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The Hidden Secrets of Cincinnati’s Underground Breweries | Underground Marvels | Science Channel - Video học tiếng Anh
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The Hidden Secrets of Cincinnati’s Underground Breweries | Underground Marvels | Science Channel
The Hidden Secrets of Cincinnati’s Underground Breweries | Underground Marvels | Science Channel
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Phụ đề (114)
0:00
For decades, Cincinnati has had a lot going on above ground.
0:05
But what makes this historic city unique is what's hidden below it.
0:10
In the 1830 and 40s, hundreds of thousands of German refugees fled to the United States
0:16
in hope of a life free from repression and inequality.
0:21
In Cincinnati.
0:22
They settled in the historic Over-the-Rhine district, and they brought with them their
0:27
most treasured product.
0:29
Beer. The United States is often referred to as a nation of immigrants.
0:34
Julie Carpenter is an architectural historian specializing in the region's rich history.
0:42
By the time Over the Rhine was fully developed, the neighborhood was between 60
0:47
and 75% German.
0:50
You see a lot of buildings that have German language on them.
0:54
What we know is Republic Street today was originally called Bremen.
0:59
Cincinnati already had an established brewing industry, but the newest residents added
1:04
something distinctly German.
1:06
For as long as there have been people in Cincinnati, people have been brewing beer.
1:10
The earliest breweries were run by English, Irish, Scottish, and they were making
1:16
traditional English style beers, ales and porters.
1:21
While the English breweries remained above ground, the German ones relied on
1:26
subterranean chambers.
1:28
To craft their delicious concoctions.
1:31
So we're walking into the fermentation level of the Jackson Brewery.
1:37
Mike Morgan is Cincinnati's resident beer expert.
1:41
This room looks huge and cavernous now, but it would have been packed with fermenting
1:47
beer in the 1800s.
1:49
Huge wooden vats going up and down both sides of it.
1:53
The only real difference between a lager and an ale is that lager yeast requires cool
1:59
temperatures to ferment, and ale yeast ferments at room temperature.
2:04
At their peak, nearly 35 breweries were producing more than 30 million gallons of
2:10
beer per year.
2:12
As demand grew, local business owners had to dig additional tunnels and cellars to
2:17
accommodate production.
2:20
All of these.
2:21
Lagering in cellars have two levels, and on the upper level they would ferment the beer,
2:27
and on the lower level they would age it.
2:32
Most of the beer was consumed locally, but soon the German lagers popularity spread far
2:39
beyond the city limits.
2:41
It was sending a lot of what was made here down to New Orleans.
2:45
So if you went to the French Quarter, good chance was it came from right here in these
2:50
lager cellars.
2:56
Demand increased exponentially over the Rhine, and the city of Cincinnati experienced
3:02
an economic boom due to beer production.
3:04
So much so, the city earned its nickname as the Beer Capital of the world.
3:10
But building cellars large enough to house not just fermentation tanks, but also
3:15
thousands of barrels of the finished product was no easy task in the 1850s.
3:22
The enterprising brewers got creative.
3:24
The magic of beer in Cincinnati is right down these steps.
3:29
Steve Hampton works for an organization revitalizing the brewing district.
3:34
So we're 30ft underground in the Crown Brewery Cellars.
3:38
They use archstone construction.
3:40
They use stone floors and were typically built by a very specialized contractor,
3:44
cellar diggers. It was very hard to do 30, 40ft underground.
3:50
You were in the middle of a dense urban neighborhood where there were people working
3:54
and living and playing literally right next to you.
3:58
What Brewers soon realized was that their underground recipe for success had a lethal
4:04
side effect.
4:08
Fermentation produces significant amounts of carbon dioxide.
4:13
Built up CO2 would not only make these tunnels off limits for people, it would also
4:18
starve the fermenting process of oxygen and slow or even stop the production of beer.
4:24
They built these series of ventilation shafts.
4:26
They look like fireplaces, but they're actually ventilation shafts.
4:29
They could actually use the natural stack effect and let the warm air out of this space
4:34
and keep fresh air in here.
4:37
Ventilation solved the carbon dioxide problem, but keeping the cellars cold enough
4:42
for the lager fermentation process needed further innovation.
4:46
Early on, they would use ice that they would harvest from the lakes and the rivers and the
4:50
canals and literally cut that in blocks, pack it away with the barrels of beer down
4:54
here.
4:56
There's a lot of cons to ice.
4:58
It's expensive.
4:59
It's unpredictable.
5:00
It also melts and that creates all sorts of problems.
5:04
So they started using artificial refrigeration as soon as that was possible.
5:09
And when they did, there would have been lines crisscrossing through here.
5:13
And it was ammonia that was run through those lines.
5:19
While the early brewers had addressed the temperature issue, they unknowingly
5:23
introduced another complication.
5:26
Ammonia remains a very effective coolant.
5:30
We don't use it today because it will kill you.
5:36
They would oftentimes have ammonia leaks from the cooling systems that would kill draft
5:40
horses. It could even overcome the the workers down here.
5:46
Coolant leaks were just one of the many dangers facing workers in Cincinnati's
5:50
underground breweries.
5:52
They were often at risk of being injured by rolling kegs or kegs, falling down in massive
5:58
kegs of a couple hundred pounds each, breaking legs and ankles.
6:03
Beer was part of your pay, and so often you were drinking while you were on the job.
6:08
And so drinking and old cellars weren't always the most conducive to safety.
6:13
And so we had a lot of accidents that way.
6:16
As the breweries continued to boom, they managed to adapt and prosper.
6:21
However, by the turn of the century, a nationwide shift was about to cast a dark
6:26
shadow over Cincinnati's beer making industry.
6:30
All of this industry and all of this culture, it really all starts to collapse all at once.
6:39
In the 19th century, innovations in beer making required breweries to undergo major
6:44
upgrades. Cincinnati was at the forefront of these changes.
6:48
Pasteurization in 1864.
6:51
That's a big deal.
6:53
You don't have to consume it immediately without it spoiling.
6:57
We then get into technology around steel.
7:00
So we go from wooden vats to big metal tanks that are easier to clean and get the bacteria
7:06
out of. And we also start to see revolutions in glass.
7:11
And then in 1892, we had the crown bottle cap.
7:19
Despite these investments, society was changing and the industry was in for a rude
7:25
awakening.
7:27
The United States enters World War 1 in 1917.
7:31
When that happens, all of that germanness that made Over-the-Rhine such a unique
7:36
European feeling place, that all becomes bad.
7:40
So that's really the first blow.
7:44
Prohibition goes into effect nationally in 1920.
7:48
And so all of this industry and all of this culture, it really all starts to collapse all
7:53
at once.
7:55
By 1918, laws were passed forcing breweries to shut down, and for many years things
8:02
looked very bleak for the Over-the-Rhine district.
8:06
Some breweries tried to survive by brewing illegally, but police raids squashed most
8:12
efforts and soon the Cincinnati breweries were seemingly forgotten.
