tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-106919102024-03-12T23:26:19.496-04:00The Potable Curmudgeon<p><b><i>The simple pleasures of beering locally.</i></b></p>
<p><b>I'm older now, and simple beer pleasures are the most meaningful to me. They tend to be encountered locally. It is my aim to get unplugged and explore some of them, slowly and thoughtfully. I'd tell you where it's leading, except that I've no idea ... and that's the whole point of the journey: To find out.</b></p>The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.comBlogger3520125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-5646234231516259702018-09-14T22:35:00.002-04:002020-10-14T10:14:19.021-04:00BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Headlines from August 2018 on the beer beat ... at Pints & Union.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_QKgzdTKW_FTfKWo-aZYWIRWSI6mi0mrH9QWPhIngC3D1Q0Af-iuSp0C5JtxaMBdxOF-iZ3x9HRn0gr-bZD3LU_b08w0G30Qu_UtT4jFWQC8-VWC2dG_QyIfK7GIG3God8jTi/s1600/PU+food+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="747" data-original-width="960" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_QKgzdTKW_FTfKWo-aZYWIRWSI6mi0mrH9QWPhIngC3D1Q0Af-iuSp0C5JtxaMBdxOF-iZ3x9HRn0gr-bZD3LU_b08w0G30Qu_UtT4jFWQC8-VWC2dG_QyIfK7GIG3God8jTi/s320/PU+food+8.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This blog has gone on hiatus, probably permanently. These days my thoughts about beer are being posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>.<br />
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You'll still find them there in reverse chronological order via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/Beer%20with%20a%20Socialist" style="font-weight: bold;">Beer with a Socialist</a>, with <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat" style="font-weight: bold;">The Beer Beat</a> having been retired as of September. That's because some also will be identified as <a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/Pints%20%26%20Union%20Portfolio"><b>Pints & Union Portfolio</b></a>.<br />
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At any rate, use the <a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/Beer%20with%20a%20Socialist" style="font-weight: bold;">Beer with a Socialist</a> search term and it should suffice. At the end of each month, I'll still collect the links right here.<br />
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Following are August (2018) ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some of these posts are more topical than others.<br />
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I hope this isn't overly confusing. Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/beer-with-socialist-pints-begins.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Pints&union begins regular hours tonight, and there's a "luxuriant brunette brew" to help celebrate.</a></h3>
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As for the beer, eight of ten potential faucets will be pouring. It isn't yet clear whether the permanent number of taps will be seven or eight, but for now I've squeezed in a special treat for those of you who enjoy classic styles: Daredevil Munich Dunkel from Indianapolis.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/beer-with-socialist-drink-toast-to.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Drink a toast to trailblazing New Albany brewer Hew Ainslie with a McEwan's Scotch Ale.</a></h3>
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I believe Ainslie deserves some manner of recognition. After all, too many plaques are mounted in honor of underachieving politicians, and too few to men like Ainslie. In addition to brewing, he was a published poet and an ardent Scottish nationalist.<br />
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I'm telling you abut Ainslie because a spoonful of McEwan's Scotch Ale helps the history lesson go down.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/beer-with-socialist-and-honor-goes-to.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: And the honor goes to Fuller's London Pride.</a></h3>
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At approximately 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 2, 2018 the first keg to be emptied at Pints&union was Fuller's London Pride, with Guinness queuing close behind it.<br />
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This pleases me for a number of reasons.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/beer-with-socialist-accumulated-thirst.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: An accumulated thirst -- or, lots of kegs floated at Pints&union.</a></h3>
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After four "official" business days preceded by two "soft" evenings, something like 800 pints of draft beer have been consumed at Pints&union, including <i>two</i> full kegs of Fuller's London Pride -- and only <i>one</i> of the other blown kegs was an IPA (Bell's Two Hearted).<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/beer-with-socialist-when-you-think-of.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: "When you think of your favorite spot to grab a beer, what architectural features come to mind?"</a></h3>
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To me, the essential ingredient for bucket-list bars is that they're located somewhere else, preferably in Europe, and have good adult beverages to drink -- namely, beer. As such, I've actually been to the Hofbrauhaus and Hirschgarten for lagers, and once walked past the American Bar in Vienna.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/beer-with-socialist-no-absinthe-barrel.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: No absinthe-barrel-aged IPAs, please. Imperial Stout? Let me think about that one.</a></h3>
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Too late.<br />
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Someone in the Netherlands already went and did absinthe beer, not barrel-aged (some things should remain far removed from scheming human hands), but with barley, wheat and an herbal extract.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/beer-with-socialist-in-short-hemp-and.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: "In short, hemp and hops can only work together if state and federal regulators get out of the way."</a></h3>
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This is an excellent essay about innovation, regulation and weirdness. Thanks to E for the link.<br />
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As for me, a pint of Fuller's London Pride will do just fine, but by all means, get out there and expand the perimeter.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/beer-with-socialist-in-consideration-of.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: In consideration of Falls City Classic Pilsner, on tap now at Pints&union.</a></h3>
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It's always best to start at the beginning, and so it might help to know that the term "Falls City" predates those beers bearing its name, as Thomas Jefferson himself explains.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/pints-union-portfolio-beer-tuesday-talk.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Beer Tuesday Talk & Taste, and Tabletop Tuesday; beer and board gaming starting Tuesday, August 14.</a></h3>
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As often as humanly possible, I'll be upstairs at between 5:00 p.m. and at least 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday evenings, starting Tuesday, August 14.<br />
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This weekly event is strictly informal, and you need not be present at any precise time, just at any point within the window. It's not exactly a class, and there'll be no tests. However, there'll be a beer of the week; purchase one downstairs, bring the beer upstairs, and we'll talk it over.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/pints-union-portfolio-orval-exemplifies.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Orval exemplifies true religion, Trappist (ale)-style.</a></h3>
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Narrowing the focus, a particularly wonderful sub-culture within Belgian brewing is that occupied by the Trappists, or those ales brewed at Trappist monasteries. In recent years, this practice has spread outside the original six Belgium (and the seventh in the Netherlands) to Austria, Italy, the UK and even Massachusetts. <br />
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These thoughts are occasioned by a chance meeting with this article about Orval.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/pints-union-portfolio-anyone-up-for.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Anyone up for Tuesday evening beer classes at the pub?</a></h3>
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When the IU Southeast opportunity came to an end, I continued with the NABC program of charitable tasting donations, which was a light variant of the class, but the class itself never was revived. <br />
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At Pints&union, there's a second chance, and we're working on it. The class would take place on Tuesday evenings within a specified period of time -- say, an hour or so each night for six weeks. We'd meet upstairs in the room that still needs to be named.<br />
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You'd pay a <a href="https://www.horseky.com/kentucky/mini-horse-farm-near-me/">mini</a>mal fee each night to cover class samples, and while attendance wouldn't be mandatory, maybe those who made every session would get recognition on the wall, or some such way of reflecting "graduation."<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/pints-union-portfolio-revised-weekend.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Revised weekend hours, with a noon opening on Saturday and hangover relief on Sunday from noon - 4 p.m.</a></h3>
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For those who have enjoyed the exemplary draft Daredevil Munich Dunkel Lager, the third of our allocated three kegs was tapped earlier this week. When it's gone, probably early next week, it will be time for Oktoberfest season to begin.<br />
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The final decision has yet to be made, but I'm leaning toward a traditional Munich interpretation. Also, Wychwood Hobgoblin continues to stand in for Fuller's London Pride, and probably will remain pouring through September.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/beer-with-socialist-theres-place-for.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: There's a place for retro beers, but for better or worse, they don't taste the same as they once did.</a></h3>
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Following is my answer, right or wrong, without having done the slightest research on the matter.<br />
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To me, it's just common beer sense that many, if not all, of the contemporary "retro" beer brands have little in common with their foundational predecessors.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/beer-with-socialist-exploding-beer-cans.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST Exploding beer cans? If I want to risk injury, I'll try to make it across a New Albany street on foot.</a></h3>
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I'd dropped by The Keg to purchase a few German-brewed Oktoberfest bottles for a vital personal sampling, and was told a case of 450 North had just detonated in the storeroom.<br />
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Lest there be any misunderstanding, allow me to paraphrase an old saw: I may be entirely befuddled by what you're brewing, but I'll fight to the point of unconsciousness in support of your right to brew it.<br />
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At the same time, count me among those who can't come to grips with the notion of craft beer as potential can bombs. <br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/08/pints-union-portfolio-about-burger-and.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: About a burger, and draft list notes.</a></h3>
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___The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-30445820910626245172018-08-08T20:35:00.005-04:002020-10-15T16:07:38.886-04:00BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Headlines from July 2018 on the beer beat.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This blog has gone on hiatus, probably permanently, and primarily because these days my thoughts about beer are being posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>.<br />
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You'll still find them there in reverse chronological order via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>, although I'm in the process of changing the column title to <b><a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/Beer%20with%20a%20Socialist">Beer with a Socialist</a></b>. For the foreseeable future, I'll retain both labels for ease of searching.<br />
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At the end of each month I'll still collect the links right here.<br />
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Following are July (2018) ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "Beer with a Socialist" or "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title.<br />
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I hope this isn't overly confusing. Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-catch-up-on-your.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Catch up on your reading with these links. First, pour a damn beer.</a></h3>
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<i>Exhausted, we bivouacked by a street pockmarked by sharrows, across from a corporate multi-tap. A squad was sent to reconnoiter. They were shaken and ashen-faced upon return: "Rows and rows of IPAs, hazy and mango and coffee-infused -- what are we to do?" The major's gaze hardened. "Drink 'em," he replied. "Drink 'em all, and let God sort it out." #secondcivilwarletters</i><br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-on-beer-lists-beer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: On beer lists, beer-speak, and beer geeksplaining.</a></h3>
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In retrospect, the three-ring binder beer list at the Public House was my "Dark Side of the Moon." How do you make another album after <i>that</i>?<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-recalling-love-on.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Recalling "Love on the Beach" and taking note of changing times.</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHNVmvfYqPnc8tbdblu8hvxYJNhKnDrVZM3LVoSkAAWFrIfI63_C-0U9W1JQtpZh3Bw6vijDRkgoDaM_iNOoIq7S05iggx0J0rsf02i4G8HeJAdTpAwvML_UzuyhUwR0_XUtNU/s1600/IMG_4732.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHNVmvfYqPnc8tbdblu8hvxYJNhKnDrVZM3LVoSkAAWFrIfI63_C-0U9W1JQtpZh3Bw6vijDRkgoDaM_iNOoIq7S05iggx0J0rsf02i4G8HeJAdTpAwvML_UzuyhUwR0_XUtNU/s320/IMG_4732.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-one-german-pub.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: "One German pub owner is still serving at 87."</a></h3>
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Clocking in at a mere 12 minutes, this is a gem of a brief <i>Deutsche Welle</i> news profile, or perhaps a <a href="https://www.horseky.com/kentucky/mini-horse-farm-near-me/">mini</a>-documentary. Surprisingly layered, little bits of the story keep emerging as Hildegard Schweinsberg works a Thursday at her pub in Neuhaus, near Schwerin on what would have been the DDR side of the border during the period of Germany's division. <br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-light-beer-not-here.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: "Light Beer? Not Here," and other Public House beer list views from 1998.</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLT2uggZ5VNnytKoUfc1DYIQuatreVm_q1cHSYw2z7tBMAsS9X3o1WFlSVXyocu4swKWs-oXHpJYECYjm3nAmX8b3oJ6rbV40qDUNxlNVOVsa7ROZcrwMlf35qxGJpK3cJaHzz/s1600/IMG_4781+cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="997" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLT2uggZ5VNnytKoUfc1DYIQuatreVm_q1cHSYw2z7tBMAsS9X3o1WFlSVXyocu4swKWs-oXHpJYECYjm3nAmX8b3oJ6rbV40qDUNxlNVOVsa7ROZcrwMlf35qxGJpK3cJaHzz/s320/IMG_4781+cropped.jpg" width="199" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-flint-michigan-tap.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Flint Michigan Tap Water? “Walt Disney knew what he was doing and I plan on making Lakeville the Walt Disney of beers.”</a></h3>
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On the topic of buffoonery, excrement and world class douchebaggery, there's this. It may be the first time in my life that I feel sorry for Walt Disney.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-glory-days-in-bike.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Glory days in the bike saddle at the Radler Tankstelle.</a></h3>
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Somewhere along the way in Germany or Austria I saw a pictograph of a man on a bicycle hoisting a foamy stein of beer: "Radler Tankstelle, 100 meters."<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-bells-two-hearted.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Bell's Two Hearted Ale is an iconic American classic.</a></h3>
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It's my recollection that we first poured Bell's Two Hearted Ale at the Public House around 2002. It was among the first regional IPAs we could get on a dependable basis at a good price point, and Centennial hops were a big deal at the time. In my world, they still are.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-pints-beer-list.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Pints&union beer list theory and practice.</a></h3>
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Owner Joe Phillips' plan for Pints&union has continued to evolve since we first began brainstorming. There will be food, cocktails, wine and an old-school pub atmosphere. There won't be television. When I dropped by there yesterday, Joe had Blur and Liam Gallagher playing on the sound system, though not simultaneously.<br />
