Home brewing supply shop opens; Lasers offer Infinite engravings

HOP HEADS

Personal experience showed Deborah Lewis and her husband, Jim, that finding home-brewing supplies could mean a trip to Pensacola or an order via the Internet. With new-found space available to them through their other business, Computers Plus, the couple opened Hop Heads.

“My husband and I have been brewing beer for years,” Deborah Lewis said. “It’s just a great hobby.”

With Hop Heads, they offer grains, barley, hops, supplies and advice.

“We’ll have kits that all you have to do when you get home is supply water,” Lewis also said.

Since Hop Heads opened early this May, Lewis said all the inventory has yet to arrive. Some plans include the addition of a grain mill for home brewers who like to crush their own. Other plans include classes and possibly a brewer’s club.

The entire concept of Hop Heads, Lewis added, comes from the pure enjoyment of the brewing.

“I haven’t had a bad batch of beer that we’ve made,” she said. “I think there’s something about making it yourself and the satisfaction.”

LOCATION: 26-C N.W. Racetrack Road, near Choctawhatchee High School

HOURS: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays

TELEPHONE: 863-9742

EMAIL: info@hopheadsfwb.com

WEBSITE: www.hopheadsfwb.com

***

INFINITE LASERS LLC

Very few things exist that Drew Cooper can’t engrave upon, he said.

Cooper and his daughter, Maddi Cooper, opened family-owned Infinite Lasers in April 2012, and by December they had relocated to a larger space in the McGuire’s plaza in Destin.

“When I was in the military, I handled a lot of the memorials and going-aways, and I had always been interested in the engraving aspect,” Cooper said, adding that he brings the old-school know how to the shop while Maddi brings the new-school.

“We can engrave on metal,” he continued. “It’s not the traditional engraving like an etch.”

They can also create custom awards for people, providing affordable recognition pieces for sports teams, squads and organizations as well as military memorials or honorariums. The Coopers can engrave on glass and acrylic, laptop computers and iPads, even guitars and rocks.

“It’s imagination,” Cooper said. “You bring in an idea and a piece of what you want engraved, and we’ll engrave it.”

Although Infinite Lasers did take over the phone number for the now-closed Destin Trophy shop, Cooper said “we’re a new business.” 

LOCATION: 45 Harbor Blvd., Destin, near McGuire’s restaurant

HOURS: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays

TELEPHONE: 424-3759

WEBSITE: www.infinitelasersllc.com

EMAIL: cooper@infinitelasersllc.com

Hop City opens home brewing department

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) – Now that home brewing is legal in Alabama, one Birmingham business is hoping people will want to buy some hops.

Hop City, located in the Pepper Place district, has just launched a home brewing department.

On Wednesday, workers held demonstrations on how to make beer from home.

According to the workers, it is as easy as making pasta.

For some, though, it could turn into something more than just a hobby.

On CBS42 News at 10, we will take a look at home brewing in Alabama, and how making beer is actually a bonding experience between a man and his son.

Copyright 2013 WIAT-TV CBS 42

U Bottle It teaches beer brewing and winemaking for beginners

Too intimidated to dive face-first into the intricate world of home brewing? Want to dip your toe in and test the hoppy waters?

U Bottle It

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Enter U Bottle It.

The Henderson business, first opened strictly as a home brew supply store in November 2011, recently started catering to wary winos and cautious hop heads with its home-brewing and winemaking classes.

“It’s a fun thing,” says owner Gary Hails, adding that he sees a lot of customers come in with friends and spouses. Some have even bottled wine for their weddings.

Classes cost $60 (beer or wine) and include personal instruction and the use of U Bottle It’s equipment and storage space throughout the process. Students also must buy beer or wine kits for the class, which cost $23 to $54 (beer) and $75 to $195 (wine), depending on which beer or wine you want to make. And you won’t be disappointed in U Bottle It’s selection—the store boasts 30 wine kits, 50 beer kits and 60 types of hops.

Hails says beers take two to three class sessions (around a month) and wines take four to five class sessions (around two months). In the end, you’ll take home either 30 bottles of wine or 50 to 64 12-ounce bottles of beer.

Do the math and you just might reconsider your next trip to the booze aisle. Hails says he can make a nice Napa merlot for just $7.

“It’s one of the few hobbies that will actually save you money,” Hails says. “It pays for itself.”

