Goodwood Brewing opening next month in the Arena District

COLUMBUS, Ohio (COLUMBUS BUSINESS FIRST) — The Arena District will get a brewery back next month.

Louisville, Kentucky-based Goodwood Brewing Co. will open March 14 in the 401 N. Front St. space that for years was a Gordon Biersch brewpub.

“Columbus is a cool city with a good craft beer scene,” Goodwood CEO Ted Mitzlaff told Columbus Business First in November. “We’d been looking in the area for some time. We see a lot of similarities to Louisville.”

The company was founded in 2005 as a production brewery. It rebranded as Goodwood in 2015.

Mitzlaff said the brewery’s approach is broad, with everything from light lagers to hazy IPAs on the menu. It does take particular pride in its barrel aging, a practice that goes both ways. Not only does the brewery put its beer into an assortment of bourbon barrels, it also sources bourbon that it then finishes in its beer barrels.

The restaurant will have a wide selection of bourbon and whiskey, which should be no surprise given its Kentucky roots. That includes several of its bourbons like the Goodwood Honey Bourbon, which was finished in the brewery’s honey ale brandy barrels and the Goodwood Rye, which was finished in its English mild barrels.

Goodwood’s food menu is Southern fare — dishes like blackened catfish, shrimp and grits and fried green tomatoes — but there will be burgers, smoked meats, salads and other entrees as well.

There will be specials throughout the opening week. Follow the restaurant on its social media channels for those updates.

Mitzlaff said the company looked at spaces in Dublin and Upper Arlington in Central Ohio before picking the 14,000-square-foot Arena District space, which presented a turnkey opportunity complete with the Gordon Biersch brewhouse and tanks.

Columbus is the sixth location for Goodwood and the first in Ohio. It just went through a similar conversion of a former Ram Restaurant & Brewery space in Indianapolis.

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