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Of course, even monks clinging to Tibetan mountainsides know that my personal contribution to Pints&union is the beer program, which is why I typically have less to say about the other aspects of the pub. Beer has been my life, and I'm thankful to Joe for the opportunity to reformat the better beer experience for another generation of pub-goers.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-when-old-mister-lew.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: When Old Mister Lew tells a story, you're advised to listen closely.</a></h3>
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It's an American "craft" (microbrew?) history lesson from Professor Bryson, but don't panic. Think corrections, not catastrophe. The scene may seem to be in upheaval, but as Lew entertainingly points out, we've all been here before -- in the late 1990s.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-pints-will-be.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Pints&union will be opening later this week.</a></h3>
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The obscure and long-awaited regulatory incantation from the Indiana Alcohol & Tobacco Commission arrived this morning, freeing the way for the doors to Pints&union to be opened to the public at some point later this week.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-kevin-gibsons-look.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Kevin Gibson's look at Pints&union in <i>Insider <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a></i>.</a></h3>
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As always, Kevin's reporting is impeccable, so read all about it -- and there are photos, too. Just don't ask me to tell you exactly when. When everything's ready, that's when.<br />
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Meanwhile, I'm like a kid in the damn candy store, albeit with back and knees throbbing from stocking cans and bottles today. It feels wonderful. The keg boxes are almost ready to pour; just a few more tweaks tomorrow.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-forthcoming-beer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: The forthcoming beer list at Pints&union (bottle and can edition).</a></h3>
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Old-timers will notice the presence of "comfort beers," "neglected classics" and "greatest beer hits" alongside beers like Stroh's, Old Style and Little Kings. The juxtaposition is purely intentional.<br />
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Indeed, it's a more egalitarian list than I would have written at the peak of polemical fervor, with fewer local craft brews; as noted previously, in my view the revolution has succeeded in large measure, and there are numerous American craft beers being vended in downtown New Albany.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-pints-preview-in.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: A Pints&union preview in the <i>News and Tribune</i>.</a></h3>
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Now for another pub preview, courtesy of the local newspaper. As of about 2:00 p.m. today, all the draft lines should be up and running, and a big shout-out goes to Kenny Henson of Monarch Beverage/World Class Beer for his efforts in fine-tuning the keg boxes. Joe and the rest of the team have been putting in the hours. All that remains is to tie up 1,001 loose ends and unlock the door.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-casual-soft-opening.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: A casual soft opening for Pints&union on a frenetic Friday evening in downtown New Albany.</a></h3>
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Pints&union cleared its first hurdle on Friday evening. It was a very soft opening, with beers and drinks and nibbles. <br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-against-grain-to.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Against the Grain to Citra its Ass Down in Okinawa.</a></h3>
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As such, perhaps it's to be expected that a brewery priding itself on eclecticism and dirty underwear would find a locale like Okinawa, which goes against the Japanese grain.<br />
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Good work, gentlemen.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/07/beer-with-socialist-kalin-tavern-where.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Kalin Tavern, where a passport is required to cross the barroom.</a></h3>
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At <i>Conde Nast Traveler</i>, Ken Jennings writes about a tavern divided.<br />
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The Google street view above dates to 2013, affording a clean view of the Kalin Tavern on the left (note the awnings) and the border blockade running right across the street.<br />
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__The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-30741846093075795382018-07-07T20:05:00.000-04:002018-07-11T20:05:27.280-04:00BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Headlines from June 2018 on the beer beat.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This blog has gone on hiatus, probably permanently, and primarily because these days my thoughts about beer are being posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>.<br />
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You'll still find them there in reverse chronological order via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>, although I'm in the process of changing the column title to <b>Beer with a Socialist</b>. For the foreseeable future, I'll retain both labels for ease of searching.<br />
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At the end of each month I'll still collect the links right here.<br />
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Following are June (2018) ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.<br />
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Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/06/beer-with-socialist-that-time-in-2003.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: That time in 2003 when we rode bicycles to Schneider Weisse.</a></h3>
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Anyway ... at Pints&union, we'll be carrying bottled Schneider Weisse and Aventinus, two world classic wheat ales. Back in 2003 at the Public House, we'd been carrying the Schneider brewery's line since it first became available via the B. United wholesale house, and naturally it was to B. United that I directed a pre-trip inquiry: might my friends and I get a tour of Schneider while cycling?<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/06/beer-with-socialist-tom-and-nick-moench.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Tom and Nick Moench collaborate on a sour beer -- and what I remember about a day with Tom in Orlando in 2006.</a></h3>
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In 2006, when the annual family reunion took place in steamy summer Orlando, the estimable Tom Moench sacrificed an afternoon to save our lives, rescuing the Baylors from resort hotel ennui, and with it $6 half-pints of Guinness served in bizarre Belgian-style stemware at the hotel bar.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/06/beer-with-socialist-these-new-rules-of.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: These "new rules of pub etiquette" are a must-read.</a></h3>
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In fact, these rules of etiquette should come across as common sense for anyone who has consumed drinks in public, anywhere at all. They're not really new, but then again, teachers teach the same topic over and over to incoming classes who are unaware of the importance. So it goes.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/06/beer-with-socialist-cask-ales-are.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Cask ales are the indigenous, tasty, beery glories of the British Isles (article from 2009).</a></h3>
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Pints & Union will be opening soon, and several readers have asked if we'll be pouring cask ale. The unfortunate answer is no, although there might be the occasional pin or firkin from <i>somewhere</i> hoisted atop the bar and dispensed by gravity. <br />
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In this column and the one following it on Saturday, it is my aim to provide some background about cask ale, which might help to explain why we won't be installing hand pumps at the start. In short, economies of scale are out of whack.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/06/beer-with-socialist-three-cheers-for.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Three cheers for a British ale movement in the States.</a></h3>
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Conditioning ale in the cask (real ale), then pouring it by use of a hand pump (beer engine), are quintessentially British ways of brewing, serving and enjoying ale, with the basic idea being to take a slightly unfinished and still living product and artfully prepare it to be served at the optimal time, with a gentle carbonation produced naturally.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/06/beer-with-socialist-how-bicycle-ride.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: How a bicycle ride and Lenin's Tribune connects Bank Street Brewhouse with Our Lady of Perpetual Hops.</a></h3>
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I'm hoping you can see how the OLPH sketch prompted these recollections. Just imagine the podium facing in the direction of New Albany's City County Building, not unlike a minaret. I'd have been the muezzin of sorts, and it would have been the finest bully pulpit ever.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/06/beer-with-socialist-whether-sheep.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Whether sheep stealer or highwayman, he was hanged just the same at Cannards Grave.</a></h3>
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Bud Light drinkers used to feel this way when they wandered by mistake into the Public House. The illustration comes from a 1972 book called <i>British Inn Signs</i>.<br />
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<blockquote>
Where five roads meet on the A37 near Shepton Mallet (Somerset) is a gruesome sign of a man hanging from a gibbet.</blockquote>
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The back story takes on a number of versions, which are considered in this modern update.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/06/beer-with-socialist-anchor-porter-is.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Anchor Porter is delicious. Just don't expect a firm answer as to how it differs from Stout.</a></h3>
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Anchor Porter is black and rich, firmly hopped (circa 40 IBUs) with plenty of malty underpinnings. I'm getting chocolate, espresso, toffee and a hint of licorice in my mouth, and I'm struck by a vestige of similarity with some Baltic-style Porters I've had in the past -- albeit at a gentler ABV.<br />
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___The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-66002142738955213762018-06-10T20:01:00.006-04:002020-10-15T16:07:39.407-04:00BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Headlines from May 2018 on the beer beat.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This blog has gone on hiatus, probably permanently, and primarily because these days my thoughts about beer are being posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>.<br />
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You'll still find them there in reverse chronological order via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>, although I'm in the process of changing the column title to Beer with a Socialist. For the foreseeable future, I'll retain both labels for ease of searching.<br />
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At the end of each month I'll still collect the links right here.<br />
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Following are May (2018) ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.<br />
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Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-beer-beat-path-to-6000-or-one.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The path to 6,000, or one helluva big difference in 25 years.</a></h3>
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Yesterday, amid 14 consecutive hours of joyous Kentucky Derby downpour, I started rummaging through my collection of posters, photos and bric-a-brac suitable for hanging.<br />
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This one, called "Brewpubs and Craft Breweries," is a poster that dates from 1992.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-beer-beat-yuengling-golden-pilsner.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Yuengling Golden Pilsner, or how I mourn the taste of corn in the morn (and afternoon).</a></h3>
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Several of my friends beat me to tasting Pabst Pale Ale (I still haven't), but earlier today by sheer serendipity I walked into Keg Liquors (Clarksville) and became the first customer to buy a six-pack of Yuengling's ballyhooed Golden Pilsner.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-beer-beat-brief-pints-union-beer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: A brief Pints & Union beer list report (yay) and a Yuengling correction (shrug).</a></h3>
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It's ironic, although not entirely unexpected, that the more beer I drink as part of a solemn imperative to research (alas, someone's got to do it), and the greater the amount of time translating this diligent research into a beer list for Pints & Union, the less opportunity to write idly about beer in general.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-beer-beat-u-fleku-home-of-bohemias.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: U Fleků, home of "Bohemia’s definitive dark beer," really WAS founded in 1499.</a></h3>
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I meant to attend U Fleků's 500th birthday party in 1999, but just couldn't pull it off. That's a big regret. Jeff Alworth is a great beer writer. In this brief essay, he takes us to Prague for one of those "Holy Grail" bucket list beers, originally described by the beer writer Michael Jackson, all of which packed off my butt to Europe so very long ago. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-beer-beat-rip-jerry-turonis-turner.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: R.I.P. Jerry "Turoni's" Turner. Also: New England IPA, Mile Wide, Goose's disgrace, George Washington, and weighing a keg of beer.</a></h3>
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As I may have mentioned earlier, though probably forgot, the current issue of <i>Food & Dining Magazine</i> (it's out today) has two contributions from moi: a profile of bar Vetti (lower case "b" is intentional), and a beer column about New England IPA.<br />
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Research for the latter brought me to Mile Wide Beer Co. (636 Barret Avenue, <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a>) a few weeks back for their release of Nomah!, which I enjoyed very much. In some ways I'm surprised by this. Not long ago, I'd have dismissed NE IPA as a fad, but now it makes perfect sense to me. May the style live long and prosper.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/05/beer-with-socialist-still-on-beer-beat.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Still on the "beer beat," but with a new identity and a renewed consultancy.</a></h3>
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"Beer with a Socialist" is what happens when the Potable Curmudgeon momentarily mistakes the word "scientist" for "socialist," and after a good laugh, decides it's kismet.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/05/on-avenues-long-live-keg-liquors-fest.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">ON THE AVENUES: Long live Keg Liquors Fest of Ale, an indisputable annual beer institution.</a></h3>
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The 13th edition of Keg Liquors Fest of Ale will take place at New Albany’s Riverfront Amphitheater on Saturday, June 2. Up to 2,500 area beer fans will be in attendance, which might sound like a crush of humanity, but it isn’t. The major regional stops on the beer festival tour host as many as 8,000 guests, with Port-A-Lets extending around the entire perimeter like Donald Trump’s walled-in America.<br />
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However, festival founder and package store owner Todd Antz has grown Fest of Ale slowly and organically, from the parking lot adjacent to his original Clarksville store to St. Anthony’s lawn, and now the banks of the Ohio. It’s an urban area, and yet still presents a pastoral scene of greenery, passing barges and the rising sun architectural imagery of the amphitheater itself. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/05/beer-with-socialist-vandals-strike.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Vandals strike Asheville brewery: “No more breweries” and “**** Beer City.”</a></h3>
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My initial thought upon reading about "anti-brewery vandalism" in Asheville was something on the order of: "Just their luck the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is still alive and kicking."<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/05/on-avenues-sadly-kentucky-derby-no.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">ON THE AVENUES: Sadly, the Kentucky Derby no longer is decadent and depraved. It’s just another vacuous capitalist bait ‘n’ switch.</a></h3>
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Let’s talk about beer. In 2018, for the first time in six years, the “official” beer of this signature institution known as Churchill Downs no longer is Stella Artois, the chosen import of AB-InBev’s payola empire. <br />
