Nikolaus Hoeffer, the Sauerkraut King of Cincinnati.

All we’ve heard about the last several years is the benefit of probiotics to our health and digestion. Our guts require a certain balance of bugs to keep things moving smoothly. But probiotics are nothing new. In fact, they’re nearly as old as human cultivation. When we stopped being nomads and hunter gatherers, we found out that if you leave veggies out in the air, they’ll ferment. And while they may smell a bit funky, the end result is super delicious and super healthy. That’s the story with sauerkraut, one of the healthiest of all of the Germanic foods.

Germans are given a lot of flack for the fattiness and heaviness of their foods – like sausages and deep fried schnitzel . But they know a lot about digestion and typically pair their heavy foods with a fermented or pickled side, like sweet gherkins or sauerkraut, whose acid helps break down fatty or meat dense dishes. Dr. Don Heinrich Tolzmann, Executive Director of our local German Heritage Museum, calls sauerkraut, “the original Germanic soul food.”

I took a sauerkraut making course led by Gary Leybman of the Pickled Pig in Walnut Hills last summer and found out how easy it is to make fermented sauerkraut. Using a good cabbage and a good salt with no preservatives, in two weeks, you’ll have the most delicious organic, additive-free sauerkraut you’ve ever tasted. I went off the German simple kraut recipe and added shredded carrot, fennel, red cabbage and jalapeno. And before the days of Louis Pasteur and his method of sterilization (and flavor killing!) this type of sauerkraut was everywhere in Cincinnati. Back then, nearly every produce vendor made their own sauerkraut, which were scooped out of great ceramic crocks or white oak barrels that fermented them. Hmmm I wonder if anyone makes a bourbon barrel fermented sauerkraut these days.

According to the Cincinnati German Pioneer Association, the first commercial producer of sauerkraut in Cincinnati was an immigrant from a village called Rulzheim am Klingbacke in the Palatinate – Nikolaus Hoeffer (1810-1875). His father Georg Franz was a poor linen weaver and subsistence farmer and Nikolaus helped out the family after school and learned how to make one of the staples – sauerkraut. When he immigrated with his family in 1832, they carried with them their prized Tyrol kraut cutter – basically what we would call a mandolin – which cuts the cabbage into thin slices for fermentation. He sold kraut by the barrel to German and the Anglican immigrants of Cincinnati, with whom kraut became a popular side. They also needed some digestive aid with their heavy meals of Welsh rarebit, Scottish haggis, English meat pies and dense Irish Colcannon.

At the turn of the last century, if you were to step into a Findlay Market pickle stall, you’d see a lot more variety in sauerkraut. Scanning advertisements from some of those Findlay market sauerkraut vendors, we see there were other varieties of kraut, including turnip kraut, ‘sour heads’, and red cabbage. Theodore Kunkel opened his pickle and sauerkraut stand at Findlay Market when it opened in 1852. According to family lore, Theo had been caught hunting on the Kaiser’s land and deported. His stand sold a kraut cornucopia of turnip kraut, sauerkraut, and pickled beets, beans, and onions.

Turnip kraut, called sauerruben in Germany, has a different flavor than sauerkraut. It can be made with shredded turnips or rutabagas, or a combination of both. It has a sweet- radish-like or mustardy bite that mellows over time. Many people like it better than the standard sauerkraut.

Sour heads are harder to find these days. Kaiser Foods used to make and package sour heads up into the late 1980s, but no longer make them. They’re a pickled whole head of cabbage that originated from Eastern Europe, in particular, Bosnia. The Bosnians use the whole pickled leaf in their stuffed cabbage, called sarma.

Red Cabbage, called rotkuhl, is even another variety. It’s a sweet and sour version of sauerkraut, using red cabbage and is often seen accompanying sauerbraten or schnitzel and a side of spaetzli, the German macaroni. It’s my favorite and why we don’t use red cabbage to make sauerkraut balls or as a topper on brats is a mystery to me.

So what is Tyroler kraut that Herr Hoeffer brought to Cincinnati with his cutter? It’s pretty simple and probably they grandfather o the one that we are all most familiar. Tyroler kraut uses cider vinegar, white cabbage, natural sea salt and caraway seeds. Most say that Austrian or Tyroler kraut is a bit sweeter than typical American sauerkraut like Vlassic stuff, which I say is pretty bland and unflavorful. I was raised on sweeter krauts – my mom always sliced up an apple to stew with the kraut she used to pair with our pork loin or other mains.

To support his family in Cincinnati Hoeffer grew cabbage and other market vegetables with his younger brother at a rented plot of land on Hamilton and Elm Street from Jeptha D. Garrard. At this time, what we now know of as Over-the-Rhine was called the Northern Liberties and was the ‘country’ from downtown. People who lived in the packed city rented garden lots in this area to grow their own produce. He then moved to be gardener for the wealthy Judge Torrence at his garden on Grandin Road in East Walnut Hills – now the area of Summit Country Day School. Back then you couldn’t pick up an Opera Cream Cake from nearby Bonbonnerie or Buffalo Wings from O’Bryan’s Bar & Grill.

Nikolaus used his sauerkraut money to help build up the Germanic immigrant community in Cincinnati. As a devout Catholic he helped the formation of three of our earliest Germanic parishes – Holy Trinity, Old St. Mary’s and St. John’s in Over-the-Rhine. He also served in public office with the Democratic Party, as City Commissioner in the 1860s, and Democratic Party Chair for many years. He helped build the first German-English school in Cincinnati, also helped the German protestants of Mt. Auburn get land and build their church, helped to found the St. Aloysius Orphan Asylum, and was a member of the German Mutual Insurance Society.

After many years in the truck gardening business, he went into real estate and helped to develop the area around Findlay Market. His office and home were in the block at Race and Elder that is now home to the Our Daily Bread food ministries who should serve sauerkraut with their meals to honor Herr Hoeffer.

The ghost sign for Meyer’s Sauerkraut on the side of the old Bruckmann Brewery in Cumminsville.

There’s a great sauerkraut ghost sign that speaks to its former prominence in our city. It’s on the side of what was originally the Bruckmann Brewery complex at the foot of the Ludlow Viaduct. Thankfully there are a few local producers of Cincy kraut left who are blazing our local Kraut Revolution – most notably the Pickled Pig and Fabulous Ferments.

So, if you want to taste what original Cincinnati sauerkraut tasted like – do yourself a favor and get some locally handcrafted, small batch kraut made in the basement kraut labs at Pickled Pig in Walnut Hills or at your local organic supermarket – and you’ll never turn back to that pasteurized canned or commercially packaged stuff again.