Tag Archives: Cincinnati

Craft Breweries, Health, Social Drinking

Craft Breweries and Leisure Time Physical Activity

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I recently spent a couple of days in San Diego, CA. This was my third trip to California since November, and my second to San Diego. The purpose of this particular visit was to give a guest lecture in ‘Craft Breweries and the Urban Economy’, a class taught by my good friend and colleague Julie Wartell at the University of California-San Diego, As per usual when I visit Julie in San Diego, we managed to find time to visit couple of breweries.

At one of our brewery stops, Seek Beer Co., we ran into (excuse the pun) a local running group. The Seek Beer Run Club meet every Monday at 6pm. Those who show up participate in a 5k run (or jog or walk) around the North Park neighborhood. Afterwards they meet back at the brewery and enjoy some conversation and a beer or two. This is a run-for-fun group, with inexperienced runners (and non-runners) encouraged to participate. According to the group’s Instagram account, runners get a complimentary post-run beer and discounted beers for the remainder of the evening. Those completing ten runs receive a club t-shirt.

The Seek Beer Run Club meet every Monday evening
Seek Beer Run Club participants enjoy a post-run beer and conversation

While the Seek Beer Run Club appears to be a rather informal, come-as-you-are, group other initiatives are somewhat more ambitious. Take the BrewRunners of Cincinnati, for example. The Ohio group offers both a15-week half marathon training program and a 17-week full marathon training program. Each training group meets twice a week at local breweries, with the goal of having participants run in the Flying Pig half and full marathons in early May. Having said that, the group emphasizes that while they are a running group, they are “mostly a get together and have fun group”. On its website, the group lists ten Cincinnati breweries as social partners.

The Seek Beer Run Club and BrewRunners of Cincinnati are two examples of the intersection between craft beer and what is known as leisure time physical activity (LTPA). Dirk Steinbach and Christine Graf of the German Sport University define LPTA as “all of the behavior connected with physical activity that people engage in in their freely disposable time”.

Others examples abound. Cycling groups that associate themselves with the craft brewing movement are also common. In my city of Toledo, OH Patron Saints Brewery organize Pedals and Pints. Cyclists meet at Patron Saints and bike to another local brewery or bar, where they enjoy some beer before heading back to Patron Saints. Partnering with a locally-owned bike shop, the bi-weekly meet-up is billed as a “casual ride exploring awesome places in and around West Toledo”. On a larger scale, Bikes & Beers organizes bike rides in cities across the country. Each event has 15, 30, and 50 mile cycling routes and a host brewery where the post-ride after-party takes place. There is a registration fee for participating in Bikes & Beers events, but each one benefits a local cycling charity to improve policies, laws, and infrastructure. Again, the emphasis is on fun and is promoted as “a fun way for cyclists of all levels to get out and enjoy the road”.

Participants in the bi-weekly Pedals and Pints program meet at Patron Saints Brewery and bike to another local brewery or bar

Beer yoga is also a common activity associated with breweries. Within minutes, a brewery taproom or other space within the brewery can be quickly transformed into a temporary yoga studio. The branding associated with beer yoga is particularly clever with names such as Bendy Brewski Yoga, Downward-facing Drafts, and Bottoms Up! Yoga. Then there’s Yoga and a Pint, a name that really cuts to the chase.

So what motivates people to participate in runs, bike rides, and yoga classes that are organized by or in collaboration with breweries? The answer to that question is provided by a recent study conducted by Alana Seaman of the University of North Carolina -Wilmington and her colleagues and published in the journal Leisure Studies. In that study, the researchers interviewed individuals who participated in LTPA associated with breweries in Wilmington, NC, Auburn, VA, and Louisville, KY. Activities that interviewees participated in were frisbee golf, run clubs, ping-pong tournaments, and yoga classes.

For participants, the social aspect of LTPA is important. LTPA provide opportunities to spend time with friends, while also meeting new people. Having a post-activity beer plays a critical role in facilitating socializing. Without it, most people would probably depart once the activity was completed. Some of the interviewees appreciated the laid-back, informal nature of LTPA, and the fact that it is less serious and intense than physical activities carried out in purpose-built buildings. The brewery, and the beer it produces and serves appears to be playing a critical role in bringing people together and socializing with each other. The fact that the craft breweries in the study were locally-owned was also attractive to many LTPA participants.

