Just over a year ago the other Cincinnati beer bloggers and I got together to try all the IPAs from Cincinnati and crown Blank Slate’s The Lesser Path as the King of the Cincinnati IPA. Earlier this year Rick Armon from The Ohio Beer Blog was in town for the Warped Wing opening and he suggested the idea of repeating the King of the Cincinnati IPA competition, but on a statewide level as the King of the Ohio IPA.
The idea sat, and simmered, and eventually went out. Last month I brought it back to a rolling boil by shooting emails to Rick, Pat from Pat’s Pints, Bob from The Artful Pint, and Cory and Ron from The Brew Review Crew. The plan for the King of the Ohio IPA is to break the state into 5 regions with each blog representing their region:
- Queen City Drinks representing Southwestern Ohio (Dayton/Cincinnati)
- The Artful Pint – Northeastern Ohio (Cleveland)
- The Ohio Beer Blog – Akron/Canton
- The Brew Review Crew – Northwestern Ohio (Toledo)
- Pat’s Pints – Central/Southwestern Ohio (Columbus/Athens)
It does seem like a kind of odd breakdown but it works based on where each of us is located and the number of breweries in the area. Each blog will bring 2 or 3 beers from their region to our state-wide competition. How those regional beers are being picked is up to each blog though I’m pretty sure most of us are doing reader polls. My plan is that I’ll post a reader poll where everyone picks a beer for Dayton and a beer for Cincinnati. I will then pick another one that I feel is great but may not be the most popular and didn’t get picked in the poll.
The timeline for the competition is that the polls will open on October 13th and run till October 25th. Each blogger will spend the week of the 27th acquiring growlers or bottles. November 1st we’ll all meet up in Columbus and do a blind tasting of the beers, we’ve got two proctors to make sure things are blind. We’ll judge the beers using BJCP score sheets as a base and announce the winner the following Monday.
So start thinking about your favorite Cincinnati and Dayton IPAs and get ready to vote! If you have a favorite IPA from another part of the state go vote on that poll too. Most importantly start following all the blogs so you stay up-to-date on this competition and all things Ohio beer!
BrewMinds 
I think Lesser Path should be included as your third, to see if the current champ stands up against new competition.
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Unfortunately Lesser Path is the summer seasonal IPA from Blank Slate and will be gone by the time of the actual blind tasting on November 1st so we won’t be able to do a direct head to head on it. Or if we did it’d be almost a month old and that’d be unfair to Lesser Path.
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