Miamisburg breweries—then and now

 © 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney

When it opened in 2013, the Star City Brewing Co. revived a piece of Miamisburg history.

Built in 1828 as a sawmill skirting the Miami and Erie Canal, the structure had last housed the Peerless Mill Inn, a popular local supper club. What's more, Star City also revived, after more than a century, Miamisburg's own brewing industry.

Star City Brewing Co.

Star City stands at 319 South Second Street. A block north is the Lucky Star Brewery, which came a year later to occupy another canal-era industrial building. Together, they established a small brewery district on the edge of downtown, and they may have created a first: the first time Miamisburg had two breweries operating at once.

My book's main title is Dayton Beer, but it includes other communities in a region roughly bounded by Xenia, Springfield, Wapakoneta, Minster, Union City and Greenville. I devoted a whole chapter to Miamisburg for a largely selfish reason: I live there, and I had a personal curiosity about the brewing history of the small town that I've called home for most of my life.

Piecing together Miamisburg’s brewing history was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle with pieces I found scattered all over the county and as far as Cincinnati and Marietta. I’ll share what I learned beginning at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 23, when my book tour stops at Star City Brewing. I’ll sign books, and I’ll have copies available for sale.

Miamisburg—the Star City, as it's long dubbed itself—is proud of its history, from its restored 1811 Daniel Gebhart Tavern to the former Mound nuclear weapons plant that also pioneered technology for stable isotopes used in industry and medicine, and nuclear generators that power spacecraft including the Voyagers, the first human objects to reach interstellar space.

1886 Lithograph of Miamisburg. Reprints available at Miamisburg Historical Society.

But what of its breweries? Looking around, I found no detailed historical records, only hints and vague references.

Such a case was Warren Jenkins' 1837 Ohio Gazetteer and Traveler's Guide, which described Miamisburg as “a pleasant post town” with a long list of institutions, business and factories, including “one cotton factory, one iron foundery [sic], one brass foundery, 2 grist mills, one steam saw mill… 3 taverns, 6 groceries, 1 brewery”.

But a sketch of a brewery that included a brewer’s distinctive name gave me a critical clue.

An 1886 lithograph of Miamisburg includes a border highlighting numerous buildings, including what it labeled “A. Kuehn’s Brewery.” It offered nothing more, but it sent me on a quest to track down the histories of “A. Kuehn” and his brewery. It led me through ancestry databases, county land records, old newspaper articles and other sources.

I even discovered Kuehn’s great-granddaughter, Jann Kuehn Adams, a history buff in Marietta; we each knew parts of his story that the other didn’t. “A. Kuehn” turned out to be August Victor Kuehn, a French immigrant who had worked at the Jackson Brewery in Cincinnati before moving to Miamisburg and eventually becoming a partner in the Marietta Brewery.

Kuehn wasn’t the Miami Valley Brewery’s first brewer or its last—but he came close in 1889, when an early-morning fire spread through the brewery while he and his family were in their beds upstairs.

Miami Valley Brewery, from 1886 Sanborn Insurance Map of Miamisburg.

I found the brewer who built that brewery, a German immigrant whose name had disappeared from history but was so well known in his time that a popular band came from Hamilton came to play at his funeral in 1881.

I also learned about the brewery he owned earlier, which stood on land now occupied by Riverfront Park. And I learned about an even older brewery along the canal, on the site now occupied by Miamisburg’s government center.

As in Dayton, Miamisburg’s small brewing industry appeared to prosper. But it wasn’t killed by the 18th Amendment. It suffered a different fate years before Prohibition could threaten it.

Can’t make it to Star City on the 23rd? I’ll also be at AleFest Dayton on Saturday, Aug. 24, and at Barnes and Noble Booksellers in Miami Twp. from 4-6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept.  7. Here’s a link to my schedule of events through November 7.