MAINEVILLE, Ohio—A couple is turning an empty factory building into a lifelong dream. A new brewery is opening outside of Cincinnati in an old cartridge factory that sat vacant for over 50 years. But the owners are making sure they’re paying tribute to its history.
What You Need To Know
- Cartridge Brewing is taking over an abandoned cartridge factory
- The brewery has been in the works for three years
- The brewery is honoring the history of the building with a wall of historic pictures and information on what the building has been in the past
- The brewery will open Halloween weekend
The cartridge factory was once buzzing here in Maineville in the late 1800s. But after sitting empty for half a century, Kyle Hackbarth thought of the perfect way to give it new life.
“You drive by it all the time and it’s kind of like, they don’t make buildings like this anymore,” Klye Hackbarth the COO of Cartridge Brewing said. “This is a hidden gem right here on the bike path, right here on the Little Miami River.”
That’s when Cartridge Brewing was born. The building was bought three years ago, but the idea of keeping the history inside was always a part of the plan.
“We kind of thought of it as a looming giant,” Lindsey Hackbarth, Kyle’s wife and the director of brand experience at Cartridge Brewing said. “And when we saw it coming in here three years ago to start building this, learning the history was a targeted passion of what we wanted to do.”
“Trying to erase the history of what’t here would go against what we’re trying to build,” Kyle said. “It is extremely difficult to start a company and then try to create a brand essentially out of nothing. Luckily, we started with a building that had these beautiful bones behind it and we could build into that.”
Kyle and Lindsey say they created the brewery for people like them- parents that wanted a place to go on a date night or bring the kids for dinner. And somewhere close by, rather than having to drive 30 minutes downtown.
“We loved the amazing food and many breweries throughout Cincinnati, but we don’t want to always drive downtown,” Lindsey said.
And now three years in the making, the building and beer are just about ready for others to see and try it out too, even in the middle of a pandemic.
“Eventually the construction stops and you have to open,” Kyle said. “We’re kind of out of time, you can’t delay it. You only have so much money and at some point in time we have to open the door.”
Cartridge Brewing has just set its opening date for Halloween weekend. You can get reservations here. Their normal hours will resume the following Tuesday.
