Hop Farming in SW Ohio?

Cool Kickstarter for the SW Ohio brewing community. Osborn Brewing is a homebrew supply store in Monroe. Brent Osborn is teaming up with a local farmer to produce locally grown hops. They are hoping to have funding in place now and have hops available as soon as 2014.

Lots of great folks involved in this project. Really cool options at the upper end of the donation scale, such as working with Jeff Fortney (who brewed for local breweries Rivertown and the now-defunct Wooden Shoe), Jeffrey McElfresh of the newly opened Yellow Springs Brewery, or Gordon Strong, who holds just about every award possible for homebrew judging and literally wrote the style guidelines.

Photos from Yellow Springs Brewery opening

File this under, er, better late than never. 

I was out of town the weekend the Yellow Springs Brewery opened, so I missed the big bash. Luckily, Jared was there to snap a few photos and take some notes. 

The grand opening saw a steady stream of patrons from the minute the door opened until hours later, at closing. Limited seating in the capacity crowd, but guests didn't seem to mind. Lots of YS residence and Dayton locals showed up to support the brewery. 

Great beers, all which were clean and crisp. The Captain Stardust Saison, which was a later tapping, kicked first. The 6.5% ABV draft had a nice floral note. Other noted favorites were the Dark Mild (3.9% ABV) English-style ale and the Porter (5.8% ABV).

I'm hoping to make a trip out there soon. I've been able to try a few of the beers on tap around town and have been very impressed. Until then, I'll just have to gawk at these pics from the opening. Nate, Lisa, and Jeffrey seem to have a good thing going. 

2012 Ohio Beer Tastings (MSD made the list!)

Rick Armon at Beer.Ohio.com has a listing of all of the Ohio Beer events scheduled for 2012 (there are a lot) and the MSD Brew Ha-Ha made the list. Lots of good beer here, with more breweries popping up all the time. If you don't make the Brew Ha-Ha, you owe it to yourself to at least check out some of the other beer events here.

Event: Montessori School of Dayton Craft Beer Tasting

Very excited about January 28th, when my kids' school will be presenting our first craft beer tasting. We've been planning this over the last few months and I've personally been working with McAllister at Premium to put together an exciting and diverse beer list. A few last minute details to nail down, but it's looking like a great inaugural event. Dayton beer folks, this is open to the public and the crowd at the school is very cool. Check out the detail below and get tickets on EventBrite:

The Montessori School of Dayton (MSD) and their families presents their first annual craft beer and food tasting event on Saturday, Jan. 28. Sample up to 20 beers from of Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania’s best craft brews: Weyerbacher, Troegs, Stoudts, Ohio Brewing, North Peak, New Holland, Founder’s, Dark Horse, Brew Kettle, and Bell’s. Little Miami River Catering will pair appetizers and desserts with several of the beers for a unique beer and food pairing experience. Beers provided by Premium Beverage Supply, with soft drinks by Earth Fare.

The Brew Ha-Ha takes place on Jan. 28 from 5 -10 pm. Order tickets online at http://msdbrewhaha.eventbrite.com or visit MSD at 2900 Acosta Street, Kettering, OH 45420 to purchase tickets during normal business hours M-F 8am-4pm. For more information call 293-8986. Tickets are $25 per person in advance and $30 the night of the events. Proceeds benefit the MSD Capital Improvement fund.

UPDATE: Check out the awesome beer list, including the area exclusive premier tapping of Double Trouble.

1,952 Craft Breweries in the US (and counting)

Thanks to Jay Brookstone for this interesting bit of news. Apparently we are tipping near the 2000 brewery mark in the US (and this can't possibly count the three new breweries planning to open in the Greater Miami Valley this year).

Cool piece of artwork illustrates this fact:

Posters are available at Printfactry.com, where you can also zoom in on the image to see your favorite brew.

Dayton Beer Company

Big day for beer in the Miami Valley! Mark Fisher at the Dayton Daily News just posted about the soon-to-be opened Dayton Beer Company. Great news for me, as it'll be in Kettering, about a mile from the house!

As Mark Fisher reports:

When up and running, the Dayton Beer Company will sell craft beers such as pale ale, blond ale, porter and hefeweizen for retail. The label on each type of beer celebrates aspects of Dayton’s heritage, such as Inventors IPA and Patterson Pale Ale, named for NCR founder John Patterson.