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Now it’s Corona, perhaps the most vile mainstream corn-choked Mexican lager atrocity known to man, reminding us that while the Kentucky Derby has developed intrinsic traditions since its inaugural run in 1875, locally brewed beer hasn’t always been prominent among these predispositions. After all, bourbon gets you there way faster.The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-67426339933753818722018-05-21T08:59:00.000-04:002018-05-21T08:59:04.380-04:00BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Still on the "beer beat," but with a new identity and a renewed consultancy.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"<a href="https://www.facebook.com/PotableCurmudgeon/">Beer with a Socialist</a>" is what happens when the Potable Curmudgeon momentarily mistakes the word "scientist" for "socialist," and after a good laugh, decides it's kismet.<br />
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A long time ago, while still a part-owner of the New Albanian Brewing Company (Bank Street Brewhouse had yet to be born), I started a company called Potable Curmudgeon Inc., which was to have been devoted to travel and tourism. For various reasons, this idea never came together; the last motor coach trip was 2004, and on bikes, 2008.<br />
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It's never too late to start all over again, and 2018 looks like the year for it. Over at Facebook, I've deleted the moribund Potable Curmudgeon Inc. page, in effect combining it with Roger's Simple Beer Pleasures, which has been renamed <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PotableCurmudgeon/">Roger Baylor's "Beer with a Socialist"</a> -- as has this periodic blog feature.<br />
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Beer musings will remain here at <i>NA Confidential</i>, rather than resume at the <i>Potable Curmudgeon</i> blogspace, primarily because <i>NAC</i> has a regular and reliable readership base. This also owes to my determination that beer not be viewed in a stand-alone vacuum. Beer is part of everything, and it should be considered alongside everything.<br />
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During the past few months, I've become convinced that beer consultancy might become a viable pastime. It's never been about the money for me, and I've already been free-lancing for a while as a writer. If I can add to writing a couple more small revenue streams, it will be enough to get by. Perhaps Patreon is in my future.<br />
<br />
There are several "beer education" and "beer entertainment" ideas I've been wanting to test for many years, and now seems like a good time to devote attention to them, because happily, my sabbatical since departing NABC has reaffirmed that beer is a place I want to be, personally and professionally. I just needed some time away to take care of other things.<br />
<br />
As an aside, finally getting my departure resolved in February this year seems to have had a salutary effect on everyone involved. The past three years have been weird, enlightening, depressing and joyous. They're a springboard to what comes next.<br />
<br />
Beer has been my life’s work. Beer has served as governing principle for a variety of personal interests, ranging from history to geography, through politics, and including food, travel and recreation. Beer has connected them in a way that iced tea simply can't manage, and frankly, then as now, iced tea consistently annoys the very hell right out of me.<br />
<br />
I've come to viscerally dislike iced tea, by the way.<br />
<br />
Do I have what it takes to be a beer consultant? Even I can't be sure, but I'm intent on hanging out a shingle. Today's world of beer appreciation, whether on the part of industry folks or paying customers, displays beer knowledge a mile wide and a millimeter deep. With a few good stories and a bit of soft shoe, I think there's a niche for infotainment.<br />
<br />
As many readers already know, my primary interest these days is Classic Beer -- the greatest beer hits from the 1300s through the 1900s. It's what the program at Pints & Union will emphasize (mid-June is the target date).<br />
<br />
There are times when beer hunting involves looking past the chaotic cornucopia of the present and rediscovering what always was there, patiently waiting, in plain sight. Of course, new classics are being created every day. Making sense of it all is becoming harder and harder, and maybe I can help with this. <br />
<br />
In the months to come, we’ll see where this goes, so thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
___The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-75145018102079474712018-05-12T11:45:00.004-04:002020-10-15T16:07:39.781-04:00Headlines from April 2018 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC4LhAHvQduQzFmU0TlVw-_lHSQjyjZAGGyQgKy-wG0Eq86S8EIrKGJmZ_hnltcc3LxngwWnLtIZV2jEApVly-GVcNRoxS3U62tfysmDxWEehFViF8ZfLCXcPUzxwTCMQba2_V/s1600/Biere+de+Titan+France+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1018" data-original-width="750" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC4LhAHvQduQzFmU0TlVw-_lHSQjyjZAGGyQgKy-wG0Eq86S8EIrKGJmZ_hnltcc3LxngwWnLtIZV2jEApVly-GVcNRoxS3U62tfysmDxWEehFViF8ZfLCXcPUzxwTCMQba2_V/s320/Biere+de+Titan+France+poster.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
<br />
This blog has gone on hiatus, probably permanently, and primarily because these days my thoughts about beer are being posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>. You'll find them there in reverse chronological order via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>.<br />
<br />
However, at the end of each month I'll collect the links right here. Following are April's (2018) ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-beer-beat-bock-brings-germans.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "Bock brings the Germans rushing to the beer garden."</a></h3>
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Doppelbock is the perfect example of a seasonal beer style redolent of history and faraway places, and yet deemed insufficiently sexy for narcissistic, hop-laden, shoe-gazing geeks.<br />
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No bitterness in <i>this</i> soul, mind you.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-beer-beat-mad-paddle-brewery-is.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Mad Paddle Brewery is coming to Madison, and there's a New Albany connection.</a></h3>
<br />
Having tickled the taste buds, let's have a glance to the northeast. If you ask me, Madison has always deserved a good brewery.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-beer-beat-fest-of-ale-returns-on.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Fest of Ale returns on June 2, so please allow me to revive an idea for pre-fest fun next year.</a></h3>
<br />
(New Albany Craft Beer Week) didn't come together in 2017 and probably won't in 2018, but if Andrew Nicholson and Kelly Winslow (especially these two) are reading ... there's always 2019. I'd be happy to give you both the rundown.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, 2018 will be the third year for Fest of Ale at the Riverfront Amphitheater. Gear up and get ready.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-beer-beat-this-just-might-be-pour.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: This just might be the Pour Fool's greatest rant: "Open Letter to The Bud Sell-Outs: Cowboy Up, Whiners."</a></h3>
<br />
<b>"There is one old saw that the 'owners' of these former craft breweries should take to heart and if any of you have never heard it, allow me ... 'You Made Your Bed, Now Lie In It.' "</b><br />
<br />
Ladies and gentleman, give it up for Steve Foolbody (<i>The Pour Fool</i>).<br />
<br />
It's the best summary yet offered, as truthfully attesting to the phenomenon of Trojan Zombie Afterlife Breweries and their <i>former</i> owners. Here's a relevant non-brewing history lesson. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-beer-beat-pints-for-parkinsons.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Pints for Parkinson's returns with Maibock, so let's have a look at Gordon Biersch, day drinking and TARC.</a></h3>
<br />
Spurred by the groundbreaking commuter research conducted by my friend Jeff, who works in downtown <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> -- and with a wife who does, too -- I have belatedly grasped that the #71 bus eastbound from State and Elm in New Albany (a short walk from my house) travels all the way to Jeffersonville on roughly an hourly basis during the day, stopping a mere bloc<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-beer-beat-everybody-wants-to-rule.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Everybody wants to rule the world -- maybe "craft" beer will, too.</a></h3>
<br />
This is exactly what the world of beer commentary is sorely lacking: <b>Beer with a Socialist</b>. I'm grateful to Jonathan for the idea, and will owe him a beer of three is this goes anyplace.<br />
<br />
Now, give it up for Lew Bryson and another thought-provoking (and fun) column at <i>The Daily Beast</i>.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-beer-beat-photographing-traditional.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Photographing traditional Irish storefronts for posterity, like the Railway Bar.</a></h3>
<br />
The loss of storefronts in Ireland is a lamentable cultural atrocity. It isn't restricted to pubs, but of course I'm enraptured by one of the pubs pictured in the article.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-beer-beat-this-humble-plinth-could.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: This humble plinth could be the spot where we memorialize the myriad victims of Prohibition.</a></h3>
<br />
It is imperative for the future health and well-being of the municipality that we embrace historical consciousness, hence my contention that the victims of the savage and deranged social experiment known as Prohibition -- surely America's second-worst idea ever, albeit well behind human slavery in terms of ramifications -- be memorialized, preferably adjacent to a watering hole that reminds us of what the heinous teetotalers tried to take away.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-beer-beat-speakeasies-here.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Speakeasies here, speakeasies there, and not an original thought to be found anywhere.</a></h3>
<br />
It's far easier to be "magical" when your family has profited immensely from LEGAL liquor sales, the budget is unlimited, and you're not scraping for crumbs to implement good ideas -- but money can buy neither love nor an exemption from imminent prosecution for inexcusably pretentious word abuse.<br />
<br />
The <i>CJ's</i> writer somehow keeps a straight face, this being a skill I never learned.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-beer-beat-putting-taproom-first-and.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "Putting the taproom first and building the rest of your business around an own-premise model gives a brewery unprecedented control, insight, and flexibility."</a></h3>
<br />
History is endlessly fascinating for a variety of reasons, among them the uncanny way that what goes around, comes around. In today, out tomorrow -- and destined to return when conditions change and the dialectic of trendiness (or purely efficient reasoning) ordains.<br />
<br />
This whole craft brewing revolution began very locally. You trundled down the street with a metaphorical pitcher, had it filled with beer, and hoped to make it back home without drinking it all -- or, the way it was done back in pre-Prohibition times.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/04/live-to-eat-on-beer-beat-tribute-to.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">LIVE TO EAT on THE BEER BEAT: A tribute to the late Rocky's Sub Pub and a question: What's happening at Jeffersonville's "restaurant row"?</a></h3>
<br />
It was announced today that Rocky's Sub Pub, on the riverfront in Jeffersonville, suddenly closed. Danielle Grady's newspaper coverage is linked below, but first, a short piece I wrote for LEO back in 2009, when Rocky's debuted its beefed-up tap system. Ironically, now both Rocky's and JeffBoat are gone. The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-50275618868472190132018-04-01T15:35:00.004-04:002020-10-15T16:07:40.187-04:00Headlines from March 2018 on THE BEER BEAT.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHP4tLtkb3fK3f2sAvQaAcz_vmc0b68eH_QsIIsVrZo1phw2r_B1hjNvdoXlM1eh3xjvys4mq969lxkymVqUPq4F_hq99OSzoYKgwu1cHNE-C3hsf6gzYlv06-a7xXIsxpaiSj/s1600/Pints+%2526+Union+March+30+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="954" data-original-width="960" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHP4tLtkb3fK3f2sAvQaAcz_vmc0b68eH_QsIIsVrZo1phw2r_B1hjNvdoXlM1eh3xjvys4mq969lxkymVqUPq4F_hq99OSzoYKgwu1cHNE-C3hsf6gzYlv06-a7xXIsxpaiSj/s320/Pints+%2526+Union+March+30+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>The Pints & Union build-out continues to be of interest.</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This blog has gone on hiatus, probably permanently, and primarily because these days my thoughts about beer are being posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>. You'll find them there in reverse chronological order via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>.<br />
<br />
However, at the end of each month I'll collect the links right here. Following are March's (2018) ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beer-beat-taco-steve-back-at-bsb.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Taco Steve back at BSB, and a year's hiatus for the Bloomington Craft Beer Festival.</a></h3>
<br />
On Saturday, Taco Steve debuted at the freshly painted and recently redubbed Bank Street Brewhouse; the word "cafe" never really sounded right, did it? About a dozen customers were eating and drinking on site when I stopped by around 3:30 p.m. to chat with Heather Morris, who runs the front of the house.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beer-beat-narrower-focus-deeper.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Narrower focus, deeper appreciation -- or, a few words about the Pints & Union beer program.</a></h3>
<br />
If you're curious about those five fixed taps, here's the way it looks to me today.<br />
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Guinness Stout<br />
Pilsner Urquell<br />
Fuller's London Pride<br />
Anchor Porter<br />
Bell's Two Hearted<br />
<br />
Conjecture this lineup augmented by (for example) Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, Tripel Karmeliet, as well as Steve's scrumpy; furthermore, imagine it remaining in place for two months, allowing repeated samplings of the sort that fix lasting and affectionate memories, rather than hurried reviews at a crowd-sourced scrum.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beer-beat-sunday-sales-in-indiana.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Sunday sales in Indiana: "Now that we have today out of the way it's just 7 days a week of normalcy."</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlFvuAvaxOIgECG-PUmNLQf8jld8dNyiZkYovqLTGUwt1kJnB3ChSJV_tuymVjGRz_XKi5ok_prB3itxB4tLmYQbEDe2slsZhcCzDYd5X0VdombivVUSg0edFZAjrJzuujQ0br/s1600/Sunday+Sales+Pearson.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="929" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlFvuAvaxOIgECG-PUmNLQf8jld8dNyiZkYovqLTGUwt1kJnB3ChSJV_tuymVjGRz_XKi5ok_prB3itxB4tLmYQbEDe2slsZhcCzDYd5X0VdombivVUSg0edFZAjrJzuujQ0br/s320/Sunday+Sales+Pearson.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Todd "Keg Liquors" Antz contributes this list of media coverage centering on Opening (Sun)Day, 2018.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beer-beat-lets-review-few-headlines.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Let's review a few headlines, from <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> (and Indy) Lager to Brimstone Big.</a></h3>
<br />
I had a lunch meeting on Friday, and the three of us met at the recently re-refashioned Bank Street Brewhouse for some Taco Steve treats and NABC libations.<br />
<br />
Now cast irrevocably as a member of the "former owner" camp, it still feels a bit weird for me to return as a civilian. This said, everything was fine. Taco Steve is impeccable, and the four beer samples all were solid.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beer-beat-belgian-bars-put-boot.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "Belgian bars put the boot into tourists who steal beer glasses."</a></h3>
<br />
At out forthcoming pub Pints & Union, the bottle and can selection will include beers that should be served in specialty glasses. I'll try my best to find generic examples of these, and it will work out. After all, it's about the beer, first and foremost.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, get over to Belgium. Once there, enjoy the excellence of the country's many beer-friendly drinking venues -- and get your shoes back when you leave.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beer-beat-paint-your-sombreros.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Paint your sombreros green, and Erin Go Blagh -- a timeless classic for a green-hued holiday.</a></h3>
<br />
Yes, tomorrow it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Time once again to endure the tasteless annual outbursts of shamrock-mounted hokum fueled by wretched green-colored lager, not to mention the inability of many revelers to get the holiday’s nickname right.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beer-beat-in-search-of-beerways.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: In search of beerways, with side orders of New Albany Social and Thunder is #SoIN.</a></h3>
<br />
The point of this digression?<br />
<br />
If the Southern Foodways Alliance chose to include documentation about <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> bartenders, certainly the same notions that preface folkways and foodways also apply to beer, whether as a stand-alone idea or as a subset of either (or both), and yet when I google “beerways,” most of the links that come up are about beer-themed pathways in the sense of scenic highways or bike routes.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beer-beat-this-is-why-classic.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: This is why the classic British-style pub CAN and DOES make it in America.</a></h3>