Leisure time physical activity is good for human health. The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies insufficient physical activity as the fourth leading risk factor for mortality, accounting for approximately 3.2 million deaths per year. Research published in The Lancet suggests that the situation is much more serious, placing the number of deaths attributable to the lack of physical activity at 5.3 million. One estimate suggests that 31.3% of persons aged 15+ are insufficiently active.

A study of over 100,000 men and women between the ages of 20 and 100 living in Copenhagen, Denmark and published in the European Heart Journal found that leisure-time activity promotes cardiovascular health, while job-related physical activity does not. In a paper published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine researchers found that 7.6% of cardiovascular disease deaths globally are attributable to physical inactivity, while another published in the Journal of Yoga & Physical Therapy concluded that “people who participate in leisure activities have lower stress levels, a better mood, a lower heart rate, and more psychological engagement, which means they are less bored, which can help them avoid hazardous habits.”

The combination of craft breweries and LPTA seems to be a particularly beneficial one. LPTA clearly has health benefits. But so does moderate alcohol consumption in a social setting, as demonstrated by the work of evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar and others. As noted by Dunbar et al., in a 2017 paper published in Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, “our social networks provide us with the single most important buffer against mental and physical illness”. This is because alcohol triggers the endorphin system, which relaxes individuals and promotes social bonding.

I have been studying the craft brewing industry for just over ten years. Over that time, as the result of my own research, as well as that of others, I have arrived at the conclusion that craft breweries are assets to the communities in which they are located. The aforementioned paper by Alana Seaman and her colleagues, which explores the symbiotic relationship between craft breweries and LTPA, is the most recent piece of evidence in support of this.

Further Reading:

Seaman, Alana N, Lindsey Schroeder, Laura Morris, Kayla Hines, and Michele Abee. 2024. “Ten bucks for yoga and a beer in a cool vibey spot”: Exploring motivations for LTPA at craft breweries. Leisure Studies.

Adaptive Reuse, Beer Tourism, Craft Breweries

On The Road Again

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Regular readers of this blog will know that I travel quite a bit and that in the course of these travels I take the opportunity to visit breweries. In 2018 and 2019, I visited 66 and 63 breweries respectively. For 2020, I had set myself the target of visiting 52 different breweries – an average of one per week. But as the famous Scottish poet, Robert Burns, so astutely observed in his 1795 poem, To A Mouse, “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”. Translation – “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”. And so it was, with arrival of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020. Lockdowns, social distancing, and travel restrictions meant that my visits to breweries were severely curtailed. I did manage to visit 22 breweries/taprooms by the time the lockdown came into effect in mid-March. During the remainder of 2020, however, I was only able to add another four breweries/taprooms to bring my total to 26 for the year.

Thanks to the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and the easing of lockdown and other restrictions, however, I have started to travel again. Last month. my wife and I had a four-day trip that took us to Cincinnati, OH and Indianapolis, IN. While we did some sightseeing on the trip, for me it was an opportunity to visit some breweries. Our first stop was Cincinnati, where we spent the night and visited a childhood friend of my wife and her husband. After dinner and a pint of Belhaven Scottish Ale at the Cock and Bull Public House, we spent the remainder of the evening at the city’s March First Brewing. Billing itself as Cincinnati’s only brewery, cidery, and distillery, I was curious about its name – March First. Was it named that to honor the fact that the state of Ohio had been founded on March 1, 1803? Apparently not. As it turns out, the brewery’s name reflects the struggle that the owner had in coming up with a name. When completing some paperwork for the state of Ohio, the owner had to fill in the name of the company. Not yet having identified one, he looked around for a few seconds and saw from a wall calendar that it was March 1 – hence the name was selected.

March First Brewing, Cincinnati, OH

The next day, my wife and I picked up our oldest daughter and her boyfriend, both of whom live in Cincinnati, and headed for Indianapolis, IN. This was a trip that we had talked about doing last summer, but COVID-19 meant that it never happened. It had been a number of years since I had been in Indianapolis, and I was keen to explore it again. It is a city with a burgeoning craft beer scene; it was recently ranked by Real Estate Witch as the second best metro area in the country for beer drinkers. Quite an accolade to live up to.

On our first evening in Indianapolis, we visited Ellison Brewing Co. It was a beautiful evening and we enjoyed several beers on the brewery’s patio. During the evening, we had the opportunity to have several conversations with our waitress. We learned a bit about the brewery’s history and the post-COVID-19 challenges of hiring staff. Ellison Brewing Co, was founded in 2015 by Iraq War Veteran Aaron Hansen who opened a combined brewery/distillery in Lansing, MI. The space occupied by Ellison in Indianapolis previously housed Tow Yard Brewing. When Tow Yard filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors in 2018, Hansen seized the opportunity to acquire the space and expand his brewery’s footprint to Indianapolis.

