I occasionally get asked how many craft breweries Cincinnati has. I keep a list and figured that enough people have asked me that I should share my list of local craft breweries. Before we begin, a few comments on counting. If you don’t care about my reasoning for my counting than feel free to scroll past this.

I have decided to take a more liberal approach to counting our number of craft breweries. The more breweries a city can claim the more popular a beercation travel destination it becomes. So, while some craft beer zealots may not include Rock Bottom or Hofbrauhaus, I am. While local diehards would discount Sam Adams, due to the lack of taproom or any other reason, I am not discounting them. BJ’s has two of their “brewhouses” in the area, but all the beer is made west of the Mississippi, so I’m not counting them.

Some may say that Christian Moerlein is only 1 brewery, despite their 2 locations. I choose to count them as 2. This also applies to Fifty West and soon MadTree, Rivertown, and Taft’s.

However, I do have some limits in my largesse and can’t see a way to count Listermann and Triple Digit as 2 breweries. Or adding Hudepohl, Beautiful View, Little Kings, or any other brands that may eventually come out of the Christian Moerlein Malt House. Yes, Weidemann has local ownership and brewing, but only on contract, so I think that’s an overly artificial inflation. That same logic applies to Quaff Brothers. And there is no way in hell I’m counting the MillerCoors brewery as a craft brewery in Trenton, if we scrub the requirement of being a craft brewery then it would add an extra number to my count.

What about the exurbs?

Where does “Cincinnati” end? Being inclusive I am choosing to include FigLeaf and Municipal. Before you jump up and shout that Middletown can’t be considered Greater Cincinnati, Cellar Dweller is often included as a Cincinnati brewery and is only 1 mile closer to the city than FigLeaf, 25 and 26 miles, respectively. Municipal is only 20 miles away. All distances measured from Fountain Square via Google Maps. And there’s no way I can see to stretch the “Greater Cincinnati Area” to include Crooked Handle in Springboro, that is most definitely part of the Dayton area and is over 35 miles from Fountain Square.

Ok, enough preamble, onto the numbers.

All of the following information is as of 1/24/18 and is in a roughly chronological order.

Active Tri-State Craft Brewers: 49

Cincinnati City Limits: 18

Rock Bottom

Boston Beer Company

Listermann/Triple Digit

Moerlein Lager House

Blank Slate (closed 8/8/17)

Bad Tom Smith

Christian Moerlein Malt House

MadTree

Rhinegeist

Tap & Screw Brewery

Taft’s Ale House

Urban Artifact Brewing

The Woodburn Brewery & Taproom

Nine Giant

Streetside

Brink Brewing Company

West Side Brewing

Taft’s Brewpourium

13 Below

Southwest Ohio: 23

Mt. Carmel

Rivertown

Quarter Barrel Brewing (Oxford)

Cellar Dweller

Fifty West Brew Pub

Old Firehouse Brewery

Paradise Brewing

DogBerry Brewing

Fibonacci Brewing

Bardwell Winery/Brewery

Fifty West Production Brewery

Municipal Brew Works

FigLeaf

Narrow Path Brewing

Queen City Brewery of Cincinnati (in Blue Ash)

March First Manufacturing

Grainworks

16 Lots

Sons of Toil

Fretboard Brewing Company

Little Miami Brewing Company

Quarter Barrel Brewing (Hamilton)

Swine City Brewing

Northern Kentucky: 6

Hofbrauhaus

Ei8ht Ball (closed 4/1/17)

Braxton Brewing

Mash Cult (Party Town)

Darkness

Wooden Cask Brewery

Braxton Labs

Bircus Brewing Company

Southeast Indiana: 1

Great Crescent

What About The Past?

Everything you’ve read up until this point is for active breweries. But what about everyone who has come before? Luckily, I’ve already handled that in another post from last year with my Historical Cincinnati Brewery Count. Now, somehow that count has gotten a little fudgy and I need to go back through it, but that’s a pain in the ass I don’t feel like getting into right now. So here’s a roughly accurate count of all the breweries in Cincinnati for the past 200 years.