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Kent development houses microbrewery, coffee roaster
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: November 10, 2016
An old Kent industrial building is opening anew with a local microbrewery and coffee roaster sharing the revitalized space at 1422 Mogadore Rd.
MadCap brewery, which started out in 2013 in a garage in Stow, and Bent Tree coffee roasters, currently located in a too-small location in Kent since it was founded in 2011, will share the 17,000-square-foot space that once housed the Consolidated Mold and Manufacturing company.
Most of the space is taken up by MadCap, which had a rousing opening night last month.
“We really didn’t know what to expect,” said MadCap’s brewer Vince Rinaldo, looking out at the crowd of hundreds milling around the new tap room’s wood-and-concrete interior late into that Friday evening. “This is amazing.”
Rinaldo came to MadCap from Strongsville’s Brew Kettle where he had crafted beer for the last two-and-a-half years. He came on board with MadCap in January, he said. Beyond brewing, Rinaldo also has a graphic design background and worked on much of the brewery’s merchandise which includes shirts, beer glasses and MadCap caps.
MadCap was the original brainchild of Ryan Holmes, who started in a friend’s father’s garage with a one-barrel system and one style of beer sold in one restaurant three years ago.
“I started home brewing because I thought that it would save me money on beer,” said Holmes, 35, a southern California native who graduated from Stow- Munroe Falls High School and who has an anthropology degree.
After experimenting with numerous kinds of beer, Holmes developed the first versions of what would become MadCap’s signature brew: an India Pale Ale (IPA) that he called “Green Bullet IPA.” After changing the formula slightly over time, MadCap has eventually dropped the word “Green” from the name.
Investing an a one-barrel system, MadCap began as a true “nanobrewery,” selling Green Bullet to first one, then several Stow locations. One local journalist was fortunate enough to have tasted one of those first batches at Bellacino’s in Stow. The beer’s positive feedback, and then the beer itself, quickly spread around the area.
In a fairly short period of time, MadCap developed a second beer and was enough of a success that it moved to a three-barrel system in a larger commercial space, still in Stow, six months after selling their first barrel.
In a short time they realized that they had to expand even further, said Holmes, and plans for a large brewery with a tasting room attached were underway.
Kent is a city that should have always had a brew pub but never did, said Rinaldo. “I guess there were a couple of people who tried but it never worked out,” he said.
Now Kent has a brew pub as MadCap working with Kent city’s development department, has opened a 10-barrel, fully tricked out brewery that is capable of making various types and quantities of beer on a commercial level, said Holmes. “We took possession on Sept. 15,” said Holmes, and he and his crew have been working since then to open the brewery and tap room.
One of the great delights in brewing in Kent is the water, said Holmes. Kent’s water was rated “best tasting” in the country in 1995 and continues to win contests.
“The water here is perfect for making beer,” he said.
The possibilities seem endless now for MadCap.
“The new facilities will allow us to make many different kinds of beer,” said Holmes. Six taps were pouring during the opening and Holmes said that, eventually, they may pour as many as 10 at a time.
“We have a double IPA and an Imperial Stout in the pipeline,” he said, adding that finally opening the tap room now gives the MadCap brew crew the time to develop new beers.
One of those beers will be a coffee-infused brew made in conjunction with Kent’s Bent Tree Coffee Roasters, which will move its wholesale operations into 1,800 square feet of shared space with MadCap, said Holmes.
Bent Tree needs more space for the same reason that MadCap needed more space: great success, said Michael Mistur, co-owner/founder, with Ryan Bannon of the coffee roaster. The two of them ran the entire business by themselves for two years, said Mistur, and are now at a point where they need much more space to continue.
“We were looking for more space,” said Mistur, 37. “We had really outgrown this space (at 313 N. Water St. in Kent) over the five years that we have been open.” Bent Tree started talking to Kent’s development department about moving, said Mistur, and the idea of sharing space with MadCap came up.
“It was a perfect space for us,” said Mistur, both for spatial needs and for the possibilities of working with MadCap. “Brewers and coffee roasters are very similar and there is a lot of room here for collaboration.” Mistur also noted that the MadCap crew “are really nice people.”
One notable similarity between “micro” coffee roasters and brewers is how they get started, said Mistur, who started as a home roaster much like Holmes started as a home brewer.
The first collaboration between the two companies has already begun, said Mistur, as a brief experiment with infusing several different coffees with beer happened shortly before the tap room opened.
While the shared space will accommodate Bent Tree’s wholesale distribution business, Mistur said that the storefront on Main Street will remain open and be redone into “a little bit more of a café,” he said.
Collaboration is a mainstay of both the local brewing and roasting businesses, said Mistur.
MadCap “did a collaboration with Thirsty Dog” last year, said Holmes, and Rinaldo said that most local brewers know each other and are open to meeting and collaborating making the northeast Ohio brewery scene a friendly place to be.
The same is true of local small coffee roasters, said Mistur, noting that local roasters have a guild that they belong to and are open to trading techniques and tastes.
Close collaboration with both the business and the community are important to both enterprises and their owners, said Holmes.
In the five years that Bent Tree has been in operation, Mistur has formed a close bond with the city of Kent.
And Holmes said MadCap is extremely happy to be in Kent,—not just for the water, but for the culture and history of the college town. He said the brewery plans to create beers that reflect Kent State and the local culture.