Ellison Brewing Co.,
The patio of Ellison Brewing Co.

From the perspective of an Indianapolis resident, Ellison Brewery is an example of an “out-of-town” brewery that has opened its doors in their city. This appears to be a growing trend within the craft brewing industry. Earlier this year, Dogfish Head Brewery of Milton, DE announced plans to open a craft brewery in Miami, FL. When I was in Indianapolis, I noticed that Goodwood Brewery of Louisville, KY were in the process of converting a space that would give them a presence in the city. This expansion of what I term “branch breweries” is an interesting development within the craft brewing industry (maybe a topic for a future blog entry). As a footnote, since I returned from Indianapolis, the Goodwood Brewery has opened its doors and is serving pints to thirsty locals and visitors alike.

Goodwood Brewery of Louisville, KY are opening an establishment in Indianapolis, IN

The next day, after our visit to Ellison Brewing Co, we visited three other Indianapolis breweries – Metazoa Brewing Co., Sun King Brewing Company, and St. Joseph Brewery & Public House. I was particularly looking forward to visiting Metazoa, In February 2020, I had met the owner of Metazoa, Dave Worthington, at the Beer Marketing and Tourism Conference in St. Petersburg, FL. Dave had told me that if I ever found myself in Indianapolis to drop in and say “Hi”. I emailed Dave about a week before we left for Indianapolis and arranged a time to visit Metazoa. Dave, who is a very busy individual, was extremely generous of his time and with beer-in-hand gave us a tour of his brewery’s space and also answered all the questions that we had about his experience in the industry. I will not say too much about Metazoa here (the next blog entry will be dedicated to Metazoa). Suffice to say that owner Dave Wotherspoon has a passion for animals and donates 5% of Metazoa’s profits to various animal welfare causes. Metazoa served as a reminder of the generosity of America’s craft brewing industry. Data from the Brewers Association showed that in 2016 America’s 5,600+ craft breweries raised $73.4 million for various charitable causes.

Dave Worthington (left), owner of Metazoa Brewing Co., gave us a tour of his brewery space
Metazoa Brewing Co. donates 5% of its profits to various animal charities

After Metazoa, we took to the streets and walked to Sun King Brewing Company. Established in 2009, Sun King is the second largest craft brewery in Indiana (3 Floyds in Muncie is the largest). Sun King was also our dinner stop. Inside the large Sun King Tasting Room is La Margarita, a Mexican-inspired food vendor, that has several locations throughout the city.

Sun King Brewing Company in downtown Indianapolis

After Sun King, we took an Uber to St. Joseph Brewery and Public House. As the name might suggest, this brewery is in an old Catholic Church, and provides an excellent example of adaptive reuse. Coming across a craft brewery in an old church is not an uncommon experience. Indeed, a quick foray into the recesses of my memory, revealed that St. Joseph was the sixth craft brewery in an old church that I had visited.

St. Joseph Brewery & Public House was established in 2015
Entrance to Sr. Joseph Brewery & Public House
Inside St. Joseph Brewery and Public House

So that was my trip to Indianapolis. It was good to be back on the road again. It was nice to spend a couple of days being a beer tourist. Notwithstanding any more travel restrictions I hope to make a few more trips similar to this throughout the remainder of 2021.

Neighborhoods

Overlooked Neighborhoods

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Recently, I came across an interesting article on the website ozy.com. It was titled Overlooked Neighborhoods: Little-known Gems in Well-Known Cities. The premise of the article was pretty straightforward. When we visit a city, we tend to keep to well-trodden paths. These can be restaurants we have read about in guidebooks, museums that are on everyone’s must-visit list, or a green space such as a famous park.

