Roll Out the Barrelhouse

Cincinnati’s BarrelHouse beer is officially back, six months after the Over-the-Rhine microbrewery and brewpub shut down in February following a sale of its brands and equipment to two Northwest Indiana beer companies.

BarrelHouse held an open house for restaurant and bar owners at its new home in the West End on Wednesday, trying to regain some of the momentum it lost during the transition.

It will soon begin selling beer in bottles for the first time, pending approval of labels and packaging by federal regulators. Ohio Valley Beer Co. and Heidelberg Distributing of Northern Kentucky have taken over distribution of the brands locally.

After the brewery closed last winter, its beer-making equipment was moved about a mile west to the Heritage Brewing Co., which operates out of the Central Light building on West Liberty Street. Heritage began operations last year, but it ran into production problems and never produced any beer for sale under its own label.

The BarrelHouse brewing equipment has since been integrated with Heritage’s, more than doubling its previous production capacity to about 3,400 31-gallon barrels a year.

Barrels of RedLegg Ale, Flying Pig Pilsner and other BarrelHouse varieties have been rolling out the door since mid-May under the direction of former BarrelHouse brewmaster Rick LeBar. He was hired by Heritage when BarrelHouse closed its Over-the-Rhine brewpub at 12th and Jackson, on the ground floor of the building that has become the new home of the Art Institute of Cincinnati.

LeBar scrambled to refill the distribution pipeline when beer ran short during the transition last spring. The company has lost some customers, including Great American Ball Park, but BarrelHouse beers are still available at several dozen restaurants and bars.

The brewery’s seasonal Oktoberfest beer was brewed a few weeks ago and should be ready for the area’s German heritage festival season. It also plans to begin producing beers under Heritage Brewing Co. labels.

Heritage is owned by former Gary, Ind., beer distributor Nick Sever. Sever’s Melanie Brewing Co. also markets a number of discount- priced beers such as Camo High Gravity Lager, M/X Malt Liquor and a 10-percent-alcohol beer called Evil Eye. Distributed across the country, they’re brewed under contract at City Brewery in LaCrosse, Wis., where the bottled versions of BarrelHouse and Heritage beers also will be produced. (It’s the same brewery that made Hudy Delight and Burger beer for Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewing Co. after it sold its brewery to Sam Adams.)

Sever said Heritage is focusing on the other end of the beer spectrum — higher-priced craft beers similar in style to BarrelHouse and the beers made up the street at the Samuel Adams Brewery.

He said he named his company Heritage as a tribute to Cincinnati’s long brewing tradition and its former status as the brewing capital of the country. The brewery produces only draft beer in kegs, since it doesn’t have a bottling line.

Although Sever bought BarrelHouse’s brewing equipment and is making the BarrelHouse beers at Heritage, he doesn’t actually own the BarrelHouse brands. They were acquired by another Indiana company, Hat Trick Inc., which is owned Jeff Ciesco, a former Miller Brewing Co. sales manager and long-time business associate of Sever’s.