A Sneak Peak at Ohio Brew Week
The Athens Messenger
June 13, 2010
By SARA BRUMFIELD
Messenger staff writer
A festival is brewing in downtown Athens, and at least 27,000 people are expected to visit the city to get a taste of Ohio’s best craft beers.
The fifth annual Ohio Brew Week will kick off on July 11 and is expected to be bigger and better than ever with more events and an expanded Boogie on the Bricks celebration on July 17 to wrap up the festival.
According to Melody Sands, marketing director of Ohio Brew Week, craft beers from 26 Ohio breweries will be featured at 35 venues around town. She said the event draws an older, more sophisticated crowd to downtown Athens.
Sands said she expects at least 27,000 people to attend this year’s celebration. She said people are coming from as far away as Canada and California.
Dan Gates, director of Ohio Brew Week, said the event is “the state fair of Ohio craft brewers.”
He said the event helps get brewers out of the breweries and the big cities and into the Athens community.
Sands said the festival’s website has been receiving about 8,000 visitors a day.
Gates said Brew Week brings visitors to Athens at a time when the economy’s not so great, because the Ohio University students are gone.
“People bring their dollars down and we recycle the dollars amongst ourselves,” he said, adding that hotels, gas stations, restaurants and other businesses benefit from the week-long event.
According to Gates, there are 18 beer weeks in the United States, but Ohio Brew Week is the only one to celebrate its own craft brew industry.
Gates said his favorite part of Brew Week is seeing the older people enjoying Athens.
“I like going to an establishment and everyone has gray hair like me,” he said. “The grownups come down to Athens to play.”
The week will start with an opening reception at the Dairy Barn Arts Center at 1 p.m. on July 11, followed by Craft Beer Day at the Copperheads baseball game at Bob Wren Stadium.
On July 13, there will be the Craft Brew Cooking Competition and Athens Cuisine Showcase at Abrio’s Brick Oven on East State Street. Sands said local chefs will pair their specialty dishes with craft brews or incorporate the beer into the recipes themselves. She said locally grown food will be used in the dishes.
“The competition will show off what Athens has in the way of food production,” Sands said. She said many restaurants are participating in the event. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Jon Sparhawk Memorial Scholarship and Community Fund.
Sparhawk was the owner of the Oak Room restaurant and part of the Athens Independent Restaurant Association. According to Sands, Sparhawk decided that Athens needed a summer event to boost business and created Ohio Brew Week. He died in 2007.
On July 14, Putter and Pints will let guests golf with Ohio brewers with an awards ceremony held at Abrio’s that evening.
On July 15, craft brews can be sampled at W.G. Grinders on West Union Street. Grinders’ corporate creator Mike Bellisari will be on hand to meet guests.
The Brew BQ Beer Garden will open at noon on July 16, featuring Great Lakes Brewing Co. and Budweiser Craft Beers near the Athens Train Depot on West Union Street. The Brew BQ Cook-off Competition will begin at 2 p.m. The winning chef will win a grill, according to Sands.
The festival will wind down with the annual Quilt Barn Ride, which is a poker-style bicycle ride that raises funds for the Athens AM Rotary and Pelotonia.
The final event is the Boogie on the Bricks free community festival.
This year’s Boogie on the Bricks event has been expanded to encompass the stretch of Court Street from Union Street to State Street. Sands said the longer area is intended to create a more relaxed setting.
“They’ll be able to hear themselves and talk,” she said. In the past, the festival spanned just one block. This year’s event will be twice as big.
In between major events during Brew Week, dozens of bands will provide entertainment at various bars and restaurants. Sands said there will also be a Haunted Hocking Bus Tour for the first time that will highlight the purportedly haunted sites of Athens.
According to Gates, the Strickmaker and Kerr families will be honored for their 60 years of service through the Kerr Distributing Co., which was recently sold.
“They’ve given so much to the community,” Gates said.