Dayton Beer

Tippecanoe detail view of 1858 Miami County map shows "I. Clark" brewery at bottom center. © 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney Note: Links to census records go to pages in FamilySearch.org. You will need to create a free account to access them. Call this Dayton Beer ’s first extra chapter. It’s about the brewing history of Tipp City in Miami County, Ohio—a history that eluded my research when I was writing my book—and a related whiskey scandal that went all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court. The lack of any clues to a brewery in Tipp City was puzzling and frustrating at the time.  Granted, what was originally named Tippecanoe City had only about 1,000 residents in the 1860s and ‘70s.   But my research was finding evidence of at least one small brewery in every city and village I studied, no matter how small— even tiny New Madison in Darke county, with about 500 residents in the 1870s and less than 1,000 today.  I suspected Tipp City had had one as well, but I had to ...

Undated photo of workers and wagons in front of the Star Brewery in Minster. Courtesy Minster Historical Society. © 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney Here's the press announcement of my upcoming event at the Moeller Brew Barn in Maria Stein: New book reveals western Ohio's hidden brewing history DAYTON, Ohio —Ohio author Timothy R. Gaffney will visit the Moeller Brew Barn in Maria Stein on Saturday, Oct. 12, from 1 to 3 p.m. to share secrets about western Ohio’s long-hidden history of beer brewing. Nick Moeller’s thriving craft brewery in rural Mercer County is one of several Gaffney spotlights in his new book Dayton Beer: A History of Brewing in the Miami Valley (The History Press, $21.99.) It places modern craft breweries like Moeller’s—including his newest one in Troy—in the context of more than two centuries of regional brewing history. It also explores how regional and global trends influenced local brewing, such as the building of the Miami and Erie Canal and German ...

© 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney If you’re a tinkerer, crafter, engineer or manufacturer—if you like to make stuff with your hands—the Make it Dayton Festival is for you. Held at Dayton History’s Carillon Historical Park on Saturday, Oct. 5, it will be a gathering of tinkerers, crafters, engineers and hobbyists who reflect Dayton’s heritage of invention and manufacturing. One of the things Dayton has a long history of making—over more than two centuries—is beer. I’ll share some of that history from 3 to 5 p.m. in Carillon Brewing’s Bier Hall . Copies of my book Dayton Beer will be for sale in the park’s gift shop and in Carillon Brewing itself, and I’ll be happy to sign them.  Named for its iconic musical bell tower, Carillon Historical Park is a 65-acre, open-air museum that preserves and interprets stories of Dayton’s inventions and inventors. Among its most historic exhibits are George Newcom’s Tavern, Dayton’s first permanent building, and the restored 1905 Wright Fly...

  © 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 lar...

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...