By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Arlyn’s Good Beer is ready to swing into action.
The beer pub at the end of Hankey Avenue off Gorrell in Bowling Green will hold its second “soft opening” tonight (Wednesday, Feb. 12) when it hosts Jazz Night with the jazz faculty and students from Bowling Green State University.
Doors open at 5 p.m. with the faculty combo hitting at 8 followed by the student jam session continuing to 11 p.m.
Arlyn’s first opened its doors last week for jazz night when the faculty were joined by visiting musicians, jazz guitarist and oud virtuoso Amos Hoffman and world-class pianist/composer Noam Lemish, both with ties to Israel.
More than 100 people packed the pub.
Eric Jones, the retired BGSU professor who started the microbrewery, said he was pleased. He saw lots of familiar faces. People found their niches at tables, along the bar, or standing listening intently to the music.
Brewmaster Roger Shope said he plans to have six varieties on tap for the second jazz night.
Starting Feb. 19, Arlyn’s will begin its regular hours, 5-11 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and 1-11 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
The connection to BGSU Jazz Night is at the root of the brew pub’s inception.
Jones, who retired as a professor of special education about decade ago, began taking guitar lessons with Ariel Kasler, who teaches guitar and piano on campus.
Through his association with Kasler, he discovered Jazz Night, a Bowling Green institution that has been going on in one form or another for more than 35 years.
The event is held weekly during the fall and spring semesters. It features not only the jazz faculty but often visiting musicians, including such renowned artists as Branford Marsalis, Jimmy Heath, Miguel Zenon, and Mike Stern.
The event also gives students a chance to exercise and expand their craft during the jam session in the second half.
Jones was concerned about the viability of the tradition if it continued to rely on the vagaries of the downtown bar trade.
So in spring, 2017 he approached Shope with a proposition — starting a beer pub to serve as home base for jazz night.
Shope, when he’s not wearing an orange safety vest as a city public works employee, was brewing beer at Bowling Green Beer Works. Shope wasn’t sure how serious he was. Jones came back a week later and reiterated his plan.
Jones envisioned a place for live music with a classic wooden bar. Shope was convinced so he ran some numbers. “For Kiko,” Jones said, referring to his wife, Akiko Jones, who teaches Japanese at BGSU. She’s a partner in the endeavor.
Shope’s experience as a brewer began at Maumee Brewing Company. He joined a couple years after the brand’s revival and worked there from 1997 to 2004.
Later when Justin Marx was expanding BG Beer Works, Shope came on to help and started brewing there. He was also inspired by the work of two of his younger co-workers Hannah and Dylan Hilfer-Schafer. They’ve gone on to found Dialectic Brewing Company in Mandan, North Dakota.
Shope said there’s plenty of room in the market for another microbrewery. “There’s more push for local products and for a place for people to gather together meet and talk.”
Arlyn’s, he said, is nicely positioned to do that.
Jones said he sees their competition more as grocery stores and carryouts that sell beer for people to take home and consume.
Arlyn’s is located on a dead end street in what originally was the Avery Coal plant. More recently it was the workshop for local builder and woodworker Arlyn Snyder.
After Snyder died, his widow Judy, kept it for storage. Shope checked out the building one day and realized it would be the right spot for the new venture. He left a note on the door asking if it was for sale.
He later stopped by when Judy Snyder was there, and her response was: “Everything’s for sale.”
Shope, a native of Bowling Green, feels the wooden bar built by Jerrod Thomas, who also did the HVAC work and put in the glycol system, would please the the venue’s namesake.
One room is devoted to the brewing process from cracking the grain to the fermentation in six tanks. And at the end the spent grain is hauled off by local farmers to use as cattle feed.
Shope has a cider and an alcoholic seltzer in the works. Arlyn’s is licensed to make wine as well. Shope noted that lagers, being the most popular beer style in America, will be featured at Arlyn’s.
At some point, he will expand into non-alcoholic brews, such as ginger beer and root beer. For now water and pop are available.
The brewery has a 16-tap system.
Shope started brewing on Jan. 10, a year to the day after a flatbed pulled up and unloaded the equipment. The brewery had to navigate the usual licensing and inspection gauntlet. “It’s not a huge hassle,” Shope said, It’s just a matter of putting in the time to make sure the venue is safe and ready to host the public “so they can have a good time.”
Once the weather gets warm, the overhead doors in the taproom will open up. Grills will be set up for customers to use. Jones said he’ll also bring in food trucks, and work with local restaurants to provide delivery.
The brewery itself does no food preparation.
Once outside the customers will have a chance to appreciate the murals that decorate the exterior. Those are the work of a crew of BGSU students under the guidance of Gordon Ricketts and Yusuf Lateef.
The design of the taproom bears the stamp of BG native Becky Midden, who now works in Chicago.
Jones said his daughter Natalie recommended her.
“You need a designer,” she told her father. “You’re just two middle-aged men who don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her assistance Jones said was invaluable.
The layout, the interior decoration and the names of the beers are intentionally simple. Jones and Shope decided to forgo quirky, colorful names, in favor of simply saying what style the beer is whether it’s an Irish IPA or a Czech pilsner or some other variety.
Jones describes the taproom as having “very elegant, very simple, direct simple clean lines.”
“I like that,” he added.
His goal is simple as well. He wants to have “a nice, kind of cool venue for live music,” and be able to provide reasonable compensation for the musicians.
On the advice of Dan Piccolo, the percussionist in the faculty band, he’ll get Jazz Night established first, before booking music at other times.
Jones added: “I want the beers to win awards,” And the first night was a good start with lots of praise for the beverages, and plenty of good music.
They can only hope that the venue ages as well as some of the songs performed by the visiting artists. Hoffman dazzled the crowd with his jazz solos on oud. Some of these tunes are a 1,000 years old, he told Jones. “They have legs.”
