It’s that time of year again…when we’re tired of winter and cold and need ways to warm up! The annual OgreFest at the BREW Kettle Taproom and Smokehouse promises a great lineup of high gravity beers to warm you! It starts this year on February 14, and continues until the beers are gone, usually about a week or so. The beers on their 24 taps rotate so you have to keep coming back to make sure you try them all. Look for the return of the BREW Kettle’s own Dark Helmet Imperial Schwarzbier and Old 21 Imperial IPA, along with guest beers from around the U.S and the world. The Dark Helmet will also be available in bottles at area good beer stores.
Your quest for warmth should take you next to the fourth annual Winter Warmer Festival at Cleveland’s Rock Bottom Brewery. It will be held on February 21 this year from 11:30 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. The festival will feature strong brews from at least thirteen local area breweries, and live music and a buffet are included in the ticket price. This is a favorite of mine as it’s mostly indoors, all local breweries, and mostly draft beers. The hours are long to give you plenty of time to taste all you want, and, you get a very nice commemorative glass.
Continuing the warming trend is the Winking Lizard with their Barleywine Festival on February 27 at their Independence location. They are planning two sessions and sign-ups will be on their web at www.winkinglizard.com.
Then there are two more beer festivals in March. Friday, March 5 is the Glass City Beer Fest at the Erie Street Market in Toledo. (check the website for details and tickets: www.glasscitybeerfest.com). The Glass City Beer Fest is also indoors, and features breweries mostly from Ohio and Michigan, and also a few others in the mix. Also worth noting is that it is a charity benefit.
March 26-28 will be the first Cincinnati Beer Fest (not to be confused with the Cincy Winter Beer Fest, held on January 30). This one will be at the Duke Energy Convention Center in downtown Cincinnati. One session each day with details and tickets available on their website: www.cincinnatibeerfest.com. Tickets are $30 each session or $70 for all three sessions (if purchased before March 1), and include unlimited tasting of over 120 beers.
Fat Head’s Brewery and Saloon joins the quest for warming beers with its first annual Headstrong Festival to be held the entire month of March. They will be tapping over 40 beers over 8% abv, including Fat Head’s Hop Lightning Barleywine at over 11%, and Pimp My Sleigh, a Belgian dark strong ale at 9.3% , which brewer Matt Cole says “could be my best Belgian ale ever with dark candi sugar, dried fruit, licorice, and a very spicy phenolic nose of clove and bubblegum.” And I thought Head Trip (currently on tap) was his best ever! Head Trip is a Belgian triple with a spicy nose and so smooth you don‘t realize it‘s 8.5%. It will also be part of the Headstrong Festival along with Battleaxe Baltic Porter, a complex yet easy drinking Baltic porter made with a touch of molasses and nine malts, also around 9% and Alpen Glow, a 9% abv weizenbock.
Fat Head’s will be shipping their Hop JuJu Double IPA to the 10th annual Bistro Double IPA festival in California. This brew packs a massive hop punch with Columbus, Simcoe, Centennial, and Warrior hops. Over 70 Imperial IPA’s will be competing for gold medal. They will also be entering many of these beers (a total of nine) in the World Beer Cup.
Upcoming things to watch for at Fat Heads: a mug club where members get a half-liter mug with an engraved number and happy hour prices all the time, beer dinners, with a “Beer vs Wine” six course dinner that will showcase Chef Derek’s culinary skills and magic, and a March dinner featuring a collaboration of Three Floyds, Stone, Dogfish Head and Fat Head’s beers.
In May they will have their first Micro Brewers Festival to kick off Craft Beer Week. Watch this space for more info but they will have over 20 brewers pouring over 60 brews, live music, and BBQ.
Buckeye Beer Engine continues their fantastic beer dinners. On Tuesday, February 9, and Tuesday March 9, they will have beer/food pairing dinners, the latter featuring Two Brothers Brewery. They are also continuing their special weekly keg tappings. You need to check their web site (www.buckeybeerengine.com) and get on their mailing list to keep up with what’s going on. You’ll also get notice of other events and specials (and coupons) for their upcoming third anniversary celebration (March 13).
While you’re in Toledo for the Glass City Beer Fest, you will want to take time to stop in a Maumee Bay Brewing Co. They have some new beers you should try, such as the Brewedwitch Barleywine which is 9.8% abv and 87 IBUs. It has been aged for four months before it was released and has flavors of caramel, fig, dark fruit, and sherry. Another new one, and a first for Maumee Bay is a double IPA named Amarillo Brillo. (Any Zappa fans out there?) This one has aromas and flavors of peaches, pine and mint, and is 8.4% abv and 101 IBUs.
Mark Wise is back brewing at the Brewkeeper once again, and continuing the “storm” series with the Red Storm, due in late February. It is an imperial amber ale with an interesting twist; just as the predecessors White & Black Storms. As the others, it will eclipse the 10% abv mark.
Febuary 5th the release of Dark Apparition (Russian Imperial Stout), Smoked and Portered (Smoked Porter), and Black Ryno (India Oatmeal Rye Stout).
In Athens, at Jackie O’s, Brad Clark is planning a Febuary 19 release of The Oil Of Aphrodite. This beer is another imperial stout that has an extremely rich malt profile, made with Maris Otter malt, chocolate rye malt, dark Belgian candied syrup, and lots of oats. On St. Patrick’s Day he will release the Scottish Ale and O’hooley’s Irish Red, both malty beers above 7.5% abv. Clark has no planned barrel-aged releases because he’s too busy filling them and building a new fermenter room and installing three new tanks! Check their website for updates: www.jackieos.com.
Andy Tveekrem (most recently at Dogfish Head, but formerly at Great Lakes Brewing Co.) is back in town helping Sam McNulty (of McNulty’s Bier Markt) start up a brewery in the Ohio City area of Cleveland. According to Cleveland’s Scene Magazine, the newly planned Market Garden Brewery will be situated next to the West Side Market and will feature a restaurant and brewhouse with a 3,000-square-foot beer garden with trees, climbing vines and community tables in between.