It wasn’t the first time I drank beer in a church, but it was the first time I drank very good beer in a church. Out of an unlabeled bottle, I was poured a scotch ale aged with Macallan Scotch Whisky-soaked oak. My glass became as dark brown as the arches in Threshold Church’s vaulted ceiling above me. The beer’s initial alcohol bit into maple, honey and toffee. It had a clean, oak finish. The beer was brewed by Scott Biddle, one of the four partners of Black Cloister, a brewery coming to downtown Toledo. Biddle is also the worship leader at Threshold, the church holding the evening’s beer tasting. Threshold is an Evangelical Lutheran church centered around college students. When, and if, Black Cloister makes enough profits to make distributions to its investors, the business’s bylaws designate that Threshold Church will receive a payout as well.
Black Cloister will open its doors this summer at the corner of Monroe and Erie in the refurbished, 100-year-old Block Building, in a beautiful space filled with brick archways. Their tap room will serve an American Pale Ale, a Belgian Blonde, a wheat beer and a rotating assortment of seasonals. “It is our intention to have exceptional beer,” said Biddle.
Brewing will be handled primarily by two of Biddle’s partners, Bob Hall and Tom Schaeffer. Hall has been brewing beer for 43 years. Schaeffer is the former head of the Glass City Mashers, a beer brewing club, and he is taking an online course from the University of Oklahoma on the chemistry of beer. They plan to brew using a fastidious “step-matching” technique, where heat and ingredients are closely paired through intricate steps. They believe that their care and concern for detail will make a better beer, a beer that will one day help support a church focused around college students.
A ministry for students
On a Sunday morning in the city of Rossford at Threshold Church, after a sermon on the topic of Lent, Scott Biddle ripped an original electric guitar ballad with the amplifiers turned high. Biddle dresses like a member of Green Day. His black hoodie and Vans matched his black glasses and chain wallet. With a shaved head, his ginger beard and arm tattoos provide his few contrasts of color. Families and early 20-somethings stood and sang along. “People have an impression of what church is,” said Eric Johnson, Threshold’s director of college ministry, “[but] Church is more than Sunday morning.”
Threshold Church started four years ago as a youthful offshoot of St. Paul’s in Maumee. They bounced around to a few locations before settling into the former home of a Catholic church on Maple Street. The church provides home-cooked meals and opportunities for college students to meet one another. “It provides a healthy social aspect [to college life],” said Danielle Rice, a fourth-year bio-engineering student at the University of Toledo. The church also involves students with community service, like the free pancake breakfasts it holds in struggling city neighborhoods.
Tom Schaeffer, 51, is Black Cloister’s chief executive, Threshold’s founding pastor and a Lutheran minister. He sports a frosty white faux-hawk, and speaks easily to young adults still searching to find themselves. “Everyone comes [to Threshold] with their own suitcase of stuff, and we’re cool with that,” said Schaeffer.
“We are respectfully irreverent,” said Michael Kennedy, Black Cloister’s fourth business partner. It is a fitting description for a brewery with a
business plan to support a ministry largely attended by college students. Threshold has nothing to lose by affiliating with Black Cloister, or if the brewery fails to make a profit. Instead, the church has everything to gain. The church has no money invested, but will receive 20 percent of dividends, as if it were a one-fifth investor. “It is more about what the money can enable students to do for others,” Schaeffer said. “We want a sense of community beyond ourselves.”
Black Cloister will start that community this summer, when they begin pouring hand-crafted beers to a hop-thirsty city to support a young church that will grow right along with it.
Dorian Slaybod is 27, a local attorney and happily living in Toledo.