The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Special beers are win-win
Marketers throw around phrases like “for a limited time only” and “limited quantities available” enough to make even the boy who cried wolf seem like a normal kid.
But, as any craft-beer enthusiast knows, when breweries do it, it means something special.
Take, for example, Northeast Ohio’s premier holiday brew — Christmas Ale from Great Lakes Brewing Co. in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. By its very nature, it’s a limited-time offering simply because it was made to pair with seasonal fare.
Adam Ritterspach, public relations coordinator for Great Lakes Brewing Co., said the 7.5-percent alcohol-by-volume beer is the company’s best-selling seasonal variety, as opposed to its year-round staples like perennial tavern favorite Dortmunder Gold.
“Seasonally, it’s Christmas Ale,” Ritterspach said about Great Lakes’ bestselling, limited-time-only beer, which is released each November. “I mean, the amount of Christmas Ale we sell in that two-month period is astounding.”
He said the company is very proud of the popularity Christmas Ale has gained over the years and its entire formula — from the actual ingredients to the timing of its annual release and even its conception — has played well into making it such a success.
“Christmas Ale truly is a Cleveland original,” he said. “And it’s one of the first craft beers brewed specifically as a holiday brew.”
But Christmas Ale isn’t the only seasonal brew Great Lakes offers. Not by a long shot. Conway’s Irish Ale hits shelves and taps in January, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. Oktoberfest arrives in August and the company’s latest foray into spring-time suds — Grandes Lagos Lager — is brewed with hibiscus flowers and is available in March.
That’s just to name a few, however. The whole list is available on the Great Lakes Brewing Co.’s website.
The folks at GLB also produce some truly limitededition beverages like the bottles of barrel-aged barley wine currently available in the gift shop at 2516 Market Ave. There’s also a limitedrelease batch of Mysterious Ways Dopplebock brewed especially for Lent, Ritterspach said, adding that its inspiration comes from Bavarian monks who partook in an all-beer diet during their 46 days of Lenten sacrifice.
“They believed dopplebock cleansed the body and soul,” Ritterspach said.
While not run by Bavarian monks on an all-beer diet, Cornerstone Brewery in Madison Village lies some 43 miles east of Ohio City and is getting ready to start pouring its next seasonal batch of brews, including its O’Nooley’s Irish Dark Stout and Eirinn Rosanna Irish Red Ale, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day and beyond.
General Manager Donny Spaid also said patrons at either Cornerstone location — Madison Village or Berea — will also soon be able to enjoy the brewery’s Dockside Wit, a Belgian wheat beer described on a beer-centric social networking site called untappd as “bright, zesty, not too white.”
Spaid called it a good “spring beer.”
Although Cornerstone Brewery doesn’t sell beer in bottles or cans at area retailers, it does sell its various seasonal and yearround brews straight from the tap in 64-ounce growlers for take-home consumption. Meanwhile, in Willoughby, brewmaster Rick Seibt at Willoughby Brewing Company said they’ve already produced two special releases this year — the Barrel-aged Nut Smasher and Barrel-aged D.B.A. varieties.
“We will be canning our Hazy Days hoppy wheat ale in May,” Seibt typed in a March 15 e-mail exchange. “It will be ready just in time for the warmer temperatures. It’s an unfiltered wheat beer with a strong hop flavor and aroma. (It’s) very drinkable and refreshing, especially on those hot, hazy summer days. We’ll try our best to have that in can available throughout the summer. It’s the only time that we can our beer.”
Another eastern Lake County brewery lies just around the corner from Cornerstone Brewery, at Debonne Vineyards, where Double Wing Brewing Co. lives.
There, brewmaster Tony Debevc, Jr. produces staples like Imperial Stout, Pale Ale, Wheat Beer, Red Double IPA, award-winning India Pale Ale and POC Pilsner, another award winner. But he also gets to experiment with various takes on his stock brews, like the batch of Imperial Stout he’s got aging in bourbon barrels until December or the Peanut Butter Blonde he created after asking a friend in Maryland who grows coffee beans to see if he could create a special bean just for the beer.
“I told him I wanted a coffee bean that tastes like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. And he did it,” Debevc said March 13 in his brewery.
He said it’s these kinds of experiments that make up the bulk of Double Wing’s more limited releases, which see consumption by visitors to the bar at Debonne Vineyards, at area beer festivals and dinners and for takeout in 64-ounce growlers and 22-ounce bombers.
All four breweries here agreed it’s also a good thing to collaborate with other Ohio breweries from time to time, not only for the sake of creating buzz about a new, limited-edition offering, but also to further the craft beer industry as a whole.
Although he said there aren’t any specific plans in the works at present, Ritterspach said Great Lakes Brewing Co. traditionally teams up with another brewery or two to create something unique for Cleveland Beer Week.
And there’s “no reason to believe that won’t happen again this year.”
He said collaborations serve multiple purposes.
“It’s part of brewing’s tradition and it’s part of the camaraderie that exists between brewers,” he said. “Breweries have a history, about as far back as you can go in beer history, of helping each other along.”
He said that’s a good thing on two levels.
“Craft beer drinkers, I think, get excited about collaborations because, if you see two, maybe three breweries working in collaboration, you know you’re going to be drinking some really good beer.,” he said. “And, from a business standpoint, it can be great name recognition, especially when a smaller brewery works with a big brewery. It can really help that smaller brewery get its name out.”
Debevc agreed. In fact, he said Double Wing and Great Lakes teamed up to produce a specialty brew called Burlot, which was an English strong ale aged in merlot barrels.
“I’m always up for doing something like that,’ he said. “For one thing, the beer industry is growing so much in Cleveland and it’s a great cross-promotion for both businesses.”
But he said, at least for him, the best thing about collaborating is getting to see what other brewers are thinking and doing.
“My biggest thing is that you get two different types of personalities but they’re both brewers and they both have that same passion,” he said. “I mean, I’m here out in the country and I might team up with another brewer who lives out in Lakewood in a high-rise. But we both love the same thing and we’re doing what we love. So let’s mix it up. What do you think? What do I think? Let’s see what these two minds come up with.”
The folks at Willoughby Brewing Company seem to agree, as Seibt said they have been engaging in them the past several years for Cleveland Beer Week and some unique creations resulted.
“This past October we did one with Little Fish Brewing out of Athens, Ohio, and Forest City Brewing out of Cleveland,” he said. “Collaborations are nice because it gives brewers a chance to work with one another and share techniques and processes. In this case we wanted to do something unusual and we made a Norwegian Kveik farmhouse ale with fresh picked juniper sprigs and a unique Norwegian yeast strain. That’s something we likely wouldn’t have done and it offered our customers a unique flavor experience.”