Our Partner, Listermann Brewing, Turns 10 This Weekend
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.”
Of course, it did work out but not quite in the way he had envisioned it. The homebrew supply business moved from his basement and into the Hamilton County Business Development Center on the campus of Xavier University, which you can see from Listermann Brewing today. He sold thousands of bottling systems as well as other equipment. As it turned out, though, the bottling system Dan had designed wasn’t that crucial to home brewing. “The yeast will eat up the remaining air,” he said.
At about the time the supply business was leveling off, someone called and offered to sell him some large-scale brewing equipment, which he accepted. In 2008, the brewing license was granted and the rest, as they say, is local brewing history.
Hear our full interview with Dan and his general manager Jason Brewer (yes, that’s his real name!), below. Shop our official Listermann collection and then raise a glass to 10 years of Listermann Brewing!
