Hitting the ice: Land-Grant Brewing opens curling ice rink for wintertime fun

Dave Fisher bent over a rubber mat and slid a yellow beer keg across the ice as "Run Rudolph Run" blared over the speakers.

The keg quickly moved to the other side of the rink, looking like it would hit the bullseye before sliding just outside the circle.

Up next was Fisher's daughter, Chloe, 22, who was stationed on the other side of the medium-sized rink.

"A little more, a little more," Dave Fisher, 67, said to her as she slid the keg. "Oh, you're in!"

Two out of four kegs slid inside the center.

"Chloe's the ringer, she really picked up the hang of it," Dave Fisher said.

The sport the Fishers were playing was curling — but with a twist as five-liter beer kegs took the place of stones being slid across the ice toward a bullseye.

Dubbed "brewery curling," the pastime is part of Land-Grant Brewing Company's five-lane, 1,300-square-foot ice rink, which opened Tuesday.

The idea to install a rink at the Franklinton brewery came last year when Land-Grant president and co-founder Adam Benner was browsing an auction website and saw a refrigerated ice rink for sale from Maine. He thought the rink would be a fun and safe way for customers to gather outside during the pandemic.

"Last year, we were trying to create more experiences outside," Benner said. "People still wanted to gather, people still wanted to go out, but we wanted to make sure that they were safe and not inside."

But as the pandemic experienced a surge in cases last winter, Benner decided to shelve his endeavor for a year.

Getting out on the ice

Due to the relatively small size of the ice rink, Benner decided it would work best as a curling rink, something he had seen bars do in Chicago.

"This is a way that we can utilize this ice rink that we have without having to worry about renting skates out, having to make sure we have all the right sizes," Benner said. "Even just from that liability of having people ice skating, we can still utilize this and it's a fun activity on the ice."

Benner said "brewery curling" is similar to the regular sport in that it's a group experience.

In a traditional setting, curling is a team sport where two teams take turns sliding heavy stones towards a target known as the "house." The rocks are helped to their destination by two "sweepers," who use brooms to melt the pebbled ice and adjust the speed and spin of the stones. (Curling at Land-Grant doesn't involve brooms.)

"It's more set up as a communal game, like cornhole that you'd have in the summertime or shuffleboard that you can play four people at a time," Benner said. "Getting the speed, how hard you have to push the little keg down the ice, it takes a bit of getting used to."

Customers can reserve a curling lane on Land-Grant's website, landgrantbrewing.com. Groups of up to eight can play for 90 minutes and then get warm inside a heated igloo.

Benner said the response to the ice rink and igloos has been positive so far.

"We had someone down here earlier today (Tuesday) that had family in from Oklahoma and they were like, 'We had to do it.' They were our first reservation and they had a blast."

Family game night

Along with his daughter, Dave Fisher came to Land-Grant with his wife, Liz Lane, and son, Kenton Fisher, who was in town from Houston. The Clintonville resident said he tried curling one other time as a child when his uncle, who lived in Windsor, Ontario in Canada, introduced it to him.

"This is pretty cool," Fisher said of the set up in Land-Grant.

Lane also was having fun on the ice.

"This is perfect," she said. "If it's not too cold, it's great."

One lane over, Chris Kocher, of Columbus, gave his 8-year-old daughter, Lucy, a high-five. The two of them then slid a keg across the ice, but missed their target.

Also having some trouble on the ice were Kocher's other daughte, Amelia, 5, and his mother-in-law, Kathleen Brewer, 73. They slide the keg too far during one turn and then not enough for the next one. Still, the family said they enjoyed themselves.

"It's more about having fun than keeping score," Kocher said. "This is a great opportunity for families to do this, too."

Micah Walker is the Dispatch trending reporter. Reach her at [email protected] or 740-251-7199. Follow her on Twitter @micah_walker701.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Land-Grant Brewing opens curling ice rink for wintertime fun