Owner Adam Longacre and brewer Garrett Conley.

CANTON, Ohio – Call something a woodshop and you think of furniture being built, sawdust flying around table saws and tools hung on a wall.

But head to Woodshop in Canton, and you’ll find a different kind of woodworking – one that involves barrels for aging beer.

The folks behind UnHitched Brewing Co. in Louisville just passed their one-year mark with their Canton location, which has a very specific purpose: To serve wood-aged and fermented beers.

Woodshop is one of the culinary cogs in the Fourth Street Collective, which also houses Deli Ohio and Mike’s Pizza at the corner of Fourth Street NE and Walnut Avenue.

“Our moniker is ‘deli by day, pizza by night, beer all day long,’” UnHitched owner Adam Longacre said.

One of the specialized styles of beer Woodshop makes is Oud Bruin - Dutch for "old brown."

Woodshop’s focus is to brew beer with wood fermentation. It’s a specific focus, different from its original Louisville brewery, which opened in 2019.

“So many regular guests at the brewery live in this area. We looked for years and years and years. This one just fell in our lap,” brewer Garrett Conley said.

“We’re one step at a time for sure. It took about three years to say yes on this. Before we landed on this one, we probably looked at 50 different things from all over, down here, up in Akron, Canfield, different opportunities,” Longacre said. “We always said, ‘Let’s never say no to a meeting and one of them is going to pan out. We weren’t going to rush it.”

There is a deli and pizza place at the Fourth Street Collective, shared space with Woodshop.

Woodshop is about a block from downtown Canton, sitting in a somewhat industrial area.

What they wanted was a low-key, small-scale boutique place with enough space to do wood fermentation.

Woodshop covers about 1,600 square feet. The building, which Longacre said dates to the early 1900s, had original windows with cantilever-like hinged openings. Oddly enough, the expanse of windows had walls on either side. Reused pews sit near fermenters. In an eclectic touch, none of the thrift-store chairs match, and the bar-stool seats are from Gervasi Vineyard.

The patio has several fruit trees.

Beer can be brewed in Louisville and transferred through a window and right into a foeder or other vessel. A foeder is a large wooden vessel for aging or fermenting.

“We always intended to have a lot of this stuff in Louisville, but then Covid happened,” Conley said.

Conley is making some intriguing beers that include a wood-aged and fermented Pils-style lager and Brett table beer using the solera method. Brett is the wild yeast Brettanomyces that, in the hands of a capable brewer, can yield unique, funky flavors. If Brett gets in wine, though, it’s game over, resulting in a very unpleasant taste. Solera is a method that involves cumulatively mixing previous batches. It’s often used in the production of Sherry, and the same approach can be used for composting barrels, too.

A goal, Conley said, is to “go back minus the stainless steel, go back to 1940s, 1950s, no added gas, all re-fermented in package. The kegs will be keg-conditioned, re-fermented in the keg kind of thing. Naturally carbonated, wood-aged, low-tech.”

Deli Ohio is one of the businesses at the Fourth Street Collective.

This is where Woodshop differentiates itself. Making beer usually requires an initial process in the brewhouse (think of the brewhouse as the kitchen). That liquid is transferred into fermenters, where ingredients continue their chemical reactions. But what Woodshop is doing is letting some of that process take place in the keg or bottle itself.

Woodshop is part of the Fourth Street Collective.

“We’re still ramping up production here. We opened in May (2024), but we didn’t start brewing until four to six months after that,” Longacre said.

Woodshop is all about wood - as in wood fermentation for beers.

“I love making beer like this,” said Conley, a deft brewer who has a touch of the inquisitive kid experimenting with a science kit.

“I want to do a Brett that has just Brett in it, so people can wrap their heads around it – ‘Hey, what is Brettanomyces?’ Then you can blend whatever you want. You can do five barrels of that, then pull one of those barrels and sour it a bit if we wanted to for a singular batch.”

The patio area is behind Woodshop.

Longacre calls Conley “a very traditional brewer.”

Tap handles are, of course, wood.

“We call it ‘agricultural brewer.’ We don’t use a lot of adjuncts in our business. This is even more organic,” he said.

Longacre says Woodshop’s mission is rare: “Wood is not just for aging but for fermentation. I think a lot of people hear ‘aged in wood’, but fermenting in wood is a completely different point.”

UnHitched’s steadfast approach to embracing Ohio for its production also is rare.

“Our brewing philosophy I think is unique in that we don’t source out of 400 miles with our beer program,” Longacre said. “And it’s only 400 miles because our yeast comes from Omega in Chicago. Our malt bill is 95 percent Ohio grown. Hops are 100 percent Ohio.

“I don’t know of any other brewery in Ohio that leverages the localness that we do and the dedication to Ohio farmers.”

Hops used in UnHitched beers come from five to six farms in the state, he said.

They make a “Mid’talian Pils” to be more Italian-focused since pizza is part of the food offerings in their collective space in Canton.

“Our beers are legit Midwest beers. They are grown in the Midwest with Midwest ingredients. We started this a couple of years ago in farmtown Louisville,” Longacre said.

UnHitched’s Midwest IPA is Pheno, and Ironwood Fang is billed as a Midwestern saison. The latter is a well-made ale with a distinct, savory, dark, woodsy flavor.

Barrels rest near the bar at Woodshop.

Woodshop’s space requires fewer people than the Louisville location, which can handle 200 people on a busy Friday night between the bar and patio.

The patio-beer garden at Woodshop is a versatile, relaxing space that has apple, pear, peach and plum trees. The eventual goal will be to use the fruit in some of the beers.

Longacre is mulling bench seating, a stage for music and an outside bar.

Distribution is limited. They offer four-packs of 16-ounce cans, mostly for on-premise sales.

“We’ll sit down and go through an area and say, ‘What are restaurants or bars that we like that may resemble some of the values that we do?’ We don’t knock on every door possible,” Longacre said.

UnHitched also brews proprietary beers for restaurants, partnering with those who “want their own brand without building their own brewery.” The brewery has made beer for Provisions in Akron, they said.

During Covid, Vinnie Cimino of Cordelia recently hosted a beer dinner with the Louisville brewery. He even came down and helped with revamping their menu when UnHitched opened.

“Louisville was my passion project,” Longacre said. “This is our collective and really Garrett’s passion project to mess around with wood fermentation.

“We’re just trying to have a good time.”

(Almost a) six-pack of facts about Woodshop

Location: 328 Walnut Ave. NE, Canton. Street parking.

Hours:

Wednesday: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. (Happy hour: 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.)

Thursday: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. (Happy hour: 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)

Friday: 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. (Happy hour: 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.)

Saturday: Noon to 10 p.m.

Distance from Cleveland: 59 miles.

Closest brewery: Muskellunge Brewing Co., five blocks away.

Proximity to UnHitched: The original brewery is seven miles away at 115 S. Mill St., Louisville. “Louisville does really well for us,” said Longacre, adding, “I still think we’re relatively unknown.”

Nice touches: Some of Cleveland muralist Lisa Quine’s work is in Woodshop. Even tap handles are made from worn old farm beams.

Movie nights: Mike’s Pizza collaborated with a group that is part of Canton Palace Theatre for a movie-screening series on Woodshop’s patio. First one was Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film, “Pulp Fiction,” which was scheduled for this past Saturday, Aug. 9.