Dayton Beer

A group of cyclists at Warped Wing Brewing Co. Photo courtesy Warped Wing. © 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney Rails to trails to... ales ? If you're riding or walking on a recreational trail in Ohio's Miami Valley, odds are good you'll pass close to a craft beer brewpub or tap house. With Bike Miami Valley's 2019 Miami Valley Cycling Summit coming up—Friday, May 10, in Miamisburg—I decided to see how many local brew pubs and tap houses I could find within a mile of one of the region’s recreation trails in the area covered in my book Dayton Beer: A History of Brewing in the Miami Valley . I found 17 Miami Valley brewpubs near bike trails. I wasn’t too surprised, for a couple of reasons. First, the Miami Valley boasts a network of than 340 miles of paved, multi-use recreational trails— the nation’s largest , according to Five Rivers Metroparks. A trail runs close to many of our local destinations. Second, brewers down through the years have tended to locate the...

Advertisement in March 22, 1919 Dayton Daily News for sale of Schwind brewery plant. © Copyright 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney No big headlines heralded the news a century ago this week, but an ad in the March 22, 1919 Dayton Daily News signaled the end of an era in Dayton brewing history: The Schwind brewery plant—once known as the Dayton View Brewery—was up for sale.  Prohibition was coming, and Dayton's brewing industry was going.    I learned about the Dayton View Brewery in research for my upcoming book Dayton Beer: A History of Brewing in the Miami Valley . The brewery's story is more than a story about beer, brewing and business. It's a story about a brewer, his legacy and the impact it had on Dayton. What follows isn't an excerpt from my book, but a brief retelling of some of the facts I dug up in my research. Some of the graphics here aren't in my book because of their poor reproduction quality. For half a century, the Dayton View Brew...