CINCINNATI — Before Prohibition, the Queen City was one of the biggest beer-making cities in the world thanks mostly to German influence. While the beer scene is as strong as ever now in 2022, a piece of that history was missing. 

What You Need To Know

  • A strain of yeast used in pre-Prohibition brewing has been restored and is now being celebrated at the Missing Linck Fest

  • Ten breweries are making Missing Linck Beer to drink at the festival

  • The yeast was discovered in a lagering cellar inside a wooden fermenting vat

  • After the pandemic caused several setbacks, the festival will happen on Saturday, at Urban Artifact and Humble Monk Breweries
​​Urban Artifact Brewing CEO Bret Kollmann Baker and Cincinnati Historian Mike Morgan are heading down into the catacombs of Over-The-Rhine. 

“We have this rich heritage here in OTR in all the lagering tunnels that exist within Cincinnati,” Kollmann Baker said. "It’s forgotten. It’s long been scrubbed away due to Prohibition.” 

Back in 2017, Kollman Baker was hunting for some Cincinnati history, hoping to discover a “linck” to the past. 

“We found an old vat that was used to make beer in one of these logging tunnels that was long sealed up,” Kollmann Baker said. “When we got down there, we couldn't believe it because would you know, when it's in a moist, damp environment, like underneath an Ohio River town, it turns into rubble and dust, but this was still intact.”

They found a missing yeast strain, lost when the F. & J.A. Linck Brewery closed. Kollmann Baker said there was a 1% chance to revitalize it for use.

“We thought we’d be wasting our time in having fun exploring a lagering tunnel, but the fact that we got a good yeast out of this that we can make tasty beer with is just unbelievable,” he said. 

Now that the missing linck yeast has been restored, 10 different breweries across southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky are all making different styles of beer that haven't been tasted since the Prohibition era. And celebrating them at the Missing Linck Festival on June 4th.

Morgan said the festival is a long-time coming after the pandemic derailed the initial plans.

“2019 was when all of this kind of got mapped out and 2020 was supposed to be the first Missing Linck Fest,” Morgan said. “So we are finally in 2022 getting around to doing that.”

Production for the festival is ramping up across the region. Now the challenge is to make something unique. 

“For us at Urban Artifact, everything we do is tart,” Kollmann Baker said. “It’s really great we can take this yeast and use it to make a beer that didn’t exist in the 1900s and late 1800s. We’re making new history by using living history of Cincinnati’s past.” 

More information on the festival can be found here.