Draft Days: Three Can't Miss Cleveland Beer Week Events

Bottoms up, Cleveland! Tomorrow kicks off the sixth annual Cleveland Beer Week, a nine-day celebration of Cleveland’s hopping craft brewery scene with more than 350 events. Need the abbreviated tour for your liver’s sake? Here are Winking Lizard co-owner and Beer Week co-founder John Lane’s must-attend events:

1. Great Lakes Tap Takeover: Sat. Oct. 11 @ 11 a.m.

Great Lakes Brewery takes over the Winking Lizard Lakewood’s taps with 43 different Great Lakes beers. Yes, you read that correctly. In addition to the Ohio City brewery’s standards, Great Lakes' brewers have been stashing special elixirs and planning a few surprises to keep the beer flowing in the name of Lake Erie. A handful of beers will only be on tap for a few hours (or as long as it takes for the tap to run dry), with the last one hitting the bar at 5:30 p.m. “We are tapping a barrel-aged Christmas Ale. That’ll be the highlight of the day,” says Lane. “Christmas Ale is already revered in this city, but to have it barrel-aged is superb.” Winking Lizard Tavern Lakewood, 14018 Detroit Ave, Cleveland, 216-226-6693, winkinglizard.com

2. Culture Yourself, Tue. Oct. 14 @ 6-9 p.m.

What’s better than beer? Beer and cheese, of course. This ticketed event ($40 for 20 pairings) will feature 17 breweries — including local favorites Brew Kettle, Buckeye and Great Lakes — for an evening of beer and cheese pairings at the West Side Market in Ohio City. “This is the first time the West Side Market has opened their space for [any group] other than themselves in its entire history that we know of,” Lane says. One of the cheese stands will be open for some expert help. Lane’s favorite combo? “I love when you get a nice stout with a really nice blue cheese,” he recommends. “I’m a freak about blue cheese.” West Side Market, 1979 W. 25th St., Cleveland, 216-664-3387, westsidemarket.org

3. Brewzilla, Sat. Oct. 18 @ 6-10 p.m.

“A Monster of a Beer Tasting” is this event’s subheading, and for good reason. “We’ll have probably 120, 130 different breweries,” says Lane, with many breweries offering several types of beer. In the past, Brewzilla has been Cleveland Beer Week’s culminating event. It’s followed for the first time this year by a bluegrass festival on Sunday, but this is still the king of beer events. VIP tickets are already sold out, and general admission tickets ($50 per person) are going quickly. 5th Street Arcades, 530 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, 216-583-0500, 5thstreetarcades.com

For tickets or for more information about the nonprofit Cleveland Beer Week or the Malone Scholarship Fund it supports, visit clevelandbeerweek.org

Brewing Up More Neighborhood Development

Sam McNulty calls him the "Donald Trump of Lorain." The guy who's successfully built his own food and drink empire on W. 25th Street is referring to his friend and fellow entrepreneur Justin Carson. The three of us were chatting at Platform Brewhouse, which opened in Ohio City this summer. Platform Beer Co., the name of the parent organization, is featured in this month's Best of Cleveland feature. Carson owns the building, along with a few others along the block, and moved the offices of his company, JC Beer Tech, from Medina to space on the second floor. A massive clean-out — the previous owner was reputedly quite the hoarder — and a complete gutting and rehab created the ground-level setting for the brewery and tasting room he and Paul Benner partnered to create.

Photo by Barney Taxel

The tanks are integral to the decor of the sprawling brick-walled room, and the taps feature an ever changing lineup of beers made on the premises and representing a variety of different styles. Flights and growler fills are both available for the asking. Patrons have recently had the chance to weigh in on criteria — types of yeast, style, alcohol content — for a Platform recipe that will be released during Cleveland Beer Week Oct 15.

There's a long bar and multiple communal tables, an old bowling machine and a high-tech jukebox, and a patio where dogs and smokers are welcome. The vibe is hyper-casual and organized around drinking. Management is focused on its hop-powered mission, so no wine or spirits. And rather than prepare food, they let various area restaurateurs and vendors set up shop — one per night — and sell their stuff.

Photo by Barney Taxel

The guys are also positioning this location as beer business incubator. With their brewmaster (and co-owner) Shawn Yasaki, they offer free training for beer-making hobbyists who dream of going pro. And the suds students can even try out their lagers and ales on Platform's customers and solicit their feedback.

The Cleveland Brew Shop, another Benner venture, which stocks beer-making supplies for the home enthusiast, is moving at end of this month from West 14th Street to another piece of Carson property right across the street from Platform. At the risk of inducing a sigh for my punning, I have to say things are really hopping on Lorain.

Buzz Worthy

The Commonwealth is keeping a blistering pace, cranking out three albums over the last two years. Their most recent release, Urban Soul (Cellar Door Records, $8), brings the band’s mellow, heady rock sound to an orchestral tipping point. It's a perfect primer listen before heading out to catch the band at a free Heights Music Hop concert at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Phoenix Coffee Co., followed by a Seafair performance at 9 p.m. The multi-band and multi-venue hop is one of the events that kicks off Cleveland Beer Week.

For Commonwealth drummer Nicholas Kuhar, local shows are where the band is most at home. “We definitely like intimate performances,” he says. “Similarly, playing a smaller room is always inviting because you can actually see the faces of people. We do enjoy playing those more intimate gatherings.” We spoke to Kuhar, who also plays percussion and piano, about what makes the Commonwealth tick.

CM: What role does Cleveland play in your music?

NK: Any metropolitan Midwest city has a lot of touchstones similar to Cleveland, so I think it’s about just experiencing adult life in a place like that. And trying to really, legitimately be an adult … trying to set up a life for yourself that’s real, where you’re trying to be good to people and you’re trying to make sense of some of the things in life. I think that’s what the album’s really speaking to.

CM: How is Urban Soul different from Emerald City Blues?

NK: The first song [of Emerald City Blues], “Ichabod,” there’s lyrics that reference like “This has been done to me”, not necessarily “You are to blame for this,” but it’s very much more looking outward and trying to identify where the is the problem. I think that might have been more the tenor of our first two records. Where as this one, I think the stories, or the lyrics, are just more interesting, more complex and 3-D when you talk about, “What am I doing that’s not completely functional?” [and] “How am I culpable in any of my conflicts?”

CM: Where do you want to go as a band?

NK: Artistically, we’re trying to push even more the orchestral elements of the band. We really respect bands like the National or Bon Iver where it’s like a tiny orchestra on stage. It’s like, wow. We’ve seen the National live twice, and they’re so incredibly powerful and rich and have so much dimension to them. That’s really where we want to be.

Cleveland Beer Week opens tonight with ceremonial keg-tapping

This is the kind of event we can get behind. The first annual Cleveland Beer Week opens tonight with a ceremonial tapping of the keg at the Winking Lizard in Independence, featuring Jimmy Malone of WMJI and state Sen. Tom Patton.

(We'd be there, but we're heading to Cleveland Magazine's Best of Cleveland Party tonight.)

The rest of the week includes a dizzying lineup of tastings, tappings, talks, brewing demos, beer dinners, an IPA festival -- and, next Saturday, Brewzilla, a 50-brewery mega-tasting at the Euclid Arcade downtown.

To get into the festive spirit, and to remind you of all the malty liquid goodness of Cleveland's brewing culture, we recommend "Beer Ye, Beer Ye," our December 2008 package of stories celebrating the 75th anniversary of our constitutional right to beer.