Today I'm bringing you a post that I'm super happy about. See, back when Michelle and I lived in Cincinnati proper, we lived in the city's Pleasant Ridge neighborhood. MadTree was a little over just down the road from our apartment--an easy drive, but not necessarily walking distance. While I was happy to have a great brewery so close to home, five years in Athens had me wishing for something close enough to walk home from after a drink too many.

Luckily, the summer before we split town Nine Giant opened. The brewery was a five minute walk from our place. I spent more than a few dollars there (and I continue to do so every chance I get). I've loved the brewery and kitchen from the day they opened (I attended their soft-opening with some friends). I was bummed when we moved out east of the city and hoped that Nine Giant's offerings would eventually get canned and hit distro. 

Today, thanks to a collaboration with Silverton's HighGrain Brewing, I'm about to crack into the culmination of that hope: Dank IPA, a beer brewed for April 20th.

Can you believe that it's been nearly six months since I've discussed a cider on the blog? Truth be told, I haven't had much cider (apart from some homebrew) in that time. Now that spring's sprung and I'm looking forward to blossoms adorning my apple trees (hopefully they finally fruit this year), I have cider on my mind.

Luckily Rhinegeist's Cidergeist brand seems to have just the thing for me in Bloom, a cider bursting with springtime-inspired floral notes. Let's see how it's drinking on this fine Easter Sunday.

Have you ever heard of goetta? It's pretty much a quintessentially Cincinnati thing. It's a kind of breakfast sausage that has a lot of grain in it to kind of make it more substantial. It's a strange thing to explain but goetta is really great (I once had a hotdog with goetta and maple syrup on it--it was one of the best thing I've ever eaten).


Another quintessentially Cincinnati thing is Christian Moerlein. So, when they announced they were making a goetta-inspired lager, I got pretty excited. I didn't ever anticipate doing a post on the stuff, however, because I never thought I'd find it. Luckily, it was sitting on the shelf at a local bottleshop  yesterday. Thus, here we are: Glier's Goetta, a lager from Christian Moerlein.

Two weeks ago tomorrow, on June 1st, Urban Artifact held its First Annual Missing Linck Day. I, luckily, had the day off so at around thee o'cock Michelle and I left our house in order to make it to the taproom in time for its release.


Michelle had never been to a release before. Good for her but only okay for me, it wasn't like a typical can release. Instead, it was a mellow affair with no line and no bottleshare. That's fine, for an afternoon release I wasn't expecting the whole nine yards.

I'm happy to say that the release was a good time. But, this post isn't about that. This post is about the beer itself, a seemingly miraculous work wrought by the crafty minds backing Urban Artifact. This post is about a golden ale named Missing Linck.

This is the first in a series of four posts devoted to Local Blend, a collaboration series of coffee porters MadTree recently released. 

I've had Deeper Roots coffee before. For my birthday last year, which was, coincidentally, celebrated at MadTree, my brother gave me a bag of Deeper Roots' Community Blend. It's really good stuff, and I can't wait to find out what Deeper Roots coffee adds to a beer such as a porter.


You see, last month MadTree dropped Local Blend, a group of four porters brewed in collaboration with four coffee roasters around Ohio. Each can represents a different city: Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Cleveland. I'm impressed with the sheer scope of this collaboration series, and, after sitting on my cans since I grabbed them on January 5th, I'm finally breaking into them one-by-one here on the blog. The goal is to review them individually, see how they stack up against each other, and give the overall Local Blend series a rating.

So, here we go. MadTree's Local Blend. First up: Cincinnati - Deeper Roots Coffee.

Today is a good day to be a beer geek.

Let me back up a bit. I know the gadget at the bottom of the page says I'm supposed to be talking about New Glarus' Octoberfest offering right now. I'll get around to that soon (hopefully sometime this week). But, I felt I should put that off because something came up.

What was the something? The release of MadTree's 2016 Funk Series at the Funk Day 2016 event. This is an experience that began this morning and is now over. Luckily, I got to check it out and  I'm writing this now to share it with you. You'll note that this isn't you standard John Likes Beer post--Purrl is absent from it and I'm drinking beer out of a glass. Like I said, I'll get back on track with my typical reviews soon enough. But, I try to be timely when I can. And this post is, if nothing else, timely.

Last night my girlfriend and I were feeling cooped up in our hot apartment so we headed out for a night on the town. Well, not really on the town. More just one specific destination: Madtree's taproom.

I had been there before to try their brews in sample their cuisine and, although my girlfriend doesn't usually care for beer, I talked her into going with me by promising her pizza and Dreamsicle (a magically delicious brew that tastes exactly like an orange creamsicle).