This story is part of a special beer month series celebrating the Queen City's beer heritage and bright future as a booming brewery town. Check wcpo.com/beer every Tuesday and Thursday for a new profile of one of the 12 local breweries in the Cincinnati area.
CINCINNATI -- Whether youre making beer in your home, or looking for a pint, chances are you will find yourself drawn to the Listermann Brewing Company.
What started as a homebrew supply store nestled across the street from Xavier University has grown into much, much more, and turned its creator into something of a local legend.
Dan Listermann started the business in 1991 to sell homebrew equipment that he would design. Since then, he opened his own microbrewery and a second label when he hired Kevin Moreland as head brewer.
Now not only is Listermann making beer under the Triple Digit and Listermann Brewing Co. labels, his store is at the center of the brewing community in Cincinnati.
Listermann said he got his start in brewing by making beer at home in
1973.(The beer) was horrible and got worse, he said.
He didnt return to beer making until the early 1980s when he brewed some beer with some old friends and they determined that the beer wasnt half bad. As his homebrewing grew, Listermann kept thinking up new and innovative homebrewing equipment that he would go on to sell.
I started getting into making these bottle fillers and by 1993, despite being offered a raise a manufacturing engineer, started full time doing this, and two years later I bought the building and opened the business. At the time I didnt have a deep passion to do this, it was just a thought, Well thats the next thing to do, Listermann said.
Those little innovations soon took off and if you ask many in the homebrew and production brewing communities, theyre still an important part of the industry today.
You would not believe the amount of respect that big brewers give Dan because when they were homebrewers, they used the tools that he created, Moreland said.
Listermann opened up his brewery in 2008 after buying a small two-barrel brewhouse and puttered right along before deciding to hand off operations to Moreland.
As it happens, Moreland also got his start in homebrewing and even shopped at Listermanns supply shop. After making many of his own beers and even doing some work in recipe development, he asked if he could buy Listermanns equipment. Instead, Listermann offered to make him the head brewer.
Moreland said his experience on the business side of the beverage industry often comes into play as they try to expand the brewery.
My advice to anyone wanting to get into the business is to try and get into it that way. It has helped the company tremendously, Moreland said.
Since the brewerys small start, it is now producing 10-barrel batches and they sell the beer in either 22-ounce bottles, or half-barrel and six-barrel kegs. You can also fill your growlers in the brewerys tap room.
Moreland said their capacity used to be about 50 to 100 barrels per year; they are now up to the 1,000 barrel per year mark. He says he would like to maintain a production of 1,000 to 2,000 barrels per year to focus on making artisan-style beers.
If we try to start doing anything about that, you gotta go outside the market and then people will want the same beer all the time, Moreland said. Were trying to base ourselves off of Lets take one leap at a time.
Moreland said theyre gaining more capacity with their brewhouse. The idea is to get a six-head automated bottling machine and release six-packs to the market.
After that, Moreland wants to be noticed locally.
Thats our big thing, if we cant be noticed here locally, I dont want to branch out to other states, Moreland said. Until I get the feeling that we are Cincinnati and people know us, I dont see us moving outside the market too fast. The simple fact is that customers tell us what to do. If theyre buying it, well make more of it.
To that end, Moreland is expanding Triple Digit and Listermann in different trajectories. Triple Digit will focus on high-gravity boutique beers, many of which will be aged in whiskey or wine barrels. Listermann Brewing will focus on more accessible beers.
Most of the barrels we use are from Buffalo Trace and Heaven Hill distilleries. We do some wine barrel aged beers too, Moreland said.
Some of those projects will include triple-smoked whiskey barrel beers, sour beers and gin and rum-aged beers.
The head brewer said hes also been keeping tap on whats developing in the micro-distilling industry to keep out of ahead of whats going on in the brewing world. Moreland said many distillers are approaching the process with an artists flair; its something hes trying to emulate with the Triple Digit brand.
Granted you have to pay for what youre doing at the end of the day and make a living but were trying to do it in a boutique style and give the customers something to appreciate. We dont want to be a cookie-cutter brewery, Moreland said.
One of the reasons that Listermanns has such a foothold in the Tri-State is its dedication to education and community. Besides being a physical resource to homebrewers with equipment, Listermann and Moreland said they are happy to help foster the growth of all the local brewers.
Were on really good footing with a lot of the brewers in Cincinnati because a lot of them got their start right here. We talk to some of them on a weekly basis, because when they run out of something they often come over here and pick it up, Moreland said.
The boys say theyd like to put Cincinnati back on the map and eventually bring in an event such as the Great American Beer Festival or a World Beer Cup. To that end, theyve been hosting no end of beer festivals locally that feature not only their own taps, but beers from the other brewers as well.
We want to get back to that day when Cincinnati was the seventh-largest beer market in American before Prohibition, Moreland said. I think by having the festivals we put on, its educating the public about what beer is being made here. It spurs people to ask their bars and restaurants to carry local beer.
The head brewer said Ohio is one of the strongest states in growth by brewers per capita, according to the Brewers Association.
You always hear the saying that Cincinnati is behind the times, well were trying to speed that process up. I think now matter how you look at it, its going to be a benefit to us economically. I think its going to be a benefit to how to build our business and its going to bring back that hometown feel to our brewing heritage, Moreland said.
Listermann shares those notions with Moreland and thinks there is a sea of change just beyond the horizon when it comes to craft beer in America.
We dont look upon ourselves as competitors, he said. We look it as, Look at this forest of Bud Light drinkers we can log. All these guys out there that drink this crap, sooner or later theres going to be a tipping point where Bud Light is an old mans beer. When these guys came up, Bud Light was the cool beer to drink; there wasnt the microbrewed beers. Now there are microbrew beers out there and its the cool thing to drink. There are those guys that drink Bud Light, theyre always going to do that. But theyre getting older, grayer, and at some point people will say, Eh, thats an old mans beer, take a look at this. And thats what Im looking forward to.
=============== This story is part of a special beer month series celebrating the Queen City's beer heritage and bright future as a booming brewery town. Check wcpo.com/beer every Tuesday and Thursday for a new profile of one of the 12 local breweries in the Cincinnati area.
=============== Listermann/Triple Digit Brewing is located at 1621 Dana Avenue in Cincinnati.
They can be found online at:
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Tap room hours:
Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
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