Cleveland based Platform Beer Co. plans to open a tasting room in the Over-the-Rhine District of Cincinnati this summer. It will be the Cleveland-based brewery’s third Ohio taproom. Platform launched just three and a half years ago in Ohio City before quickly expanding with a production facility and a Columbus brewery and taproom.
Platform’s Cincy-based operation will be a new concept for the brewery as it will combine beer, coffee and barrel-aging.
The 2,500-square-foot space (1201 Main St.) will be called “LOCOBA by Platform,” an acronym for Local Coffee Barrels. In the morning, the taproom will offer coffee, pastries and grab-and-go food. Lunch items will feature locally sourced products made fresh daily. At night, the space will function as a tasting room pouring a variety of Platform beers plus wine and craft cocktails.
“When considering a Cincinnati location, we wanted to do more than just a tasting room,” co-owner Justin Carson explains in a release. “We saw an opportunity to have a space that could do creative things with coffee, beer and spirits barrels.”
Platform intends to brew beer on-site and age it in barrels sourced from local and regional distilleries. Those barrels will then be used to soak unroasted coffee beans. Those beans would then be sent to local roasters and eventually brewed and served at LOCOBA.
“It creates this really interesting proposition where a customer can taste a spirit, taste beer aged in that spirit’s barrel, and taste coffee from beans soaked in that same barrel,” Carson adds.
Platform has partnered with Coffee Emporium in Cincinnati for the beans. The brewery also plans to work with other roasters around the state. Platform also has plans to launch a year-round line of canned cold brew coffee this year that will be available in retail stores throughout the state.
Platform Beer Co. has been working with Cincinnati-based developer Urban Sites to get the project up and running by summer 2018.
