What are you Drinking?

[derspiess]

Quick Oktoberfest weekend AAR:

Friday: Ueberdrome was fun, but seemed to be about half the crowd we had last year.  Rained the entire time from about 7:00pm, which put a damper on the crowd and some of the events for the night.  I think I got a pic or two for Yi, but they may be a little blurry.  Food was as awesome as last year's, beer was as well, but unless they drop the VIP ticket back down to 2012 price for next year or add something, I may not buy one.

Saturday: Took a two & a half hour tour given by the Over the Rhine Brewery District organization.  Got to tour three old abandoned breweries, including Jackson Brewery which dates back to 1852.  Went into the old lagering cellars for a couple locations, one of which was just recently re-discovered and unsealed.  Then we headed over to Rhinegeist to try their "Oktoberfest ale", which was a good effort but an average ale at best and nothing like an Oktoberfest maerzen lager.

Sunday: After the Bengals-Packers game we headed over to the main Oktoberfest downtown and I was reminded why I usually avoid it.  Too many people, not enough atmosphere.  So we headed over to the Ueberdrome to wrap up the weekend.

Probably had my fill of Oktoberfest/maerzen style beer for a while, though I didn't drink too heavily at any point.  And in this area there will be several local Oktoberfest celebrations each weekend through October, some of which are much nicer than the mega-Oktoberfest downtown.

[Caliga]

I haven't been up to Cincinnati in a while.  I miss the Hofbrauhaus.

OTOH we found an awesome German restaurant down here (Der Gasthaus) that actually is run by real Germans and has great food.

[derspiess]

I haven't been up to Cincinnati in a while.  I miss the Hofbrauhaus.

OTOH we found an awesome German restaurant down here (Der Gasthaus) that actually is run by real Germans and has great food.

Get up here.  There are several new places you need to see.  And many of them serve goetta in various forms.

[Caliga]

Get up here.  There are several new places you need to see.  And many of them serve goetta in various forms.

Like what, and where are they?  I prefer to not cross the Ohio into Yankee territory.

[derspiess]

Get up here.  There are several new places you need to see.  And many of them serve goetta in various forms.

Like what, and where are they?  I prefer to not cross the Ohio into Yankee territory.

If you can make it up here, give me enough advance notice & I'll show you guys around.  For a while, the only places worth visiting were in Newport, KY but Cincy got off its ass and built some nice places to eat/drink.

Moerlein Lager House, just across the river in Cincy.  Large-ish restaurant with brewery on premises: http://www.moerleinlagerhouse.com/

We also just recently got a Yard House near the Lager House.

Rhinegeist, a new brewery located in Over the Rhine in the former Christian Moerlein bottling building.  Really cool place, in spite of the hipsters: http://rhinegeist.com/

Several nice little food/beer joints in Over the Rhine as well.  They're re-developing that district at a rapid pace now & it's looking pretty nice.  And I feel safe enough to take my family there during daytime hours.  If you're unfamiliar with OTR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-Rhine

The oldest continually operating saloon in Cincy, Arnold's: http://www.arnoldsbarandgrill.com/

Outside of downtown, there are four new breweries I'd recommend:

http://listermannbrewing.com/ - not much on atmosphere but they have some good & interesting beers, including a peanut butter porter and a smoked bock. 

http://www.madtreebrewing.com/ - they make several good beers, but my favorites are their IPA & barrel-aged imperial stout.  They don't serve food, but usually have a good food truck parked in the lot.

http://fiftywestbrew.com/ - cool, retro place that makes great beer but can't decide on what their year-round beers are.  They are located in an old building that was once a speakeasy/liquor smuggling operation and at a different time, a brothel.  Their food is not that great, so I stick to the free pretzels & snack mix.

http://mtcarmelbrewingcompany.com/  - my favorite place.  Don't judge them by their horrible website.  They are located in an old farmhouse & have an excellent atmosphere plus some great year-round beers.  It's my regular Friday evening hangout.  They don't serve food but you can bring your own or order carryout delivered there.

[derspiess]

Three Floyds Robert the Bruce, one of the few Scottish-type ales I like. 

Next up, the highly coveted Zombie Dust by Three Floyds.  People go frickin' mental for that stuff around here, partly because it's so hard to get.

[Ideologue]

Slug from a bottle of Stoli, because I've got a headache and can't get to sleep.

[derspiess]

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2009/06/13/scripts/cincy.shtml

Don't think I can post the link to the audio, but it's available in the link above.

