World of Beer's Best of Ohio Tap Takeover

Every Bar in Lakewood promotes three major points, adventure, community and supporting your local businesses.   Today’s blog is about the latter, buying local.  A part of supporting our local businesses, that we sometimes forget, is that it’s not just about our local retailers but also about our local producers.  The manufacturers, the growers and in this case the brewers make great things.  Getting to buy a product that you know was create in your home state, or even town, gives us that extra bit of pride.  Getting to drink something that was made by my "neighbors" makes me happy and makes me feel like I have a closer relationship with my beer.  On Friday, I was invited to World of Beer’s (bar #42) for their Best of Ohio Tap Takeover.

The World of Beer put 48 Ohio brewed beers into their taps.  These covered over two dozen breweries from all over the state.  They ranged our hometown Lakewood’s own Buckeye Brewing to one of my favorite’s Jackie O’s from Athens’ Ohio.  Breweries of all ages attended, from the established, Great Lakes Brewing Company, to plucky new comers like Franklin Brewing Company.  What these breweries have in common is creating products that aren’t just beer.  If you have enough money, know how, and cleanliness abilities you make a good enough beer.  Hell, you can make good beer in your basement.  These breweries do something beyond just making beer.  They are crafting beer.  This may just sound like a play of semantics but to the people that work at these breweries it’s everything.  They spend countless hours tweaking recipes to be the exact beer that they want to exist.  This Friday they got to show themselves off.  It was impressive that there are enough great types of beer in Ohio to fill forty-eight taps  and that we could have used at least another couple dozen beers.  I tried out five of them and still wished there was another half dozen I would have drank as well.  Well, my liver disagrees but what are you gonna do.

The event itself was odd.  There weren't any of the breweries present there like I was told, or at least they weren't obviously present.  There was also a weird smell coming from the sinks or garbage that made us move to a different location in the bar.  It basically felt like a normal day at World of Beer (minus the smell) but with a ton of Ohio beer on tap.  But they had soooo much local beer that they made up for it.

My first beer was Crafted Artisan Meadery, Meadjito.  Artisan is one of four quality meaderies in Ohio.  For those with a good palate, you’ll pick up hints of mint, lime juice, and of course, honey.  If you aren’t a mead connoisseur, it’s going to taste like a mildly sweet and sour white wine.

Next was Actual Brewing’s Photon.  I couldn’t detect much smell to it and it didn’t have a head.  This was a good beer for those trying to bridge the gap from light beers.  It’s very fizzy with little taste.  There’s a slight after taste to it as well.  It’s a nice choice for the light beer drinkers but not too interesting to your average craft beer aficionado.

I haven’t had anything from Fathead’s Brewery in a while and tonight it was time to make amends.  I didn’t even have a choice.  How do you not drink something called Fat Head’s Bonehead Red Rye Cask w/ Pineapple and Habanero.  It had a nice head to it and a soft foam.  They used the rye well, where many breweries have failed.  There should have been a piney and pineapple taste but it had trouble competing with the habanero's heat.  The spiciness took over more and more of the taste as you drank, including sticking around for a long after taste.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it and would get it again.  I want to try it with something to eat.  I believe that its complex taste will enhance a variety of foods.

My favorite beer of the night was Elevator’s Horny Goat.  I am always impressed with what Elevator produces and tonight was no different.  Horny Goat is a dark beer that even Kelly, who doesn’t like dark beer, liked a lot.  Its taste combination of whiskey, vanilla, and coconut creates a taste that’s more than its parts.  Horny Goat just got better as you went.  You must drink this, it will raise your expectations for beer and yourself.  Perhaps this was simply because it was my fourth beer in.

My last beer of the evening was Brother Drake's Apple Pie Mead.  This is not a shy mead.  It has a strong sweet aroma of apple, alcohol and cough syrup.  It’s a sweet mead, whose taste is heavy with apple and honey.  The combination can come up almost fake due to its potency.  This strong apple pie taste hides its 13% alcohol content.  This is a beer whose goal is to blast you in the face with apple pie, then knock you on your ass.

These are experiences that can’t get with a domestic beer.  Our Ohio craft beers, instead of being part of the background of getting drunk, are part of our experience.  I enjoyed getting to know some new Ohio beers.  Thank you to the people that crafted them for us.

