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

Bar #49 Johnny Malloy's & Gippetto's (Deceased)

Where do you watch your favorite professional sports team and why? There is an industry of bars that seek to answer that very question and they all say the same thing, “here.” The sports bars of the world attempt to find the keys to enhancing a simple concept, watching sports. They must find the way to maximize how their food, booze, seating, atmosphere, number of different games playing, audio and visual, and of course the social aspect that makes it worth leaving the house for. Johnny Malloy's has risen to this challenge and of being bar #49.

Johnny Malloy's has its own parking lot that is bound to be full when our home teams are playing. Luckily, this wasn't one of those nights. I made my way through their large but enclosable Patio. The patio gives a place for smokers to enjoy the bar atmosphere during the summer and to sadly stare through the windows at during the winter.

Once you enter the permanently enclosed half of Johnny Malloy's there are some cool booths and a bar that can probably seat a solid 2 dozen people. However, you won't notice that until your eyes have adjusted to the rows of large flat screen TVs that plaster the bar's walls. We took our seats at the bar and waited for the bartender to make his way over to us.

As is the luck of the blog, if anything can go wrong for a bar then it will while I'm there. Tonight, the issue was, they were training a new bartender. Minus an issue at the end, the new girl and the original bartender did a good job. The problem was that as she was being trained in between serving customers, leaving awkward times when neither bartender was to be found.

I started my night off with Elevator's 1810 Oktoberfest. It was full flavored with the perfect amount of taste and alcohol. It's named after the date of the original Oktoberfest. It happened on October 12^th 1810 when King Ludwig I (a prince at the time) married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen in Munich and threw a festival to celebrate which reached all of Bavaria (later became an important part of Germany) by the end. This beer is the epitome of what an Oktoberfest beer should be leaving all others to try and live up to it. Now take a break from reading and go buy it while it's still around.

Welcome back. I ordered the garlic buffalo hot wings and classic mac and cheese bake to eat. The wings were ok. They were what you'd expect but didn't add anything to make them unique or exceptional. The mac and cheese bake was much the same, it was a safe bet that you wouldn't complain about and wouldn't mind eating again.

There are currently no soups on the soup and salad menu.

I have a confession to make. I'm from Pittsburgh. This was important tonight because for the first time in two decades, the baseball team I grew up with both made the playoffs and had their first winning season. I know this is when you start getting all up in arms about the Indians. I love the Indians. I still talk about their epic playoff game when the actual Cleveland environment rose up and smited the New York Yankees. Swarms of midges descended on the brightly lit field testing the grit of our pitcher and theirs. The latter was found wanting. This being said, the love of a child and his sports team is one that can last a lifetime. It allowed me for 20 odd years to say over and over again that this is the year. It wasn't. It becomes a part of you. I root for the Bucs not because of where I live but because I am a Pirates fan. I even refer to them as us. If you've moved to another city you understand. The team closest to you in distance is not necessarily the team closest to your heart.


Luckily, this evening the majority of the people in the bar had decided they wanted the Reds to lose or the Pirates to win so I felt at home. There were a small group, or crowd if you will, of three wearing Reds clothing. Between their team losing and the bar being against them, they left in under an inning. Since, going to Johnny Malloy's the Pirates would make it past the Reds that evening but lose in game five to the Cardinals. The Pirates fans were still the happiest losers you'll find, with some even calling for a victory parade. Next year I'm expecting, no demanding, a Pirates and Indians World Series


Anyway, there was some anarchy with the billing but they got it fixed with no complaint from me.


I wanted to watch a baseball game with my friends. I had as much seating as I needed plus I didn't have to get up to get up to get beer or food, plus I had plenty of options. Johnny Malloys also provided me with extra people to cheer along with me. I was able to see and hear my game better than I would have at home. Johnny Malloy's & Geppettos made my night better than had I watched the game at home. This is what's made this sports bar successful for over 35 years and why you should visit bar #49.

17103 Detroit Ave. 

216-529-1400

www.johnnymalloys.com

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