“We want Dayton to be proud of its history and to give Daytonians a product they could call their own,” said Hilgeman, a 2005 Alter High School graduate who holds a marketing and international business degree from the University of Cincinnati.

Can't wait! Last spring, I wrote an article musing whether we would see locally produced beer again. Toxic Brewing Company should be opening later this year downtown, Vitruvian Brewing Company in Yellow Springs, and now Dayton Beer Company, it looks like the drought may be ending.

Yellow Springs Brewery in the works

Thanks to Brewtensils for the link. Looks like Yellow Springs is getting a brewery:

After years of dreaming, planning and home brewing, Shane and Jacqui Creepingbear are launching their long-awaited Vitruvian Brewing Company. The couple began moving into the MillWorks space formerly occupied by Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute on Jan. 1, and will spend the first two months remodeling for beer production. They expect to have their first brew sometime in March.

Read more at the Yellow Springs News.

Craft Brew Tax Cut Proposed

Bloomberg has a great article today about some proposed legislation to give tax cuts to craft brewers:

This legislation would roll back excise taxes on small brewing companies by anywhere from 11 percent to 50 percent. The current tax rates, adopted in 1976 before the rise of micro- and craft breweries in the 1990s, have never been updated, requiring many brewers to pay levies calibrated for much larger operations once considered small.

Looks like some Ohio brewing folks are part of the push to make this happen:

The push for changes in the tax code is being led by the Brewers Association and a group of brewers and brewery employees, including Patrick Conway, a founder of Cleveland- based Great Lakes Brewing Co.; Greg Hardman, of Cincinnati-based Christian Moerlein Brewing Co.; and Steve Hindy, president of Brooklyn Brewery

Interesting that part of what this legislation would do is reset the ceiling so that some of the larger craft brewers, like Boston Brewing company, would still qualify. The makers of Sam Adams may seem like a big brewery, but as the article points out, they still only produce one 50th of what AB does. Sam Adams and Yuengling, also mentioned, are much more interesting choices than pretty much anything AB puts out, so I love to see them get a leg up on the macro-brews.

Ohio and Texas Beer Laws

Two interesting brew laws in the news this week.

First, it looks like brewers in Ohio will be allowed to offer samples onsite without having to purchase an additional liquor license. Before Wednesday's ruling, brewers that wanted to offer tastings onsite had to purchase an additional license, at a cost of ~$3,900 annually. Here's a write-up in today's Akron Beacon Journal. (Thanks to Natalie at Belmont Party Supply for the heads up on this one).

Second, it looks like Texas may finally get its act together and eliminate the arcane and ridiculous naming convention that it forces brewers to use in the state. Texas law currently mandates that beers under 4 % ABV be labeled "Beer" and anything stronger is labeled either "Ale" or "Malt Liquor." The law is absurd because an ale is designated an ale not by its strength, but simply by the type of yeast used to produce it. Texas also blocked efforts by breweries to allow customers to know where to buy their products. Yesterday a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks overturned the laws, citing that they are unconstitutional. Big victory for Texas beer aficionados and brewers. Here's the write-up in the Star Telegram.

Send Beer

Beer2buds is an awesome concept too long in the making. The site lets you buy beers for your friends, even when you are 200+ miles away. Here's how it works:

1) Add your friend's contact info and some money via PayPal.
2) You friend gets an email or text with a redemption code.
3) Your friend goes to the website, picks a bar, and gets a voucher (print of via iPhone) to take to their local bar.
4) The bartender at the local pub redeems the voucher for a beer or cash.

I posted a link to the site, you know, in case anyone wanted to try it out by buying me a cold one.

Note: So apparently it isn't working here in Dayton yet, but there's a spot where you can suggest bars to add to the program. Feel free to send some notes to our local better beer bars.

Beer Golden Age Infographic

William Bostwick and Jessi Rymill, co-authors of Craft Beer, posted an interesting infographic in Co.Design on Friday confirming that we are indeed in a golden age of beer. Some interesting tidbits:

• Outside of the Prohibition period, 1978 marked the lowest number of American breweries (44) since around 1810.
• In ~30 years since, we've added 1551 breweries in that time.
• The peak in 1873 (4,131), although it seems unlikely that we'll ever hit that number again, given that there were likely a lot of breweries because many of them were small and didn't have the distribution channels we have now. Output was tiny (under 12 million barrels).
• Today's breweries output about 200 million barrels annually. That number has stayed static since the 1980s, but a higher proportion of that number each year is coming from small craft brewers.

