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.