Why Beer Culture, Bockfest Are "So Cincinnati"

What has goats, beer, sausages, parades and parties? If you answered Bockfest, you'd be right! It's an annual event that celebrates Cincinnati's rich brewing history and the coming of spring. Local 12 news reporter Rich Jaffe went deep underground for a look at an event that is "So Cincinnati."

Behind an unassuming door, just off Court Street is a passageway to Cincinnati's past. More than 40 feet underground is the lagering and storage room of the old Gerke Brewery ... open to the public for the first time during Bockfest. It's one of three such areas on the Prohibition Resistance brewery tours.

Mike Morgan of the Over-the-Rhine Brewery District said "There are very few cities that have these kind of attributes - this is a very unique thing we have here in Cincinnati." Morgan added "It's almost unbelievable that most of these spaces sat here unused until we started doing these tours in 2006."

Looking like the ancient catacombs of Europe, these rooms stored, cooled and matured a big part of Cincinnati history - beer. These old structures are incredibly well-built, and there are efforts to uncover more of them. Morgan said "after Bockfest, the craziness stops and the hangover's over we're gonna come back down here and start knocking through this wall the rest of the way and if there's anything on the other side of it then the next set of tours we do will include the newly discovered space."

Bockfest celebrates the city's German brewing heritage complete with parades, sausage queens, music, tours and lots of beer. A Trojan goat is a big part of the events, and building it, as you might imagine, was a bit of a challenge. "Trying to keep it short enough to go under the power lines across the street ... that became an issue," said goat craftsman Keith Baker. "We had lofty goals and we had to scale back significantly to get it down to a manageable height, another major obstacle was trying to keep the crew that helped me with this sober enough to complete it."

Urban archeology is the tie that binds the city's underground past to the future and a springtime tradition that's "So Cincinnati."

Bock beer was originally brewed by German monks to get them through the Lenten fast. It's higher in calories and alcohol than regular beer.

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