(thanks to Jonathan for the link)

Good Beer Writer, Lousy Self-Promoter

I've been really busy writing lots of good beer-related stuff, but I've missed posting a few of my Dayton City Paper articles. A shame, since one of them was the cover article a few weeks back--probably the article I'm the most pleased with to date. Time to rectify that. Here are three articles that you may have missed:

Craft Brew Around Town
original publication date: April 12, 2011
A guide to some of the best places in Dayton (and surrounding 'burbs) to pair craft beer with sports, music, food, and cinema.



Do-It-Yourself Craft Beer
original publication date: April 26, 2011
An intro to homebrewing for the non-brewer, with an overview of the basics. Don't miss the DCP Summer Wheat Ale recipe, a straightforward ale that's as easy to drink as it is to make.


Buckeye Vodka
original publication date: May 10, 2011
Buckeye Vodka brings microdistilling to the Miami Valley, with their high end artisanal vodka with a mid-range price point. It's become my house vodka.

Pints for Prostates BrewTensils Brewout

On May 7^th from 9 am to 5 pm, in collaboration with National Homebrew Day, Miami Valley BrewTensils will be hosting a local brewout to raise funds for Pints For Prostates, a national charity designed to raise awareness of prostate cancer screening through the universal language of beer. Local homebrewers will be making their beers in the parking lot behind the store, and BrewTensils will be selling the Brewer’s Best PSA IPA ingredient kit, with a portion of proceeds for each kit sold going to Pints for Prostates

The event will include a local raffle for prizes from Belmont Party Supply, BrewTensils, Trolley Stop, South Park Tavern, Pizza Factory, Chappy's Tap Room and Grille, Boston's Bistro, and King's Table Bar and Grille. In addition, enter into the national Pints for Prostate raffle for a vacation in the beer capitals of Europe! The trip for two goes to Prague, Bamberg, and Munich for 9 nights, September 9-19 and includes airfare, hotel, brewery tours, Oktoberfest, pubcrawls and transportation (a $7,500 total value). Tickets for this raffle are $10 each, three for $25, or seven for $50 (all proceeds go to Pints for Prostate) with the drawing held nationally on July 31, 2011. For more info please visit www.pintsforprostates.org or www.brewtensils.com.

Cavalier Distributing Earthquake Relief

Cavalier Distributing is donating $2 to a relief fund for every new email address added to their weekly newsletter. Cavalier is one of the two or three local distributors responsible for the great craft beer selection in the Miami Valley and their newsletters are always interesting and informative, so this is a can't miss. Here's the text of their release on the project:

Cavalier Distributing will donate $2.00 to tsunami relief efforts for every new subscriber to our email newsletter between now and March 25, 2011, up to $10,000. Please forward this message to fellow craft beer fans in Ohio to make this effort a success.

If you are receiving this email as a forwarded message, please click the following link to subscribe: Subscribe to Cavalier's Weekly Newsletter

Update: So far we have added 632 email addresses to our weekly newsletter. Please help get the word out so we can reach our goal of donating $10,000.

Technorati Tags: Calavier Distributing, Japan, tsunami, earthquake, beer, craft beer, brewing, homebrew

Lenten Beer

As a follow-up to my recent article about the connection between beer and food, here's a story of a newspaper editor who plans to emulate European monks by limiting himself to only beer and water for the 40 days of lent.

Technorati Tags:Lent, monks, Abbey ale, Trappist, food, beer, craft beer, brewing, homebrew

News: Thai9 Tapping Cask Hopslam Tonight

Thai9, the Thai and Sushi restaurant with a great beer list in the Oregon district, is tapping a cask of Bell's Hopslam tonight. I'm told it's one of two such casks in Ohio. This is a great beer in bottles and on tap, so I can't wait to try to the cask version. Beer flows around 7ish tonight.

Also, Thai9 is part of the Dayton Growler Co-Op (although I'd be shocked if Hopslam is included), which, along with Trolley Stop, South Park Tavern, and Blind Bob's, allows customers to pick up and fill growlers to enjoy their favorite draft beers at home. Here's the link to Blind Bob's blurb about it, as well as an article with more details by Mark Fisher of the Dayton Daily News.

