My father, whose long white hair is a kind of camouflage in Yellow Springs, Ohio
Spring has finally arrived in Ohio. I’m sitting in my bookstore with the door and windows open wide. Aretha plays on the stereo. Tiny white petals float in on the breeze and polka-dot the welcome mat. I can hear the voices of under-dressed Ohioans who walk down the street and fan themselves in the 60-degree heatwave. All this scene needs is a cold Ohio beer in my hand!
Recently I’ve decided to apply my big talk about buying local to my beer drinking and to take this hobby of mine more seriously. Time to really explore craft beers in my area. My little heart-shaped state is tiny, but Ohio has at least 109 craft breweries, which ought to keep me busy for a while.
On a recent brilliant blue day I drove down to Yellow Springs, Ohio, which is where Antioch College is, which is code for Warning: high hippy concentration (any way you read it). This blue dot in Ohio’s sea of red is packed with little shops — clothing, jewelry, and every form of currently trending anachronistic media (which is, of course, where I spent most of my time). All the stores had cats.
In the air is the smell of locally grown everything wafting from the cozy restaurants, freshly bloomed spring flowers, and patchouli. Creative, empowering graffiti covers any surface not painted in murals or pasted over with creative, empowering bumper stickers.
We don’t mess around here
Part of the impetus behind the trip was the Yellow Springs Brewery that opened up a few years ago, and which is already winning awards. As though “Yellow Springs Brewery” wasn’t enough to indicate where they are from, their slogan is “Crafting Truth to Power,” a dead giveaway that they exist on one of the most liberal, highly-educated islands in our state. That’s also, by the way, the title of one of my undergrad term papers.
Their taproom is lovely: bright and breezy and still warm with all the rich wooden everything. I ordered my flight — to sample four of their beers without falling over — and sat down. Next to us was a table of brewers. They all wore work shirts with their brewery’s name on it and their own embroidered on a patch above their hearts. With their tattoos and long, unruly beards, they were caricatures of what a new American brewer looks like.
Still Life: beer flight & potato chips
I sampled a range of styles: an IPA, a saison, a Belgian fruit beer, and a brown ale. I was disappointed by the Belgian styles. The saison only had a hint of the funky fuzziness that makes me like the style. Its name is Captain Stardust, though, for which it gets points. Far and away my favorite was the IPA, but not just because I love IPAs. Breaking Edge was solid — hopped with Ohio hops! — as was the one I brought home in a growler, the Wobbly Wheel. Tons of lovely hop aroma that makes you think you’re drinking a fistfull of spring flowers. Their American smoked brown ale won an award in the Great American Beer Fest of 2013, but was unfortunately not on tap.
With the beer, we destroyed a large bag of Ohio-made potato chips, the name of which I’ve forgotten already. (If nothing else, Ohio can make a fine beer and a superior potato chip.) We left the brewery pleasantly warm and wittier than ever.
I did NOT steal one of these, though I was tempted
What the brewery and the beers have that is enviable and not reproducible elsewhere in the country, is an intrinsic Ohioness. What does that mean, exactly? They’re brewed and imbued with the same ephemeral notions that make me an Ohioan: earnestness, honesty, a preternatural love of sweet corn, generosity, resilience, and a fierce hometown pride. And it is for these reasons that I’ll continue drinking Ohio beer, that I’ll wear shorts in spring, that I’ll be proud, that I’ll lay down roots.