Land-Grant Brewing hosts open house

The guys behind Land-Grant Brewing Co. said their Franklinton brewery would be up and running by the end of summer. This Friday-less than a week before fall officially blows in-they'll make good on that promise.

The brewery (424 W. Town St.) should receive its building permit tomorrow, says creative director Walt Keys, and brew master Jamie Feihel hopes to start mashing their first ales as early as Friday. While the brews won't be kegged in time for the neighborhood's Independents' Day celebration (Sept. 19 to 21), Land-Grant's door will be open most of Saturday and Sunday for an informal open house.

"People can come on in, check out the space, buy a T-shirt, catch the Browns game," Keys says.

Beer will start flowing at the 100-seat taproom the weekend of Oct. 3, Keys says. At first, only Land-Grant's four mainstays will be tapped: a kolsch, a brown ale, a session IPA and a hoppy, West-Coast-style IPA. Moving forward, there's room for 14 more kegs behind the bar, eight for Land-Grant's musings and six for guest breweries.

Once open, Land-Grant will host food trucks, serve beer flights and, for a small fee, offer weekly or biweekly brewery tours (beer included, of course).

Keys is especially excited about the taproom's commitment to proper glassware.

"The session IPA will be in a 16-ounce pint glass, for example, and the kolsch will be in a nice, tall, skinny kolsch glass," he says. "[The kolsch] will be a smaller pour, but it will be priced appropriately-and you want to drink a kolsch when it's extra cold."

In the coming weeks, final touches to the brewery include a patio off the taproom (which should be completed today, Keys says); 130-year-old refurbished barn wood, salvaged from a barn near Marion, around the building's exterior; and a special Kickstarter wall in the room between the taproom and the brewery, recognizing those who raised the first $31,010 for the upstart brewery.

"What it did was help us knock out all that nitty-gritty stuff right off the bat, which really put us in a good position moving forward," Keys says of the Kickstarter.

Photos courtesy of Walt Keys