<br />
Logically speaking, there cannot be British (or Irish) pubs in America. They can be British-style and Irish-style, which is why so far during the short life of the Pints & Union project, I've taken great pains <i>to clarify that inspiration</i> is being derived from British pubs.<br />
<br />
We're building a pub, not a Disney cookie cutter.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beer-beat-england-or-one-mans.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: England, or one man's heightened cholesterol panic is another man's nostalgic repast (2013).</a></h3>
<br />
I found myself hungry for English comfort food and daydreaming about Real Ale, and with the pantry barren of Marmite, made do instead with kippers and my last bottle of Fuller's ESB.<br />
<br />
The words of Inspector Morse, classic British television police crime solver, popped into my head.<br />
<br />
<i>“The secret of a happy life is to know when to stop – and then go that bit further.”</i><br />
<br />
I was plunged into a reverie about our last trip to the United Kingdom in 2013.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beer-beat-pints-union-preview-video.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: A Pints & Union preview video at <i>New Albany Social</i>... plus the new Falls City taproom and a Michael "Beer Hunter" Jackson birthday greeting.</a></h3>
<br />
Joe Phillips did a live Facebook video earlier today at Pints & Union, courtesy of Kelly Winslow and her New Albany Social juggernaut. Embedding seems a challenge, so here's <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nasocialpage/videos/1738112602921021/"><i>New Albany Social</i> video link</a> -- as well as a couple of interior shots (below) from when I ambled past this morning and chatted for a bit with Resch's crew.<br />
<br />
___The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-78166509420068145712018-03-04T21:11:00.004-05:002020-10-15T16:07:40.472-04:00Headlines from February 2018 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQAY3j0qzMArrJjggr7qz0CNrceXt4jcdlP9F9pG6DM3MQq_1SbjykRuraRF8CaUIQmpjIJadJXOBhprtzOM178CRpYI3TvHlORlPRqhqJRHC1H1Yco73722PKBbg3Ee03X78P/s1600/Closing+NABC+February+27+2018.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1115" data-original-width="1486" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQAY3j0qzMArrJjggr7qz0CNrceXt4jcdlP9F9pG6DM3MQq_1SbjykRuraRF8CaUIQmpjIJadJXOBhprtzOM178CRpYI3TvHlORlPRqhqJRHC1H1Yco73722PKBbg3Ee03X78P/s320/Closing+NABC+February+27+2018.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
This blog has gone on hiatus, primarily because these days my thoughts about beer are being posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>. You'll find them there in reverse chronological order via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>.<br />
<br />
However, each month I'll collect the links right here. Following are February's (2018) ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
<br />
---<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-beer-beat-theres-one-small-problem.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: There's one small problem with the Growler USA franchise coming to Jeffersonville, Indiana.</a></h3><br />
Meanwhile, the <i>News and Tribune</i> informs us there'll be a new beer business down the road in Jeffersonville. The header says it's a brewpub, but I think not.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-beer-beat-just-so-you-know-devils.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Just so you know, Devil's Backbone is a Trojan Zombie Afterlife Brewery, Beer Necessities has perished, and AB InBev remains a pack o'vermin.</a></h3><br />
Repeat after me: "Pack o’ vermin." Like a plague virus, nothing AB InBev touches can be considered healthy or good.<br />
<br />
I reiterate: Follow the money. There's enough excellent beer out in this and any other market to preclude supporting vermin with your money.<br />
<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-beer-beat-pints-union-to-open-in.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "Pints & Union to open in New Albany, will be inspired by classic European pubs."</a></h3><br />
But first and foremost, Pints & Union marks a return to the ethos that originally compelled me to go into the beer business. For this opportunity, all thanks to Joe Phillips -- and serendipitously, Taco Steve (Powell). <br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/on-avenues-golden-oldie-classic-comfort.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">ON THE AVENUES: Golden oldie classic comfort beers at an old school pub? Sounds like Pints & Union to me.</a></h3><br />
Food and drink lend themselves to constant reinvention, and yet it cannot be denied that there are eternal, renewable “classics” amid the bedlam. Clichés become such precisely because they contain an element of truth, and certain aspects of the human experience stand the test of time, whether an umbrella, mouse trap or a lovely, satisfying De Koninck. <br />
<br />
In summary, for several years my troublesome contrarian instincts have been telling me that the beer climate is ripe for a principled, thoughtful return to founding values, emblemized by a relatively small, mostly fixed list of classic beers on draft, and in bottles and cans, to be accompanied by some hearty old-fashioned beer education, which seems to have been tossed aside in the era of cyber “craft” fandom.<br />
<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-beer-beat-busting-up-brotherhood-of.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "Busting Up the Brotherhood of Beer: Time to confront sexism & harassment in the industry."</a></h3><br />
Here comes the learnin'. I'd suggest diverting your gaze from Untappd, if only for a few seconds, and partaking in something real.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-beer-beat-on-crowlers-southern-beer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: On crowlers, Southern beer <i>terroir</i> and Sunday sales changes in Indiana.</a></h3><br />
Crowlers aren't new as such, but they're new to New Albany, so stop by FCBC, watch the show, and buy a can of beer to go.<br />
<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-beer-beat-twentieth-gravity-head.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The twentieth Gravity Head begets a Pints & Union update.</a></h3><br />
Mark Lasbury does an excellent job of describing what Gravity Head looks like to the uninitiated (bizarre insanity), so take it to the bank: what makes me mildly churlish isn't the absence of personal recognition, but the fact that beer history is routinely neglected these days -- and there's a lot of history to Gravity Head.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-beer-beat-akasha-brewing-company.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "Akasha Brewing Company: Karma and craftsmanship, cruising under the radar" -- from <i>Food & Dining Magazine</i>.</a></h3><br />
While Indian cosmology might make a fine category on Jeopardy!, the story of Akasha Brewing Company (909 East Market Street) in <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a>’s ever-evolving NuLu neighborhood is decidedly more prosaic.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-beer-beat-at-long-last-my-nabc.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: At long last, my NABC business divorce is about to be finalized.</a></h3><br />
Now it's 2018, and tomorrow morning -- three years after I followed Dr. Freedman's advice to pull down my pants and slide on the ice -- my ass is FROZEN SOLID, and a bit chapped, but the exit transaction finally will be complete. <br />
<br />
___The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-6898735103061554512018-02-08T20:06:00.007-05:002020-10-15T16:07:40.853-04:00Coming soon: "Pints & Union to open in New Albany, will be inspired by classic European pubs."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Yda3WhhryK5pFLDmNH7aH5TxPlYyKANf5-3tlqwNE1RPpGdT7qvz5s8sCPpujO1KgPdtEa7HlmqeSGxN-ZyhxeLfJjFQj64Bt4B1JpAwP1K1rT9VJk9Fh8P9InJFxilW56wD/s1600/IMG_3560.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Yda3WhhryK5pFLDmNH7aH5TxPlYyKANf5-3tlqwNE1RPpGdT7qvz5s8sCPpujO1KgPdtEa7HlmqeSGxN-ZyhxeLfJjFQj64Bt4B1JpAwP1K1rT9VJk9Fh8P9InJFxilW56wD/s320/IMG_3560.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
For more than a year, I've been working with my friend Joe Phillips on a pub project at 114 E. Market in downtown New Albany called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PintsnUnion/">Pints & Union</a>.<br />
<br />
On Wednesday this week, the cat slipped from the bag in the form of a fine write-up by Kevin Gibson at <i>Insider <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a></i>.<br />
<br />
Paraphrasing Robert Frost, we have promises to keep -- and miles to go before we sleep. The first link leads to Gibson's story, with a few thoughts of my own; the second offers some information about how we refer to drinking establishments; and the third provides an overview of my thought process in devising a revolutionary throwback old school progressive beer program.<br />
<br />
As there is further information to report, I'll copy here from <i>NA Confidential</i>.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-beer-beat-pints-union-to-open-in.html"><span style="font-size: x-small;">THE BEER BEAT: "Pints & Union to open in New Albany, will be inspired by classic European pubs."</span></a></h3>
<br />
First and foremost, Pints & Union marks a return to the ethos that originally compelled me to go into the beer business. For this opportunity, all thanks to Joe Phillips -- and serendipitously, Taco Steve (Powell) ... <br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<a href="https://insiderlouisville.com/lifestyle_culture/pints-union-to-open-in-new-albany-will-be-inspired-by-classic-european-pubs/"><b>Pints & Union to open in New Albany, will be inspired by classic European pubs</b></a>, by Kevin Gibson (<i>Insider <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a></i>)<br />
<br />
Leave your cellphone in your pocket, and if you want to watch the local college hoops game with some cheap wings, well, you’ll be going somewhere else.<br />
<br />
Pints & Union, which owner Joe Phillips hopes will open sometime in April at 114 E. Market St. in New Albany, will be inspired by European-style (or “Anglo-Irish”) pubs, built for conversing over a pint — or five. Even the name reflects typical pub names in Europe and the United Kingdom.<br />
<br />
“We’re going to resurrect the spirit of what a real pub is,” Phillips told Insider.</blockquote>
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/shanes-excellent-new-words-on-taverns.html"><span style="font-size: x-small;">SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: On taverns, pubs, Gaststätten and Bung -- with a Mencken chaser.</span></a></h3>
<br />
It's an understatement to say we have lots and lots of work to do, but it's good to have plans, goals and timetables. Until the grand opening, we might spend hours parsing the similarities and differences of pubs, taverns, bars, cafes and the like, as with this chat at <i>Trip Advisor</i> about three German-language descriptors: Gasthof / Gasthaus / Gaststätte ...<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/02/on-avenues-golden-oldie-classic-comfort.html"><span style="font-size: x-small;">ON THE AVENUES: Golden oldie classic comfort beers at an old school pub? Sounds like Pints & Union to me.</span></a></h3>
<br />
I’ve had enough of venues with 20 beers on tap, the inevitable majority of them IPAs, with the remainder Imperial-this, barrel-aged-that, most of universally high gravity. I’m driven to utter distraction when returning to the same venue two weeks later, only to find that 18 of them have changed, with a whole new crop of “what do you have that’s new,” which might actually mean something if there was an outside chance that the best of the new beers would reappear in less than a year ...<br />
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The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-63027809663821795292018-02-02T20:36:00.004-05:002020-10-15T17:31:22.534-04:00Headlines from January 2018 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDT3dQWNnjnVhEr0jDKEXlLvusx4fez-cTt2AMsIQ9KIieo_cMMKY7Kh3gedUy24RG5HCAJja-U72zSKmbQUIqorTFi4IudEHh7_v6DGB0WDKuMFT7RpV8Oj_93Mxkyb0hukxO/s1600/IMG_3563+%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDT3dQWNnjnVhEr0jDKEXlLvusx4fez-cTt2AMsIQ9KIieo_cMMKY7Kh3gedUy24RG5HCAJja-U72zSKmbQUIqorTFi4IudEHh7_v6DGB0WDKuMFT7RpV8Oj_93Mxkyb0hukxO/s320/IMG_3563+%25281%2529.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
This blog has gone on hiatus, primarily because these days my thoughts about beer are being posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>. You'll find them there in reverse chronological order via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>.<br />
<br />
However, each month I'll collect the links right here. Following are January's (2018) ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-beer-beat-drinking-bout-in.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "The Drinking Bout in the Cathedral Porch," or why it's time to make the Feast of Fools great again on New Year's Day.</a></h3>
<br />
Make no mistake: "Lux Optata Claruit," from the section called "Mass Of The Asses, Drunkards And Gamblers," is drinking music equal to "Gimme a Pigfoot" or "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight."<br />
<br />
One need only observe an expanded context.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-beer-beat-on-inauthenticity.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: On inauthenticity, disinformation, RateBeer and those disembodied breweries of the Trojan Zombie Afterlife.</a></h3>
<br />
If Trump were to consider deporting counter-revolutionary swine like these, I might consider voting for him.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
ZX Ventures is a global incubator, operator, and venture capital team backed by Anheuser-Busch InBev. We are a small army of futurists, dreamers, doers, <a href="https://www.mrwebsmith.com"><a href="https://www.mrwebsmith.com"><a href="https://www.mrwebsmith.com"><a href="https://www.mrwebsmith.com">design</a>er</a></a></a>ers, engineers, scientists, marketers, brewers, builders, and data geeks.</blockquote>
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-beer-beat-we-always-cook-with-beer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: We always cook with beer. Sometimes, we even add it to the food.</a></h3>
<br />
Which brings me back to your meal and beers tonight. <br />
<br />
What you’ll be experiencing tonight is something exceedingly rare in the current time, so oddly offbeat as to be a counter-revolutionary act. <i><b>Your meal tonight and those drinks accompanying it are not being crowd-sourced</b></i>. Ratings have not been consulted, polls have not been taken, and not a single selfie was harmed in the preparation of this feast. <br />
<br />
Rather, the bill of fare was selected because in the experience and intuition of Chef Fill-in-the-Blank and Anonymous Brewing, it was felt these dishes and beers belong alongside each other.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-beer-beat-how-ambitious-brew.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: How "Ambitious Brew" prefaced "I Know What Boyz Like" -- and "The Misogynist Within."</a></h3>
<br />
The (pre-Prohibition) brewers didn't know what hit them, primarily because they refused to pay attention until it was too late.<br />
<br />
Ever since Leg Spreader first oozed to the surface three years ago (really -- it was January, 2015), much has been accomplished with respect to sexism in "craft" beer.<br />
<br />
Quite a bit is left to be done, judging by another excellent piece by Bryan Roth, who is one of the most thoughtful beer writers around -- perhaps the Dave Zirin of good beer?<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-beer-beat-meet-comfort-beer-its.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT meets "comfort beer." It's undervalued, but real -- for instance, like Fuller's London Pride. Did I mention undervalued?</a></h3>
<br />
<blockquote>
1. What one word, or phrase, do you think should be used to describe beer that you’d like to drink?<br />
<br />
Comfort.</blockquote>
<br />
As I was laying out this post, another paean to comfort beer popped up in my Twitter feed, leading to immediate pangs of hunger for an authentically rendered Cornish pasty (pastie, British pasty, oggie, oggy, teddy oggie, tiddy oggin or oggy oggin) washed down with one or more adeptly pulled PINTS OF BITTER, damn it.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-beer-beat-v-grits-false-idol.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: V-Grits, False Idol Independent Brewers, their bricks 'n' mortar vegan brewery in development -- and the BSB Hangover Hoedown in 2015.</a></h3>
<br />
As has been widely reported recently, V-Grits is partnering with a brewery start-up to be known as False Idol Independent Brewers in a bricks 'n' mortar shared vegan brewery space at the former (and revered) Monkey Wrench at 1025 Barret Avenue ...<br />
<br />
... I strongly suspect V-Grits and False Idol will do quite well with this concept, and perhaps a yearly commemorative Monkey Wrench Ale would be appropriate.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-beer-beat-chili-cook-off-at-donum.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Chili cook-off at Donum Dei Brewery on the 28th, to benefit APRON.</a></h3>
<br />
Just when you thought "Bowl Season" was finished, we present the first chili cook-off to benefit Apron, Inc.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-beer-beat-this-smoked-beer-story-is.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: This smoked beer story is fine, thank you. Also: Eiderdown and Sunday sales.</a></h3>
<br />
Today's linked posting at <i>Atlas Obscura</i> strikes me as a perfectly reasonable introduction to the genre of smoky flavored beers, so naturally, I saw the article subsequently mentioned somewhere on Facebook, and found a heated debate among purists as to whether Garrett Oliver's description of a firebox was technically accurate, how such glaring errors as this fatally compromised his stewardship as editor of the <i>Oxford Companion to Beer</i>, and whether every "t" was crossed and "i" dotted -- and I was muttering obscenities to myself.<br />