But dare to look beyond the tourist traps and our own comfort zone, and we will see that every city has lesser-known neighborhoods that are worth spending time in. This particular article identifies seven such neighborhoods:

It is is an interesting list, albeit a little U.S.-centric. What I found particularly intriguing about the descriptions of these seven neighborhoods is that beer is mentioned as a key part of the urban fabric in four of them (Abasto, Bridgeport, Brevnov, and Over-the-Rhine). In the cases of Abasto, Bridgeport, and Over-the-Rhine, craft beer bars and breweries, in particular, are mentioned, while in the Břevnov neighborhood of Prague, the monks at the monastery there first brewed beer in the year 993. This makes it the earliest record of beer being brewed in the Czech Republic. In a completely separate piece on Pittsburgh’s overlooked neighborhoods, Kelly Abrogast, shines the spotlight on the city’s Troy Hill neighborhood. According to Abrogast, Troy Hill is Home to “some of the best beer you’ve ever had”. Troy Hill is home to Penn Brewery.

Rhinegeist Brewery in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood

The fact that craft beer (whether in the form of craft beer bars or craft breweries) are considered a key contributor to interesting and vibrant neighborhoods does not surprise me in the slightest. In a 2016 piece in The Atlantic, James Fallows identified eleven signs that a city will succeed – one of those signs was the existence of at least one craft brewery. As noted by Fallows, “a town that has craft breweries also has a certain kind of entrepreneur, and a critical mass of mainly young (except for me) customers.” As Fallows correctly notes, craft breweries are a magnet for young people. As market research has demonstrated, it is the Millennial cohort who are driving the growth of the craft beer sector. A craft brewery or craft beer bar in a neighborhood attracts young people, not just from the immediate neighborhood, but from other parts of the city, and even farther afield. Beer tourism is increasingly popular, and craft beer drinkers visiting cities search out those neighborhoods with craft breweries and craft beer bars. A craft brewery opening up in a neighborhood is akin to putting up a welcome sign. It is saying to people, come check us out. This neighborhood is ok; good things are happening. In some cases, such as the Ohio City neighborhood in Cleveland, OH or the Lower Downtown (LoDo) neighborhood in Denver, CO, craft breweries (Great Lakes Brewing Company and Wynkoop Brewing Company respectively) were pioneer investors who kick-started the redevelopment of these respective neighborhoods. In other cases, such as the Pearl District in Portland, OR or the North Davidson (NoDa) neighborhood in Charlotte, NC the craft breweries and craft beer bars have followed other investment into the neighborhood. Whatever the sequencing of investments, many of these neighborhoods have had new life breathed into them.

Great Lakes Brewing Company was the catalyst for the redevelopment of Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood

According to Denver Public Library, “back in the 1980s, Lower Downtown Denver was what we called “a little sketchy” – a lot of places were boarded up, and ones that were open were populated by the underground crowd, drifters, punk rockers and late nighters. Today, the bustling restaurant – sports bar – brew pub district looks like the Seattle or Portland we all longed for, with a huge variety of food choices both native and exotic, all kinds of great beer, espresso, chocolate, and other delicacies, and a wide array of clothing and accessory stores, art galleries, and high-end lofts.”

Back in 2016, I spent a few days in Stockholm, Sweden. While there I visited the Nya Carnegie Bryggeret (New Carnegie Brewery). The brewery is in an old lightbulb factory in the Hammarby Sjöstad neighborhood. In the early 1990s, Hammarby Sjöstad was a run-down, polluted industrial and residential neighborhood that was considered unsafe by outsiders. By the time I visited it in 2016, it had underwent a remarkable transformation. As a result of significant investment, it was an attractive neighborhood with apartments, shops, offices and, yes, a brewery.

The Nya Carnegie Bryggeret (New Carnegie Brewery) in Stockholm’s HammarbySjöstad neighborhood is in an old lightbulbg factory

The example of Nya Carnegie Bryggeret shows that craft breweries often thrive in overlooked neighborhoods, but they can also succeed in overlooked buildings. Through the process of adaptive reuse, craft brewery entrepreneurs will take an old abandoned church, fire station, automobile dealership etc. and turn it into a vibrant craft brewery. Craft brewery entrepreneurs are attracted to distressed neighborhoods because real estate is often relatively inexpensive.

Some people living in an overlooked neighborhood, may like it that way. So they may not necessarily welcome a new brewery and other investment and the visitors that they attract. Rising property values may force long-standing residents out of the neighborhood. Along with my colleagues, Jay Gatrell and Matthew Lehnert, I write about this in an upcoming book chapter. The chapter looks at the historical evolution of Cincinnati’s Over-the- Rhine neighborhood. Despite once being dubbed the most dangerous neighborhood in the United States, residents of Over-the-Rhine had for decades been suspicious of outsiders and the change they sought to bring to the neighborhood. This suspicion manifest itself in the Over-the-Rhine Peoples’ Movement who fought against gentrification of their neighborhood. In the end, their cause was a lost one and millions of investment dollars later Over-the-Rhine is very much a changed and more vibrant neighborhood.