Bog Iron Brewery Making a Splash in Norton

Frank White, Brian Shurtleff and Matt Menard said they always had a passion for brewing beer, and now they’re getting to fulfill their passion at Bog Iron Brewery in Norton.

They all have been brewing beer individually with small brewing kits for years.

“Anybody who’s ever been a homebrewer, they sit around and daydream about this,” Shurtleff said. “We took one small step and then another, and we just kept going from there.”

The trio agreed it has been hard, but in 2012 they opened the brewery.

“It was three times the budget and twice the time frame, but we finally opened,” Shurtleff said.

White said he first started home brewing with his cousin and a friend in 1982.

 “We figured we’d brew beer and sell it to our friends,” he said.

Shurtleff said he started because he was a “foodie,” and felt creating and selling beer was a natural progression.

“I got a kit close to 20 years ago and it came out pretty decent,” he said.

They said they all met at the South Shore Brew Club.

“That’s when we started talking about the brewery,” White said.

Shurtleff said beer brewing is essentially like brewing coffee.

“They’re basically the same process,” he said.

The trio makes four different beers, an India Pale Ale, a blonde ale, the Black Steam and the English Session Mild.

“The blonde is an easy drinking beer,” Shurtleff said. “The only difference is it’s 7.5 percent alcohol.”

The trio agreed their most popular beer at the moment is the English Session Mild, which is traditional English beer.

“The craft beer drinkers tend to like a lot of hops, or alcohol or some crazy off the wall ingredient,” Shurtleff said. “The English beer is a pretty basic standard ale. Not a ton of hops, alcohol or crazy ingredients.”

They sell two taps to Trinity and one at Kinsale in downtown Boston.

“It’s been amazing,” Shurtleff said. “Both Trinity and Kinsale have been amazing to work with and really supportive.”

Menard said after only being in business for three months, Trinity has put two of their craft beers on permanently, which is rare.

“For craft beers, they like to cycle the beers pretty quickly to get people to sample the new beer and get the crowd moving through,” he said. “It’s kind of unheard of.”

They said they will be going before the Norton Board of Selectmen soon to start selling the beers out of growlers and giving samples. For now, Trinity and Kinsale are the only places you can get a Bog Iron Beer.

For more information visit www.bogironbrewing.com.

Foolproof Brewing Company Joins RI Beer Scene

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Saturday, April 06, 2013

Kalena Crafton, GoLocalProv Contributor

How’s that look? Foolproof Brewery is producing local beer that’s created with activities in mind.

Watch out other craft breweries–there’s a new beer brewing company tapping into Providence this year.

Since Nick Garrison got a brewing kit from his parents for Christmas and brewed the beer for his own wedding, he’s had a passion for brewing, a passion that has led to the birth of Providence’s hot new brewery: Foolproof Brewing Company.

GolocalProv took time to speak to Nick Garrison, the founder and owner of Foolproof Brewing Company, and and their professional brewmaster, Damase Olsson.

Could you explain your brewing process?

Nick Garrison: We approach brewing a bit differently at Foolproof. Before we even start talking about ingredients, flavors, and beer styles, we look at life experiences. We actually brew our beers with specific activities in mind. The names of each of our brews reflect these sacred beer drinking experiences.

We’re basically trying to get people to think about and treat beer as more than just an alcoholic beverage, but instead as an experience that should be savored and enjoyed.

I truly believe that we as beer drinkers consciously (or subconsciously) associate beers with various experiences, weather, places, moods, and activities. At Foolproof, we really wanted to take that concept to the next level, and that’s how we developed our philosophy of experience-based brewing.

We treat each of our beers as a tribute to a specific experience, and we encourage our friends and fans to go out and create their own experience. I love the idea of somebody picking up a six pack of our beer and taking it camping, heading to the beach, or maybe just staying at home on a rainy day and then sharing that experience with us.

Are there any traditions, or special styles you follow?

Damase Olsson: I do try to use only malt, water, hops and yeast in my recipes. I will also add various other things such as vanilla or honey if that is a flavor I am looking for in the beer. As for styles, I tend to brew mostly ales (as opposed to lagers), as ales will ferment more quickly (two weeks as opposed to five to six weeks), though I do enjoy brewing good lagers when I get the chance and time in the brewery permits. One style I have consistently brewed is a Russian Imperial Stout, so maybe that would be my special style.

A secret recipe?

