

Other options to sample German treats blend in a welcome dose of culture: Columbus's annual Oktoberfest celebration offers beer, music and other cultural elements in a family-friendly, festival-style setting. Additionally, the Brewery District-located Germania Society, which was established in the mid-1800s to help new German immigrants adapt to their new homeland, openly invites the public to join them in events such as their Sommerfests and Red, White and Brats.

Uncharted Waters: Anchor Public Taps (San Francisco, CA)

San Francisco's iconic Anchor Brewing Company

In the increasingly muddled world of what defines a craft brewer, the August 2017 news related to San Francisco's Anchor Brewing threw more haze into the equation. Essentially, the purchase of this craft beer pioneer by Japan-based Sapporo Holdings technically made Anchor a craft brewer no more, at least according to the current Brewers Association definition.

For many craft beer aficionados, the news was disappointing to say the least and, as a long time resident of the Bay Area, it had a similar effect.  With that said, it wasn't surprising, knowing the company's numerous struggles to keep its foothold within its home port (something we learned on a tour of the main brewery roughly eight years ago, ironically just before longtime owner/brewer Fritz Maytag’s sale to an investor group was widely known) as well as get its brews out to a larger audience. In a weird way, it made the brewery's new Anchor Public Taps space, advertised on Anchor Brewing's website as a "new pilot brewery and bar" and "one-of-a-kind San Francisco experience" a must visit on our recent travels to California to see what was going on.

Going for the Whole Grains: Return to Yellow Springs (Pt. 2)

A few of the memorial cobblestones you can find at The Women's Park
located in the southern reaches of the village of Yellow Springs

After ingesting our daily allotment of fiber with a little bit of a sweet treat (courtesy of the 22nd Annual Wool Gathering at Young's Jersey Dairy, the subject of my last blogpost) we ventured further down US 68 into the downtown area to grab our whole grain allotment for the day, in the form of some finely distilled spirits and brewed beers at two Yellow Springs institutions, conveniently located at the same light industrial complex just north of downtown.

Cincy Trip Pt. 3: From Sleepy Bees to Screaming Trees

Our Sunday focus in Cincinnati was to grab some screen time in front of the TV for a little football action. But of course, we needed some fuel in the system after a good night's sleep, so we headed to the Blue Ash branch of the popular local breakfast and lunch purveyor Sleepy Bee Cafe.

Started in December 2013 in the Cincinnati suburb of Oakley by John Hutton and Sandra Gross, the eatery's popularity prompted a second location a ten or so miles up Interstate 71 in Blue Ash (a third location in the heart of Downtown Cincinnati is nearing completion.)

If you hadn't guessed from the restaurant's name, the Sleepy Bee has an apiary theme, borne out of the owners' love of bees.  Honeycomb tile clusters and vaguely-beehive-shaped wire lamp covers dot the ceiling, while a flowery glass sculpture hangs over the bar area (unlike their Oakley location, the Blue Ash eatery has a liquor license.)

Going on a Quick Bender: Surly Brewing (Minneapolis, MN)

The Christmas season the last few years has typically brought some delicious
brews from the Upper Midwest to our joy (and enjoyment)

It's always nice to have some well-placed friends: every Christmas season, we looked forward to a visit from a long-time friend of my wife who lived out in Minnesota for the holidays. Aside from the very good company, we looked forward to her presents of some highly sought after regional brews with cult-like followings in Wisconsin's New Glarus and Minnesota's Surly Brewing.

On our recent vacation travels, we tried but couldn't make Wisconsin work with our timeline; however, we calculated a quick jaunt through Minnesota would be more than doable. With that determined, we figured a visit to Surly Brewing was a definite must-do.

Brews and 'Ques: Rhubarb in the Midwest Pickin' Out Brews

The "World's Largest Rhubarb" lies in Aledo, IL, the self-proclaimed
"Rhubarb Capital of the World" and annual Aledo Rhubarb Festival

I had started a new series of "'Brews and 'Ques" blogposts (link to the original post here) that highlighted some of the favorite antique store and craft beer/brewery pairings that we've encountered during our travels. Well, it didn't seem right to not test out that combo during our recent vacation road trip, and as it turned out, this one included something of a famous one, especially if you're a History Channel fan.

Beer along the National Road: Black Acre (Indianapolis, IN) and Hairless Hare (Vandalia, OH)

The Unofficial Official Map of Breweries Visited: 614ortyniner Edition

Now mind you, we have done our share of brewery hopping (we stand at about 150 breweries visited between the two of us heading into August), but our most recent road trip/vacation was really focused on the Great Eclipse of America.

