Tomorrow afternoon at the North Market Beer Festival the King of Ohio contest returns. Organized by beer bloggers and writers from throughout Ohio including Rick Armon from The Beer Blog Ohio in Akron, Tom Aguero from BrewMinds in Cincinnati, Cory Smith and Ron DeGregario from the Brew Review Crew in Toledo, and yours truly. Every brewery in Ohio was invited to enter their best session beer (defined as any beer with an abv of 5% or lower). No less than 68 breweries took us up on the invitation, so starting at 2 pm on Saturday, Sept 24, a team of 15 judges is going to have the challenging, but enviable, task of crowning one beer as King of Ohio Session Beers.
Winners will be chosen in four subcategories: Session IPA, Lager/Kolsch, Sour/Wild Ale, and Session Ale. Those beers will then face off in a final round of blind taste testing, with one eventually emerging as the King of Ohio. The winner will be announced at the festival at the conclusion of judging, and of course on this blog and others on Monday. So if you’re at the festival stop by and say hi. Thanks to the Columbus Craft Beer Alliance and the Ohio Taproom for sponsoring prizes for the winners.
The North Market Craft Beer festival and the King of Ohio contest are far from the only beer-centric activities going down in Ohio this weekend. Here are a few others (click on the links for more details):
New Belgium Clips and Beer Film Tour – New Belgium invades the Columbus Commons on Friday night pouring a range of beers and showing 10 short films all of which feature the year 1991 in some way. Admission is free, beers aren’t but all proceeds go toward local charity Transit Columbus. Doors open at 7 pm and the films start showing at 9 pm.
Fat Heads Celebration of the Hop – An IPA festival to beat all others, hop masters Fat Heads have invited 19 outside breweries to bring their best hop forward IPAs to this festival. On the plus side price of admission includes food from Wiener Wonderland, but sadly (if you don’t have a ticket) the event is already sold out.
Brew Dog Annual General Mayhem Meeting – The first ever annual meeting of Brew Dog’s Equity for Punks in the USA on Saturday gives investors a chance to see the facilities, get an update on Brew Dog’s progress and plans, listen to live music, and of course drink some beer. Looks intriguing.
Creeper Release Party – Saturday also marks the long awaited debut of Columbus Brewing Company’s award winning Creeper Imperial IPA in packaged form. Those who were savvy enough to get a ticket for this event in advance can buy 4-packs, sample special varieties of other CBC beers and get some chow from local food trucks. The rest of us will have to wait for Creeper to hit the shelves.
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