Cincinnati Brewing Timeline
By Alisha Woolery Cincinnati.Com Contributor
January 1812: The first Cincinnati brewery was opened by Davis Embree.
Courtesy of Hudepohl-Schoenling
1836: By the end of the 1830s, Cincinnati is home to 10 large breweries, brewing traditional beer and ale.
1840: In the 1840s, large numbers of Germans arrive in Cincinnati, bringing with them a desire to manufacture malt beverages.
1840s: The revolutionary brewing process to make lager beer was developed in Europe.
1850: During the 1850s a surge of temperance activity begins. At this time 90 percent of all beer consumed in Cincinnati was brewed in and around the city.
1853: Christian Moerlein opens his brewery on Elm Street. It becomes the largest brewery in Ohio by the 1890s.
1860: There are 36 breweries in Cincinnati.
1870: Brewery technology advances, the most important of which is an ice machine patented to use liquid ammonia under compression to produce cold air and ice.
1880s: Individual breweries like Christian Moerlein set up companies to bottle their own beer.
1890: Cincinnati is known as the beer capital of the world.
1892: Cincinnati breweries produce 1,350,000 barrels of beer.
1901: Anhueser-Busch Brewing Association in St. Louis becomes the first brewer in the world to manufacture and sell over one million barrels in a year.
1918: Prohibition begins.
1933: Prohibition ends.
1933: Because of Prohibition, most of the breweries are closed. Bavarian Brewery, Burger Brewing Co., Red To Brewing Co., and Hudepohl Brewing Co. reopen. The Bruckmann Brewery continues brewing.
1934: Schoenling Brewing Co. is established.
1973: Cincinnati only has two local breweries left, Hudepohl and Schoenling.
1986: Hudepohl and Schoenling merge.
1999: Hudepohl-Schoenling and its beer brands are sold to Snyder International Brewing Group.
- Information from "Over the Barrel," by Timothy Holian, "Cincinnati Breweries" by Robert Wimberg and the Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewing Co.