So the multiple number of breweries we actually ended up visiting in seven different states was something of a happy (and tasty) accident. We thought we'd start looking at our beery contingent with the two breweries that provided the bookend experiences for our big road trip, which both happen to lie next to US Route 40, more famously known as The National Road.

West Side Story: Tailspin Brewing and Moeller Brew Barn

Once a former major port along the Miami-Erie Canal, the town of
Delphos in western Ohio is a much quieter destination these days

Perhaps one of the more underrated inspirations behind our travels (and, by default, this blog) has been our increasing pursuit of antiques and any far-flung shops we can find. As we've discovered, Ohio has plenty of fun such shops scattered within its borders, and that fact has in the past couple months taken us to both sides of the Columbus metro on Interstate 70 (Dayton/Springfield and Cambridge) and to the southeast along US 33 (Lancaster, Logan and Athens.)

Well, similar to our I-70 travels, we decided US 33 was worth a drive up to the northwest side of the state with antique stores in Delphos and Van Wert turning out to be pleasing looks into days gone by. We've also found nothing quite closes out a day of antique-seeking like a few good brews, and these travels allowed us to visit two of the more remote of Ohio's ever-growing collection of craft breweries.

Pick of the Liter: Combustion Brewing

One of the blaring headlines in the craft beer world to hit early in 2017 was one that might worry aficionados at first glance. Growth in what seemed to be at times an unstoppable juggernaut of a business model in the 2010s slowed dramatically in 2016: Brewers Association statistics noted that the segment grew only 6% in volume (compared to 12-15% in prior years) and ticked up only a notch (0.1%) in total market share.

What is somewhat hidden in the statistics is that the smaller segment of younger brewpubs and breweries that open up in under-served communities continues to boom. Typically, these establishments are much more tuned in to their surrounding community and, when done correctly, are transformed almost instantaneously into local hangouts. This niche is one that the newly opened Combustion Brewery and Taproom definitively falls into.

The Science of Good Taste: CoSi + C-B-C + Ac(tual) BeEr

Before and After: 20 years and still going strong for CBC Restaurant

Reliability can be considered a boring concept in the food and drink world, but frankly I'm good with that, especially if that reliability ventures onto the positive side of the ledger.

Let's start with long time Brewery District mainstay CBC Restaurant. Formerly associated with Columbus Brewing Company via area restaurant maven Cameron Mitchell, CBC has pretty much kept the slightly more upscale than typical brewpub theme, crowd-friendly hangout (plenty of parking as well as an outdoor patio) atmosphere going for 20 years now, long after Mitchell sold the brewpub to its current owners and Columbus Brewing left the space for its current west side climes (Lenny Kolada's Commonhouse Ales now occupies the brewery area in the back of the space.)

Return to the Trails (Pt. 4): Go (North)west, Young Craft Beer Seeker

Earlier posts from this current "Return to the Ale Trails" series:
Part 1: Jumping Onboard The Trail Train - Newcomers to the Scene
Part 2: Ales for what Ails You - A Closer Look at Fresno, California's Ale Trail promotion
Part 3: The Columbus Ale Trail (Year 3) - Bigger and Better Than Ever

Part 1 of my original 4-part Ale Trails series (written in November 2016) can be found here.

This final part of my current Ale Trail series proved to be one that piqued my curiosity the most, as it delved into a scene that I knew existed but did not have many real details about.

While it doesn't make up the entire equation of what gets an area's craft beer scene noticed on a larger scale, overall exposure plays a huge role. In some ways, that's what Fresno (Part 2 of this series) and Columbus (Part 3 of this series) are seeking, albeit at different stages of the process.

In recent months, my spouse and I have noticed the appearance of Canadian craft beer on the shelves of our local stores, and the few bottles that we tried were a far cry from anything produced by a couple of big time north-of-the-border beer producers that happen to rhyme with Cabatt and Polson.

This is why a couple of Canadian newcomers to this compendium of ale trails particularly intrigued me. We had mentioned the Niagara Ale Trail in the first part of this series, and it is nice to know it's not that hard to grab a craft beer after coming up close and personal with one of the most spectacular natural wonders in North America.

However, it was the existence of the British Columbia Ale Trail, an area that I had known mainly for other things (the best Chinese food outside of China, numerous natural wonders, and one of the most popular movie filming substitute locations for various other world cities) that inspired me to dig deeper into the world of craft beer both in our neighbor to the north and British Columbia.

