Ohio Brewery News

Taking Silver to the Bank 

The owner of Eighty-Three Brewery, Chris Surak, was surprised to learn he’d won a medal at the 2021 Great American Beer Festival competition. It’s not that he didn’t enter a great beer – obviously, he did – but the shock came from a source we can all relate to.

“I was super surprised cause I actually forgot the awards ceremony was last night,” Surak told Cleveland.com’s Marc Bona the day after earning a silver medal for Berliner Nice! in the Specialty Berliner-style Weisse category. “I’m super thrilled for it. I was caught off guard. I totally forgot about it.”

Four months later, it shouldn’t come as a shock that Eighty-Three Brewery has packaged their award-winning brew in cans.

Berliner Nice! is a traditional, German-influenced Berliner Weisse style sour ale, low in alcohol with a refreshing, crisp tartness. The recent trend in American sours is to offset the acidity with copious additions of fruit. However, as is customary in Berlin, Eighty-Three’s version can be spiked with a few drops of raspberry or woodruff syrup, based on the drinker’s preference.

The brewery’s medal winning entry was flavored with the traditional woodruff syrup, made from the Waldmeister herb native to Germany. As beer writer John Holl describes it, woodruff has “a sweet, hay-like, earthy aroma and taste,” which helps to cut the acidity of the base beer.

Don’t get caught off guard: pick up four-packs of Berliner Nice! starting this weekend. Eighty-Three will soon be releasing Giant Maple Tree Star, a maple bourbon barrel aged barleywine clocking in at 12.45% ABV. For details on that release, give the brewery a follow at instagram.com/eightythreebrewery