I am just now realizing how little time I have devoted to our city’s beer tours. We have quite a few different tours around town that will cart you from taproom to taproom, allowing you to have a few drinks and experience a few different breweries without needing to worry about driving yourself around town doing so. I talked very briefly once last year about them here, but I thought it might be time to dig in a little deeper and let you know about them and what they’ve been up to! Today seems a good day to start, so we’ll get to know Cincy Brew Bus a bit…

All About Cincy Brew Bus

When owner Mike Stokes and his wife Jen started Cincy Brew Bus, they wanted to create something that would tie together their passions for craft beer, local history, and local businesses. They knocked it out of the park when Cincy Brew Bus first started shuttling local beer fans from taproom to taproom.

The tours usually kick off from either the Moerlein Lager House, The Growler House, or Rock Bottom on fountain square. From there, your tour guide will take you to three or four different taprooms where you’ll be able to sample what’s on tap, and learn a little bit about the brewery. This is a perfect way for you to get together with a group of friends, and get out to some of our finest taprooms in a safe and fun way.

The Jungle Shuttle

Recently, Cincy Brew Bus has announced a partnership with OTR’s Taft’s Ale House to provide an easy way to shuttle Bengals fans from OTR down to the banks for select Bengals home games. Starting at 10:40am the shuttle will make it’s way from Taft’s down to O’Malley’s in the alley down by Paul Brown Stadium. Again…this is much more than a way to get drunks from one venue to another in the city. The Jungle Shuttle is a way to tie local businesses in with craft beer. It’s a big picture about pulling this city together instead of creating separate destinations where people go, and then stay.

When you take a Jungle Shuttle, you will also receive a wristband, which will entitle you to $1 off Taft’s Ale House beers at O’Malley’s in the Alley on days that the shuttle is running. The bar is one of the first in the city to offer Taft’s Beer on a regular basis.

There has been a lot of talk about whether or not Cincy Brew Bus will be expanding the service to include Reds games this next season, and while they aren’t ruling anything out, they (Cincy Brew Bus and Taft’s Ale House, both) seemed to make it pretty clear that they don’t want to expand quicker than their businesses were ready to. Slow steady growth seems to be the way of the successful in Cincinnati’s growing beer scene.

As for what days you’ll be able to book the Jungle Shuttle this season?

September 20th

October 4th

October 11th

November 29th

December 13th

January 3rd

One more thing: you need to know how much the Jungle Shuttle will cost – it’s free!

Growing With The Beer Scene

As Cincinnati’s beer scene continues to rapidly grow Cincy Brew Bus has been growing with it. Offering shuttles on busy beer weekends, or the Jungle Shuttle I talked about just a second ago, are one part of what they do, but it’s not who they are. Brewery tours are very much who they are and as more and more are coming on line they are working them into their schedule as much as possible. One of the newer breweries to come online is Mt. Healthy’s very own Fibonacci Brewing Company. I just received word the other day that Fibonacci would be the next brewery added to Cincy Brew Bus’s tour schedule. They said that the brewery will be available to private tours immediately and most likely will be worked into a public tour schedule by the first of the year.

This is a fantastic way for someone who might live on the other side of town to make their way up to Mt. Healthy to see what the nano-brewery has to offer. If you haven’t been there… I can’t encourage it enough! We are making moves in this city to really entrench ourselves as a true “beer city”, and part of that move is to develop neighborhood breweries that service the small neighborhoods that they are located in. These small “nano-breweries” will make up a web of breweries that ensure that anyone who is still asking the question of “is there a beer bubble” will start to see that the answer is a resounding “NO!”.

So keep your eyes on Cincy Brew Bus, if you see them out around town, give them a wave and a thumbs up… they are filling a crucial gap in our beer scene, tying each part together into a web of beer happiness! To read more about the Cincy Brew Bus, make sure that you visit them on their website, and book your tour soon!