USA, OH: Akronym Brewing Co. to open pilot brewery in Medina by May or June

Akronym Brewing Co. has taken over the closed Rockne’s Pub in Medina, Cleveland.com reported on January 28.

Rockne’s, at 5121 Buehlers Dr. in Montville Township, off Ohio 18, closed in May 2019. The brewery is leasing the building, which is near a Buehler’s grocery store.

It’s going to be Akronym Public House and Pilot Brewery, said the brewery’s Shawn Adams. The Medina space will take advantage of Rockne’s large kitchen and become more of a gastropub.

“It’s always a lot of work right now, but we’re excited about it,” he said.

Joshua Blubaugh, one of the owners, said opening would be May or June in all likelihood, depending on supply-chain issues.

“This has been in the planning. The first location was three years in looking for a location. We pretty much started looking for a (second) location a year and half in. It’s been slow. With Covid, the opportunity got hard for a while. Coming out of Covid, things got a little bit easier,” said Blubaugh, who said the Rockne’s space covers 6,900 square feet inside plus about 1,000 on the patio.

“We wanted to be far enough away so that you’re not pulling away from yourself,” said Adams, who said they considered other places, but the spacious kitchen was a draw. The Medina location also will have a bigger patio.

“We do a little bit of distribution, but that was never in our plans,” Adams said. “We wanted to make a place for people to come and drink our beer in the best possible setting. We always had it in the back of our head we were going to look for something else, but it takes a long time to do anything with the pandemic. We were looking for opportunities the whole time, and we’ve been strong enough through the pandemic that we were able to pull it off.”

Akron’s Main Street, which has been in the crosshairs of construction over the past several years, should be fully open by summer, Adams said. Akronym has a beer garden now, and the owners are planning four beer festivals as well as live music on Saturdays, he said.

Akronym opened at 58 E. Market St., in downtown Akron in 2018. In the few years it has been opened, the brewery has won awards in competitions including the U.S. Beer Tasting Championship and National Honey Beer Competition. It 2019, the brewery placed second in cleveland.com’s Cleveland’s Best Brewery Contest. In that competition, 46 contenders were narrowed to 15 finalists.

The Akron brewery uses a 10-barrel system. The Medina space will have a half-barrel system. And the brewery will move its barrel-aging program and sours to the Medina space, Adams and Blubaugh said.

“We’re super excited,” Blubaugh said about the expansion.

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