Jackie O’s Pub & Brewery, 24 W. Union St., will kick off an eventful year for the brewery with their first bottle release of 2013.
The brewery will release four of its original hand-crafted beers including Berliner Weisse, Cellar Cuvee 7, Kentucky Monk and Oil of Aphrodite on Saturday to a crowd of “beer geeks” from all across Ohio.
“We do about five or four releases a year that have been aged in different types of barrels in our cellar room,” said Art Oestrike, owner of Jackie O’s. “I really like the Berliner Weisse myself.”
Brad Clark, head brewmaster, said that they are particularly excited about the Berliner Weisse as they have been working on it for two years now and this will be the first time it has been released in a bottle. On ratebeer.com, the brew is rated 88th overall and has a mean user rating of 3.55 out of 5.
“Our beers have been favorites of the public since day one,” said John Hicks, public relations director at Jackie O’s. “(Berliner Weisse) is a great springtime beer … This is a killer brew to just sit on your back porch and sip.”
They are also releasing a fruitier sour beer, Cellar Cuvee 7, which tends to be popular among beer geeks for the sour taste.
“(The Cellar Cuvee 7) is a blend of two beers that have been aged for two years in both bourbon and wine barrels with cherries and raisins,” Clark said. “It’s a sour beer that has a lot of fruit character and a lot of complex barrel nodes.”
Even though students will be out of town, Clark said that in the past 150 to 200 people have attended the release and they’ve had people from more than 17 states attend from across the U.S.
People from all over the world are familiar with the brewery’s product and their facility was even rated 56th on ratebeer.com last year and is currently ranked 97th in the world on the popular beer rating site.
The brew release will not include cans from the highly anticipated new facility off Stimson Avenue, but patrons can expect kegs of the brewery’s most popular beer, Firefly, to be released sometime soon, Clark said.
“It’s a great feeling to finally be producing beer (at the new facility) and to see that work come to fruition,” said Sean White, brewer at the Uptown facility. “We still have a lot of work to do but it’s coming along.”
wh092010@ohiou.edu
