Business is now Hopping

By Karl Henkel | October 23, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Rust Belt downsizes its bottles to meet demand

YOUNGSTOWN

Walk into V2 Wine Bar and Trattoria downtown for a burger and beer — quickly becoming a popular food combo at Federal Street’s newest restaurant — and there’ll be plenty of options.

If V2 partner Ed Moses is around, he may recommend the V2 burger — tomato, lettuce, cheese and hot peppers — alongside an ice-cold pint of Rust Belt Rusted River Irish Red Ale.

It’s not a match made in heaven, but it’s a match made in Youngstown, which isn’t a match seen all that often.

V2, overseen by Vernon Cesta of the popular Vernon’s Caf in Niles, and Rust Belt, a 3-year-old microbrewery pinned along the west banks of the Mahoning River, both are primed for a business boom, at least according to their respective owners.

But they can’t do it alone.

That’s why Ken Blair, a city employee by day and co-owner of Rust Belt by afternoon, evening and weekend, was pumped up to hear that one of his brews was paired with some local cuisine.

Blair, who runs the brewery with the help of four others — including his wife, Jillian — estimates that about 70 percent of local establishments carry at least one of the Rust Belt brews on tap, helping to fill their need to fill the stomachs of the rapidly growing microbrew drinkers.

“That [V2] kind of feeds into a trend of marketing beer with food,” Jillian said.

But until now, those bars and restaurants could serve the beer only on tap, unless they wanted to carry tall, 22-ounce bottles.

But Rust Belt, which rolled out its beer in late 2008, now has decided to offer its four main varieties — the Irish Red Ale, Blast Furnace Blond Ale, Coke Oven Stout and Old Man Hopper’s IPA — in six-packs.

“We think that bars are more willing to have the 12-ounce bottles,” Blair said.

It’s the next step in the expansion project for the only brewery in the Mahoning Valley.

“We learned that to really get the beer out there with big bottles, it was going to take a lot of time,” Blair said. “But if we want to grow, we have to listen to what consumers want.

“And they want six-packs.”

Beer drinkers will find the newly bottled beer next to other microbrews such as Great Lakes and Thirsty Dog on store shelves. They’ll also be priced similarly, about $8.99.

(Don’t worry, 22-ounce fans. The tall bottles won’t be phased out until early 2012.)

The phase out definitely won’t be easy.

The bottling process — done by hand — will take about twice the man hours, Blair said, as will labeling and boxing.

That’s not all.

The additional workload also will include the rollout of Rust Belt’s John Young Selects — its seasonal brews — which includes McPoyle’s Milk Stout, XOXO Doppelsticke Altbier, A Big Ail Belgian Style Abbey and Peacemaker Imperial IPA, a full-flavored-without-being-too-strong IPA. They’ll roll out in succession during the next few months.

But the move to six-packs already is paying off. Rust Belt has doubled its total volume output from Year 2 to Year 3, from 400 barrels to 900, and initial orders for six-packs have tripled demand.

And Blair hasn’t even been able to reach out to new states, such as Michigan, Virginia, Illinois and Tennessee, to grow the brand.

“If we get slammed with orders, we’re probably not going to reach out to those other markets yet,” he said. “We don’t want to overextend our commitment to our distributors.”

If demand continues to rise, Blair said he’s prepared.

“We’ll have to talk to the landlords about expansion,” he said.

Rust Belt is the second potential beer explosion in Northeast Ohio this month. D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc. introduced its 182-year-old beer in Ohio earlier this month.

Blair thinks Rust Belt is right on par with the taste of America’s oldest brewery.

“We take our beer to Pennsylvania and we compete well with Yuengling,” he said. “I’d stand our red [beer] up to Yuengling’s any day.”

Bold proclamation, but the statement rings true: Rust Belt is right near Yuengling at V2.

And Blair wouldn’t have it any other way.