One of Cincinnati's newest breweries in East Walnut Hills will open its doo rs to the public later this summer.
Woodburn Brewery at 2800 Woodburn Ave. will open and start pouring beers on Friday Aug. 26.
Woodburn Brewery at 2800 Woodburn Ave. in East Walnut Hills will open on Au g. 26. Enlarge Woodburn Brewery at 2800 Woodburn Ave. in East Walnut Hills will open on Au g. 26.
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At its opening Woodburn will be pouring a pineapple saison, made with real pineapple; an American pale ale; a chocolate cherry stout; a cedar IPA; a B elgian Wit; a Belgian Quad; an American brown ale; a breakfast IPA, and the four-time gold medal winning SteinPils.
Woodburn co-owners Chris Mitchell and Dennis Chacón came into contact with Ingolf Steinkamp through investors in the brewery. Steinkamp owned a m achine shop and a brewery in Germany. He also owned a shop in Cincinnati, w hich is how he had relationships with Woodburn's investors.
When Steinkamp sold his brewery, he kept his recipes, including one for mul tiple German gold-medal-winning SteinPils. After meeting Mitchell and Chac ón, he agreed to give them the exclusive U.S. rights to brew SteinPils .
"People can expect to drink exceptional beer in an exceptional space," Chac ón told me. "We want people to be inspired by both the space and the b eer."
All of the furniture at Woodburn was custom made for the brewery. The bar i s poured-in-place concrete and the architectural features in the art deco b uilding built in 1909 will be accented by raw copper. In contrast to some o f Cincinnati's more industrial-looking breweries, Woodburn is meant to make drinkers comfortable and stick around for maximum beer consumption.
Woodburn has a three-barrel pilot system capable of brewing smaller batches of 93 gallons. That will allow it to experiment with different styles of b eer it might not want to make on its 20-barrel production system, but Mitch ell and Chacón have plans to use it to include the larger beer communi ty in their brewery.
The pilot system will be made available to homebrewers to come in, make the ir beers and have them on tap at Woodburn. Mitchell has deep ties with the Cincinnati homebrewing community through his former job at Listermann. List ermann is actually where Mitchell and Chacón met when Chacón was trying to start up a brewery in a building he bought on Vine Street in Over
-the-Rhine.
While Woodburn isn't serving food – Chacón says it's something they're exploring – the brewery will partner with food trucks to s erve patrons, as well as play host to pop-up caterers.
Woodburn is one of two breweries in town that is taking advantage of a new business that places bee hives at local businesses to produce honey. The Wo odburn owners want to keep everything as local as possible. They source thi ngs like ginger, berries, paw paws and whatever is in season from Carriage House Farms in Miami Township, then send their spent grain back to Carriage House for use in the farm's Madhouse Vinegar brand.