These are the other beers included for the World of Beer's Best of Tap Takeover:

Crafted Artisin Meadery Meadjito 
Brothers Drake Apple Pie Mead 
Brothers Drake Sour Paw Paw Mead 
Black Box Abbey Ale
Black Box Cloud 9
Thirsty Dog Brewing Co. Barrel Aged Cerberus
Thirsty Dog Whippet Wheat 
Rockmill Petit Saison
JAFB-Wooster Brewery Harvest Saison
JAFB New Stunt IPA
Actual Brewing Ingenuity
Actual Brewing Photon
Great Lakes Brewing Company Space Walker
Great Lakes The Wright Pilsner
Great Lakes Mango Perry Firkin
4 String Backstage Blonde
4 String Big Star White IPA
Hoppin' Frog Brewery Turbo Shandy
Hoppin' Frog BORIS the Crusher
Buckeye Sunstream
Buckeye Hippie IPA
Jackie O's Pub & Brewery Paw Paw Wheat
Jackie O's Galaxy Mandala DIPA
Jackie O's Dark Apparition
Catawba Island Whitecap Wit
Catawba Island Double Couple
Franklin Brewing Company Ltd. Company Ltd. Americas Gold
Franklin Brewing Milk Street Stout
Willoughby Brewing Company Peanut Butter Cup Porter
Fat Head's Brewery Jack Straw
Fat Heads Bonehead
Fat Heads Bonehead Firkin w/ Habanero and Pineaplle
Fat Heads Bumbleberry
Portside Distillery Pop Smoke Rauchbeer
Portside Brewing Ironclad
Lagerheads Smokey Robinson
Seventh Son Brewing Golden Ratio IPA
Seventh Son American Strong
Brew Kettle White Rajah
Brew Kettle Black Rajah
Columbus Brewing Restaurant Bodhi
Columbus Brewing Dalton
Mt. Carmel Deeper Roots Coffee Brown
Elevator Brewing Company Horny Goat
Griffin Cider Lemon Blues
Griffin Cider Honey Oak Nitro
Rivertown Roebling Porter Nitro

Lakewood Wine & Craft Beer Festival

I started off with 15 drink tickets and cool 4 oz glass to drink my 15 beers out of.

Got to meet the man behind Franklin Brewing Company in Elyria, OH, Howard Ross.  I also, tried their America's Gold.  It's a kolch style ale.  What that means to you is some extra hoppy taste mixed with a big drop in bitterness giving you an interesting tasting but very drinkable beer.

www.franklinbrewing.co

Beer #2 was Harpoon's Winter Warmer.  It's full of good flavors including ginger bread without being over powering or nauseating.  It looks to be one of my favorite Christmas ales of the new season.  That's the last I'll talk of next season's beers at least till after Halloween.

Beer #3 was called Wheat Freedom.  This was a beer in the opposite direction.  It had that wheat beer bitterness that I prefer with a well rounded taste of lemon to make sure we all new it was a summer beer.

Thor Platter's band been a fan of the blog for a while now and is always worth giving a listen to.

http://ThorPlatter.com/

One of the big contributors of this event was Lakewood's World of Beer.  Now, you could say that their involvement just makes it some big chain bar event.  You'd be a little right.  This gave us three things:  a better organized event, more than likely a better selection of beer and wine, and Shawn Freeman.  Shawn's the general manager of Lakewood's World of Beer.  He is one of the friendliest most enthusiastic people you'll ever meet.  Shawn loves craft beer and I believe that he has a secret plan to make everyone he meets to love it just as much.  He made his bar and this event something a bit more special.

My next beer's name was lost to the night but my notes say that the beer was forgettable too.
Beer #6 was Goose Island's Sophie.  A light and hoppy beer that shows that you can make a quality beer that everyone can enjoy.

Melt's a great bar I've been before and their official blog day is coming soon.

25th Anniversary from Lakefront Brewery that uses apricot to make their beer instead of masking it.  You'll taste a different nuance every time you drink it.

This is the best hard cider I've ever had.  It's crisp taking advantage of a non-sugary tangy apple flavor with a hint of honey.

I had Pizza BOGO for the first time for dinner.  Besides a great combination of toppings I liked the cheese on the pizza more than just about anybody else's.  I also realized that 8 little beers in is a good distance on an empty stomach.