Olsson: Now that would be a secret, wouldn’t it? But in reality, I have no secret recipes, as each brewer can take the same ingredients and have a slightly different flavor, depending on their brewhouse. After all, with only four ingredients, it is tough to have secrets.

How long have you been brewing beer? Have you hit any road bumps or accidents along the way?

Olsson: I have been brewing non-professionally since 1993 and professionally since 2006. I haven’t had any real bumps or accidents along the way, professionally at least. As a home brewer, I have made my fair share of mistakes, one of which was dropping a batch down a flight of stairs. Glass carboys will always lose a battle with a cement floor.

Garrison: I’ve been brewing for about five years and have been running a brewery for less than three months. It was certainly a challenge pulling this whole crazy idea together. It took me four years to take Foolproof from a dream to reality, and we definitely hit some bumps along the way. Financing, equipment, licensing, branding issues…you name it. Every new brewery faces an uphill battle, but I think we’ve done a great job working through all of the hurdles.

I’ve dumped my fair share of homebrew (things don’t always work out as planned!), but as Damase [Olsson] mentioned, we can proudly say that we haven’t had to dump any beer down the drain yet at Foolproof. I think it’s a testament to Damase’s talent as a brewmaster.

What made you decide to start brewing beer?

Olsson: I enjoyed the flavors of craft beer (though it was called microbrew back then), and I had the opportunity to take a weekend course taught by URI professors when I was living in Narragansett, so I decided to give it a go. Been giving it a go ever since.

Garrison: I received my first home brewing kit as a Christmas gift from my parents. I never thought that two plastic buckets could actually change my life. Within a year of picking up homebrewing as a hobby (ok, borderline obsession), I knew this was what I had to do with my life.

What does beer mean to you?

Olsson: They say beer is what started civilization, and I tend to believe that. Beer is the great equalizer. Every society has had a grain-based beverage, whether it be from corn, wheat, sorghum, or barley. Beer is consumed by folks in every level of society, so if civilization began with beer, every society has had some form of beer, and every strata of society drinks beer. I guess you could say that beer is what keeps the world humming. Or, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, “Sometimes a beer is just a drink.”

Garrison: Working at a brewery for a living, beer is obviously a very important part of my life. In fact, it changed my life. To me, when enjoyed responsibly, beer is something that brings together family and friends, and ultimately, we drink beer because it’s fun. I really wanted the Foolproof brand to reflect that idea – good beer is something that will always bring people together.

Pairing Your Brews

In the mood for getting together with friends for a BBQ? Backyard will match the friendly, smokey atmosphere. Olsson gives us the inside scoop on how to pair Foolproof with your experience, and what to pair it with to make your taste buds tingle:

Barstool – something light in flavor, so it will not overwhelm the beer. Some folks have had it with sushi and loved it. So I would definitely say fish, chicken (not BBQ’ed but baked or lightly grilled), or even a salad.

Backyard – Now there is a BBQ beer, so something more robust, and spicy. Mexican would also work well with this beer.

Raincloud – The roasty flavors remind me of a nice roast, beef, or pork, which would all work very well with this beer.

Revery – I am going out on a limb here, but a French vanilla ice cream beer float works very well. But if you do not want to put ice cream in your beer, you can have it on the side, on top of a warm brownie.

Bringing in a Local Taste

The local brewery hopes to get even more local in the next year, looking to use Rhode Island hops in some of their batches. Currently, the brewery uses hops from all over the world. “We have hops from the Czech Republic, England, Germany, and the Northwest of the United States,” Damase says. “We hope to be using Rhode Island hops next year in some of our batches.”

Try a Taste

Get down and check out the brewery for yourself, see the brewing process, and try the beer a tour Fridays and Saturdays for $10. You can grab a taste of the golden drink at any of these locations.

Foolproof Brewing Company, 241 Grotto Avenue, Pawtucket. Click here to visit the website and for more information.

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Home-Brewing Meets the Boutique Hotel

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SUDS CELEBRITY: It’s impossible to mention the rise of quality craft beer without mentioning San Diego. The city made a sudsy stand for itself throughout the aughts, both through very (very very very) popular festivals and a number of new taverns serving a rainbow of thick, hopsy, small-batch ales. And we don’t simply mean that people should mention San Diego in a California context; the city holds court with Portland and Denver for doing it right. But the innovation in a pint glass hasn’t slowed; it’s just trying out new spots. Say, like a hotel. Hotel Solamar, to be specific. The Kimpton property, which is snug in the Gaslamp-Ballpark nexus, is going the home-brewing route. It’s a charming turnaround from what usually happens; an ambitious foam fan will try and replicate a business’s brew at home. Now a hotel is supporting that homey, made-in-one’s-kitchen flavor, and chef Christian Graves is at the helm.