<br />
Give me a freaking break.<br />
<br />
I thought: Have any of you ever stood behind a bar and tried to help a real person understand what smoked beer was all about, with the goal of encouraging the customer to try one, and maybe even enjoy it?<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-beer-beat-have-look-at-this-pints.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Have a look at this Pints&Union pub buildout progress report.</a></h3>
<br />
Later the building housed two bars, first Love's Cafe and then more recently, Good Times. It is in the process of being almost completely rebuilt from the ground up, with much of the original wood slated to be repurposed in the interior. When the work is finished, it will become Pints & Union, the forthcoming pub being sketched by Joe Phillips and yours truly.<br />
<br />
Our shared vision takes the traditional Anglo-Irish pub as a starting point. It might be described as "progressively old school," although this phrase lamentably is being used by someone else. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-beer-beat-dives-and-hives-in.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "Dives and hives" in Nawbany, a new brewery coming to Floyds Knobs, and other tales of the drinking life.</a></h3>
<br />
Sara's pub crawl also took her to Jack's, Brooklyn and The Butcher and Hugh E. Bir Cafe. Taken as a whole, her wanderings testify to a rich diversity of drinking options in New Albany, and in spite of my own personal trials and travails, I have to admit I'm proud to have played my role in it -- and look forward to doing so again.<br />
<br />
Speaking of start-ups, I too was surprised to see a brewery coming soon to Floyds Knobs (Our Lady of Perpetual Hops).<br />
<br />
___The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-70930033385715134472018-01-04T22:46:00.006-05:002020-10-15T16:07:42.611-04:00Headlines from December 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Previously, I've explained why this blog has gone on hiatus, adding that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>. You'll find them there via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>.<br />
<br />
However, whenever the urge strikes -- I seem to have settled on monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are December's ruminations, with the oldest listed first.<br />
<br />
Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-beer-beat-pervasive-fog-of-hoosier.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The pervasive fog of Hoosier regulatory wars.</a></h3>
<br />
The overarching topic of conversation was the ever-expanding intersection of beverage alcohol production, agriculture and tourism. Examples of places where these pursuits come together are farmers markets, special events and fests, and the floor plan of Huber's. <br />
<br />
What is the Alcohol and Tobacco Commission's stance on regulating these activities -- and what will it be tomorrow? Those are the questions.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-beer-beat-what-beer-guy-like-me-can.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: What a beer guy like me can learn from Master Sommeliers like Brett Davis and Scott Harper.</a></h3>
<br />
The world of wine generally remains mysterious to me, and I aim to keep it that way. Hit or miss, wine remains fun; I know too much about beer to revert to amateur status, so grasping the basics about wine suits me just fine.<br />
<br />
The educational opportunities are welcomed whenever they materialize, but I don't always seek them out.<br />
<br />
For the past decade and a half, Brett Davis and Scott Harper have represented the other side of this wine appreciation spectrum. They're the <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> area's Master Sommeliers, which is a very big deal, indeed. <br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-beer-beat-praljak-yugoslavias-civil.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Praljak, Yugoslavia's civil war, the brewery in Sarajevo and the bridge in Mostar.</a></h3>
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Let's begin with the brewery in Sarajevo, which dates from 1864 and remains in operation today. I drank the typical golden lager beer back in '87, although remembering exactly what it tasted like is another matter entirely.<br />
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Significantly, it would be difficult for any brewery anywhere to continue brewing without predictable supplies of barley and hops, but since old-school breweries were built in proximity to their water sources, the wells kept functioning -- and helped keep people alive.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-beer-beat-this-iconic-and-ironic.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: This iconic (and ironic) photo of Dan Canon and Rosa L. Stumblebus.</a></h3>
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In spite of the many reasons that seeing this photo might annoy me, only one of which pertains to the candidate himself, I can't convey my pleasure in seeing it continually pop up during coverage of Dan Canon's congressional campaign.<br />
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The photo dates to Canon's campaign kickoff party in July at the downtown NABC location, whatever it's being referred to these days.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-beer-beat-la-chasse-dauntless-beer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The La Chasse-Dauntless beer dinner menu is released, Porter versus Stout, and other beery odds and ends.</a></h3>
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We haven't had many chilly days this fall and early winter, but about a month ago stouts and porters started tasting good.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/matching-ensembles-of-cigars-bourbon.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">MATCHing ensembles of cigars, bourbon, beer and cigars at Match Cigar Bar in New Albany.</a></h3>
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Perhaps an introduction is in order, because I have the distinct impression many of my readers aren't aware of Match Cigar Bar's second location at 147 East Main in New Albany.<br />
<span style="color: red;"><i><br />
</i></span> <span style="color: red;"><i><b>(Sad note -- Match New Albany closed at the end of December. The Jeffersonville location remains open)</b></i></span><br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-beer-beat-sunday-sermonizing-about.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Sunday sermonizing about the arduous path to pints, and union.</a></h3>
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During my time as a beer revolutionary, I often asked myself what would happen when the revolution began devouring itself -- and if this isn't a perfect analogy, the question might better be stated this way: What's to be done when the beer world gets crazy, and I can't make sense of it any longer?<br />
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<b>Obviously, this is the juncture when one goes back to the mattresses and the basics ... the simple pleasures, the timeless virtues, and the bedrock foundations.</b><br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-beer-beat-bechdel-test-and-what.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The Bechdel Test, and what 1980s lesbians can teach us about beer.</a></h3>
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It's best just to read what Emma Inch has to say about what 1980s lesbians can teach us about beer, with a <a href="https://www.horseky.com/kentucky/mini-horse-farm-near-me/">mini</a>mum of commentary on my part, but a brief diversion to signpost the Bechdel Test.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-beer-beat-beer-and-christmas-truce.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Beer and the Christmas Truce, France, 1914.</a></h3>
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"The two barrels of beer were drunk, and the German officer was right: if it was possible for a man to have drunk the two barrels himself he would have bursted before he had got drunk. French beer was rotten stuff."<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-beer-beat-of-seminars-books-and.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Of seminars, books and beer: <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> brewing history with Kevin Gibson.</a></h3>
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Another friend, Bob, phoned last night. During the conversation he mentioned his membership in Rotary; bizarrely, I awakened this morning to a confusing mishmash of Kevin Gibson, Rotary and <i><a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> Beer</i> (those eight ales yesterday may have been a contributing factor) until it dawned on me that I'd previously combined these elements in a blog post -- last year, maybe?<br />
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Um, nope. It was July 16, 2015, when I connected dots to a review of Kevin's beer book which I'd contributed to <i>Food & Dining</i> the preceding year. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-beer-beat-saying-goodbye-to-2017.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Saying goodbye to 2017 with an assortment of links.</a></h3>
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Looking ahead, the fifth anniversary presentation of Tailspin Ale Fest 2018 on February 17 draws ever nearer. We'll be in Portugal, crawling from one port lodge to the next in Vila Nova de Gaia (be still, my throbbing heart), but if you'll be around for Tailspin and want to attend, it's time to start planning.<br />
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I'm guessing that NABC's Gravity Head will follow on Friday, February 23, but as Liam Gallagher once sang, it's nothing to do with me.<br />
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___The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-14407825066794883072017-12-05T22:11:00.005-05:002020-10-15T16:07:42.996-04:00Headlines from November 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Previously, I've explained why this blog has gone on hiatus, adding that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>.<br />
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You'll find them there via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>.<br />
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However, whenever the urge strikes -- I seem to have settled on monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are November's ruminations, with the oldest listed first.<br />
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Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.<br />
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Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-beer-beat-pint-of-bitter-please.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: A pint of bitter, please, because it's The Dubliners at the The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, 1977.</a></h3>
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It's the mid-1970s lineup of the Irish folk band The Dubliners, performing on a throwback British television show called The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, depicting a fictional working men's club -- a form of private pub with ale and stronger drink, in addition to indoor recreation (snooker, darts), or a haven for what Americans would refer to as blue collar workers.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-beer-beat-martin-luther-gruit-hops.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Martin Luther, gruit, hops, brewer's droop and Industrial Disease.</a></h3>
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Whether it's Buhner's or Bostwick's research, I've no idea whether any of this is entirely reputable. I always thought it was the alcohol itself that contributes to erectile dysfunction, but strict veracity isn't my point.<br />
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Rather, it's the phrase "brewer's droop" itself, and joyfully recalling how it was used by Dire Straits in the song.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/11/on-avenues-when-it-comes-to-beer-less.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">ON THE AVENUES: When it comes to beer, less might yet be more.</a></h3>
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I remember being in Prague in the mid-1990s. We’d wander through downtown neighborhoods hunting beer – sometimes hopping trams, other times the subway, but most often on foot. The objective was to find drafts from as many of the Czech Republic’s breweries as possible, and having identified these beers, to drink them straight down. <br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-beer-beat-its-cornucopia-of.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: It's a cornucopia of ephemera, from Quaff On to Lazlo Toth.</a></h3>
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"I used to occasionally drink your BUDWEISER Brand, that's how I know the name of your company, and all the fine products you make, light as well as Dark. I have a marketing idea that goes with your name since you have the same name as our new President, George Bush. Since he wants a 'kinder, gentler nation', I thought up the idea for you to sell a new beer, -- BUSH BEER -- A KINDER, GENTLER BEER."<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-beer-beat-your-brain-on-coursework.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Your brain on coursework, or expanding the mind one pint at a time.</a></h3>
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At one point in the oral history interview, I paused for breath following a rambling recollection of perhaps ten minutes' duration, all of it spent detailing fake IDs, Mario's Pizza, the family room at Steinert's, 4-for-1 Thursday nights at the Troubadour -- though omitting the famous case of Wiedemann smuggled into (and out of) the fraternity office via a trumpet case during the campus chemical cloud lockdown -- suddenly aware of my inability to remember anything substantive about any of my classes.<br />
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Or what happened to the trumpet.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-beer-beat-beer-news-overview.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Beer news overview, featuring our Bamberg correspondent; Pearl Street Taphouse's anniversary; and a Dauntless beer dinner at La Chasse.</a></h3>
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Kim Andersen is an evil man, taunting the terminally New Albany-bound (that's me) with this photo of delicious, freshly-poured Spezial Rauchbier, as snapped from his current vantage point in Bamberg, Germany.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-beer-beat-i-brought-my-passport-for.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: I brought my passport for beers at J-town's 3rd Turn Brewery.</a></h3>
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As a final indicator of my regrettable sloth in getting around to visiting this two-year-old "new" brewery, 3rd Turn already has expanded to Crestwood, 13 miles away from J-town -- this time outside the Gene Snyder Freeway (i.e., I-265) perimeter of <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> locality demarcation.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-beer-beat-sierra-nevada-celebration.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale and a stray recipe for Eastern European Sauerkraut, Bean and Mushroom Soup.</a></h3>
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At some point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I'd pre-order as many kegs of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale as North Vernon Beverage could acquire via hook or crook, and we'd pour them at the Public House for weeks on end.<br />
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Probably a keg each year was deposited directly into my own stomach. It's a wonder we ever made any money. Holiday sentimentality is utterly lacking in my interior world, and yet this annual arrival of Celebration Ale truly came to define the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-beer-beat-one-excellent-afternoon.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: One excellent afternoon spent pub crawling with beer on the periphery of the wine walk.</a></h3>
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It's entirely possible to begin a Saturday afternoon at Floyd County Brewing Company with a couple of locally brewed beers and a burger, then stroll over to Big Four Burgers + Beer for another local beer, before walking eastbound to Hull & High Water and having ... one more "craft" beer, prior to an end-of-pub-crawl night(afternoon)cap -- well, two -- at Gospel Bird, with the added bonus of a restorative dose of Fernet Angelico.<br />
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__The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-48947485272796863052017-11-04T18:00:00.004-04:002020-10-15T16:07:43.485-04:00Headlines from October 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Previously, I've explained why this blog has gone on hiatus, adding that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>.<br />
<br />
You'll find them there via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>.<br />
<br />
However, whenever the urge strikes -- I seem to have settled on monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are October's ruminations, with the oldest listed first.<br />
<br />
Some are more topical than others. In October, there were several travel-related postings using "The Beer Beat" as a label, but not as a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-beer-beat-craft-quality-and-other.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "Craft," "quality" and other beer semantics -- but independence genuinely matters to me.</a></h3>
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One conclusion of Bryan Roth's piece on the beer semantics of craft and quality is that relatively few beer consumers as yet care very much about the ownership of the brewery so long as the components denoted by "craft" are present.<br />
<br />
