REVIEW: Christian Moerlein Saengerfest

It's been a good long time since I've taken a look at a Moerlein beer. Today's is one of my favorites. I remember fondly getting all inebriated drinking this particular beer at my friend David's wedding. I love a wedding with good beer. In fact, the reception was at the very building depicted on this label. Anyway, Sangerfest. It's a german style maibock, one of my favorite lager styles. Let's get to it. To the beer!

REVIEW: Cincinnati Beer Week 2013 Embree's Northern Dark Baltic Porter

My friends! Beer Week is once again finally upon us! That reminds me, with Beer Week here, I'm reminded that a few of my earliest posts dealt with last year's goings on. I totally glossed right past my one year anniversary! So let me take this opportunity to belatedly thank each and every person who has checked in here every other day over the past year. It's so cool and totally gratifying that people get a kick out of this stuff. It's also cool because it makes that 'est. 2012' up in the masthead look slightly less preposterous. Stay tuned, because I have zero plans of shutting this thing down any time soon. There's way too much beer that I haven't had. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, back to Beer Week and more importantly, this beer. Last year to celebrate the inaugural Beer Week all of the local brewers got together at Mt. Carmel to produce a big, monstrously hopped barleywine. A beer that I was able to try and thoroughly enjoy. But also a beer that I am kicking myself to this day for not grabbing a six pack of. I imagine it would've aged amazingly. If anybody was forward thinking enough to lay a few bottles of that down let me know how they turned out! For this year's version Rivertown handled the brewing and bottling. There were also a few more cooks in the kitchen on this one. But in this case, that is categorically an advantage, as it just means that there are more Cincinnati breweries throwing their two cents in. Collaborating on Embree's Northern Dark Baltic Porter are Blank Slate, Christian Moerlein, 50 West, Great Crescent, Listermann, Moerlein Lager House, Mt. Carmel, Rivertown, Rock Bottom, Samuel Adams, and Triple Digit. Phew! I can't imagine there are too may cities in America that can boast too many more great craft breweries than that. OK, I've rambled enough. Let's see what we've got here. To the beer!

Cincinnati Craft Beer Oktoberfest

A few weeks ago my friends and I went down to Oktoberfest Zinzinnati. I contemplated writing a blog post about it. It was certainly a good time. Good Oktoberfest beers, good food, (likely wildly unsafe yet amazingly fun) carnival rides. But really, there wasn't a ton for me to say about it. It was fun, but it was really more about the party than the beer. But this past weekend Listermann Brewing Company, along with the rest of the burgeoning Cincinnati craft beer community, got together for an Oktoberfest celebration that I can really get behind. My sister and I headed down on Saturday afternoon to see what was up. To the beer!

REVIEW: Christian Moerlein Exposition Vienna Lager

Today's beer is one of the newer brews from Christian Moerlein, a Vienna lager. A german style of beer. Vienna lager is a style of beer that you may not be familiar with, at least by this name. It may be more well known by the name Boston Lager. Yup, you learn something new every day. I had no idea what the actual style of one of the grandfathers of craft beer was. So now that we're all acquainted with the Vienna lager and we know what we're getting into with this new Moerlein beer we can get down to business. To the beer!

REVIEW: Christian Moerlein Over The Rhine

Today's beer is one of my all time favorites, folks. I've been saving it's debut on the blog for a special occasion: Opening Day. A civic holiday here in Cincinnati. The return of our beloved Redlegs and the unofficial first day of Summer. There is almost nothing I love more than sitting in the setting sun in the Moon Deck at Great American Ball Park drinking an OTR with friends. I love baseball. I love beer. Nowhere else are the two more inexorably tied for me. The Reds are Cincinnati's team and OTR, I believe, is Cincinnati's flagship beer. I could wax poetic about baseball and beer for hours but I have things to do. To the beer!

REVIEW: Christian Moerlein Friend of an Irishman

I'm making up for lost time. My second Cincinnati beer in as many posts. This time from, what is probably the most famous brewery in Cincinnati, Christian Moerlein. Moerlein makes great beer. Their OTR is one of my favorite pale ales in the world. I talked about their Emancipator Doppelbock way back in my post on Pretzelfest, another really good beer. Today's beer is Friend of an Irishman Brewer's Stout. Somehow, I've never had this beer. Not sure how I missed it. One an interesting side-note on Christian Moerlein beers. My illustration professor at Mt. St. Joseph, Jim Effler, painted all of the labels for Moerlein's beers. I got a chance to see a couple of the paintings in person. Very cool. To the beer!