Dayton Beertasting Association

Wednesday morning is spent checking out of our cottage in the woods and checking into our hotel in Athens,  The Ohio University Inn.  My wife, Sally, also spends part of her day doing some genealogy research.  Part of her research takes her to a complex of old buildings now known as The Ridges, but a hundred years ago was known as the Athens Lunatic Asylum.  Constructed originally to be a humane refuge for the mentally ill, many of which were shell-shocked  Civil War Veterans, the hospital became known in the 1950’s for treating patients with shock therapy, torture and lobotomies (Dr. Walter J. Freeman perfected his technique for the Trans-Orbital Lobotomy while employed at the hospital ). The horrific history of the mental hospital along with the 2,000 gravestones scattered along the nearby hills make this one of the spookiest, and some even say haunted, places in the world.

I meet up with my friends Rick and Missy, who also came up this way from Dayton for this event, at Jackie O’s Brewery, the only local brewery in Athens.  There’s a  Meet the Brewer event, and Brad Clark is on hand in person to tell us about the wonderful creations he’s come up, including a Java the Stout (Coffee Stout), Black Betty (a raspberry and vanilla flavored porter aged in bourbon oak barrels), The Dark Apparition (A Russian Imperial Stout), The Barbarian (an 11 month old hopped barleywine  aged in Oak Barrels), and The Thorogood (a version of his peat-smoked strong scotch ale again aged in bourbon oak barrels — 1 bourbon, 1 scotch, 1 beer). These are some of the richest and flavorful collection of dark beers I’ve ever had in one setting and Rick and I are so impressed, we decide to rename all of our children “Brad” in honor of the brewer.  What I found most interesting in talking to Brad (the original), was that you couldn’t find a Pale Ale or IPA or variation on his beer menu.  It’s not that he wouldn’t like to brew some high hopped beers, but with the current hop shortage, a small brewer like himself can’t get the right hops necessary to make these type of beers — at least not at a price that would make the beer affordable to his clientele.  So the IPA’s loss is the stout and porters gain and Brad has done a fantastic job of using his creativity to make a truly memorable drinking experience without any of the high hopped beers that seem so mandatory these days.

Our conversation with Brad evolves into the most unusual beers featured at Brew Week, which quickly turns to the Peanutbutter Cup Coffee Porter brewed by Willoughby Brewing Company.  According to Brad, the inside scoop is that the bar featuring this beer was on their last barrel of this beer already, so he recommended making The Pigskin our next stop.  We weren’t about to come to Athens and miss out on Peanut butter beer, so we immediately find The Pigskin on our map and head in that direction. They had 4 different beers from Willoughby, and we sampled them all including the Strawberry Hefeweizen, One Hopper IPA, and the Belgian Moon Beam belgium style wheat beer.  All of these were above average, but I was far and away blown away by the Penautbutter Cup Coffee Porter.  Forget the name,  I was surprised to find there was a rich, intense, coffee flavor to this beer, followed by just a faint hint of peanut butter finish.  Expecting it to be primarily a novelty item, I found it very drinkable and welcome.  My only disappointment was that I wanted to take some back to Dayton, but they refused to sell me a growler of this beer.  Although given the limited supply, this was quite understandable.

We next head back to our hotel, where we have tickets to another formal tasting — this one with The Columbus Brewing Company lead by their master brewer, Eric Bean.  Once again, I have no problem paying a small surcharge for a taste event like this when something is added to the event.  I even include Sally and my kids (aged 3 & 5) at this event, and afterwards am complimented on how well the kids  behaved (lucky for me the complimenters have not seen them at bed time).  We taste the Ohio Honey Wheat, Apricot Ale, Pale Ale, Mecs County Gold and  Columbus Barley Wine.  I enjoyed the Apricot Ale and Barley Wine the most — the barley wine was described as 25% sugar, a ton of malts and just enough hops to balance.  We had a long Q & A session, in a large part due to fact Rick and I had spent an afternoon of beer tasting and did not appear shy in asking any questions that popped into our heads regardless of the relevance to the existing conversation.  Our thanks go out to Eric and the local distributor, Kenny Kerr, for doing a great job in answering our questions.

I invite Rick and Missy to have dinner with us at the hotel, and we have a wonderful dinner together in which I don’t think our little girls stopped giggling throughout the course of the evening.  I plan on giving Rick a formal invitation to future local beer tasting events and vouch that he would make a wonderful addition to our organization.   After dinner, Missy volunteers to be our designated driver and we make a couple more disappointing stops.  We go back to the Pigskin but find out they indeed our out of the Peanutbutter Coffee.  So instead we stop into the Cat’s Eye Saloon, which is featuring beers from  The Brew Keeper, another brewery in Cleveland.  We tasted their Hops Infusion IPA, White Storm Imperial Cream Ale, and West 12 Trappist Style Ale.  I may have to give these another chance on another night, but on this particular night something wasn’t quite right with these beers.  I asked the bartender if she had any peanut butter beer on tap, but regrettably they were all out of any peanut butter beer as well.