This afternoon's happy hour kicks off one of the best annual Cleveland events in recent years, Cleveland Beer Week. What I love about the event is that it takes place all over northeast Ohio. There's so many participants including microbreweries, bars and supermarkets.
The highlight event is Brewzilla which wraps up the week of beer celebration next Saturday at the Galleria. While Chuck Berry and guests celebrate rock and roll down the street as part of the Rock Hall Masters series others will be toasting the diversity of both local, national and international beers.
What I dig about the Cleveland Beer Week site is the event schedule page. There's way too many during the entire week to list all at once. You can do that or you can hone in on events by day, time, type and neighborhood.
Cleveland should really try and sell the concept that we are one of the premier brewery centers in America. At the turn of the 19th century there were countless breweries in this town. It has to do with the fact that Cleveland became a haven for German immigrants. Cleveland still boasts more German ancestry than any other nationality. We have beer in our blood.
People point to places like Portand, Oregon as the craft beer capital. Cleveland should have that distinction and it can be ours with the right marketing and continued growth of breweries and master brewers.
One of the great American brewers is Stone and they're in San Diego? San Diego? That's not beer country. Where's their water supply? We have the Great Lakes and how smart of our premier brewery to use that name.
So enjoy our heritage and let's all work toward staking claim as the craft beer capital of the United States. You can do your part by imbibing this week. Life's to short to drink shitty beer. Ok, we need a better slogan than that.