Further Reading:

Reid, Neil. Craft breweries, Adaptive reuse, and neighborhood revitalization, Urban Development Issues, Volume 57, Issue 1, pp. 5–14.

Reid, Neil, Jay D. Gatrell, and Matthew Lehnert. Leveraging brewing history: The case of Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine Neighborhood”. In Thakur, Rajiv, Ashok K. Dutt, Sudhir K. Thakur, and George Pomeroy (Eds). Urban and Regional Planning and Development: 20th Century Forms and 21st Century Transformations, Springer: Dordrecht (forthcoming).

Reid, Neil and Isabelle Nilsson. From mill district to brewery district: Craft beer and the revitalization of Charlotte’s NoDa neighborhood. Invited chapter for inclusion in Beer Places: The Micro-Geographies of Craft Beer, by Daina Cheyenne Harvey, Ellis Jones, and Nate Chapman (Eds).

History

Signs of the Times

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My wife and I visit Cincinnati, OH several times throughout the year. Our oldest daughter lives there, so we take every opportunity we can to spend time with her. Plus, we both really like Cincinnati. It is an interesting and vibrant city. For me, it holds some special memories. It was the first large American city I ever visited. I arrived in the United States in 1985, to attend graduate school at Miami University in Oxford, OH. To get from Oxford to Cincinnati is about a fifty minute drive, so it became a favorite destination during my two years at Miami.

Every time my wife and I visit Cincinnati it is usually for a couple of days, which gives us enough time to visit a museum or park or some other attraction that we had never visited before. On our most recent trip, we made a visit to the American Sign Museum (AMS). According to its website, the AMS is the “largest public museum dedicated to signs in the United States”. The 20,000 square feet museum has over two hundred items on display, the vast majority of which are neon signs. The signs date from the late nineteenth century up thru the 1970s. As you might imagine the signs for a plethora of businesses and products – drugs, paint, gasoline, restaurants, bars etc. Some of the signs catch the eye more than others. A 1963 McDonald’s sign is particularly eye-catching. It features Speedee, a character who was eventually phased out in favor of Ronald McDonald. Another classic piece of Americana on display at the AMS is a Big Boy statue, which dates from the 1960s.

The McDonald’s sign on display at the American Sign Museum
A 1960s era Big Boy statue

Not surprisingly, there are also a number of beer signs. So I thought I’d use the remainder of this blog entry to look at some of the brewery/beer signs and tell the story behind them.

