September 07, 2018
Our friends at Listermann Brewing are celebrating a milestone this weekend--- they’ve been in business for 10 years.
The journey began in 1973 founder Dan Listermann told us on The Cincy Shirts Podcast. Back then he was a student at Miami University. “I went to a drugstore and saw a bag with a pound of malt, an ounce of ,and instructions,” he recalled. “And I was supposed to boil that up with about five pounds of sugar, let it cool down, and then put it into a new garbage can with a packet of Fleischmann's bread yeast. It was ghastly. It was really bad.” He made about 4 or 5 more batches before calling it quits.
A few years later, a buddy called and wanted to try brewing beer again. Dan resisted, but his friend assured him the home brewing process had become much better. “So, my brother and I went up to see him, we brewed some beer, and it was great.” They continued on with their rediscovered hobby of home brewing.
Things were going well, except Dan wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the home brewing equipment, particularly the bottling mechanism which by his estimation, did a poor job of removing air from the bottle. “So, I sat in the bar one night and figured it out,” he said. “Then I thought ‘that wasn’t hard, I could do that a lot.”