I love craft beer, and I really, really love the taproom experience that craft beer drinkers like me get from our local beer community. I’m not going to pretend, though, that some of you might sometimes want other stuff, too. If you want to know the truth – I actually drink a lot of that other stuff, too – so I get it.

West Side Brewing gets it, too.

A Little Bit About West Side

West Side is a killer Cincy Brewery. I feel like if you’ve been drinking craft beer for a little while here in Cincy, you should know that by now. They have extreme dedication to traditional styles of beer, no frills… just true to what it should be.

That doesn’t mean that they don’t play around and experiment, too. That’s a big part of what makes so many of us fall in love with them, actually. Their undying dedication to traditional craft beer, peppered with just enough of the crazy stuff that is making all the folks on the Tik Tok rowdy.

If you want to know more about West Side, who they are and why you should be drinking there more often, you can read about them here on the website – or just follow them on Social Media.

The Bourbon Introduction

Back to what I was talking about at the start of this post… “other drinks”. West Side, in very typical West Side fashion, leans very hard into one thing and then lets themselves pop out of that comfort zone in just the right places.

They’ve let loose on their own customized Bourbon in the taproom thanks to a partnership with Brain Brew (a group of folks that definitely deserve a little bit of a deep dive here on the website very soon). These folks use a really wild process to infuse a Bourbon with different blends of wood to create one-of-a-kind booze masterpieces that you definitely need to try to believe.

The Bourbon that West Side settled on is finished with American Oak, European Oak, 200-Year-Old Oak, Maple Wood, Cherry Wood, and Smoked Oak. It sounds like a lot, but the end result is a bourbon that is nuanced, smooth, and really freaking tasty, too.

Why It Matters

As craft beer grows, and as new drinkers find their way into taprooms, it’s becoming more and more important to our local spots to find new ways to invite different types of drinkers into their spaces. From the introduction of hard cider, seltzers, cocktails, etc – it’s all part of widening the umbrella of what people can expect from the taproom experience.

As the years keep going by, and as the world keeps changing I’ll be curious (and excited) to see how our taprooms find their own place within it all.