Return to the Trails (Pt. 1): Jumping Onboard the Ale Trail Train

The Summit Brew Path, Ohio's second ale trail promotion behind
the Columbus Ale Trail, has happily exceeded all expectations

In November, I wrote a series of posts sampling some of the ale trails of the country, starting with what has been a very successful such promotion here in the Columbus, Ohio area. I also then compared some of the other similar promotions in relation to metro areas similar to Columbus on a population basis as well as both a general and specific look at some of the other more interesting promotions that I found across the country.

Six months later, I thought it would be fun to update this series with a look at some of the mostly newer promotions that have appeared for craft beer aficionados to tackle, as well as take a look at what awaits those who undertake this year's version of the Columbus Ale Trail as well as the associated Columbus Craft Beer Week.

Destination Dayton: The Wright Stuff and A Little Hop Funk

While "The Gem City" may be Dayton, Ohio's official nickname (for an interesting look at the origins of the nickname, check out this article by Yellow Springs-based radio station WYSO 91.3), it is the city's motto, "The Birthplace of Aviation", that most people latch onto.

Two prominent examples of this aviation bent lie in Wright-Patterson AFB as well as its resident popular destination for plane nerds around the world in the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. Other hints of this heritage lie in the mascot of the University of Dayton (the Flyers) and one of the most prominent craft breweries in the area in Warped Wing.

Of course, the king daddy of all this lies in the form of two local natives with the last name of Wright, who hauled their winged construct from Ohio down to Kitty Hawk, NC, for the first ever heavier-than-air powered aircraft flight in 1903. This history, and a lot more than you might expect, is available for viewing at the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.

In the Shadow of Giants (Pt. 2): Big Beer vs. Big Beers

When it comes to Budweiser plants being the only game in town, the cities of Fairfield, CA (as detailed in my last post on Heretic Brewing) and Columbus share that distinction. Established in 1968, the Columbus-located production brewery predates its west coast counterpart by about 8 years.

Unlike its California brethren, however, Columbus' Budweiser plant opened up with some brewing competition in the area, mainly in the form of August Wagner. At that time, Wagner, which launched in 1905 as Gambrinus Brewing and Bottling, held the unique distinction as the only brewery in the city established prior to Prohibition to actually survive and function as a brewery after the law's repeal.

The Brewery District-located King Gambrinus statue, said to be modeled on
longtime Columbus brewer August Wagner, is the most prominent reminder
of Wagner's pre-Prohibition-era brewery remaining in the city

Six years later, Anheuser Busch emerged as the lone area brewing presence. Beset with aging equipment and financial problems, August Wagner Brewing was forced to shut operations early in 1974. Since then, Budweiser reigned as the only commercial brewer in the area until the second iteration of Columbus Brewing, started up by current Temperance Row Brewing brewer Scott Francis, set up shop in 1988.

Nowadays, Columbus' craft brewery roll call numbers closer to forty, but even combined they almost certainly don't compare volume-wise to the local Budweiser plant's roughly 10 million barrels of production in 2015, according to this Dayton Daily News article.  Perhaps it's only appropriate that the Columbus craft brewery within closest stone's throw of the city's "Big Beer" representative comes at the term from a completely different direction.

In The Shadow of Giants (Pt. 1): An Oasis for the Heretics

Fairfield-based Jelly Belly, one of the top manipulators of sugary media
you can find in California's Solano County

As one travels eastward on Interstate 80 into the Suisun Valley in California's Solano County, a billboard or two may alert the uninformed that Fairfield, the county seat, is home to one of the most famous of candy confectioners in Jelly Belly. As my spouse and I will attest, the factory tour is definitely more than worth the time, with a weekday far preferable as you can see the machinery in full action,

Driving up a little farther up the freeway, this same newcomer to the area may catch a whiff another uniquely sweet smell not too long afterward. The source of this scent is quickly identified - just to the south of the interstate, the sizable structure (700,000 square feet worth, in fact) that is the Fairfield branch of international beer maker Anheuser Busch chugs away, like it has since 1976 and all by its seeming lonesome.

Digging deeper, one will discover that this has not always been the case - the small but plucky brewpub Blue Frog Grog & Grill plied its craft beer offerings for locals in the know starting in 1999, making a solid run as an independent business until the owners sold their business in 2013 (in a somewhat odd twist, the brews have been adopted as restaurant chain Fuddrucker's craft beer offerings in the Bay Area.)

But what Fairfield may have lost in 2013 by the Blue Frog's disappearance it gained back in spades later that year. Some would even say there was a great deal of heresy involved.