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Opening a brewery during a pandemic is a tall task. But for Mike Brown, the owner of Rebel Mettle, this was five years in the making and he wasn’t going to let the pandemic stop him.

On its opening day, Rebel Mettle Brewery in downtown Cincinnati already saw a healthy crowd through its doors. For Brown, the love for brewing actually came many years ago.

“It really just turned into a passion and then Dwayne, Greg and I would get together and brew batches in our garage and it really was like, you know what, this just feels right,” Brown said. “So, that’s how we got started.”

For Brown, an Air Force veteran, opening a brewery in Cincinnati was always the goal. While he isn’t from the Queen City, it became his home.

“I came here in ’98 to go to UC, 9/11 happened, I joined right after that,” he said. “As soon as I got out of the military, I came right back here. I am going to go Ron Burgandy- I love this town.”

But opening during a pandemic wasn’t the plan. Brown says while it wasn’t ideal, they weren’t going to stop all the progress they made.

“Did it slow us down? I don’t think so, not at all,” he said. “There was a day where everyone kind of hit the panic button, but for the most part we were like let’s do this.”

For several customers, the opening of Rebel Mettle couldn’t be better- it’s the first downtown brewery to open in more than a decade.

“It’s pretty cool to have a brewery I can walk across the street, grab a beer,” Bob Schwartz a downtown resident said. “I don’t have to walk or ride the bike to OTR or Covington to enjoy a good beer.”

At Rebel Mettle Brewery- a play on words meaning having a rebellious attitude- the staff just hopes everyone can enjoy what they worked so hard for.

“We are a celebration of making your own opportunities and forging forward,” Brown said.