All About Blank Slate Brewing
One of the more painful of Cincinnati’s closed breweries for me to write about, it’s not by chance that Blank Slate was always listed by so many craft beer drinkers as their favorite brewery in Cincinnati. Owner/brewer Scott LaFollette built his business on a simple motto:
Our minds may be empty, but our beers are not.
Each recipe that poured from their taps started with a traditional base before taking an extreme left turn somewhere, in a perfect way, of course. The brewery made things like a Sausage Spiced Oktoberfest and a Hot Sauce Barrel Aged Saison alongside one of the more traditional Goses I’ve ever found from a craft brewery. (I get it, that’s a matter of opinion…)
While the taproom might have been small and simple, it became a home away from home for a core group of dedicated fans who found solace in its confines. As the craft beer scene exploded in Cincinnati, Blank Slate stayed true to who they were and who they wanted to be. It wasn’t always easy to find their beer on tap around town – but you could always find a welcome spot in their taproom where you could get a point of something that you knew would be made perfect.
In the end, craft beer changed. Blank Slate could have changed with it – but it didn’t. It should say a lot about what this place was that we are here, years after their closing, still talking about what this brewery meant to us as craft beer drinkers. It was special.
The Blank Slate Timeline
- June 2012 – The brewery makes its first sale… self-distributed, without a taproom (you couldn’t have one in Ohio still…)
- October 2012 – The brewery signs with a distributor.
- November 2013 – The brewery gets new fermenters, the first expansion.
- November 2014 – The taproom, dubbed the Pour House, opens up.
- January 2016 – Blank Slate starts the beginning of a massive expansion.
- August 2016 – The brewery releases beer in cans for the first time. (See notes about their packaged releases here)
- August 2017 – Without notice, the brewery closes its doors.
Posts About Blank Slate
Blank Slate Is Closed – Now What?
Blank Slate’s First Bottle Gets Label Approval – Updated With Release Info
Blank Slate’s Next Packaged Releases
Blank Slate Fume Gets Label Approval
Blank Slate’s Birthday Week Tappings
