DEVIL WIND BREWING NEARS OPENING DAY AT XENIA SITE
The Dayton area’s newest brewery has started to brew beer and is putting the finishing touches on its tasting room as it prepares to pour its first pints for the general public.
The opening of Devil Wind Brewing is only a few weeks away, although the precise date has not yet been set, co-founder Doug Lane said.
“We’ve done all of the construction ourselves,” Lane said. “It’s been a blur. But we’ve kegged up our first batch of beer, and we have three others that we’ll probably put into kegs this weekend.”
First up are an ESB (Extra Special Bitter), Oatmeal Stout, West Coast-style IPA, New Englandstyle IPA, and a German-inspired Helles Lager, Lane said.
Devil Wind is a few inspections and hoops-to-jump-through away from serving their first customers.
The 3,000-square-foot brewery is located at 130 S. Detroit St. in downtown Xenia, just steps from the bike path. The brewery’s partners include David Hatfield, Michael Van Kirk, Perry Wyatt and Lane.
The space will seat about 90, and plans call for distributing Devil Wind beers in kegs to local establishments after the tasting room is established.
The brewery will bring in food trucks and encourage carry-out from local restaurants, Devil Wind’s founders said.
The brewery’s name was derived from historical reports that the Shawnee Indians that inhabited Greene County referred to the Xenia area as “Land of the Devil Wind.”
Devil Wind will become the second brewery to operate in Xenia during this century.
The Miami Trail Brewery opened in Xenia in the late 1990s and shut down by 2002, and was, during its time, the only craft brewery in the Dayton area.