Uptown Untapped Grows From Beer Festival Into A Community Celebration
By Friday morning, preparations for Saturday’s Uptown Untapped will already be underway. At Asterisk, the cook will begin marinating more than 400 chicken wings, getting an early start on the food to be served Saturday evening, when the East Main Street parking lot fills with diners, beer drinkers, music fans, and neighbors.
Those wings are one measure of what Untapped has become.
What began as a novelty, serving beer on the street in a city tied to temperance and Prohibition, has grown into something broader. A food and music festival built around the simple idea of gathering in Uptown.
“It is a great backyard party,” said Uptown Westerville Inc. Executive Director Lynn Aventino.
This will be the ninth Untapped, with the event held every year since 2017, except in 2020. It is one of Uptown Westerville Inc.’s major fundraisers, but its character has evolved as organizers have adjusted the mix of breweries, food, entertainment and activities based on visitor feedback.
Beer was the statement at the beginning.
Aventino remembers the first Untapped as something that now seems almost routine. “First time we ever had beer on the street,” she said. “People can’t believe it. It’s the first time it was ever served on the street.”
That history remains part of Untapped, but it no longer has to carry the festival. Beer now sits alongside restaurant food, music, games, and conversation in a district that has become a gathering place for the larger Westerville community.
The 2026 tasting menu reflects that change. After hearing complaints last year that 18 breweries still produced too many IPAs and heavier beers for a warm-weather festival, organizers reduced the field to 11 breweries while keeping 32 options. “The people said we want variety,” Aventino said.
Organizers took that message to the breweries, asking for lighter summer offerings and a broader range of styles, rather than measuring the festival by how many breweries could fit into the space.
Some offerings connect directly to Untapped and Uptown.
Wolf’s Ridge will pour Grilled Pineapple Trip Sitter, a hazy IPA that the tasting menu says was “created just for Westerville Untapped.” Spires Social will offer Uptown Girl, a strawberry blonde ale named for the neighborhood. Temperance Row will serve Prohibition Pilsner, whose description references Westerville’s history as a center of the temperance movement.
Food has become just as important to the experience. Aventino said one of the clearest messages from last year’s festival was that there was not enough of it, so organizers worked to expand the choices from Uptown restaurants and visiting vendors.
At Asterisk, that means the wings will be prepared starting Friday morning. Other offerings include Coney dogs, a vegan dog with tofu chili, corn on the cob, loaded tater tots, and strawberry shortcake.
Old Bag of Nails plans fish fillets, steak fries, and fried mushrooms. Cardinal and Beatitudes will offer pizza; Meza will serve charcuterie; and the Crispy Cucumber food truck will bring fried pickles.
Even one of the breweries is adding food to its offerings. Aventino said Spires Social plans to bring a griddle, another sign that the lines between beer festival, food festival and neighborhood party have begun to blur.
Music adds another piece. Billy Brown, who performed at Untapped last year, will return, and Trailer Park Ninjas will bring a broad selection of cover songs later in the evening.
The festival has also added more activities after breweries told organizers that successful beer festivals offer more to do than just moving from one tasting station to another.
Untapped will include cornhole, putting and Pop-A-Shot basketball, along with larger games such as Simon, foosball and air hockey. Breweries have also been encouraged to bring their own activities.
“So there’s stuff to do while you’re here,” Aventino said, “not just eat and drink.”
Making the festival happen requires another kind of community effort. Aventino counted 84 volunteers directly connected with Untapped, with Sustainable Westerville expected to add about 20 more to staff composting and recycling stations and help reduce event waste.
For Aventino, Untapped is also a way to introduce visitors to Uptown and give them a reason to return. She called Uptown “the whole community gathering part of Main Street.” At Untapped, that role becomes visible as tables, tents, music and crowds transform Uptown.
“It’s just the people gathered in the community,” Aventino said.
The novelty may once have been putting beer on a Westerville street. Nine Untapped festivals later, the event is increasingly about everything that has gathered around the glass: food, music, local businesses, friendships, and a neighborhood finding another way to bring the city together.
Because this post is public, you’re encouraged to share it on social media.
The Westerville News is a reader-supported publication by Gary Gardiner, a lifelong journalist who believes hyper-local reporting is the future of news. This publication focuses exclusively on Westerville—its local news, its influence on Central Ohio, and how surrounding areas shape the community.
Reader funding, including subscribers, protects editorial independence, so coverage is guided by journalists rather than owners or corporate profit goals. It also reduces pressure to chase clicks, letting the newsroom focus on stories worth readers’ time. And it helps keep the site accessible to everyone, including people who can’t pay or live in places where a free press is under threat.
Explore more hyper-local reporting by subscribing to The Hilliard Beacon, Civic Capacity, Marysville Matters, The Ohio Roundtable, Shelby News Reporter, This Week in Toledo, and Into the Morning by Krista Steele.
