I couldn't get a picture of Pigskin's logo. Oops.

I sampled significantly more beer yesterday than I had the previous evening. Upon waking this morning I quickly ran through my check-ins on Untappd and discovered that I had a grand total of seventeen new brews under my belt, revisited two old friends, and an extremely cool sort of remix on one of the new ones (you’ll see what I mean very soon).

I started my day off at Devil’s Kettle Brewing. After a late lunch and a few pit-stops to avoid the worst of yesterday’s rain, I rolled into one of Athens’ new breweries at roughly three o’clock.

Devil’s Kettle is located on Columbus Road, which (if you don’t know your way around Athens very well) is pretty far away from the uptown bars and the overall beast that is Ohio Brew Week. So, how does the brewery reel in (hook, line, and sinker) people like me for the week? Yes, they offer fantastic beer but that’s not what I’m trying to say.

They offer Hops School. For each day this week the brewery has dry-hopped one of their brews (Spider Silk, their blonde ale) with a different hop. The whole thing is designed for people to learn more about the difference between various kinds of hops. Yesterday it was citra hops, which gave the ale a citrusy, almost piney, flavor. 

Also at Devil's Kettle I had a regular Spider Silk and a Freak the Mild (an English-style brown ale).

I next headed to the West End Cider House and built myself a small flight of four brews: Mad Moon Hard Cider's Unplugged Caramel Apple (a hard cider with a caramel kick, as you might expect from the name), Marietta Brewing Company's Smoked Porter (very smokey, not for me), West End's own Them Apples (sour and just a little sweet), and Brothers Drake Meads' Apple Pie (not a beer or cider but something all my friends have been urging me to try--tastes like a honeyed apple pie!). All of these were great.

There was a small break between West End and Jackie O's, but I arrived at the latter close to six o'clock. Here, my friends and I built another flight. This contained: Warped Wing Brewery's BrassPunk Pils (well-crafted and hoppy) and Barn Gang (Belgian-style triple), Urban Artifact's Keypunch (incredibly fruity, essentially a non-lemon shandy), Actual Brewing Company's Photon (light beer), Green Flowers (an IPA collab between Jackie O's and Yellow Springs), and, most importantly, White Apparition. The only one here I had a beef with was the Photon although, and to be fair, I did know it was a light beer going into it.

White App

After finishing up at Jackie O's we went to The Pigskin. Let me be brutally candid here:  I hate Pigskin. I think it's the worst bar on campus. But the promise of good beer lured me in, and I wasn't disappointed. 

We got a flight of all seven brews they had on tap: Old Firehouse Brewery's Nutty Pyro (a great brown ale) and Flashpoint (an IPA that's light on hops); Willoughby Brewing Company's Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porter (as delicious as it sounds), Kaiserhof (my friend said this is what Bud would be if it was a craft beer, and I agree completely), and Moonshadow IPA (another not-too-hoppy IPA); Urban Artifact's Harrow (a very tasty-yet-sour brew) and Finn (what's up with all these lightly-hopped IPAs?). All seven of these beers are solid.


And that's it for my second night at Ohio Brew Week! As soon as the storm that's hitting Athens blows over I'll be heading to Devil's Kettle for another Hops School lesson. Where will I go after that? I don't know but be sure to check back tomorrow to find out!