Weekend guided tours available

Leslie Basalla-McCafferty and her husband, Brian, are changing the game with living local history, new and old.

The self-described “hop heads” are educating beer enthusiasts through their multiple weekend tours on Cleveland Brew Bus, which they own and operate.

Touring any brewery will provide history as well as processing information, but the Cleveland couple takes thing a step further with their package tours to numerous regions across Northeast Ohio.

“When you book a Brew Bus tour, you’re getting a full-service experience,” said Basalla-McCafferty, who co-authored the 2015 book “Cleveland Beer: History & Revival in the Rust Belt.” “We are so much more than just transportation. We are a craft beer education and appreciation tour.

“You can bar hop with an Uber or rent a party bus, but you won’t have an expert tour guide with you relating the stories and bios of the breweries you’re visiting and telling you all about the beers you’re drinking,” she added. “And you won’t have guaranteed behind-the-scenes access at the breweries. We always make sure our guests get at least one brewhouse tour, and get to learn all about how beer is made, and hopefully meet a brewer or owner.

“Plus, we have everything pre-arranged with the breweries when we visit They know when we’re coming and how many people we are bringing and are prepared to give our guests VIP treatment. We make sure things go as smoothly and seamlessly as possible.”

For the most part, Brew Bus sticks to giving tours within Cuyahoga County, currently working with 19 breweries. The bus travels as far west as Sibling Revelry in Westlake and Fat Heads in North Olmsted. Its southernmost regular stop is The Brew Kettle in Strongsville.

Basalla-McCafferty said the company launched an East Shore tour late last year that visits Goldhorn Brewery on E. 55th Street, Euclid Brewing Company in Euclid and The Cleveland Brewery on E. 185th Street. They also offer Willoughby Brewing Company as an option, in place of Goldhorn on that route.

“I am hoping to bring Lake County back as a more regular destination for us, with the opening of Brim Kitchen and Brewery. I envision it being part of a Sunday route with Willoughby and Goldhorn, or even with one of the Ohio City breweries. We tend to go a little further afield on our Sunday routes as we have a little more leeway time-wise.

“We occasionally give Akron tours as well,” she said, “maybe two or three times a year, and also give some special tours like our Farm to Pint tour, which visits Barn Talk Hops in Wadsworth and Haus Malts in Cleveland, along with one of our partner breweries. Guests can see how the ingredients of their beer are harvested and processed and enjoy some brews featuring locally-sourced ingredients.”

Keeping close tabs on any new announcements regarding new breweries — and there are many — Basalla-McCafferty closely follows the progress of new breweries as they build out; a general rule for an establishment to be listed on the tour, beyond it being a brewery, is that is must be independent, not part of a big chain.

“So Granite City, BJ’s and Hofbrauhaus are not part of our rotation,” she said. “Luckily for us, we have so many connections in the community that we know most of the people opening new breweries, and they often ask us about including them in tours rather than us having to ask them. The general manager at Masthead, which just opened in Downtown Cleveland, was my co-manager at Market Garden, so he was texting me weeks in advance of their opening, to make sure they’d be on our tours. I am good friends with former Platform brewmaster Shaun Yasaki who is opening Noble Beast Brewing, and with Ralph Sgro, who is opening Terrestrial Brewing, and they’ve both been keeping us constantly in the loop about their progress.

“As for creating new routes, or adapting existing ones, I make my decisions with an eye on geographic proximity of the breweries to each other,” she said. “For example, with Collision Bend Brewing opening on the East Bank of the Flats, we’ll be able to do an all-Flats route with them, Portside and Brick and Barrel, or with certain shared traits/qualities the breweries have. We have a Hidden Gems route featuring places off the beaten path, and a Small Breweries, Big Flavor route focusing on neighborhood nanobreweries.”

Acknowledging the substantial increase in breweries, Basalla-McCafferty knows it’s becoming more difficult for Brew Bus to hit every brewery it partners with.

“I try to make sure that every one of our breweries sees us at least once a month, but with so many new places on peoples’ radars, it’s a harder sell to get them to visit well-known, veteran establishments like The Brew Kettle or Great Lakes,” she said. “Sooner or later, we will have to get a second bus. Having another bus would also afford us more opportunities to go further afield and offer special tours, as well as give us more flexibility for serving larger groups on corporate tours.

“I’d like to add historical walking tours of Ohio City. Prior to Prohibition there were about 10 breweries operating in and around the area, and there are a handful of those structures still standing. I feel like partnering with Great Lakes or Platform, both of which operate, in part, out of historic brewery buildings, would be a natural fit for something like that. I’d also like to offer a mead and cider tour. Both are very fast-growing segments of the craft beverage market.

“By far, my favorite thing on our tours is getting people into places they’ve never visited before and seeing their minds be blown by something like the sheer scale of Fat Heads production brewery and taphouse in Middleburg Heights, or how cool Platform’s taproom is, or the outstanding professionalism and expertise of Market Garden’s production brewery tour,” she said. “Seeing people’s eyes widen and jaws drop when they walk into a new brewery is awesomely rewarding, but it’s even better to roll into a brewery and have a previous guest come running up to us and say, ‘We came here for the first time on one of your tours and we loved it, we come here all the time now!’

“When that happens, I feel like we’ve done our job. We view ourselves as ambassadors for Cleveland’s amazing brewing scene, and we love that the breweries value what we do, so it’s particularly gratifying to know when we’ve introduced people to our partners and to see them become regulars.”

COURTESY OF ROGER FATICA