It’s easy to feel like it was just yesterday when West Side Brewing opened up their doors in Westwood. It’s also mind blowing to take a step back and realize that there have been 22 new taprooms that have opened since them. Things are busy in Cincinnati beer, and to open, and operate a brewery in the middle of that kind of chaos and manage to still carve out an identity for yourself is nothing to ignore.

I’m thrilled to live in a city where a place like West Side exists and keeps putting out beers that sit squarely in that beautiful space between modern craft and the traditional styles that I fell in love with years ago. These guys are fun.

Sunday might be their technical, official anniversary – but they’re planning on a few things all weekend to make sure that whenever you stop by there’s something going on to make it worth your while.

Friday, 6/28

If you head out to West Side tonight, you can get the first shot (or shots) at winning the sweet metal cooler that they’re raffling off all weekend. For each pint that you buy you get a ticket to go in the raffle. In addition to that, they’ll have Sea Cuisine parking outside to serve up food, and live music from Jessie Strassell will definitely pair up with a cold beer on an amazing summer evening.

Saturday, 6/29

Saturday is a big day. It all starts at 11am when their running club kicks things off (if running is your sort of thing. Me? I just like drinking…)

Just like on Friday, for every pint that you order on Saturday, you’ll get a raffle ticket to throw in on the big metal cooler that they’ve got displayed in the taproom. And since we’re talking about pints – you’ll want to know that they’re also using Saturday to release their big, 12% Triple IPA in cans, along with special limited edition glassware too.

Starting at 4pm, they’ll be hosting brewery tours. Today (6/28) is your last day to prepurchase tickets (and you have to prepurchase them) – but you might wan to make sure you do it. For $10 you get a beer, a pint glass and a tour of their brewing facility.

Also at 4pm, you can help West Side cheer on FC Cincinnati while you have a pint or two.

Hungry? Starter’s Cafe will be serving up lunch from 11am-3pm, and then Stellar Street Eats will be there from 5pm-10pm to make sure you’ve got something in your belly for dinner.

Sunday, 6/30

Starting with brunch and beermosas from 11am-1pm – this is going to be a fun day to hang out. As it is all weekend… each pint gets you another ticket for that cooler, and there are more brewery tours that you hopefully bought tickets for by today (6/28). The brewery is announcing both, the winners of their homebrew competition at 5pm as well as the winner of the big metal cooler at 9pm.

For food, the Italian Truck will be onsite from 3pm-8pm. Ain’t nobody going hungry on West Side’s watch!

Get out there. Celebrate… no… appreciate the fact that we’ve got a place like this kicking out some really amazing stuff to a part of town that desperately needed a place like this.

Congrats, West Side!