In short, whether the brewery is independent or monolithic/corporate just isn't a consideration because it tells consumers little about "quality" as this concept is applied to the denominator "craft."<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/10/2017-poperinge-hop-parade-part-one-one.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">The 2017 Poperinge Hop Parade, Part One: One must pour the proper foundation for maximum parade enjoyment.</a></h3>
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Back at the Grote Markt, there were leftover tokens from the previous day's visit to the "Lekker Westhoeks" beer sampling. As we sipped again on Sunday, the visiting band from Wolnzach in Bavaria serenaded the denizens of nearby sidewalk cafes.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-2017-poperinge-hop-parade-part-two.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">The 2017 Poperinge Hop Parade, Part Two: The procession itself, and where to dine afterward.</a></h3>
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Poperinge's triennial hop parade seeks to tell the story of the magic cone used in the production of beer, as placed in the historical context of the Westhoek ("west corner") region of Flanders, embracing this vicinity in Belgium as well as a slice of nearby France.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-beer-beat-from-sunday-sales-in.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: From Sunday sales in Indiana to garlic tastings, an overview of informative news items.</a></h3>
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Having recently returned from fact-finding mission to Belgium and the Netherlands, and while in Haarlem enjoying enjoyed more than one session at the Jopenkerk, it's an excellent time to remind readers that there's no better use for a shuttered church than to trasnform it into a house of beer worship.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-beer-beat-second-annual-harvest.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The Second Annual Harvest Craft Beer Hop takes place on Friday, October 13.</a></h3>
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Last year restaurateur Ian Hall and his crew at The Exchange pub + kitchen organized the first Harvest Craft Beer Hop. This year it's bigger and better, featuring a stellar lineup of downtown New Albany's food and drink establishments ... 13 in all.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/10/out-there-in-fields-or-visit-to-de.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">Out there in the fields, or a visit to De Plukker Hop Farm Brewery outside Poperinge.</a></h3>
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Luc had decided that with the weather as yet variable, he'd use the car, and so off we went for an inspection of De Plukker, an organic hop farm and brewery.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-beer-beat-beaumonts-list-of-top.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Beaumont's list of top-notch airport bars somehow prompts a Super Bock memory.</a></h3>
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For some unknown reason, Stephen missed the Super Bock Lounge at Francisco Sa Carneiro International Airport in Porto, Portugal. Seeing as it will be the next "airport of call" for the Confidentials come February, I may have to heed the call of duty and investigate.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-beer-beat-louisville-craft-beer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> Craft Beer Week VIII begins today ... in Jeffersonville.</a></h3>
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For a dram of perspective, let's glance back at the inception of the celebration in September, 2010.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/10/on-avenues-id-like-nothing-more-than-to.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">ON THE AVENUES: I'd like nothing more than to go for another ride.</a></h3>
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Regular readers know that Diana and I recently traveled to Europe, spending the bulk of our time in Poperinge, Belgium and Haarlem, Netherlands.<br />
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Kevin was a big fan of both these places, and when we returned to them a month ago, each bicyclist I saw pedaling past – there were hundreds in all – reminded me of the epic beercycling times we had. <br />
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It will surprise absolutely no one to learn that our acquaintance began in the late 1980s over beer, not bicycles. Kevin started patronizing Scoreboard Liquors, the package store where I worked, and after a brief lull (I believe he moved away for a short time) we met again when the Public House came into existence in 1992.<br />
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<a href="https://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-beer-beat-one-hundred-years-ago.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "One hundred years ago, Britain nationalized hundreds of its pubs — and invented a better drinking culture."</a></h3>
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Simply stated, speaking as one who is fascinated by World War I and British pub culture and the notion of prohibition, this is a worthy digression to which I'll be returning.<br />
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___The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-32087760106165920842017-10-05T20:26:00.000-04:002017-11-04T17:56:38.238-04:00Headlines from September 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Previously, I've explained why this blog has gone on hiatus, adding that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>.<br />
<br />
You'll find them there via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>.<br />
<br />
However, whenever the urge strikes -- I seem to have settled on monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are September's ruminations, with the oldest listed first.<br />
<br />
Some are more topical than others. In September, there were several travel-related postings using "The Beer Beat" as a label, but not as a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-beer-beat-remembering-michael.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Remembering Michael Jackson and revising the beer tasting syllabus.</a></h3>
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The Mesa gig was on August 23. I knew the 10th anniversary of Jackson's passing was coming soon, but wasn't sure exactly when; while eating lunch at Brugge Brasserie on Wednesday, I glanced at my e-mail and saw the notification of Tom Acitelli's letter perfect tribute in <i>All About Beer</i>, linked here.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/on-avenues-with-beer-beat-we-are.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">ON THE AVENUES with THE BEER BEAT: We are dispirited in the post-factual beer world.</a></h3>
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Come to think of it, contemporary cocktail-driven bar programs seldom advertise on the basis of “cheap” whiskey, do they? <br />
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Verily, it’s forever top shelf and upscale with wine and spirits, but when it comes to beer, the dumbing-down always lies waiting, just around the corner. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/on-avenues-with-beer-beat-beef-steak.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">ON THE AVENUES with THE BEER BEAT: Beef Steak and Porter always made good belly mortar, but did America’s “top” steakhouses get the memo?</a></h3>
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Perhaps the simplest answer is best. There is no documentary evidence to suggest that the customer base of such a steakhouse desires beer choice. Moreover, the profit margin on wine and liquor surely dwarfs the return on beer, so only a few popular lagers are kept around for the die-hards, and that’s that.<br />
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I’ve long since learned to mournfully adapt. Precisely because my operating assumption is that steakhouses customarily downplay beer, I harbor absolutely no expectations once I’ve resolved to dine at one of them.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/travel-preludes-mechelen-with-side-of.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">TRAVEL PRELUDES: Mechelen, with a side of Gouden Carolus.</a></h3>
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Het Anker’s flagship Gouden Carolus Classic remains a great favorite of mine, and in 2008 I was at the peak of my powers, since largely ceded, to cajole favors from importers and wholesalers. In this case it was a guided brewery tour for the group.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/travel-preludes-poperinge-and-date-with.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">TRAVEL PRELUDES: Poperinge and a date with Westvleteren.</a></h3>
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Trust me - it's really Westvleteren 12, the beer that “disappeared” from circulation when it was selected as the best beer in the world by readers of RateBeer.com.<br />
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Not that it was easy to find, even in Belgium ... even where it is brewed.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/travel-preludes-for-town-so-small-watou.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">TRAVEL PRELUDES: For a town so small, Watou packs a big gustatory punch.</a></h3>
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I've been extremely fortunate to have enjoyed more than one meal at the 't Hommelhof restaurant in Watou, founded twenty or so years ago by Stefaan Couttenye and his wife, the late Sabine Dejonckheere. On one early springtime visit, hop shoots were on the menu.<br />
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When Chef Couttenye opened 't Hommelhof, the notion of beer cuisine in general, and local food sourcing in particular, remained a minority taste even in a place like Belgium.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/travel-preludes-haarlems-awesome-cafe.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">TRAVEL PRELUDES: Haarlem's awesome Cafe Briljant is winding down (for now), but not before I have another drink there.</a></h3>
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On September 30, Rob will preside over the Cafe Briljant's final evening in business at the current location. Happily, I'll be able to drink a few beers there before this closing event occurs.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/travel-preludes-eagles-nest-tasting.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">TRAVEL PRELUDES: An eagle's nest, a tasting room; a study in brown.</a></h3>
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The Dutch word "proeflokaal" (test classroom) appears to be one of those only vaguely translatable concepts, although at root it implies something on the order of testing/tasting room, and may have originated from the habit of jenever (Dutch gin) distilleries operating sampling venues nearby.<br />
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When Peter van der Arend opened his specialty Dutch beer bar, there were only a few dozen breweries in the Netherlands. The number now is in the hundreds. He definitely was on the front end of a savory trend.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/on-avenues-with-beer-beat-getting-in.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">ON THE AVENUES with THE BEER BEAT: Getting in tune with the straight and narrow.</a></h3>
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It seems to me we’re all guilty at times of espousing a false dichotomy, in which there is mass-market corporate swill on one side and exuberant, innovative craft beer on the other, but the problem with hegemonic Cold Beer War dualism like this is that it utterly excludes a beer like Schlenkerla Märzen. Maybe it fits rather comfortably in the same metaphor with non-aligned nations of the 1970s.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/travel-preludes-finally-chance-to-visit.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">TRAVEL PRELUDES: Finally, a chance to visit the Jopenkerk -- a Haarlem brewery in a church, and with gruit beer.</a></h3>
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By 1996, the present Jopen company had been formed to brew beer in Haarlem on a regular basis, although at first it functioned strictly as a contract brewer. In 2005, after years of negotiation, Jopen purchased the Jacobskerk, and in 2010, the renovated church opened for business as the Jopenkerk brewpub.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-beer-beat-hull-high-water-is-only.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Hull & High Water is only days away, and it has me all playful about beer lists.</a></h3>
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I caught myself wondering what sorts of wine are to be sold at an inland seafood shack, then began trying to remember when (or even if) I've ever ordered wine at a seafood restaurant of any sort.<br />
<br />
Everything about Weaver's piece screams "beer," and precisely because not a soul has asked me, here are a few ideas for a solid, nautically-and-aquatic-themed beer list.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-beer-beat-how-jared-williamson.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "How Jared Williamson Found Love — and a Head Brewing Job — at Schlafly."</a></h3>
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In an effort to keep this simple: I'm delighted at Jared's career path in brewing, honored to have played a small part in encouraging it, and thrilled that he was able to go to Germany for a taste of what has inspired me for so long.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/09/on-beer-beat-and-back-in-poperinge-for.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">On the BEER BEAT, and back in Poperinge for hop festival Saturday, 2017.</a></h3>
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Poperinge's hop festival runs from Friday through Sunday every three years. I first attended in 1999, and have missed only 2011 in all the years since. Next up is 2020, and I intend to be there.<br />
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In my opinion, the festival steadily has improved from one to the next. It remains almost entirely organized and operated for the benefit of the city and immediate proximity; outsiders are welcome, and yet it's very local in nature.<br />
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__The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-14711161622566346502017-09-02T14:41:00.004-04:002020-10-15T16:07:43.870-04:00Headlines from August 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioGmk9P_kZltWRe2TdP03diPFCa8nnap-7sXnSTW8UIKHuvgmdTViUwAqyTqkKBRXrhyphenhyphenifCg-OwqQRobprpBiAIPrnLO6lHcFUcOoVN9I-LwW2Fb1MGhUZ1KimaWNwF4waQuGX/s1600/pat+in+action.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="902" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioGmk9P_kZltWRe2TdP03diPFCa8nnap-7sXnSTW8UIKHuvgmdTViUwAqyTqkKBRXrhyphenhyphenifCg-OwqQRobprpBiAIPrnLO6lHcFUcOoVN9I-LwW2Fb1MGhUZ1KimaWNwF4waQuGX/s320/pat+in+action.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
Previously, I've explained several reasons why this blog has gone on hiatus, adding that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>.<br />
<br />
You'll find them there via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>.<br />
<br />
However, whenever the urge strikes -- I seem to have settled on monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are August's ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some are more topical than others, and I'm past the point of caring about it.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-beer-beat-moon-under-water-so-how.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The Moon Under Water -- so, how does Orwell's perfect pub look today?</a></h3>
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A survey in the United Kingdom has undertaken to compare Orwell's angle with the rigors of modernity, and to update it. I think the 1940s ideal remains valid in a number of core objectives, which might be summarized by ambiguity: a "perfect" pub has to be a <i>special</i> one. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/08/30-years-ago-today-on-beer-beat.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Visiting the Carlsberg brewery just prior to the Altercation in Copenhagen.</a></h3>
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Kim was at work on Wednesday, and I knew the way to Carlsberg, so there was no doubt that Barrie's limited amount of time on the ground in Copenhagen would include a brewery tour. It wasn't necessary to twist his arm.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/08/30-years-ago-today-on-beer-beat_12.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Elephant, Mouse, wonderful friends and a Titanic Struggle.</a></h3>
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This story has been told, blogged and altogether beaten to death on a dozen occasions at various blog portals, though never before with photographic evidence. <br />
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As part and parcel of my ongoing commitment to taste and decency, I'll be sparing readers the more graphic photos, which include bodies slumped in unsuspecting doorways, phallic Lenin busts and other testaments to the oddly redemptive power of Elephant Beer.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-beer-beat-read-about-my-beer-night.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Read about my "Beer Night" at Mesa next Wednesday (August 23) with Chef Ruben Freibert's appetizers.</a></h3>
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For me, this tasting feels like my first solo gig after leaving the band, and as such, it's potentially liberating. NABC tastings eventually became necessarily restricted to our own beers, rather than the world's, and while NABC's house beers were good, it's nice to contemplate events ranging a bit farther afield. If this one goes well, hopefully there'll be more.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-beer-beat-scofflaw-flies-bird-as-ab.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Scofflaw Brewing flies the bird as AB InBev shareholders watch with preda-masturbatory glee.</a></h3>
