Belly Up for Beers

The Akron-Canton craft brew scene is where fun is fermented. It’s absolutely hopping.

The Summit Brew Path is back for its seventh year, highlighting breweries in Summit, Stark and Medina counties. Thousands take part in the weeks-long brewery challenge. All finishers are entered into a drawing, and the grand prize winner is announced at the Summit Brew Path Bash in January.

To see how the southerners do it, check out Hall of Fame Hops, the self-guided ale trail through the breweries of Stark and Tuscarawas counties.

If your taste runs more to the highly caffeinated, try The Drip Drive, a 20-stop trail through Summit County’s coffee country. Prizes—and lots of energy—are involved.

A SIX-PACK OF BEER FACTS

Hoppin’ Frog’s Smashing Honey Blonde took home a silver medal in the World Beer Cup, bringing the Akron brewery’s medal count to three.

In 2011, Chris Surak, co-founder, of Eighty-Three Brewery in Akron’s East End, won a golden ticket to Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. beer camp in California where he cut hop vines and brewed some magic with other winners.

The Wadsworth Brewing Company uses fruits, spices, coffees and other additions that give their beers a fun twist. All spent grains are given to farmers for feed.

Missing Mountain Brewing Co. in Cuyahoga Falls, on the banks of our crooked river, got its name because its outdoors-loving founders realized the only thing missing from Northeast Ohio IS a mountain.

Akronym Brewing took an empty space between two buildings in downtown Akron and transformed it into a magical biergarten to complement the main taproom on East Market Street. It also has a public house in Medina.

HiHO Brewing Co. in Cuyahoga Falls got its name from the nieces of founders Ali and Jon Hovan. The girls always greet Jon with “Hi Uncle Ho.”