Update: Jan. 10

Platform Beer has announced that Locoba is set to open the week of Jan. 28. As announced before, the 1,700-square-foot location at Main and 12th will have a full-service coffee shop during the morning along with a lunch and dinner menu, while transitioning to a more traditional tasting room in the evening. The menu is short and simple: with a Caesar salad, cheese plate, banh mi, chips and salsa and dips.

Original reporting Feb. 1, 2018

A Cleveland-based brewery is opening a tasting room in Over-the-Rhine this summer. Platform Beer Co. will call their place Locoba by Platform. It will be an all-day combination of coffee shop and tasting room. The name is short for Local Coffee Barrels.

The space, at 1201 Main St., will be open in the morning for coffee, pastries and grab-and-go food. Then they will then serve lunch and then morph into a beer taproom with food, wine and cocktails in the evening.

But the connection between beer and coffee will go beyond serving both in the same place. They'll be experimenting with beer-spirit-coffee combinations. They already make High Brow Barista Coffee Rye Pale Ale, for which they soak coffee beans in the beer.

They're taking that interplay of beer and coffee further by using bourbon barrels to age some of their beers. They'll then use the barrels again to soak green, unroasted beans. The beans will be sent to local roasters, and the coffee sold at the coffee shop.

Co-owner Paul Benner said that you could order a shot of bourbon, a glass of beer aged in that bourbon's barrel, and a cup of coffee soaked in the barrel that held the bourbon and the beer.

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Platform started in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland in 2014, then opened a tasting room in Columbus in 2016.

"We wanted to do something different here," Benner said. "We put a lot of thought into how to make it different in Cincinnati than in Cleveland or Columbus."

He said they hope to have a "very chill" atmosphere with couches, a smaller bar, an un-hectic feeling. Rather than partnering with a vendor or food trucks, they will be making their own food, though they haven't decided finally on the menu.

Platform cans beer in a variety of styles from a line of IPAs, their Cleveland "Palesner," which is a pale ale/pilsner combination, a sweet potato ale, fruit gose and sour beers.

Platform came to the Cincinnati market only about six months ago.

"We wanted to connect with customers here, give them the opportunity to find out who we are as a brand," Benner said. "We put a lot of thought into how to make that work in Cincinnati, and we hope to fit into the fabric of what's already there in Over-the-Rhine. We're lucking to live in a state with three cities with very strong brewing cultures."

They've been working with developer Urban Sites on the building at the corner of 12th and Main, and hope to be open by this summer.