They’ve only been open a short time, but it’s been made pretty clear that Blue Ash’s March First Brewing Company has an extremely strong desire to tie themselves in with the homebrewing community in Cincinnati – offering up brew day contests and now a fantastic program to help bridge the gap between homebrewers and professional breweries.

Cincy Beer Labs

The new program that is being launched on September 12th in the March First taproom will allow two new brewers twice a month to brew a recipe of their own creation alongside the March First Brewing team in the brewery.

Two recipes a month will then be released in the taproom spotlighted by a release party every other Wednesday.  The brewery says that they want to help close the disconnect that they see between the homebrewers in the city as well as the 40+ brewries that exist in Cincinnati.

There is an untouched (and large) group of people who truly enjoy the art of brewing and love our beers that are at home creating their own special recipes – why are we not bringing them into the family that has become the professional brewing industry?  We want to bridge that gap because we see a real opportunity for both sides to not only learn from each other, but build lasting relationships.  This really embodies what the brewing community is about for us – growing together, and of course Brewing awesome beer.

The Kickoff

As I said above, the program kicks off September 12th in the March First taproom, where they’ll be tapping the first of their homebrewer spotlights.  The brew is dubbed the “Highland’s House California Common Lager” and is a 5.7% ABV, 40 IBU creation by local homebrewer Tim Werdman.  It’s the start of a series that not only will you not want to miss, but if you have any bit of homebrewing in your blood you might want to think about taking part in!

My Takeaway

I think this is a fun way to get more people not only into the hobby of homebrewing to start with, but once they are homebrewing to try to get them a little deeper into it.  We talked about this idea a little bit when we were out at Bad Tom Smith for the last episode of Cincy Brewcast – they’re going with a simliar program up in their Cleveland taproom to help tie them into the local homebrewing community.  Woodburn has also gone with a program since their inception which gets local homebrewers into their taproom to brew pilot batches… you’re going to see it more and more.

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