The scary game of the night was Jenga with 2x4s.  I played against Johnny and our new friend whose name is probably Andrew, if not sorry.  Both of them either work or have worked for NASA.  We started with the rule that if you touch a piece then you have to pull it out.  The game went fine for a bit until I picked a low piece that didn't want to move.  That meant there was a lot of weight pushing down on it. We did not have the rule, however, that I couldn't touch other pieces.  So I pressed down on the top as hard as I could and yanked.  Two pieces almost came out, leaving the tower precariously reliant on my hand on the top.  I knocked the pieces back in place with newly released board.  I have found that in games played with drunk people if you add in enough confidence with a big smile anything is possible.  When I said, "we never said we couldn't hold the tower up with my other hand;" the rocket scientists happily went along with it.  The tower no longer had a proper center of gravity and every pull caused lots of swaying and twitching by all of us.  We all had one more successful yank until Johnny was unlucky enough to have the swaying tower fall.  The best thing about Giant Jenga is watching everybody scatter as the log tower attempts to smash everyone in its path.  As the loser, Johnny had to drink what we decided on next, which was mixing a glass of wine in with our dozen+ beers of the night.

Roo Brew is not from Australia, it's from Akron.  It's not made by a beer brewery it's made by a winery.  There was a day when the people of Akron Law School said we need beer and this winery said, "Sure, Why not."  It's a smooth beer with a slight taste of mint.

This was the disturbing place where the glasses were rinsed off into.

After this point my notes just become a mess of autocorrecting.  Regardless if you are going to drink anything I drank this night, drink this, it's amazing.

If you were the designated driver you got in for $10.  Thanks Katie!

Hi Sue!

I drank Mama's Little Yella Pils by Oskar Blues Brewery, a favorite for those that love a good pilsner.

I've already written about  21st Amendment's Hell or High Watermelon beer.  In a world where watermelon beer should be awful this is awfully good.

This beer is super clean and an excellent example of a higher quality Eastern European beer.  Keep an ear out for more news from this foreign beer in the future.

I don't know what I drank from her booth.  I somehow drank two of them.  They were 9% alcohol.  She is currently yelling chug and I drank the glass in under a second.

I hope everyone had a great night.  I know we did.  See you all next year!

Craft Beer

First off you should go to this.  It's a big event for Lakewood and is going to have so much awesome going on it's unbelievable.  You can buy tickets at the event, online or at World of Beer and Rozis!  Go here for more information!

I wrote part of this a little while back and decided to turn it into a blog.  I should have some pictures up after the event.

Over the past decade the craft beer industry has rapidly expanded. There are a number of reasons for this growth, including directly introducing brands to local markets, the rise of home brewing, and the unifying of craft beers as a market. These factors combine to make a product market that has moved beyond a simple fad and becomes a part of our edible culture.


Why is craft beer different than your regular domestics? The first reason is purpose. Craft beer aims to be tasted. They describe their beers with words like hoppy, malty, piney, bittersweet. Domestic beers goal is maximum drinkabilty and depict themselves as what people like you drink. They instead represent themselves with words like crisp, refreshing, and nondescript flavor word like superior and flavorful. At this point the domestics usually detour to their cool cans, history or effect on your lifestyle. The second is fizz. A proper craft beer and basically all home brewed beer gets its fizz from the gasses released by the yeast. This means that the beer has a life form continuing to ferment, adding alcohol and fizz for the lifetime of the beer (up to 5 years) Obviously, domestic beers ferment their beer as well or else it would simply be gross grain juice. However, your domestic beers are more likely to kill their beer and then carbonate it like a Coke. The farther you attempt to compare the two the more you see the same differences you find with any products that are made both in factories and by artisans. Examples include store bought and baker made bread, prepackaged and butcher cut meats, and of course Amish vs IKEA furniture.


The most important difference you will find between the craft breweries and the large corporate brewers is...well, it's beer. Craft beer is not made in the cheapest way possible. It's not made to give you something to drink with the fewest calories imaginable. It's not a “lifesytle choice.” It does not strive to be the most flavorful beer tasting alcoholic beverage. Craft beer is beer.


It's not simply that craft beer tastes better and has an alcohol content higher than NyQuil. Craft beer has become part of our culture. It has entered the standard guy conversational topics, like cars and sports have in the past. (*Women can, do and should like beer just as much as guys. Awesome has no boundaries.) Networking no longer needs to be on the golf course, but now takes us to the craft breweries and gastropubs. When we are expanding our business, we no longer have to worry about sweating out in the sun carrying a bag full of steel but instead share an experience with our associates with a mug full of a cool, unique lager. It has become the wine of the common and not so common man.