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Now, Scofflaw's friends and foes alike at last find common cause to unite, rejecting the newborn mockrobrew to find the next greatest Northeastern IPA, and lofting those middle fingers in the precise direction this most honest of all personal salutes always should have been pointed.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-beer-beat-schansberg-explains.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Schansberg explains Sunday and Indiana's lingering sales restrictions: "Support for restrictions is driven by greenbacks more than blue laws."</a></h3>
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I've decided to post this link on Saturday so you'll have time to read it before Sunday, when you can readily purchase cold beer to go at your local brewery, but not at a liquor store or a grocery.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-beer-beat-early-new-albany-brewer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Hew Ainslie, an early New Albany brewer and Scottish-American poet.</a></h3>
<br />
Hew Ainslie was New Albany's first commercial brewer. This biographical sketch below was written by <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> goldsmith, writer and homebrewer Conrad Selle.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-beer-beat-thanks-to-mesa.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Thanks to Mesa (A Collaborative Kitchen) for a great inaugural beer night.</a></h3>
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I was a tad rusty, and a few synapses failed to fire, but overall last evening's gingerly dipped toe of a first-time-in-two-years beer sampling went fairly well. Thanks to everyone who turned out; to Chef Ruben Freibert for his nibbles (and our borrowed server Brett); and to the whole crew at Mesa.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-beer-beat-late-august-compendium-of.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: A late August compendium of links about local and regional beer.</a></h3>
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There was a time when the general rule of thumb was to wait a bit before reviewing a restaurant or brewery, this representing a tacit understanding that while no one excuses bad food, beer or service, it usually takes a while to put things into place. Curve balls are common at the start, and even boomerangs.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-beer-beat-yay-effing-yay-my-friend.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: YAY (effing) YAY -- my friend Patti and her pal Cindy get some serious ink, and I'm not talking tattoos.</a></h3>
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Here you go, Patti -- your fifteen minutes of beer fame, although honestly, it's fifteen years. You've been a rock star all along. <br />
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__The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-4619623936839862712017-08-04T12:34:00.009-04:002020-10-15T17:31:24.819-04:00Headlines from July 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHIXBUPON3hJeQ1qlejYIcF6YCVFxMiAE9VFNJ2fcOpOSjyb9ReZjVcy4k9ATqDQAxtD7jANyNDGQKV2hxMYPqe0JViWHI5W9YO6KJ8dEgBULk_OiS2Iu1BTHDX-GziW2W68g/s1600/1987-0391.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1072" data-original-width="1600" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHIXBUPON3hJeQ1qlejYIcF6YCVFxMiAE9VFNJ2fcOpOSjyb9ReZjVcy4k9ATqDQAxtD7jANyNDGQKV2hxMYPqe0JViWHI5W9YO6KJ8dEgBULk_OiS2Iu1BTHDX-GziW2W68g/s320/1987-0391.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>1987 vintage.</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Previously, I've explained several reasons why this blog has gone on hiatus, adding that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i></a>.<br />
<br />
You'll find them there via the helpful all-purpose tag, <a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Beer%20Beat">The Beer Beat</a>.<br />
<br />
However, whenever the urge strikes -- I seem to have settled on monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are July's ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some are more topical than others, and I'm past the point of caring about it.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-beer-beat-are-barstools-even.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Are barstools even necessary? There ARE alternatives, you know.</a></h3>
<br />
As David Wondrich explains, more templates of barroom <a href="https://www.mrwebsmith.com"><a href="https://www.mrwebsmith.com"><a href="https://www.mrwebsmith.com"><a href="https://www.mrwebsmith.com">design</a>er</a></a></a> than we ever realize actually derive from top-down bureaucratic standards inherited in the aftermath of Prohibition, at times abetted with Hollywood's regimented narrative. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/30-years-ago-today-on-beer-beat.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Changing an empty keg the Soviet way.</a></h3>
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Here is one of the very first sights I saw in Leningrad on the morning of July 2, 1987. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-beer-beat-dan-canon-and-welcome.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Dan Canon and the welcome return of progressive thinking at NABC.</a></h3>
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Most importantly of all, welcome back to the real participatory local world, NABC. I missed your political consciousness these past two years. It was something I'd taken for granted. Maybe it will survive without me, after all.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-beer-beat-dollars-and-cents-remain.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Dollars and cents remain the most rational arguments against AB InBev.</a></h3>
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There'll always be exceptions, but life is about the everyday. In the main, as a consumer, I'd like to know exactly where my money is going. Whenever possible, I'd like to see my money directed to indies.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-beer-beat-why-brexit-could-mean.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "Why Brexit could mean a pricier pint of Guinness."</a></h3>
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It's worth remembering that the distance from Dublin to Belfast is a scant hundred miles, less than the drive from New Albany to Indianapolis.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/30-years-ago-today-on-beer-beat-finest.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: The finest restorative Pilsner Urquell ever, upon arrival in Prague.</a></h3>
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I limped to the long, imposing counter where a brawny, mustachioed man stood next to a pair of matching taps, both pouring the exact same nectar, and with a wheeled cart filled with clean mugs. Mustering my courage, I flashed four fingers and muttered, “Pivo, prosim,” having miraculously recalled the proper words without stealing a glance at the guidebook buried somewhere in my day pack.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/30-years-today-on-beer-beat-automat.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years today on THE BEER BEAT: The Automat Koruna, one of my favorite pubs (?) in the world.</a></h3>
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You told the cashier what you wanted and paid, to be given a receipt, then waited in a customarily long line, handing the receipt to one of the white-smocked beer pourers. The reward was a cool half-liter (or more) of golden, pilsner-style Pražan beer, brewed a few miles away in Holešovice district of Prague.<br />
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You consumed your Pražan and also ate while standing at a stainless steel table. There may have been chairs at the Automat Koruna, but if so, I can’t remember them, at any rate, I didn’t ever sit. Crowds were a constant, and stand-up space sometimes at a premium. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/30-years-ago-today-on-beer-beat_15.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Worshipful pilgrimage to the Pilsner Urquell birthplace shrine.</a></h3>
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We caught a train from Prague to Plzeň, got there well before noon, and reconnoitered. From the station, the Pilsner Urquell brewery was easy to see and smell, although we knew to inquire at the official state-run Čedok travel agency (actually established in 1920, prior to communism), which surely would be located somewhere in the center of the city. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/30-years-ago-today-on-beer-beat-meeting.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Meeting the gang at the legendary Imbiss by Gleis 16 at the Hauptbahnhof in Munich.</a></h3>
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July 16, 17 and 18 are holy days in the pantheon of my beer travels, for it was on those three days in 1987 that four good friends from Hoosierland came together in Munich. I was joined by Bob Gunn, Barrie Ottersbach and my cousin Don Barry for three nights of Bavarian bacchanalia.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/30-years-ago-today-on-beer-beat-munichs.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Munich's incredible Mathäser Bierstadt, symbol of a lost era.</a></h3>
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For example, “beer halls” in the sense of the Hofbräuhaus generally do not exist in matching scale outside the city of Munich. Moreover, in 1987 a beer hall even larger than the Hofbräuhaus was our home away from home for two glorious evenings: Mathäser Bierstadt, which was tied to Löwenbräu.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/30-years-ago-today-on-beer-beat-friday.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Friday nights and Saturday mornings, Munich-style.</a></h3>
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It was Don who famously rose, grinned broadly, and disappeared. Later when asked, he insisted that his parting had been effusive and memorable, a valedictory oration surely among the most eloquent ever uttered in such an honorable establishment. <br />
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I'm here to tell you that he never said a word.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-beer-beat-i-guess-if-nabc-isnt.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: I guess if NABC isn't celebrating its 30th birthday, then I will, with a look back at the 25th.</a></h3>
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Yesterday (July 22) was the 5th anniversary of the New Albanian Brewing Company's 25th anniversary, which means the business entity variously known as Sportstime Pizza, Rich O’s Public House, the New Albanian Brewing Company (later, adding Bank Street Brewhouse, now dubbed NABC Cafe & Brewhouse) has celebrated its 30th birthday. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/30-years-ago-today-on-beer-beat-ferry.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: A ferry ride from France to Ireland, with the help of Super Valstar and Guinness.</a></h3>
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The magic moment possibly occurred at lunch in Versailles while Bob was still traveling with us, or somewhere amid the Ottersbach/Baylor excursion to Pointe du Hoc on Saturday, but I'm thinking it likely came in Cherbourg on Sunday afternoon. Of course, I'm referring to the time we drank deeply of the Super Valstar, or as it read on the label, "the big blonde." <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/07/30-years-ago-today-on-beer-beat-stouts.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Stouts galore in Cork, Kinsale and the Hibernian Bar, but in Ballinspittle, not so much.</a></h3>
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The great thing about Cork is that it had not one, but two of its own classic Irish Dry Stouts: Murphy's and Beamish. Sadly, they've long since ceased to be independent, but add the ubiquity of draft Guinness, and the city was a stout-lover's dream.<br />
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One bar we found had all three on tap at once. By contrast, there may have been two Guinness taps in all of <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> at the time.<br />
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__The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-52849245523856313212017-07-16T09:50:00.006-04:002020-10-15T16:07:44.448-04:00Headlines from June 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMFgNzgtaE5ahefn0RfS4Vdn0JQ4VnOdu8t9rKyI3uu_TLQuukB-6bNL1b9ZkatMu2nngtKHhB8LGdnOnivojh6XVUg_qW3NzMjKgHZYG9TeCNNHn6KEfZNBIXDiQdzMbnBgs2/s1600/me+and+ted.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMFgNzgtaE5ahefn0RfS4Vdn0JQ4VnOdu8t9rKyI3uu_TLQuukB-6bNL1b9ZkatMu2nngtKHhB8LGdnOnivojh6XVUg_qW3NzMjKgHZYG9TeCNNHn6KEfZNBIXDiQdzMbnBgs2/s320/me+and+ted.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Previously, I've explained several reasons why this blog has gone on hiatus, adding that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, over yonder at <i>NA Confidential</i>.<br />
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You'll find them there via the helpful all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat.<br />
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However, whenever the urge strikes -- probably monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are June's ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some are more topical than others, and I'm past the point of caring about it.<br />
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Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beer-beat-please-stop-calling-your.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "Please stop calling your legal, open-to-the-public bar a "speakeasy," and other adventures in fake news.</a></h3>
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Allow me to suggest that far too many lamentations about the scourge of "fake news" are found to emanate from those who routinely and unquestioningly absorb vast mounds of extraneous bilge written and photographed in the service of food and drink promotion.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beer-beat-falls-city-nixes-its.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Falls City nixes its previous expansion plan, and now the new brewery is slated for NuLu.</a></h3>
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Obviously, it makes little sense for the Neace family to own a brewery and for it not to supply vast amounts of beer for games played by the soccer team, in which they also have an ownership stake. This new projected brewery location is a bare mile from the proposed stadium site.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beer-beat-ted-shannon-their.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Ted, Shannon, their businesses, and what happens when creative exuberance meets that immovable capitalist object.</a></h3>
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Brugge Brasserie is safe and sound, though there have been tumultuous times for Ted and Shannon, owners of the Broad Ripple shrine to the wonders of Belgian steak frites and ale. They've been compelled by reality to make a difficult business decision regarding Outliers Brewing and The Owner's Wife, their newer ventures on Mass Ave. in Indianapolis.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beer-beat-cincinnati-area-lagers.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Cincinnati area lagers during Reds baseball on Thursday, June 8. I hear they serve Bud Light at <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> Bats games.</a></h3>
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How very avant-garde of them. Next thing you know, Bats management will admit to the existence of iPhone selfies and have a special commemorative event -- or maybe it's finally time for a Mike Calise Bobblehead Night. At the same time, periodic visits to major league parks in recent years have convinced me that in the big leagues, they're getting it. In Minneapolis in 2014 and Cleveland last year, local "craft" choices were many and varied, if predictably pricey.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beer-beat-timeless-wisdom-of-dean.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The timeless wisdom of Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon.</a></h3>
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Finally you took the abundant hints and stepped off the merry-go-round, only to be nickel-and-dimed into oblivion because now you're a quitter. You find it difficult to address all this publicly, because you can see that the behavior currently being directed against you can be explained by the same behavior once directed against them. That's life.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beer-beat-neace-ventures-acquires.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Neace Ventures acquires Tin Man Brewing Company.</a></h3>
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For now, just the press release. After U2 is finished tonight and there is time to think, maybe I'll offer analysis, but for now, I'm simply delighted for the Davidsons. They're first-rate folks and I hope this is a power move for them. And this: Damn it Neace Ventures, I was really hoping you'd buy my 1/3 share of NABC. Guess I'll keep having to e-mail that guy in Shanghai.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beer-beat-30-years-ago-today-labels.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: 30 years ago today, labels from beer hunting in Red Hungary ... and töltött káposzta at Czarnok Vendéglő.</a></h3>
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Sturdy half-liter returnable bottles were the norm. There were a handful of breweries in Hungary, including the once-dominant Dreher plant in the Kobanya district. The beers they brewed were lagers in the broad German and Austrian tradition, with an occasional dark or bock included in the range. "Imported" beer meant brands from Czechoslovakia, East German and Poland.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beer-beat-im-curious-about-origins.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: I'm curious about the origins of the smooth, crisp and milky Pilsner Urquell pours.</a></h3>
