NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Scott Mertie is an accountant, beer memorabilia collector and the author of “Nashville Brewing,” a book which chronicles the history of Music City’s beer industry.

Now he’s adding a new title to his resume: owner of a brewing company.

Mertie is reviving one of Nashville’s oldest beer brands, the Nashville Brewing Company, with a lager that debuts this week. Nashville Lager will be available at local stores, restaurants and bars.

“I had in the back of my mind this would be really cool to bring back this brand,” said Mertie, who learned about the history of the company when he was researching for his book.

Mertie’s fascination with beer started when he was just six-years-old living in Ohio. By high school, he had a collection of some 3,000 beer cans, including ones his dad would bring him from international travels.

Mertie started homebrewing during college and was an early supporter of the microbrewery movement during the 1990s and 2000s. He moved to Nashville in 1992, where he started collecting pre-Prohibition brewery items and researching Nashville’s brewery history.

“In doing all that research, I started finding out there was a lot more early brewing history prior to Gerst. Most people thought of Gerst as the oldest beer and really the only Nashville beer,” Mertie said, referring to the longtime brewing company that operated until 1954.

Mertie discovered that Jacob Stiefel opened Nashville Brewery in 1859 on the corner of South High Street (now 6th Avenue South) and Mulberry Street. Today, the site is a vacant lot with views of Nashville’s expanding skyline and a historical marker that Mertie commissioned.

The brewery closed because of the Civil War, but reopened as Nashville Brewing Company in 1864 until the building was razed in 1890 after Christian Moerlein and William Gerst bought the brewery and built a larger one across the street.

“The Nashville Brewing Company really blossomed after the Civil War and changed ownership several times, but they were a fairly decent-sized brewery in the Southern standards in the late 1800s,” Mertie said.

Mertie is launching Nashville Brewing Company with its flagship beer, Nashville Lager. The beer’s label shows a historic photograph of the Nashville Brewery. He described the traditional Bavarian Helles beer as “really clear and crisp” with a good body. Helles means “bright” in German.

“We wanted to keep this very simple as beers were in the 1800s,” Mertie said. “They didn’t give beer fancy names and stuff, the style of the beer was the name.”

The beer is made with imported German malt and hops.

“It’s a little more expensive to do it that way, but it makes a huge difference in the taste,” Mertie said.

Mertie partnered with Nashville’s Blackstone Brewing Co. to contract brew the beer. He plans to release seasonal brews throughout the year.

Mertie said he would consider opening a brick-and-mortar brewery if the Nashville Lager brew takes off. Ideally, he’d like to open the brewery in the SoBro/Gulch area where the Nashville Brewing Company once stood.

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Information from: The Tennessean, https://www.tennessean.com

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