Region & History

Anyone wanting to know how Cincinnati became a beer town should head to Over-the-Rhine, just a few blocks north of the Ohio River. German immigrants settled here from the 1830s onward. The canal separating the neighborhood from downtown was popularly known as "the Rhine," and "over the Rhine" became the district's name.

In 1836 Cincinnati had ten breweries; by 1860 the Cincinnati Museum Center counted 36. By the end of the century, an estimated 60 percent of the city's residents came from German families, and nearly a hundred breweries had opened before 1920. Around 1890 the city dubbed itself the "Beer Capital of the World."

One of these brewers was Christian Moerlein. He emigrated from Bavaria in 1841, first worked as a blacksmith, and founded his brewery at the corner of Elm and Henry Street in 1853. Before Prohibition, it ranked among the ten largest breweries in the US by volume. It closed in 1919.

Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933, shut down most breweries. Hudepohl, founded in 1885, survived as one of just four breweries in the city by producing low-alcohol beer and soda. After 1933, Hudepohl, Burger, and Schoenling continued operating until Hudepohl and Schoenling merged in 1986.

Hudepohl revived the Moerlein name in 1981 with the Christian Moerlein Select Lager. In 2004 businessman Greg Hardman bought the names and recipes of several historic Cincinnati brands. The Moerlein Lager House opened on the Ohio River in 2011, followed by the brewery in the former Kauffman Building in 2013. Rhinegeist opened on June 29, 2013; the name means "spirit of the Rhine."

Up north, the revival began in 1988. Brothers Patrick and Daniel Conway founded Great Lakes in Cleveland, Ohio's first brewpub and first microbrewery. There is no EU geographical protection for beer from Ohio.