Craft beer is a reflection of the state of Ohio. The grain we grow over a vast section of the state. It is our ingenuity at the building of industries, like our expanding automotive that should no longer exist. We yearn to create superior products and work hard to get ourselves success. It creates a community of growers, builders, crafters, family members, friends and drinkers. Craft beer brings these elements together into something that is more that just alcohol, it's Ohio.

Bar #42: World of Beer (Deceased)

Imagine, if you will, a bar that has the beer you want. Whether it be from a specific brewer, beer genre, combination of tastes or even just a favorite state or country, they have the beer you want. To be faced with this beer mecca would be overwhelming to most. Imagine if this sphere of bier also had a guide that knew and understood the treasures held within this bar. Such a place could be the “answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” or at least where to get the exact beer I want. The answer to all of this is 42. Bar #42 is the World of Beer.

I had been to the World of Beer on their soft opening party. Obviously, the official review of the new bar couldn't be on a night when their entire staff was working and they knew how many people were coming. I rarely let the chain bars have an easy go due to their deep pockets, preplanned setup and (normally) their higher prices. This isn't to say if I have a good time and nothing goes wrong that I'm going to spite them anyway for being successful.

There were around 15 people at the World of Beer when we arrived which is only a drop in the bucket to the large bar. Since we had a bunch of people coming we took a table over sitting at the bar. The bar is nice, you get a good view of all the beer options or the band area. I like the idea of sitting at the bar. It raises the chances of talking to new people but it can drop the chances of keeping everyone with you in the conversation.

I sat down at a stole at the table and literally made an oooh sound. It may be the most comfortable stole in Lakewood. Most of their seating is nicely cushioned and black.

We got all our menus together to figure out what we wanted to order. These menus include the list of 50 beers on draft and 500+ beers in bottle. The menu talks about the types of beers, what goes into them, and some featured breweries. A new menu to Lakewood's World of Beer is craft spirits. They do their best to bring in locally brewed liquors. Included in this menu are a line of cocktails made from beers as well.

World of Beer doesn't make craft foods. What they do do is offer a menu full of other restaurant’s menus that will deliver to you. Lakewood's WoB gives you options such as Dominos, and the neighboring Eddie N' Eddie's and Jimmy Johns. You call them and they bring it to the table. We ordered from both Jimmy Johns and Eddie N' Eddies. ENE arrived about 30 seconds before JJ with their check. After paying it, I turned around to receive Jimmy John's check and food.

I ordered the molten burger from Eddie N' Eddies. It was awesome. It included fried jalapenos and onions, Sriracha and cheddar cheese. I ordered their pretzel and beer cheese, which was bready and the cheese was alright.

Johnny immediately called Jimmy Johns after they left. This caused brief bit of confusion over the phone as he gave them our table number again. Luckily for them this lead to a better tip than if our orders had been combined.

My first beer was almost some honey bee beer concoction but luckily I tried it first. It's very sweet and a glass would have been unfortunate. What I did start with was Evil Twin Ryan and The Easter Bunny. It was both slightly sour and hoppy. It was easy to drink with a mild but complex taste, with a bit of small bubbled fizz.

The staff at World of Beer goes to a beer school to learn about beer from the basics to brands. This allows them to help their customers find everything they do and don't want out of the World of Beer's large selection, using real information and not just saying that their other customers buy that.

The first whiskey off of World of Beer's new spirit menu was Cleveland Whiskey. They use a technology to compress their brew in smaller casks to speed up the process. The results a very clean and drinkable whiskey.

They now have an additional liquor school, so that they can properly serve their customers their newest products. We learned this from Sean the General Manger. From him we also learned that the after taste of Jim Bean is compared to furniture polish.

This brings up a prohibition moonshining poem:

Lincoln, Lincoln, what on Earth have you been drinking?

Smells like whisky.

Tastes like wine.

Oh my gosh, it's turpentine!

I also learned this night that bourbon from nonKentucky breweries, legally, must be casked in Kentucky.

Sean, the General Manager, makes his way around the bar during the night to talk to people and make sure everyone is having a good time. Even on nights when I'm not there I have been told this is the case.

Free Facials and Hotdogs!  You must be 21 and over to drink beer but your sense of humor doesn't.

