E-Malt.com News article: USA, OH: Southern Ohio Brewing to open its doors to the public on July 4

The Dayton area's newest craft brewery, Southern Ohio Brewing, will open its doors to the public this Saturday, July 4, in Beavercreek, Dayton.com reported on July 2.

The new brewery has been in the works for more than a year at 818 Factory Road, along the Miami Valley Bike Trails Creekside path just north of U.S. 35. Co-founder James Williams and members of his family were busy putting the finishing touches on the brewery’s tap room earlier this week. The renovation was extensive. “We took the building to its bare walls,” Williams said.

The building and surrounding two-acre parcel previously housed Banjara Banquet Center and All In One Banquet Center, as well as a Factory Lighting Outlet store. It opened in the 1970s as the Beaver Valley Golf Center, with miniature golf, a driving range, batting cages and a game room.

Southern Ohio Brewing’s hours for now will be 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, and noon to 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Reservations are recommended and can be made on the brewery’s web site; walk-up customers will be accommodated if there is room. Space will be limited because of social distancing.

“This is not the opening-day party that we wanted to throw,” Williams said. “But the support from the community and from our neighbors has been amazing.”

Opening-day beers will include a blonde ale, West Coast IPA, peanut butter porter, rye pale ale, and red ale. Growler and 32-ounce can fills will be available. Long-term plans call for adding guest taps for other local craft breweries, as well as offering wine and cocktails. Williams and his brother-in-law had been fermenting their idea of opening a craft brewery for two years, and looked at spaces, mostly along the I-75 corridor between Dayton and Cincinnati. But the Beavercreek property drew them in.

“We used to travel down that bike path and see that place, and we thought if it ever became available, it would be a great spot for a brewery,” Williams said last year. The number of craft breweries that have opened or are in the works in the Miami Valley in the last nine years is approaching 20. None of the most recent wave of new breweries has shut its doors, and nearly all have expanded their offerings, packaging or brewery space, or added second locations, since they first opened.


02 July, 2020