  • Sunshine Beer: Sunshine Beer was one of the beers brewed by the Sunshine Brewing Company of Reading, PA. The brewery, opened in 1880, was owned by Peter Barbey & Son. Colloquially, the beer was known as Sunny. Some old television commercials advertising Sunny can be viewed here. Sunshine Brewery closed in 1968 and the building was demolished during the 1970s. A video of the brewery being demolished can be found here.
  • Kaier’s Beer: Kaier’s Beer was brewed by the Chas. D. Kaier Brewery of Mahanoy City, PA. Kaier was a German immigrant, arriving in the United States at the age of nineteen in 1857. He opened the brewery opened in 1880. Kaier was quite the entrepreneur. In addition to the brewery, he owned forty taverns, an ice company, an opera house, a hotel, and a host of other business in Mahanoy City. During Prohibition, the brewery remained operational by producing both legal (no greater than 0.5% alcohol by weight) and illegal beer (3.2% alcohol by weight). The illegal beer was transferred by a pipeline down the Mahanoy Creek to a barn on the city’s Vine Street where it was put into kegs. The brewery had ‘spotters’ stationed on all roads leading into Mahanoy, who would inform the brewery when Federal agents entered town. Keg filling operations were then temporarily suspended. By 1951, Kaier’s was one of the largest breweries in Pennsylvania, producing 183,500 barrels of beer. In 1966, the brewery was sold to Henry F. Ortlieb Brewing Co. of Philadelphia, who closed the brewery in 1968.
  • Seitz Beer and Ale: Seitz was a brewery in Easton, PA. Opened by Frederick Seitz in 1821, it was the town’s first brewery. At its peak in 1933, the brewery employed seventy people and produced 70,000 barrels of beer. In 1874 Seitz built a bottling plant, allowing the brewery to become the first brewery in Pennsylvania to sell beer in bottles. To keep the doors open during Prohibition, Seitz produced a non-alcoholic brew called ‘cereal beverage’. At the same time, Seitz was pumping beer by a hose under the Delaware River to neighboring New Jersey. New Jersey had not ratified the eighteenth amendment banning alcohol. As a result the Federal ban on alcohol was not as severely enforced in the state. Similar to the Kaier Brewery in Pennsylvania, Seitz were tipped off when Federal agents were about to show up. Seitz eventually closed for business in 1938.
  • Broadway Brewery: Broadway Brewery started out its life as San Francisco Brewery in 1853. The founder and owner, Jacob Frederick Sprecht, was a German immigrant. By 1862, the brewery was under new ownership and was renamed Broadway Brewery. The name reflected the brewery’s location on Broadway Street. In 1893 the brewery was destroyed by a fire. By August of that year a new brewery had been built and was up and running. Although the name was retained, the new brewery was located on 19th Street. By 1899, the brewery was producing twenty thousand barrels annually. It had fifteen employees and eight horse-drawn beer wagons, which delivered beer to San Francisco saloons. On January 17, 1917, the Broadway Brewery became part of the California Brewing Association (CBA). CBA was a co-operative designed to give member breweries greater buyer and selling power. By the end of the year, however, the Broadway Brewery was closed.
  • Ballantine Beer: Ballantine Beer was brewed by P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company, founded in Newark, NJ in 1840. Its founder, Peter Ballantine, was a Scottish immigrant. At its peak, during the 1940s and 1950s, it was the third largest brewing company in the United States. Its popularity during this period was helped by the fact that Ballantine was the first television sponsor of the New York Yankees. Starting in the mid-1960s, due to competitive pressure, Ballantine entered into a period of decline, from which they would not recover. In 1972, Falstaff Brewing Corporation purchased Ballantine. The new owners closed the Ballantine brewery in Newark, choosing to brew Ballantine’s various beers elsewhere. In 1985 Falstaff was purchased by the Pabst Brewing Company. Over time Falstaff and Pabst modified the recipes of the various Ballantine beers. A number of Ballantine beers are brewed today, including the Ballantine IPA. The Ballantine neon sign on display at the American Sign Museum is in its original crate. As the label on the top right hand corner of the crate indicates, the sign was manufactured by Adversigns Inc. of Berwick, PA in the 1950s, and was shipped to the Penn-Sheraton Hotel (now the Omni William Penn Hotel) in Pittsburgh, PA
Sign at the American Sign Museum explaining the history of the Ballantine beer sign

These are just some of the beers signs on display at the American Sign Museum. There are others, of course, including signs for Heilman’s Old Style Lager, Hudepohl Beer, and Schoenling Beer. These signs are an important piece of American brewing history. It is great to see that they have survived the decades and, thanks to the American Sign Museum, are here for the general public to enjoy.

History, Ohio

Carillon: Honoring the Past

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A few weeks ago, my wife and I were planning an overnight trip to just north of Cincinnati, OH. We were going there to celebrate a friend’s birthday. The drive would be approximately three hours. And given that we’re planning to leave mid-morning we decided to look for a possible lunch venue along our route. Anytime we are on the road and have a lunch stop, I always try to see if there is a brewery where we can eat and have a beer. We figured we would be near Dayton, OH around lunchtime, and so I looked for breweries there. In my search I came across Carillon Brewing Co. I had read about Carillon a few years ago and had always had an interest in visiting it.

Carillon Brewing Co. is a little different than most craft breweries. It is located inside Carillon Historical Park. The park is a sixty-five acre open-air history museum that depicts the history of Dayton from the late-1700s to the present.

Carillon Brewing Co.

Carillon Brewing Co. was established in 2014. One of the brewery’s claim to fame is that it is the nation’s only production brewery that is located inside a museum. Inside the brewery itself, there are displays highlighting Dayton’s brewing history. Like many other city’s across the United States, British-inspired ales were the dominant type of beer produced. When German immigrants started arriving in significant numbers in the 1840s, they introduced Lager to the city. By the 1880s there were as many as fourteen breweries operating in the city, and by 1900 Dayton’s breweries were producing three million gallons of beer annually.