WEEKLY SOCIAL: If you’re at the Solamar from 5 to 6 p.m. on any Thursday, you’re likely to find Chef Graves hobnobbing over hops and flavors and body and such with guests. That’s “Craft Beer Hour” at the hotel. But Chef isn’t simply jumping into this as a new enthusiast; he’s a home brewer himself, meaning he’ll be able to discuss the brews guests are enjoying. (They’ll hail from San Diego’s best craft breweries, fyi, so this could be a good way to catch up with what the area offers.) He’ll also discuss home-brewing techniques, too. Call it the traditional hotel wine hour updated for those who love a really solid, made-by-hand lager or porter. Remember when chefs used to ask you if you were enjoying your meal? We rather like the idea that they’ll discuss with us our own kitchens and brewer aspirations.

Copyright NBC Owned Television Stations

Longneck Brew House opens this weekend in Stuart

Longneck Brew House

Address: 950 SE Indian Street, Stuart

Phone: 772-210-2296

Grand Opening: Begins 11 a.m. Friday

Grand Opening Specials: Happy hour prices all weekend

Normal business hours: 2-10 p.m.

STUART — Two men’s passion for beer is the driving force behind the newest beer enthusiast’s paradise, scheduled to open this weekend. Longneck Brew House will be the first and only bar in South Florida where beer lovers can enjoy a wide variety of craft beers brew their own on premise.

Charts of grains and hops and a periodic table of beer styles adorn the walls and a line of coppery brewing kettles sit waiting to be filled with grains and hops by brewers eager to experiment with ingredients and create their own beer without having to invest the time and space for home brewing.

Groups or individuals can come in for two to three hours, select an ale recipe, gather their ingredients, steep them in a brewing kettle, add yeast, and leave the rest to Longneck. In two to three weeks, beer makers can come back to bottle their 12.5 gallons of beer and slap on a custom label.

The Brew House guarantees that every beer made from their recipes will turn out like it’s supposed to.

Owners Scott Sundermeier and Bob Hitt wanted to offer a place that was more than just a corner bar, but somewhere they could share their love for brewing.

Two hundred pint glasses on display at Longneck Brewhouse from bars, pubs and breweries Sundermeier has visited since discovering the art of home brewing 14 years ago are testament to his enthusiasm for craft beer.

“I like beer a lot,” Hitt said, “But he’s fanatical.”

Longneck Brew House will offer nearly 100 different beers from light to dark, sweet to bitter, 24 on tap and 70 in a bottle.

The Brew House will also be about more than drinking with friends. The owners’ aim is to create a place where people can come together to create something to be proud of.

“It’s a unique experience,” Hitt said.

“Hang out with your friends, do something fun, and have something to show for it,” Sundermeier said.

Hitt expects the brewery to be popular with parties, group outings, even corporate retreats as friends and colleagues brew, drink, and share in the creation process.

The only other pub in Florida that offers brewing on site is in Jacksonville and there are only 20 bars that do so in the country, so Hitt is expecting Longneck Brew House to draw novice brewers and beer aficionados from Martin County and beyond.

Sundermeier and Hitt are excited for the opening on the first weekend in March and are thrilled to be pursuing a dream of brewing beer for a living, according to Sundermeier.

Longneck Brew House will also offer appetizers at the bar, home brewing supplies and a mug club that offers discounted drinks with membership.

Popularity brewing for local club

Oh, how you want to sample the beer you’ve lovingly created from a combination of water, grain, hops and yeast — but you have to wait until it’s ready.

And that could be anywhere from two to four weeks after bottling — or longer — depending on the type of brew.

So, you put it in a place far enough away not to be constantly tempted to crack one open. But the first couple times you home brew, the pull is too great.

“It’s terrible,” said Greg Krumm of Arnold. “You end up sampling one bottle a day until they’re gone and the last day, it’s really good. Once you have a couple batches under your belt, you realize the waiting is a good thing.”