Garrison Keillor masterfully encapsulates Cincinnati's brewing heritage-- and it's pork-eating heritage.

Cincinnati poem
Saturday, June 13, 2009

Listen (MP3)
Listen (RealAudio)

We're in Cincinnati and it's good to be here
In a city of pork and a city of beer.
Old beer signs everywhere you walk:
"Good Old" Brucks, Brenner's XL Pilsener, John Hauck
Barbarossa, King Gambrinus, or Crown.
You eat you some Pork hocks with leeks and garlic cloves, you need beer to wash it down.
Similarly, to go along with a pint of beer, you need more than a pretzel
You need Pork Meatloaf with brown gravy and spaetzle.
A big pork sandwich and something to drink,
Geisbauer, Bierbrauer, Linck.
Nothing chintzy
Here in Cincy.
Like it or not, Cincinnati was not vegetarian.
It went for pork shanks with bread dumplings and a pitcher of Bavarian.
No lemonade, no cranberry juice, no apple cider,
But a big mug of Weber's, Lackman, Jackson, Mohawk, Gerke, Burger, or Foss-Schneider.
And all of the pig was used, even the snout
To make Bierwurst, Mettwurst, Bratwurst, piled high with sauerkraut.

Beers with distinguished names like Butcher & Weidmann and Windisch-Muhlhauser
To give a sense of dignity to the drunken carouser
City of suds and city of swine,
Some greasy goetta sausage and a glass of Christian Moerlein,
Or Little Kings cream ale

Beer by the bottle, the barrel, the hogshead, and the pail,
Golden brown glasses of beer with nice big heads
And Hudepohl-Schoenling, Cincinnati's finest, hu-dey "Hu dey think gonna beat them Reds"
It was the national capital of beer.
In 1890, they produced a million barrels a year.
Old breweries along McMicken Avenue on the hill north of Liberty Street,
Making beer out of water, yeast, sugar, plenty of hops, and wheat.
Oh in Cincinnati there was lots to do:
You had a Hudy and a Pork cordon bleu.
Cincinnati was a regular culinary riot.
How sad to be on a diet.
What a terrible loss.
To miss out on the roast pork loin with beer sauce.
And it is politically incorrect
And you may object
To my saying so, but I suspect
Something joyful and boisterous and profane
Was lost when we decided to abstain.
A man sitting down to pork braised, roasted, fried, boiled, battered, with a glass upraised,
A man who is a little fried himself and his eyes are glazed.
That may have been the night he became your daddy
Here in Cincinnati.

[Tonitrus]

"Military Special" vodka and diet grape soda.

Time to drunkenness....under 5 minutes. 

[fhdz]

"Military Special" vodka and diet grape soda.

Time to drunkenness....under 5 minutes.

[derspiess]

  There should at least be a certain process to getting drunk.

I just had a Gumballhead wheat beer.  Now having a Pride & Joy session ale.  Yes, I'm on a Three Floyds kick.  A

[Capetan Mihali]

A glass of my ersatz tinto de verano: a deceent measure of cheap red wine in a tall glass with a few ice cubes, a splash of 7-Up, and filled with seltzer.

[Admiral Yi]

"Military Special" vodka and diet grape soda.

Time to drunkenness....under 5 minutes.

Guess I'm not the only guy around here going on a bender.

[The Brain]

Coffee.

[derspiess]

A few shots from the OTR Brewery District tour a week & a half ago:



Clyffside Brewery, which went through several owners before, during (they made illegal beer until 1925) and after Prohibition.  Note the brewer's star at the top, which is not the Star of David.  They're supposed to do some renovation on this building but it hasn't really started yet.



Jackson Brewery, which was the oldest brewery in town that lasted more than a decade.  It's undergoing a lot of work right now and the developers plan to segment it into a restaurant, brewery, and theater.  Needs quite a bit more work before it's ready for any of that.



Lager cellar/tunnel under the Jackson brewery.  It's three stories underground and was only recently unsealed.  Very extensive, and it was all dug out by hand in the mid-1800s.



Hudepohl lager cellar.  Most of the brewery over top was demolished, and they were going to build a parking garage or something on the lot before they discovered the tunnels underneath and had second thoughts.  This one was partly flooded from the storm that came in the previous day.


At its height, the Over the Rhine district had as many as 18 operational breweries.  For a while it was down to zero, but we now have three and hopefully counting.

Most of the old buildings are still standing, and the trend has thankfully moved from demolishing them toward renovation.