Moerlein OTR to debut By Joe Wessels
A new bar will open soon at this location on Elder Street at Findlay Market.
Elder Café, a notorious Over-the-Rhine bar, will reopen later this month - under new ownership - for five days to debut a new Christian Moerlein beer named after the neighborhood.
Leaders from Over-the-Rhine's Brewery District - an area around and north of Findlay Market - want to reopen the bar at 128 W. Elder St. for five days.
The Christian Moerlein Brewing Co., one of Cincinnati's old breweries that used to bottle its beer just a few blocks north of the bar, will unveil a new pale ale beer, Moerlein OTR, on the first day of the event, said Greg Hardman, president of the brewery.
(How ironic... a PALE ale in OTR!)
"We think it's going to be a fantastic event to have fellow Cincinnatians to sample our products while they try the great foods at Findlay Market," he said.
"We were actually looking for a place to launch the product in Over-the-Rhine."
The five-day event will be the first - and until it's over, the only - place to try the new beer, Hardman said.
Being dubbed the Moerlein OTR Ale Haus during the event, the bar, with many of the fixtures from when it was open in the neighborhood including Moerlein and Hudepohl beer neon signs and a mahogany bar, will feature a theme each day, from April 25-29.
Themes, by day, are:
Wednesday, April 25, 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., tapping the first keg ceremony.
Thursday, April 26, 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., Brewery District Happy Hour, with Taste of Findlay Market Brats.
Friday, April 27, 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., fish fry.
Saturday, April 28, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Brews, Blues & BBQ, with live music.
Sunday, April 29, noon to 4 p.m., Cajun Sunday Seafood Sampler.
The former Elder Café, on the northern side of Findlay Market, was closed by the city in February 1999 after a shooting death in early January 1999 and 111 police runs in 1998.
The bar had been a perpetual problem for police, as calls for police to the bar had increased in the years leading up to its eventual closure by the city.
The bar was purchased earlier this year by Jennifer LeMasters and her boyfriend, architect Mark Wirtz. The couple has been working to restore the inside of the building and have it up for sale.
Mike Morgan, a real estate agent, has been helping them with the work in exchange for free rent during the five-day fest.
He said organizers wanted to have the event to help bring attention to Findlay Market and the area around it, plus bring a positive vibe back into the place that had been so crime-ridden before.
"We wanted to kind of show people the potential of things," Morgan said.
"We're doing this event in a bar that used to be a really bad place and we're trying to give it some good karma."
Christian Moerlein, the founder of the original Christian Moerlein brewery, lived and worked just a few blocks from the former Elder Café.
Hardman thinks there might be another reason to have the launch there.
"Christian Moerlein probably walked into this place," he said. "He had to of."
Publication date: 04-10-2007