Krumm is a member of the Annapolis Homebrew Club, a 9-month-old organization whose members have a passion for beer. They hold monthly meetings and discuss the nuances of brewing right down to subtleties that would make a scientist proud.

Of course, they also enjoy sampling their creations. But they’re not out to get hammered. There’s far too much work in their beers to waste them that way.

“We’re not a bunch of toothless, beer-swilling rednecks,” proclaimed one member, Kurt Anderson, a Navy chief petty officer who’s been brewing for five years. “We’re craftsmen.”

The club got started after he moved to the area from Florida last year and ran into an old shipmate who wanted to learn the craft.

They, in turn, went online, where they found another couple of interested local residents and decided to band together. There are about 60 people on the club’s mailing list, about 25 of whom gather for meetings.

Members are from across the county, as well as the Eastern Shore, and range in age from 22 to over 60.

“It’s not like a typical chick thing to do,” said Kristin Reel, a stay-at-home mother from Edgewater.

She learned home brewing from her father. Anderson also has a relative to thank. “My brother started making it, and I wanted to top my brother,” he said.

Others got their initial push after sampling a particularly intriguing craft beer and wondering if they could make something similar.

“It’s a self-satisfying hobby,” said Adam Davis of College Park, who works in fisheries policy.

For Krumm, home brewing is simply an expression of his creativity. “It’s kind of like cooking, but it ends up being beer,” he said.

Most people have to make a few batches before they really know what they’re doing, he said, but the experiments are half the fun.

“When you first start, you just want to make beer,” said Krumm, a loan officer at a bank. “Two or three years later, I’ll be telling you about enzymes.”

Minute changes in temperature or time can impact the final product, so even after someone becomes a proficient brewer, batches can vary.

“You can make the exact same beer 10 times and it’ll be a little different,” said Jay Wonch, a club member from Crownsville.

Grin and beer it

Anderson looked like he was preparing for a science experiment as he lugged beer-making equipment into Krumm’s house recently. He wanted to show the devices involved in the process, and do a little brewing.

“This is my yeast,” Anderson said, holding up a couple jars filled with a dark substance. “These guys are the actual heroes.”

Like any hobby, beer-making can get expensive. But someone can get the basic equipment for $75 and the ingredients for a first batch, which makes 5 gallons, for another $30, said Matthew Ducey, a manager at Annapolis Home Brew in Severna Park.

“It’s just as easy as baking,” he said, adding that home brewing is growing in popularity.

Club members get a lot of their supplies at the shop, which has been in business 15 years, or online.

The basic recipe calls for heating water, adding that to grains, and then letting the mixture sit for a specific amount of time until the results are siphoned off. Brewers boil that, add hops and cool before placing it into a container. Yeast is added before sealing the container and letting it sit two to four weeks. Bottling comes next, along with more waiting.

Additional ingredients can be added along the way, and these can get pretty exotic. Ducey’s sampled a jalapeno and bacon beer, a sweet potato beer, and made a brown sugar cinnamon and oatmeal beer.

Club members have heard of everything from fish parts to seaweed being added to brews.

Some of their own beer carries interesting names, such as Shark Bite, Tongue Lashing and Black Hop Monster, which give nods to the ingredients and the taste. Davis made gluten-free beer for his girlfriend called Oxymoronic Tonic.

One club member recently won a competition and has his beer, “Katie’s IPA,” at a local restaurant chain.

“The cameraderie (in the club) is excellent,” Krumm said. “A lot of us instantly got along really well. And it’s the knowledge. You can read all you want, but a lot of people like myself, we learn by doing or watching. Most of us make pretty good stuff.”

To find new drugs, beer acids get an ‘x-ray’

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“Now that we have the right results, what happens to the bitter hops in the beer brewing process makes a lot more sense,” says lead author Werner Kaminsky, a research associate professor of chemistry at the University of Washington.

Straight from the Source

Read the original study

DOI: 10.1002/anie.201208450

There is documentation that beer and its bittering acids, in moderation, have beneficial effects on diabetes, some forms of cancer, inflammation, and perhaps even weight loss.

As reported in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Kaminsky used a process called X-ray crystallography to figure out the exact structure of those acids, humulone molecules, and some of their derivatives, produced from hops in the brewing process.

That structure is important to researchers looking for ways to incorporate those substances, and their health effects, into new pharmaceuticals.