Technorati Tags: beer, brewing, craft beer, homebrew, Bell's Hopslam, Bell's Brewing, Hopslam, Thai9, Growler Co-Op, Blind Bob's, South Park Tavern, The Trolley Stop, Dayton, Ohio, cask ale

News: Belgian Golden Ales in the NY Times

Veteran NY Times beer correspondent Eric Asimov teams up again with Florence Fabricant and a guest--this time Resto owner Christian Pappanicholas (Resto is a Belgian focused Manhattan restaurant). Their target--to tackle Belgians and Belgian-style ales. As Asimov notes, Belgians often defy categorization, and despite trying to cast somewhat of a net around the Belgian Golden Strong Ale style, there's still quite a bit of variety in the mix.

Twenty beers, half from Belgium, nine from the US and one Canadian brew complete the spread. Interestingly, the top pick is not from the mother country, but rather from Ron Jeffries' Dexter, MI based Jolly Pumpkin. In fact, of the top four, three are American, and two are Jeffries' brews (Jeffries also brews for Leelanau).

A surprise that isn't a surprise--Duvel, the originator of the style, didn't make the top pick. Historically, I have loved this beer, but as of late, I've noticed the same freshness problem Asimov notes. Brouwerij Duvel Moortgat, what is going on?

Asimov usually accompanies his articles with a post on his blog, The Pour. Check out the post on Belgian ales and be sure to read through the comments for readers' takes.

Technorati Tags: Belgians, Belgian Golden Strong Ale, Eric Asimov, Resto, beer, craft beer, brewing, homebrew

News: H.R. 4278 = Craft Beer Stimulus

From a post on the BeerAdvocate Forum (you'll need to be a member to read the thread, but I'm hoping no one at the site minds my re-posting of this article, since it behooves us all to get the word out. Thanks for RicoBrew for originally posting.):

H.R. 4278 the "Small Brewers Stimulus"

Imagine that, bipartisanship can happen as long as craft beer is involved. HR 4278 is a graduated excise tax reduction bill introduced by Rep. Neal (D-MA) and Rep. Brady (R-TX)

The wording of the bill will give brewers who produce less than 60,000 barrels/year a federal excise tax cut from $7/barrel to $3.50/barrel. Between 60,000 and 2,000,000 barrels per year will get a rate cut from $18 to $16 per barrel produced.

The bill is currently trying to make its way through the Ways and Means committee (which Rep. Neal is the Chairperson). The Brewers Association is busy trying to get their member breweries mobilized and calling their representatives to cosponsor the bill. Info can be viewed here:

http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/government-affairs/current-issues/show?title=graduated-excise-tax-legislation-introduced

Also a nice video from News 4:

http://cbs4denver.com/video/?id=67298@kcnc.dayport.com

Will this mean cheaper beer? No. But it'll help your favorite brewery grow and thrive despite this down economy and also create jobs.

Technorati Tags: craft brewers, beer tax, tax, H.R. 4278, beer, craft beer, brewing, homebrew

News: If It's February, It Must Be NIPAC Time

Every February, Brewing News launches bracket picks for the National IPA championship this month. One hundred and twenty-eight IPAs go head to head for the national title in rounds similar to the NCAA tourney. Get your picks in soon--the first round starts Feb 12th.

Technorati Tags:Brewing News, NIPAC, IPA, beer, craft beer, brewing, homebrew

News: Mike Schwartz Interviews Eric Wallace of Left Hand Brewing

This post is a bit overdue, but with all the Belgian beers, I've barely been able to keep up. A few months ago, the local craft beer purveyor/homebrew store, Belmont Party Supply, expanded, building out an adjacent storefront strictly for homebrewing and cheese making supplies. Belmont and Miami Valley BrewTensils, as the new space is called, have been stepping up their web presence as well, with a Twitter feed, a relaunched and easier to use website, and now what one hopes is the first of many brewer interviews. Below is the Vimeo feed from Mike's interview with Eric Wallace, of Left Hand Brewing. And if you are in Dayton, be sure to check out the store fronts. Even before the move, Belmont had one of the best beer selections I've ever seen--and now, with the homebrew equipment in its own space, there's plenty of room to expand even further.

Belmont Party Supply Interview with Eric Wallace from Schwartzbeer on Vimeo.

Technorati Tags: Belmont Party Supply, Left Hand Brewing, Schwartzbeer, Eric Wallace, Miami Valley BrewTensils, beer, craft beer, brewing, homebrew