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Bodhi

Columbus Brewing Co. | www.columbusbrewing.com

Columbus Brewing Co.

2555 Harrison Road

Columbus, Ohio 43204

(614) 224–3626

First brewed: 2009

Style: Double India pale ale

Alcohol content: 8.5 percent

IBUs: Low 90s

Awards: Bronze medal at the 2014 Great American Beer Festival

Available: Year-round on draft and in bottles

IF YOU LIKE THIS BEER, here are five other Ohio craft brews to try:

• Rhinegeist Saber Tooth Tiger

• Great Lakes Chillwave

• Homestead 3 MC’s

• Hoppin’ Frog Hop Dam Triple IPA

• Hoof Hearted Dragonsaddle

COLUMBUS BREWING owner and brewer Eric Bean had just designed his latest beer, an aggressive India pale ale using Citra hops, and he wanted a hip name for it. He read somewhere that consumers gravitated toward beers with fun names.

But when he looked at the names of some of the early Columbus brands . . . well, they seemed pretty bland. Pale Ale? IPA? It can’t get more mundane than that.

“I was looking for a name that sounded cool,” Bean says. “All other brewers have cool names. Why don’t we have any?”

He chose Bodhi. Now here’s where things get interesting. Bean, who has a reputation for producing some of the state’s best hoppy brews, doesn’t want to reveal why he chose Bodhi, preferring to keep a little mystery behind the name. Of course, there are a few well-known possible inspirations that he freely acknowledges.

For starters, legend has it that Buddha was sitting under a Bodhi tree when he achieved enlightenment. Bodhi is also Sanskrit for enlightenment. Or maybe the name is just paying homage to the kick-ass Bodhi character played by Patrick Swayze in the film Point Break.

Whatever the real story, the beer is delicious, and Columbus fans can’t get enough of it. For years, the beer was available only on draft. Bean was hounded all the time about when Bodhi would be in bottles. That finally happened in 2016, when Columbus moved to a larger location and upgraded its brewing system.

“We definitely have a philosophy around our hoppy beers,” Bean says. “I don’t like bitter hoppy beers. I think that’s the beauty of Bodhi. It’s so approachable . . . But it’s not that it’s so soft that the super high-end bitter freak isn’t attracted to it, too. That beer is designed for a pretty broad audience.”