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Philip Spiess
To Paul Simons: I'm sorry, I missed your inquiry about Cincinnati brewery tours at Post #3067; I was off on a tour myself of the New England coast, imbibing oysters, lobsters, clams, and other mollusks and crustacea (how shellfish of me!). Although I remember no such brewery tours for high school students, I think it highly unlikely that any were offered, given the strict Ohio state liquor laws and state-run liquor stores (although beer could be bought in any number of outlets, such as pony-kegs, a nearly unique Cincinnati term). We did go on tours of the Coca-Cola bottling plant on Dana Ave. across Victory Parkway from Xavier University.
However, as to the heyday of Cincinnati breweries at the time of our youth (I won't bother with pre-Prohibition breweries, most long gone, except to mention the revival in the 1990s of Christian Moerlein Golden Lager Beer, supposedly made by the original 1870s formula -- don't know if you can still find it, but it was good). When we entered Walnut Hills in the Fall of 1958, these establishments, I believe, were still functioning: (1) Burger Brewing Co., which, though founded before Prohibition, was revived after it ended, buying Windisch-Muhlhauser's old Lion Brewery on Central Parkway at Liberty St. (by Plum St.), and sponsoring the radio broadcasts of the Cincinnati Redlegs' games till 1967 (the great stone lions, formerly on the peak of the brewery, were removed to the entrance of a farm on North Bend Road near Diehl Road, at Mack, Ohio); (2) John C. Bruckmann Brewing Co., again, founded before Prohibition but revived after it, closing in 1949, although its buildings in Clifton near Cumminsville remained prominently visible (particularly its tall smokestack) on Streng St. below the junction of the north end of Central Parkway with Ludlow Ave., by Trechter Stadium of Central High School; (3) George Wiedemann Brewing Co., Columbia St., Newport, Kentucky, a pre-Prohibition brewery which reopened in 1937, but which was absorbed in 1967 by the G. Heileman Brewing Co. of Wisconsin (which at that time owned almost all of the breweries in the United States, except for Anheuser-Busch and Coors), but which allowed it to continue to operate under its own name (in my college days, college friends, Jeff Rosen, etc., and I would congregate in the summers in the beer garden on the brewery's roof, taking in beer, cheese, wurst, the sights of downtown Cincinnati across the river at night -- and the dulcet strains of the Delta Queen's calliope in concert); (4) Bavarian Brewing Co., West 4th St., Covington, Kentucky, another pre-Prohibition brewery, reopened in 1934 (my grandfather used to trek across the river to buy Bavarian beer and cart it back into Ohio, which I understood, as a youth, to be illegal), but bought out and the premises vacated in 1966; (5) Hudepohl Brewing Co., 6th St., a pre-Prohibition brewery which acted as a distributor during Prohibition and reopened in the 1930s, becoming popular in the 1980s advertising "Hudy" beer; (6) Schoenling Brewing Co., Central Parkway, founded in 1933 by an ice manufacturer, it produced "Little Kings." Hudepohl and Schoenling joined forces as one company in 1986 and today the company is owned by the Christian Moerlein Brewing Co.
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