LOUISVILLE, Ohio — Garret Conley, head brewer at UnHitched Brewing Company located in downtown Louisville, is the kind of guy who notices sumac, elderberries and spicebush growing in fields and alongside the roads of his community and wonders how he can incorporate the flavors into his next batch of beer.
“You’re coming (to UnHitched) to get immersed in that pastoral nature of Ohio,” Conley said as he gazed around the bustling brewery on a Saturday afternoon.
Every barrel of beer produced at UnHitched is authentically and unapologetically local. Each menu is stamped with a seal that promises 100% of the brewery’s beer ingredients are grown and processed within the Midwest — all within 400 miles of the taproom.
The brewery’s footprint covers the Midwest — and if it weren’t for the yeast, which comes from Chicago, and some grains that come from Indiana and Pennsylvania, the brewery would be nearly 100% Ohio-grown ingredients with a smaller footprint of about 250 miles: “As far north as Chagrin Falls and as far south as Mechanicsburg,” Conley said.
Why Ohio? Owner Adam Longacre puts it this way: “You’ve got great farmers down the road. You don’t need to go to the Pacific Northwest or even Michigan for ingredients. They’re all right here.”
Agricultural dedication
Beer is an agricultural product, even if no one thinks of it that way. Beer is primarily made up of crops like malted barley, hops and yeast, combined with water and time, Longacre said.
Sourcing hops in Ohio wasn’t always easy. About 99% of the nation’s hop acreage and about 25% of the worldwide acreage is located in the Pacific Northwest states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Astute beer drinkers likely can easily identify the taste of Pacific Northwest hops, but it’s unlikely that they’ve been exposed to the taste of hops grown in Ohio soil.
In 2013, around the time when the seeds of UnHitched were being sown, researchers at the Ohio State University received a specialty crop grant that helped plant the beginnings of a hop revival throughout the state. The revival was partially born because about $30 million was sent out of the state to purchase hops and to support jobs related to hops. Now, according to the Ohio Hop Growers Guild, there are over 50 farms in the state growing hops, with over 100,000 plants in the ground.
With the introduction of new hop varieties and viable crops across the state, breweries like UnHitched have been able to leverage locally-grown ingredients from partners like Barn Talk Hops, Haus Malts, West Branch Malts and Auburn Acres. At UnHitched, Conley said that beer aficionados can expect to taste “the power of agriculture” that’s coming right from their backyards.
“While we’re not farming, we’ve bound ourselves to the agricultural elements,” he said.
Longacre agreed, saying that while they may make the same style of beer with the same ingredients, it’s likely that they’ll taste different every time — although the average customer might not have the palate to recognize the subtleties. That’s because it’s impossible to get the same hop to an exact specification every single year; variables like drought and late frost can impact yield and ultimately impact the flavor of beer.
To Conley, these are the variables and challenges that make brewing local rewarding and allow the chance to be inventive. If a crop doesn’t turn out the way it’s expected to, you just “pivot and get a slightly different character.”
Beers with Ohio character have interesting stories. One beer on tap, called Wet Fang, is created with a fresh wet hop variety called Heritage, with UnHitched being the first brewery to use it. A hog farmer was attending a flea market at Heritage Farms, a Christmas tree farm in Penninsula, Ohio, and noticed some hops growing and asked to take some cuttings.
Jenny Napier of Barn Talk Hops, a hop-growing and processing farm, propagated the cuttings. What’s interesting is that Napier’s family had previously owned the land at Heritage Farms and those same hops had been used for beer-making many generations ago.
Conley said once a new line is open, a sumac Saison will be put on, brewed using local sumac. “Sumac is everywhere. No one is using any of it — and why not? There’s a bit of beauty in those brushstrokes.” Lemongrass, used by a farmer as a pest deterrent, has also been utilized as an ingredient for its bounty. You’ll never find a vanilla stout on the menu: it’s not a crop that’s sustainably grown in Ohio or the Midwest.
“I always tell people there’s not too much magic in what we do. I take something that farmers work really, really hard on, minimally manipulate it, and not screw up what they have put a lot of time and effort into,” Conley said of his brewing process.
There is no shortage of benefits to using local agriculture in beer production. Longacre points out that the brewery doesn’t deal with supply chain issues — the supply chain is direct, with few, if any, disruptions when farmers are literally down the road. When the brewery pays farmers for their products, the farmers can invest those dollars directly into their farms and their local communities.
After brewing and taste testing, Conley can deliver feedback to farmers to tell them exactly what their products taste like, allowing them to leverage their unique crops with other sellers. Conley dreams of the day when other breweries become interested in Ohio-specific hop varieties, and he can direct them to farmers to give the farmers a bigger market.
Small town revival
UnHitched’s dedication to local agriculture isn’t just to have unique beers. The driving mission of the brewery is like a “small-town America revival,” according to Longacre.
UnHitched opened its doors in October of 2019 in downtown Louisville, a town that Longacre recalls as stagnant and depressing — a farm town on the map that no one had heard of and that no one had plans to visit.
Longacre and his wife had wanted to open a business in the area that would have a community impact. The whole goal of the business was “to see if we could be a foundation for our small town, to build something cool not just for us, but to inspire other people to start to reinvigorate and build businesses downtown,” he said.
Since opening UnHitched, Longacre said eight or nine new businesses also opened downtown. While only some of them have remained open, he said that at least people are attempting to make a go at revitalizing the area.
UnHitched’s taproom seats about 120 people and offers a family-friendly menu. Older Louisville locals might recognize the material the tables are made of; the building used to house a bowling alley, and the lanes were repurposed to make the bar.
New beginnings
Conley and Longacre look forward to this spring when their second location will open in downtown Canton. The location is set to open in late March or April when the beer is ready to serve.
Their new location is called The Woodshop, an UnHitched project. Deli Ohio and Mike’s Pizza will accompany The Woodshop and will all be located in the Deli Ohio building.
While the same principles and dedication to local agriculture will still apply, the draw will be beer that has been fermented in wooden barrels, a brewing technique that is hundreds of years old. If you’re wondering, the wooden barrels won’t be made from wood from Ohio. They’re a special type of barrel called foeder barrels, which are being crafted by a company based in Missouri that mostly uses wood sourced from the Midwest.
But you can see the twinkle in Conley and Longacre’s eyes as you ask them about using Ohio-made barrels — they’re already dreaming and wondering how they can make it possible.
