In early 2013, a new craft brewery was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. MadTree Brewing is the creation of three friends who’d been homebrewing together for a few years and decided to go pro.
Kenny McNutt and Jeff Hunt brought an engineering mindset to the table that blended nicely with Brady Duncan’s business analyst skills. The three were able to build enough financing for a 15-barrel brew house, 100 barrels of fermentation space and the first craft cans in Ohio.
Craft Canned
PsycHOPathy IPA, Gnarly Brown and Happy Amber came rolling off the canning line quickly after opening, but only gave us a small glimpse of the power MadTree was packing.
The first sign of their brewing prowess was shown through their staple brews, including Axis Mundi (Russian imperial stout), Identity Crisis (hoppy porter) and Galaxy High (imperial IPA). These beers are now regularly mixed with many special one-time brews, resulting in a new beer in the tap room every week.
Some are old homebrew recipes, but many have been collaborations with local chefs that are paired with meals from their restaurants. On top of all that, they recently began using Hoff-Stevens kegs to infuse their beers, resulting in one of the best coffee stouts I’ve ever had.
Despite everything they have going on draft, they find time and space to add to the initial three-can lineup with one year-round beer, Lift (kölsch), and a set of seasonal offerings:
- Spring | Sprye (rye pale ale)
- Summer | Sol Drifter (strawberry blonde ale)
- Fall | The Great Pumpcan (pumpkin ale)
- Winter | Thundersnow (winter warmer)
Forests of Fermenters
In order to brew this bevy of beers, MadTree has had to continually expand. This expansion has come at a rate of almost 100 barrels of fermentation space every four months. They were able to double their first year goal, which beat their goal for year two. Now they are on track to do six times as many barrels as originally planned for their second year. All this growth has turned their space into a crowded stainless steel forest.
Luckily for beer lovers in Southwest Ohio that crowd is about to thin out as they’ve begun leasing the building south of them and will begin moving into it soon. This will more than double their size, allowing for an expansion of the tap room and plenty of more fermentation space to keep the beer flowing to tap lines and store shelves across Ohio.
With over 3,000 American craft breweries (100 in Ohio alone) it’s quickly becoming not enough for a brewery to just make amazing beer. A lineup of great year-round beer and seasonal releases is only a starting point for today’s best breweries. MadTree has excelled in going above and beyond in two major ways: charity and creativity.
#HeadBandFriday
Most young craft breweries don’t have a budget for advertising. MadTree has taken a unique advertising approach by being very creative while keeping things inexpensive.
It started when MadTree began selling headbands along with their other merchandise. They began posting various pictures with the hashtag #HeadBandFriday. Then one of the brewers came up with the idea of recreating classic album covers featuring MadTree’s new headbands.
What began as a one-time thing has become a weekly occurrence, and fans look forward to seeing what album will be parodied each week. Check out all their hilarious parodies on Facebook!
The Giving Tree
Those headbands aren’t just used for keeping sweat out of the brewer’s eyes while adding hops to the boil. For each headband sold, $1 goes directly to the charity of the month (and they’re a steal at $3). But that only represents a small portion of MadTree’s charitable contributions.
Starting with the release of their first seasonal can and all following canned releases, MadTree has selected a charity to receive 50 percent of all sales of that can or merchandise during the day of the release. This has resulted in over $4,000 being donated to the YMCA, Susan G. Komen and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
The most visually noticeable, and most entertaining, form of charity is their Toss-A-Buck grating above the bar. Noticeable because the grates are hanging above the bar with signs saying which charity is getting the money this month (the same one that gets the money from the headband sales). Entertaining because after patrons have a beer or two, their aim tends to slide downhill while their charitable contributions go up with bets on who can make the shot to the top of the grate. It may not seem like much to have someone toss a dollar onto a grate, but last December $1,200 was raised for Toys for Tots.
All of these things leave MadTree Brewing posed to remain a powerhouse Cincinnati brewery and grow into a regional brewing force to be reckoned with.
Tom Aguero is a blogger at QueenCityDrinks.com writing about beer education, opinion and Cincinnati breweries. He’s a server administrator by day who blogs about beer at night. His passion for beer blogging has lead Tom to start homebrewing and become a BJCP certified judge. His eyes are now set on becoming a Certified Cicerone® and Siebel graduate. Tom can be reached at Tom@QueenCityDrinks.com and @QueenCityDrinks.
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