Liquid Mansfield

Something wonderful has happened! Something amazing for my little Ohio town, in fact. Something that will bring people to the area and that will change people’s attitude toward our city. Something for all of us to be proud of. And yes, of course beer is involved: a brewery has opened in Mansfield!

Last Wednesday was a bright and giddy spring day. My skin was buzzing with the forgotten touch of sunshine and the promise of a good beer after work. At 5pm Ben and I took our tickets for the brewery’s soft opening and crossed the small brick parking lot that separates my bookstore from the dangerously close by brewery.

The Phoenix Brewing Company is located in a brick building built in 1914 that was originally a mortuary. Rather than ignore what could be taken as a morbid history, they have embraced it. When my sampler of their five beers arrived, it came on a coffin-shaped, wooden flight. The names of their beers, too, riff on the theme: Redemption IPA, Ferryman’s Stout, etc. (When they were first brainstorming names, “Embalming Fluid IPA” was bandied about. Apparently clearer heads and weaker stomachs prevailed.)

They don’t overdo the theme, though, and let the beer be the focus of attention. Of their five beers the IPA and the oatmeal milk stout stood out as fantastic over the other just really good beers. I settled on the latter after we finished the flight. I hope that their wheat or pale ales are satisfactorily normal for the non beer snobs, but I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about those folk.

What really made me smile that night — aside from my two 20-ounce mugs of Ferryman’s — was the crowd. The night was a ticketed event for people who work in our downtown area. The coffee shop dudes were there, the cigar store lady, the bank guys who pretend not to recognize me, the pizza guy who catered my wedding, the staff of two nearby bars who all know me by name.

Ben and The Ferryman

We found ourselves in a lively conversation with an editor from our local newspaper who, perhaps more importantly, is Steve the Beer Guy. The three of us lobbed facts about beer and brewing at each other for a while until we were all convinced of the others’ competence on the subject. We discussed a few other topics, his beloved Cincinnati Reds, for example (Ben: [whispering] what sport is this?) but it kept coming back to beer. As it should. Did you know the beer industry is one of the few sectors that has steadily grown since its beginning in the 80s?; this wheat is unusually hoppy and delicious!; isn’t it fucking fantastic Mansfield has a brewery?!

When Steve’s designated driver arrived, Ben and I sat quiet for a while in the noisy brick room watching the sky turn from orange to purple over the rusty water towers and low-riding industrial buildings that make up the north side. There was something about this moment, this scene that was echoed in the opaque black beer I swirled in my stein. This is more than just another bar, just another stout: this is ours.

This stout was brewed by Mansfielders in a hundred-year-old building that collected the ghosts of Mansfield’s past. Today The Phoenix Brewing Company makes its own history. This beer, our beer, gives the rest of us who live in Mansfield something to look forward to — an ESB on the patio this summer, a porter in their tap room next winter — and a reason to believe in our home.