Maple Lawn Brewery supports homebrewers

A bunch of beers you’d likely never expect to hit the taps at Maple Lawn Brewery did so last Saturday. The Pomeroy, Ohio brewery offered a tap takeover with special small-batch brews made in collaboration with members of two local homebrew clubs.

“We really wanted to give the homebrewers a chance to show off their wares,” said Hank Cleland, Maple Lawn’s co-founder/owner/brewer. He says homebrewing is how he got started, and this is his way to help promote the craft.

“They made their beer here on site using our spring water. Six weeks or so later, here we are with the tap takeover.”

Back on July 21, members of the Greater Huntington Homebrewers Association (GHHA) and members of the Alfred (Ohio) Homebrewers Club held a brew day at Maple Lawn Brewery. Club members brought their own recipes, ingredients, and equipment sufficient to make a 5 gallon batch of their selected beer. Maple Lawn brewers Hank Cleland and Cory Fowler supervised the activity.

On that July Saturday, the homebrewers brewed their batches and transferred them to fermentors. In the coming weeks, they made a couple of more visits to the brewery in order to further process and keg the fermented beer. The big coming out party took place on September 1, when eight homebrewer-brewed beers debuted.

Maple Lawn Brewery supports homebrewers

Cleland says that this is the second time this year he’s done a collaboration tap takeover with a homebrew club. The first was back in February with the Athens (Ohio) Homebrew Club. He plans to continue doing two more next year.

GHHA President Jane Zalewski attended that Athens homebrewers’ event.  “We had a fantastic time,” she said. She talked with Hank, and he said he’d love to have her club come and do the same thing. She says the club jumped on the idea and had a great time doing it.

The Alfred Homebrewers are all from pretty close by Pomeroy, says member Roger McCune.”We always loved craft beer so we just decided to start making it ourselves,” he said. Club members visit the brewery often and when they were there one day this summer, they were asked to join in the brew day. “They wanted the participation of the local club, so we went ahead and helped them out.” McCune said. “It’s been a lot of fun.”

 GHHA Member Brews

Greater Huntington Homebrewers Association members made six beers, including:

• Quaker Oatmeal Stout by Jane & Dave Zalewski
• Cherry Stout by Jane & Dave Zalewski
• Dr. Mohn’s Citra Pale Ale by Dr. Geoffrey John
• Pelouse D’erable Saison by Wayne Palumbo
• Galaxy Grabber SMASH Lager by Kenny Graley
• Dahkness Charlie Murphy’s Law Dunkel Weisse by Doug Penn

Alfred Homebrewers Brews

The homebrewers from Alfred brewed two beers:

• Queen Anne’s Revenge Black Lager by Jon Fluharty, Joe Weeks, Roger McCune & Cathy Hart
• Norma Jean Oatmeal Blonde by Fluharty, Weeks, McCune & Hart

Special brews from Maple Lawn too

Maple Lawn assistant brewer Cory Fowler also made a nice small batch beer he released that day. His #TrentMadeMeDoIt was a double-hopped Double IPA. Another excellent beer from the brewery on Saturday was a very tasty Mexican-style lager they called Meigsican. Nice word play there.

Cleland says the brewery gets a lot of support from the local Meigs County community. “We also get a lot of people from Huntington, Charleston, and Athens, even some from Columbus.”

“Our Meigs Gold Lager is our number one seller. We also try to keep a pale ale of some kind on tap, same with the IPAs. We try to keep a bourbon barrel aged beer on too. Our idea is just to keep putting new beers out, different flavors, always new things to try.”

Brilliant Stream commends Hank Cleland and his Maple Lawn Brewery crew for their support of local homebrewing. Follow them on Facebook to keep up with the next tap takeover event. Our Appalachian region has some of the most community spirited brewers anywhere.