World of Beer is classy looking, with lots of TVs, leather furniture and is a comfortable location even if you're wearing a suit. It is obvious that the place is a chain that probably looks nearly identical at any of their locations. Normally, this would be enough lead me to go somewhere else. World of beer has an enormous craft beer selection, great service by people that know their product, comfortable seating, access to great food and a manager who really does give a damn about his bar. Normally, this would be enough for me to shout kudos for the bar from the roof tops. Where does that leave us? There is a reason why a bar becomes a chain. They have created a product and environment that lots of people like. Beer may or may not be the meaning of life, the universe and everything. If it is, then the answer is Bar #42, World of Beer, the bar to go to if you love craft beer or would like to.

See more pictures and read more WoB blog: http://everybarinlakewood.blogspot.com/2013/03/bar-world-of-beer.html

14701 Detroit Ave

216.221.5253

lakewood@wobuse.com

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Bar #? World of Beer (Deceased)

Logo by World of Beer

One rule I've tried to follow for this blog is that the official revues for the bars aren't during special events. This includes, fill-in-the-blank crawls, holidays and specialty parties. I don't want to give a bar any extra help or detriment that can come with having crazy crowds, extra staff or specialty foods. Mass produced food and plastered people hopping in for 10 minutes don't always make a bar seem better. So, this week World of Beer is not bar #31.

Radeeka Lou, "I feel like a bug floating helplessly towards a bug zapper."

I got a Facebook message a couple days ago from the general manager, Shawn Freeman, of World of Beer Lakewood offering me tickets to his big opening. Of course, I was thrilled and decided to bring my beer blogger buddy Johnny to come.  This was primarily because he's been talking about WoB for the last 6 months. Our night started with lots of waiting in the rain. First he showed up early and I showed up late. Luckily for him, they let him in. Unluckily for me he didn't tell me.  I then waited out in the rain, while he couldn't hear his phone ring.

Once I finally entered the bar it was a picture drinking perfection. The bar was crowded but not enough for anybody to feel uncomfortable and I was able to quickly get a seat at the bar. All the seating was comfortable. The band, Erica Blinn, sounded good. There were TVs set so that you could see them wherever you were at, even if you were in the band.

There were two giant coolers loaded with 500 different types of bottled beer:  one for domestic and one for imported.  They were separated by 50 draft taps. I picked my first beer because I liked how the tap looked. It turned out to be Revolution Brewing's Bottom Up Wit. It was probably the best wheat beer I've had. It had enough bitter taste to let you know that it's a wheat and there was a slight taste of lemon to make it very drinkable. I got a sample shot to give it a test drive then bought the full class.

Shawn Freeman came by a couple times during the night to see how it was going. He even waited on customers on occasion. It wasn't needed, as they had a huge staff preventing almost any wait for service. The service was always excellent both prompt and knowledgable.

When the next band, Rob Duskey and the Rounders, came on they gave me a shout out. It turns out he is a big fan of the blog. Luckily, he was pretty good, so that I can tell you all to go check him out next time he's playing.

I went with three beer shots next. Johnny told me I needed to try New Holland's Dragon's Milk, an over all great stout for anyone that likes them. I also picked whichever random draft was five drafts to the left and the right. Otter Creek's Russian Imperial Stout and Oskar Blues' G'Night were both good enough beers that at around 10% alcohol. 

It was around now that both my wife's (Kelly) friend Caroline and I got texts from Kelly telling us we were both at the World of Beer. We then noticed that Johnny was sitting in between us.

World of Beer does not have a kitchen but it does have a menu full of menus of other restaurants that will deliver to the bar.

I finished off my evening with a Magners Irish Cider because I needed something that was the opposite of what I had just drank. If you like ciders you'll like this.

I got to meet the bands at the end of the night while I was talking to another of Every Bar in Lakewood's big fans, Thor Platter. They'll all be playing at the Brother's Lounge in a couple weeks.

Unlike my previous encounters with the the chain bars of Lakewood World of Beer was able to prove good customer service isn't just for the locally owned bars. They have a huge beer selection and supply. I was very happy with the service and really had nothing to complain about. However, this was a private opening night where they knew almost the exact number of customers they would have and the maximum amount of time they could be there. I'll give them a little time to make sure that they always have enough staff to keep up on their larger crowds and that they keep their beers in stock. I look forward to watching the World of Beer impress me again.

Read the official blog for WoB, Bar #42 here: http://everybarinlakewood.blogspot.com/2013/06/bar-42-world-of-beer.html

14701 Detroit Ave.

lakewood@wobusa.com

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Johnny's Beer Blog
Robduskey.com

Erica Blinn