The biggest Ohio Brew Week celebration yet will hop into the month of June for the first time this year with nearly 40 craft breweries and 200 flavors of beer pouring into Athens pubs and restaurants.
Because of Ohio University’s quarters-to-semester switch, Ohio Brew Week will move to an earlier date, taking place from June 22 to June 30.
Despite the change, event director Dan Gates said he expects this year to produce the most successful festival so far.
“We’re just so well-known now,” he said. “There will be more people in town, more breweries lined up and more bars opening up.”
Since its beginning in 2004, the weeklong event commemorating Ohio craft brews has grown into an Athens staple and contributed to the development of the brewing industry throughout the state, said Melody Sands, Ohio Brew Week marketing director.
Before Brew Week, Sands said there were fewer than 20 craft brewers in the state, adding that few people had formally tried craft brew in the country, especially in the Midwest.
“Ohio Brew Week has been a catalyst for more people willing to try craft beers,” Sands said in an email.
When the event was established in Athens, it was the longest craft brew celebration in the country, hosting 17 microbrewers and showcasing 52 varieties of beer, Gates said. Now, there are more than 50 celebrations of its kind throughout the country, he said.
“I’ve seen the knowledge level of craft-beer drinkers just boom, and a lot of it I’ve seen because of the stuff we did,” Gates said. “A brewer making lots of money with a big facility might say we’re nothing, but we were there when these people were real little.”
During this year’s event, Ohio University alumnus Greg Hardman, owner of Christian Moerlein Brewing Co. in Cincinatti’s Over-the-Rhine Brewery District, will return to Athens as the keynote speaker.
After graduating from OU in 1984, Hardman worked as a beer distributor at the former Athens Bobkat Beverage for four years and then spent 18 years working with Warsteiner Importers Agency, a leading world brewer of beer.
“Back then in Athens, craft beer was really in its infancy,” Hardman said. “People were just experimenting with it in those days.”
Hardman said he will detail how he made his way from Athens to eventually opening one of the largest breweries in the world during his speech.
“I left not because I didn’t love Athens but because I wanted to see the rest of the world,” he said.
Even though other regions have followed suit, Gates said Athens remains the smallest community to entertain a weeklong festival featuring beers crafted solely in Ohio.
“We have that ability to see people for the week, recognize them and show them hospitality,” Gates said. “I could go to a place and see a 65-year-old man sitting next to a 25-year-old comparing notes on beer. That’s the key to it all.”
kg278810@ohiou.edu