This map inside Carillon Brewery provides information on Dayton’s brewing history in the 1850-1856 period

According to the brewery’s website, all of the beer brewed at Carillon is a “historical recreation of the earliest brews made in Ohio’s breweries.” Many of the processes used to brew the beer replicate those of the nineteenth century. Beer is brewed in open kettles, fermented in oak barrels, and is unfiltered. And when available , Ohio-grown hops are used. Beers on the menu include Coriander Ale, Irish Red Ale, and Pale Rye Ale (no IPAs!). The staff at the brewery are dressed in period costume. With my lunch, I opted for their Ginger Pale Ale. In addition to brewing beer, bread using spent grain from the brewing process is made daily onsite. My wife and I enjoyed some with the soup we had for lunch, and purchased a loaf to take back home with us.

For $150, Carillon offers you the opportunity to be a brewer for the day. It is quite a long day, which starts at 11:00 am and runs until 7:30 pm. While we can read about the process of brewing beer, and even look at diagrams that identify the various steps, it is my belief that there is nothing like a little bit of hands-on experience to enhance one’s understanding.

Carillon offers you the opportunity to be a brewer for the day

While craft beer has bought us a unprecedented diversity of wonderful beers (The Brewers Association recognizes over 150 different styles of beer), it has, I believe, also contributed to a growing appreciation of brewing history. This is manifest in any number of ways. In my town of Toledo, OH, for example, the Toledo Historical Museum organize a History and Hops Brewery Tour, in which participants learn about the city’s brewing history. The tour starts at one of the city’s craft breweries – Maumee Bay Brewing Company. In a similar fashion, the Over-the-Rhine Brewery District Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation (BDCURC) in CincinnatI, OH offer a number of walking tours that recount that neighborhood’s historical connection with beer. In St. Louis, MO, the Bellefontaine Cemetery and Arboretum offer the Beer Barons Tour. The cemetery contains around forty burial sites that have a connection with St. Louis’s rich brewing history. The tour provides people with an opportunity to learn about the city’s beer entrepreneurs.

Individual breweries are discovering and recreating old beer styles that have not been brewed in decades. For example, breweries in Louisville, KY are brewing their version of pre-Prohibition Kentucky Common beer. The city’s Apocalypse Brew Works produce a Kentucky Common beer using a 1912 recipe from the Oertel Brewing Company; a recipe that calls for corn grits.

Kentucky Common – a beer style that was popular in the Louiseville, KY region in the pre-Prohibition era is now being produced by a number of Louisville breweries. The one pictured here was brewed by Louisville’s Bluegrass Brewing Company.

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, DE have an Ancient Ales series, whose recipes are based on residue discovered on chemical analysis of drinking vessels from various sites around the world. They do this in partnership with University of Pennsylvania archaeologist, Dr. Patrick McGovern. The result has been beers with evocative names such as Midas Touch, Chateau Jiahu, and Birra Etrusca Bronze.

History is important. It grounds us in our roots, helps us understand change, and can inspire us to learn more. And thanks, in part to craft beer, there seems to be a growing interest in the history of both beer and brewing. This is a good thing.

History, Ohio, Toledo

Toledo History and Hops

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The tour started at Maumee Bay Brewing Company

Last month, I went on a tour organized by the the Toledo History Museum. The tour was titled “History & Hops Brewery Tour”, and combined some general Toledo urban history with the history of the brewing industry in the city. The two-hour tour started at Toledo’s oldest and largest modern-day craft brewery, Maumee Bay Brewing Company (established 1995; white star on map below). Gathered outside of the brewery as we waited on the bus to start our tour, I counted about twenty fellow tour participants.

Our tour guide was Tedd Long, Vice President of the Toledo History Museum. Tedd provided commentary for the tour, which he supplemented with short video clips. Tedd started off by noting the historical importance of the brewing industry in Toledo. Indeed, from the early to mid-1800s up until the early twentieth century it was one of the leading industries in the city. If I heard Tedd correctly, there were fourteen breweries in the city of Toledo in 1900.

Map of Toledo Breweries That Existed at Some Point Between 1838 and 1972. Source: Maumee Bay Brewing Company

We made a number of stops along the tour.  I won’t cover them all in this blog entry, but will rather hit on a few highlights. Our first stop was in east Toledo, at the corner of Oak and Front Streets (number 7 on map). This was the site of the Home Brewing Company, which existed between 1904 and 1919. The brewery was a five-story structure. Interestingly, the brewery was owned by a syndicate of saloon owners. The syndicate ownership structure gave the saloon owners control over the price of the beer. At its peak, the Home Brewing Company produced 40,000 barrels of beer per year.

