Monthly Archives: July 2026

Brewing Heritage Day

Posted on by
2

Yesterday was Cincinnati’s first official Brewing Heritage Day. Although beer from several area breweries was available for tasting, official programs were essentially limited to two breweries near the city’s downtown. Actually, to be entirely honest, almost all special Brewing Heritage Day activities and displays were confined to the larger of the two.

I went first to the other one. Northern Row Brewery & Distillery had the day’s special flights available, and I believe some tours originated there, but the bulk of the attractions were around the corner. I enjoyed a Redlegger Amber Ale, then moved on.

There is obviously some pretty major work in progress on the exterior of Rhinegeist Brewery. The building was once the Christian Moerlein Brewing Company bottling plant. Inside, Brett Stakelin provided entertainment. In preparation for today, a single keg of Moerlein Lager had been aged in the lagering tunnels of the former Jackson Brewery and I was there in time to get a pint.

The Cincinnati Museum Center had a table filled with brewing memorabilia, and beside it was a virtual reality demonstration with visuals of the tunnels where the beer I’d just drunk was aged. Adjacent to the taproom, lots of informative panels from the American Museum of Brewing, a project of the Brewing Heritage Trail that is currently looking for a home. A conference room held hourly presentations. I was there as John Piening shared family and personal history from the Burger, Shoenling, Hudepohl, and other breweries. During Piening’s talk, very heavy rain broke loose and after a while the old roof began to leak. I took a picture of where it was dripping on the table but was so close that it looks more like a shiny surface than a wet surface.

I was working my way toward the exit when I encountered a Sausage Princess. I greeted her as Sausage Queen but was quickly corrected. I believe Sausage Princesses are those selected to represent various establishments in the annual competition for the Queen who reigns over Bockfest. Before I could verify that or ask her name, she turned the conversation to the Wooly Pig Brewery whose T-shirt I was wearing. She had only recently learned of the brewery and considered it a place she definitely needs to visit.

The rain had let up considerably by the time I stepped outside, but it had not stopped. However, the construction scaffolding kept me dry for the start of my walk to the car. Before I exited the dry tunnel, I snapped a picture of one of the tour groups braving the elements in search of knowledge. 

 

Happy Birthday to U.S.

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday was the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Around 2010, the Cincinnati History Museum rediscovered a copy of the second printing of the Declaration and put it on display for the Fourth of July in 2015. Like this year, the Fourth of July fell on Saturday. Part of my blog post for Sunday, July 5, 2015, concerned the opening of the display on July 2. The 1776 document is again on display this year in an exhibit that opened on July 3. I took the opening picture from I-71 as I headed toward the museum for the opening of that exhibit.

Declarative Acts and Revolutionary Actors is paired with another temporary exhibit “Equal to Any in the City:” Ball & Thomas Photographs 1840s – 1870s. Both opened on the 3rd and are included with museum admission. Declarative Acts and Revolutionary Actors runs through August 23. “Equal to Any in the City:” Ball & Thomas Photographs 1840s – 1870s runs through October 14.

This year the museum’s copy of the Declaration of Independence is displayed in front of the 1st Pennsylvania Battalion flag. Josiah Harmar was a member of the 1st Pennsylvania Battalion and probably brought the flag with him to Ohio. His great-grandson donated the flag to the City of Cincinnati in 1926.

The Declaration of Independence was not signed on July 4, but was approved by representative from twelve colonies. Approximately 200 copies were printed that night in Philadelphia. Without instructions from their legislature, delegates from the thirteenth colony, New York, did not approve of the declaration on the fourth but did so on the ninth after which about 500 copies with the New York resolution were printed. The copy on display is one of four known survivors from the second printing. Twenty-six copies of the first printing are known to exist.

Additional informative displays and artifacts from Cincinnati’s earliest history, such as wood from the original Fort Washington, fill out the Declarative Acts and Revolutionary Actors exhibit.
 
 
James Presley Ball was a free Black man who, along with his brother-in-law Alexander Thomas, operated a very successful photography studio in Cincinnati from the late 1840s into the 1870s. The museum’s exhibit contains many of their original photos.

It’s perhaps not surprising that Ball was an active abolitionist. He frequently worked with the Underground Railroad, but his biggest contribution to the ant-slavery movement was probably a 600 yard long panorama he created in collaboration with other artists in 1855. It toured part of the country providing a visual depiction of the horrors of slavery. The panorama has been lost, but an accompanying pamphlet survives. A short video describes it in the exhibit.

The exhibit uses the Ball and Thomas story to share some details of early photography aside from the specifics of their activities. The film camera had just been invented and Photoshop was more than a century away but people were already busy improving on what the lens saw. Studio employees called retouchers might enhance black and white images with a little color or maybe even add something entirely new to the scene. Examples are turning a gray watchchain gold and placing a shiny gold ring on what was actually an empty finger.

It was still morning when I finished viewing the exhibits. It had already been uncomfortably hot when I arrived, and I knew the temperature was still rising. I opted to pause on a bench in the lobby for a bit before venturing out. What you see at left is the natural result of anyone spending more than a second or two in that wonderful half-dome with a camera in hand.

Because all of my previous 4th of July blog posts have included fireworks, I’m including this pair of worse than usual shots. In the past, I’ve photographed the shows at Kings Island, Loveland, and maybe a couple of other places. I can always hear, but not see, the Kings Island show, and that might be true of some other nearby events as well. However, I am surrounded by multiple neighbors who really like to celebrate on the 4th (and the 3rd, and the 5th, and more), so this year I just stepped outside my front door and grabbed a few snapshots with my phone. Then I stepped back inside and went to bed.

The 1955 Mountain View diner occupied by Sugar n’ Spice is a good place for breakfast when heading to the Museum Center. However, since it is in the downtown area, parking is a consideration, and for me, it often loses out to other places also within range of the museum with free parking. I’d already decided I was just going to deal with the parking, then learned that I didn’t have to. I had also more or less decided that I would have a very Cincinnati goetta-and-cheese omelet when I spotted something else on the menu. I believe this was my first-ever goetta Benedict. It is also very Cincinnati and also very good. Happy hollandaise.