Humulone molecules are rearranged during the brewing process to contain a ring with five carbon atoms instead of six. At the end of the process two side groups are formed that can be configured in four different ways—both groups can be above the ring or below, or they can be on opposite sides.

Which of the forms the molecule takes determines its “handedness,” Kaminsky says, and that is important for understanding how a particular humulone will react with another substance. If they are paired correctly, they will fit together like a nut and bolt.

If paired incorrectly, they might not fit together at all or it could be like placing a right hand into a left-handed glove. That could produce disastrous results in pharmaceuticals.

Kaminsky cites thalidomide, which has a number of safe uses but was famously used to treat morning sickness in pregnant women in the late 1950s and early 1960s before it was discovered to cause birth defects. Molecule “handedness” in one form of the drug was responsible for the birth defects, while the orientation of molecules in another form did not appear to have the negative effects.

To determine the configuration of humulones formed in the brewing process, coauthors from KinDex Therapeutics, a Seattle pharmaceutical firm that funded the research, recovered acids from the brewing process and purified them.

They converted the humulones to salt crystals and sent them to Kaminsky, who used X-ray crystallography to determine the exact configuration of the molecules.

“Now that we know which hand belongs to which molecule, we can determine which molecule goes to which bitterness taste in beer,” Kaminsky says.

The authors point out that while “excessive beer consumption cannot be recommended to propagate good health, isolated humulones and their derivatives can be prescribed with documented health benefits.”

Some of the compounds have been shown to affect specific illnesses, Kaminsky says, while some with a slight difference in the arrangement of carbon atoms have been ineffective.

The new research sets the stage for finding which of those humulones might be useful in new compounds to be used as medical treatments.

Source: University of Washington

Old Mill Craft Beer — Brewing up a storm, and open for business

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BIDWELL — As established wine-producers, Lisa and Tim Merry felt pretty confident that locally-brewed beer would be a success in Gallia County. The couple, who jointly own Merry Family Winery in Bidwell, had heard regular inquiries over the years from their customers on the subject of beer.

“Nobody was brewing beer around here, and people kept asking us about it,” Tim Merry said, “so we decided to give it a try.”

The brewery takes its name, Old Mill Craft Beer, from its home — the old mill, which used to be the venue for Jewell Evans’ Grist Mill. It is a building that comes with some well-known Gallia County history; Jewell Evans was married to locally-born and raised Bob Evans of Bob Evans Farms fame.

The Merrys had considered the possibility of starting a brewery for about two years. After the initial success of the winery, which opened in 2006, they found that the wine business was growing and expanding every bit as as well as they had hoped — so much, in fact, that they decided to move it to a larger building, the old mill, obtaining more land for vineyards.

They kept the existing vineyards, as well, and found that they had space at their new location for growing their own hops.

“We grow the hops and harvest the flowers,” Tim Merry said, “We use ten different kinds of hops, and they all have different names; three of them are Columbus, Cascade and Centennial.”

Merry added that both businesses began as hobbies, but they are very labor-intensive. When they decided to begin producing beer professionally, there was much work to be done.

Merry noted, “After we got our state and federal licenses, we had to get all the equipment. We needed tanks and fermenting equipment. We needed grain, some of which we had to grind. It’s a lot of work, but it sure beats working for someone else.”

There are a lot of variables in the beer-making process, Merry said.

“When it comes to the amount of time it takes to make beer, they’re all different so it varies. I brew in 50-gallon batches; I can brew up a batch in about four hours, but then I have to let it ferment and clear,” Merry said. “That can take anything from two weeks to six months.”

At the moment, the brewery offers three different beers, which they sell by the glass or in 12-ounce bottles.

“We have an imperial ale with a citrus flavor, a black lager with chocolate and dark malts and an India pale ale with a bold hop flavor,” Merry said, adding that the brewery has purchased some Buffalo Trace Bourbon distillery whiskey barrels to add a bourbon flavor to future batches.

The Merrys were both born and raised in the area, noted Tim, who added that he’s glad to stay and support and boost the local economy.

“Lisa’s from just across the river, and I was born in Gallipolis,” said Tim Merry. “The winery-brewery’s in Bidwell, and that’s as far as I’m going.”

The winery and brewery are open from 10:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Additional information may be obtained from the web site at merryfamilywinery.com, or the Merry Family Facebook page, or by calling (740) 245-9463.