Our second stop was at the intersection of Front and Main Streets, also in east Toledo. Toledoeans will recognize this intersection, as the iconic Tony Packo’s Restaurant is located there. This intersection was the location of the original Buckeye Brewery (number 9 on map). The brewery was established in 1838, and was owned by a German Brewmaster, Julius Kohler. In 1854, Kohler purchased a brewery  at the corner of Bush and Champlain Streets (number 1 on map) and shifted his brewing operations to this location. The brewery, which was a small, white, wooden frame building, was purchased by Kohler for $2,400. Our tour also included a stop at the Bush and Champlain Streets location. Over the years the Buckeye Brewery underwent numerous ownership changes, while also gaining capacity as a result of building additions. By the 1870s, the brewery was producing between fourteen thousand and nineteen thousand barrels of lager. In 1880, it was the fourth largest brewery in the city.

Another stop was at the intersection of Summit and Elm Streets, the site of the Finlay Brewing Company (number 4 on map). The brewery opened in 1853. It started off brewing Ales and Porter, but in 1869 switched to producing Lager. In 1874, Finlay Brewing Company produced 12,000 barrels of beer. By 1881, production had increased to 54,000 barrels. Finlay Brewing Company was the first Toledo brewery to sell its beer outside of the city, when it expanded its market reach to include Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York. It was also the first Toledo brewery to bottle its beer.  The bottling of beer, of course, was made possible by the invention of the automated bottling machine by Michael J. Owens, who worked for the Toledo Glass Factory (owned by Edward Drummond Libby). Prior to bottles, beer was sold in kegs. Today , Toledo remains a center of beer bottle design and innovation – a topic I covered in a previous blog entry.

 

Maumee Bay’s Brewery Manager, Craig Kerr, leads us through the beer tasting portion of the tour

Another stop that we made on the tour was the building that currently houses the Spaghetti Warehouuse restaurant, at the intersection of Lafayette and Superior Streets. Constructed towards the end of the nineteenth century, this building was the Hoppe and Strube Bottling Company. Hoppe and Strube bottled beer for a number of breweries including the Pabst Brewing Company from Milwaukee, WI and the Maumee Brewing Company, whose brewery was located right next door.

These are just a few of the stops we made on our tour. As I reflected on my afternoon, visiting the sites of old Toledo breweries, it struck me that most American cities have a brewing history. It is a history that should be preserved and told. Thankfully, the Toledo History Museum have taken on that task in Toledo. Back in March 2017, I took a guided tour of the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood in Cincinnati, OH and learned about that neighborhood’s rich brewing history.  The tour was organized by the Over-the-Rhine Brewery District Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation,  a not-for-profit group, part of whose mission it is to preserve and tell the story of the neighborhood’s brewing heritage. Just the other day, I came across this piece, in the St. Louis Dispatch about the Bellefontaine Cemetery and Arboretum Beer Baron Tour. Around forty burial sites in the cemetery have a connection with St. Louis’s brewing history. The annual Beer Barons Tour gives people an opportunity to learn about some of the city’s beer entrepreneurs. These are important histories. We should preserve them and share them.

Following the bus segment of the tour, we returned to the Maumee Bay Brewing Company for beer tasting in the brewery’s cafe. The beer tasting was led by Brewery Manager, Craig Kerr. We sampled six Maumee Bay brews – Cherry Vanilla Porter, Coffee Cream Ale, Dreamin Demon (Belgian Strong Dark Ale), Glass Hopper IPA, Oktoberfest, and Mango Jerry (Gose). The background to each beer, including information on the ingredients was provided by Craig Kerr. I have sat through a lot of craft beer samplings over the years and this was perhaps the best. Craig did a fantastic job of describing each beer, as well as providing information on the general brewing process, and the function of the different ingredients.

FurtherReading:

Musson, Robert A. 2011. Brewing Beer in the Glass City, Volume I. The Buckeye Story. Medina, OH: Zepp Publications.

Musson, Robert A. 2018. Brewing Beer in the Glass City, Volume II: Huebner, Koerber, Maumee Bay and the Rest, 2nd edition. Medina, OH: Zepp Publications.

History, Ohio

Over-the-Rhine

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A few weeks ago I spent the weekend in Cincinnati, OH. My oldest daughter moved there back in February.  She recently graduated from Nursing School at the University of Toledo and is now working as a Registered Nurse at The Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. I like Continue reading Over-the-Rhine →