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I've been vaguely aware that the Pilsner Urquell international distribution effort of late has been emphasizing the "three pours" draft approach. I'm all aboard, and want to learn more. If my pub sanctuary project-in-development gets off the ground, this will be my daily classic house lager -- and make no mistake, Asahi as Urquell's new owner ranks nowhere near AB-InBev's level of multinational swinishness.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beer-beat-day-drinking-porter-with.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Day drinking porter with the porters at the market pub.</a></h3>
<br />
Historically, a porter is a person employed to carry burdens, as at a market. In the UK, what makes a "market pub" noteworthy is its exception with respect to allowable opening hours.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beer-beat-making-light-switch.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Making light switch covers great again, and other examples of stewed cranberries tasting like prunes.</a></h3>
<br />
File under: Slow news day. Or maybe "any publicity is good publicity," this coming from the guy who put Lenin (and Che) on the Red Room wall.<br />
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And a non-beat bonus:<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/06/shanes-excellent-new-words-we-only-want.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: We only want to get drunk, so send away the tigers and climb into your cups.</a></h3>
<br />
It is my belief that frequent drinkers of alcoholic beverages, of whom I am unrepentantly one, have about as many ways of describing our condition as the Inuit have for snow.<br />
<br />
__The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-7899035197037236622017-06-19T20:24:00.000-04:002017-06-19T20:24:15.045-04:00Headlines from May 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxH727xDHoJjHR8__abnzml1Rzkpf-uFr97PgqCw_Ldm9md8XNyTXTw26jWbNXS49S02T4YELKEwXFpoS0bA4uC5VYgv96dzoqMg-bWhl8VoPpmvyudJX3gv_KV5eGVC03okSk/s1600/Wicked+Weed+Haiku+Sell+Out.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="990" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxH727xDHoJjHR8__abnzml1Rzkpf-uFr97PgqCw_Ldm9md8XNyTXTw26jWbNXS49S02T4YELKEwXFpoS0bA4uC5VYgv96dzoqMg-bWhl8VoPpmvyudJX3gv_KV5eGVC03okSk/s320/Wicked+Weed+Haiku+Sell+Out.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Okay, okay -- I'm two weeks late.<br />
<br />
Previously, I <a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/12/allow-me-to-explain-several-reasons-why.html">explained several reasons why this blog has gone on hiatus</a>, and explained that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, over yonder at <i><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/">NA Confidential</a></i>. You'll find them there via the all-purpose tag, <i>The Beer Beat</i>.<br />
<br />
However, whenever the urge strikes -- probably monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are May's ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some are more topical than others, and I'm past the point of caring about it.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if belatedly.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-schallers-pump-has-closed.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Schaller’s Pump has closed, but why was Chicago's oldest bar called a "Pump," anyway?</a></h3>
<br />
The demise of any 136-year-old bar is both newsworthy and regrettable. What strikes me about Schaller's Pump is the name itself. Nowadays, you simply don't see too many bars referring to themselves as "pumps," although there are a few newer establishments around the country that have borrowed the rare old-school usage.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-pour-fool-nails-it-yet.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The Pour Fool nails it yet again, as "Budweiser Finds Another Sell-Out" -- this time, Wicked Weed.</a></h3>
<br />
Like others before it, Wicked Weed Brewing has died. That's unfortunate, indeed, but from the moment the ownership of Wicked Weed passed to AB InBev, this previously independent brewery was transformed into something else. Now it's Wicked Trojan Zombie Afterlife Weed. We'll always have our memories. <br />
<br />
Speaking only for myself, I wouldn't drink a WTZAW beer with Donald Trump's lips. <br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-wicked-weed-whatever_8.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Wicked, Weed -- Whatever: "Tastes of paradise can shatter mirrors" (2014).</a></h3>
<br />
<i>Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants</i> (is) by the wonderfully named Wolfgang Schivelbusch. He is not a Groucho Marx character from Duck Soup, but a German-born cultural historian operating from a decidedly (Karl) Marxist perspective.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-wicked-weed-whatever-this.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Wicked, Weed -- Whatever: "This week in solipsistic beer narcissism" (2014).</a></h3>
<br />
Given the perpetual linkages between education and personal advancement, why is it that people choose to <i>devalue</i> the notion of education, eschewing the why, how and wherefore, and substituting in their place a solipsistic, narcissism-driven, knee-jerk, me-first hedonism?<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-wicked-weed-whatever-lets.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Wicked, Weed -- Whatever: "Let's explore anti-local craft beer unconsciousness" (2013).</a></h3>
<br />
We don't need Bourbon County Stout when other versions of wood-aged stouts (and other styles) produced by genuine indies are in the same league.<br />
<br />
We don't need whatever sour specialty used to be brewed by Wicked Weed before its untimely demise.<br />
<br />
Instead, we need to log off Untappd, hide the phone, find a local brewery and enjoy a fresh beer with living, breathing humans.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-wicked-weed-whatever_11.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Wicked, Weed -- Whatever: "Localism + Beer" (2012).</a></h3>
<br />
It makes no sense to labor over writing a fresh new essay when we've all been here before, and whether or not the "keep politics out of my narcissism" caste<br />
realizes it, we've been here ever since Goose Island died.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-wicked-weed-whatever.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Wicked, Weed -- Whatever. Localism is the salve for your cognitive dissonance.</a></h3>
<br />
There are plenty of laws that might be enacted to put AB InBev in its place, but these are unlikely to be written, because who benefits the most from robber baron multinationals if not the politicians accepting their campaign contributions? <br />
<br />
Accordingly, if vile politicians give money to AB InBev with the aim of preserving monopolies and suppressing choice, why would you even consider doing the same -- even if it's your <i>precious</i> Bourbon County Stout?<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-it-has-been-three-years.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: It has been three years since BSB's original kitchen closed, so let's return to "Ice Cold WCTU (A Modest Proposal)."</a></h3>
<br />
By January of 2015, I'd decided to run for mayor and take a leave of absence, which turned permanent shortly thereafter -- and no, they haven't paid me a <i>dime</i> yet. Perhaps it's time to make an attorney rich.<br />
<br />
All in all, it's been a charmed life, and I have few regrets. One of them is that it wasn't possible to follow through on what undoubtedly was my greatest idea: <b>Ice Cold WCTU</b>, a museum and conceptual memorial to the victims of Prohibition, doubling as the unique shtick to draw customers to the brewery.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-moss-boss-and-his-l.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Moss the Boss and his L’ Eblouissant (The Dazzling), one of my favorite pubs in the world.</a></h3>
<br />
Even then, we almost missed The Dazzling. There was no sign apart from a back-lit Murphy’s Stout oval, adorning an accurate facsimile of an Irish pub front. We stepped inside, only to find the pub officially closed to make room for at least two dozen Namur locals gathered there to celebrate their recent return from a tour of Sri Lanka. <br />
<br />
At this juncture, our first acquaintance was made with the Belgo-Irish force of nature known as Alain Mossiat, to be forever known as “Moss the Boss.” Moss welcomed us, albeit a bit warily at first. His resistance began to crumble when it became evident that our beer pilgrim credentials were exemplary, and so an impromptu compromise was reached.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-starlight-distributions.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Starlight Distribution's entire inventory was destroyed by Friday's flooding.</a></h3>
<br />
Condolences to Starlight Distribution and solidarity with the recovery. The same goes for all the folks north of us who suffered damage from yesterday's flooding.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-it-should-be-in-museum.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: It should be in a museum, but the original Public House keg box has a new, loving home.</a></h3>
<br />
It was dubbed the Jouett Meekin Memorial Keg Box. For a while, I kept beer tapped to drink at home, and used the keg box for Harvest Homecoming Parade parties and occasional social gatherings. I’m quite attached to this hunk of metal and draft lines, but the time has come to find her a better home.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-odds-and-ends-from-month.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Odds and ends from the month of May. I can't remember anything before that.</a></h3>
<br />
It's good by me. Any effective strategy for dealing with sexism in "craft" beer is likely to be incremental. We're talking attitudes, and these take time. Speaking of time, I'm a history nut, and "extinct" styles fascinate me.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-beer-beat-fest-of-ale-is-almost.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Fest of Ale is almost here, though New Albany Craft Beer Week wasn't.</a></h3>
<br />
In 2016, I took a stab at organizing a New Albany Craft Beer Week to precede Fest of Ale, and to culminate with it. It's a common promotional device, and one exercised widely. It didn't happen in New Albany this year.The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-76938201141575717552017-05-13T08:39:00.001-04:002017-05-13T08:40:07.841-04:00Headlines from April 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEildCYKWzkHILh7eGzvleMO29bsF9BxnCZrk55AyL2HFCeJdel2oFssEjVas22PXhboT_-voQBIp2YRJ6aVmyxN8yBIDEU2-xeOCfNr_cijuABpUChspaANYH5dNmcNRMgGcppl/s1600/Samuel+Smith+England+2001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEildCYKWzkHILh7eGzvleMO29bsF9BxnCZrk55AyL2HFCeJdel2oFssEjVas22PXhboT_-voQBIp2YRJ6aVmyxN8yBIDEU2-xeOCfNr_cijuABpUChspaANYH5dNmcNRMgGcppl/s320/Samuel+Smith+England+2001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Previously, I <a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/12/allow-me-to-explain-several-reasons-why.html">explained several reasons why this blog has gone on hiatus</a>, and explained that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, over yonder at <i><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/">NA Confidential</a></i>.<br />
<br />
You'll find them there via the all-purpose tag, <i>The Beer Beat</i>.<br />
<br />
However, whenever the urge strikes -- probably monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are April's ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some are more topical than others, and I'm past the point of caring about it.<br />
<br />
Having noted this, I found that writing about my favorite pubs made me feel good. There may be more of it.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-beer-beat-indie-not-craft-because.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Indie, not craft, because "There is absolutely NOTHING 'independent' about AB/InBev."</a></h3><br />
I haven't gone cold turkey on the "craft" descriptor, and find myself using the word here and there (usually in quotation marks, as intended to emphasis the escalating irony), but zero tolerance is a worthy goal to which we might aspire.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-beer-beat-retro-and-dive-tavern-and.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Retro and dive, tavern and free house. Stages of development. A rumination.</a></h3><br />
We’re approaching an important local anniversary in the saga of better beer, because at some point in the late summer of 1992, the first keg of Guinness was tapped at the Public House formerly known as Rich O’s. <br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-beer-beat-hibernian-hi-b-bar-one-of.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The Hibernian (Hi-B) Bar, one of my favorite pubs in the world.</a></h3><br />
It's been 30 years since I climbed the stairs to the first floor (in Europe, that's how they're numbered) and beheld the cramped majesty of the Hi-B. Somewhere up or down another set of stairs was the loo. The publican Brian O'Donnell was a legend even then, and as I write, it is my earnest hope that he's still alive and scowling.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-beer-beat-dolphin-one-of-my.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The Dolphin, one of my favorite pubs in the world.</a></h3><br />
Few such pubs can boast a semi-official house artist. The late Beryl Cook was a painter who moved to Plymouth after the retirement of her husband. They opened a guest house nearby, and gradually Cook gained fame as an artist. Because The Dolphin was her local, several of her paintings chronicle pub life. <br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-beer-beat-brewdogs-private-equity.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: BrewDog's private equity $$$ bonanza: "Not bad for ten years of being rude about the rest of the UK brewing industry."</a></h3><br />
BrewDog's antics have entertained me for a long time. The company's success reminds us that while P.T. Barnum may have been an American, hucksterism never has been confined to just one country. I hope the founders of BrewDog make a mint, whether in dollars, Euros or pounds sterling. I'll be at a local establishment somewhere, drinking myself to sleep.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-beer-beat-jim-koch-ponders-whether.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Jim Koch ponders whether it's "Last Call for Craft Beer."</a></h3><br />
Just my two cents. It's hard feeling sorry for Jim Koch, though in some ways I do. Samuel Adams Boston Lager is one of the most important beers in American brewing history, whether "craft" or macro. It helped pioneer a whole segment, and it's still really good for what it is.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-beer-beat-st-radegund-free-house.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: St. Radegund Free House, one of my favorite pubs in the world.</a></h3><br />
Regrettably, my paean to St. Radegund Free House in Cambridge, England must begin with the sadly belated report that former landlord Terry "Bunter" Kavanagh died five years ago at the age of 75.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-beer-beat-neighborhood-dive-bar-for.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: A neighborhood dive bar for the post-craft beer world?</a></h3><br />
It's feeling like a lab rat, as though you're part of an ongoing experiment in anxiety escalation -- like an arms race, always hoppier, sourer, stronger and plain weirder; the wheel constantly is revolving, and there's nothing upon which to hang one's metaphorical chapeau for longer than one keg (a sixth barrel), lest another begin pouring the diametrical opposite.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-beer-beat-sometimes-compliance.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Sometimes compliance takes a labyrinth.</a></h3><br />
Attention, oppressed Indian(a) ATC permit holders.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-beer-beat-valley-malt-pioneer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Valley Malt. Pioneer Valley. It all comes back to me now.</a></h3><br />
And, during two recent trips to Western Massachusetts, it never once occurred to me that Valley Malt might be located nearby, as in fact it is -- in Hadley, just a few miles from Diana's niece's family in South Hadley. We almost certainly were within minutes of the malting, and may well have passed it a half-dozen while driving back and forth. <br />
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__The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-37349308375063066152017-04-11T09:35:00.006-04:002020-10-15T16:07:44.807-04:00Headlines from March 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUH479i2oA2v0SPI65AK2cEhJSLa5_YGv1WP-y1xO8VZf2R05RUx4OvNr2Mr0H0hL7Y25XYMg-rCOYUjRphiKlrFyXCgj9sVwFw7QoHY-pgMbtYi5Xc-v-ICUEeD7TmPN5xJtL/s1600/Mezcal+F+and+D+Photo+Spread.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUH479i2oA2v0SPI65AK2cEhJSLa5_YGv1WP-y1xO8VZf2R05RUx4OvNr2Mr0H0hL7Y25XYMg-rCOYUjRphiKlrFyXCgj9sVwFw7QoHY-pgMbtYi5Xc-v-ICUEeD7TmPN5xJtL/s320/Mezcal+F+and+D+Photo+Spread.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Previously, I <a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/12/allow-me-to-explain-several-reasons-why.html">explained several reasons why this blog has gone on hiatus</a>, and explained that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, over yonder at <i><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/">NA Confidential</a></i>.<br />
<br />
You'll find them there via the all-purpose tag, <i>The Beer Beat</i>. However, whenever the urge strikes -- probably monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Here is another month, with the most recent listed first. Apologies if topicality has gone out the window. I'm still groping for a working routine.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-beer-beat-assortment-of-headlines.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: An assortment of headlines for beer and dissection.</a></h3><br />
Every year is the same, and I repeat once again: <b>SUNDAY SALES ALREADY EXIST</b>. Each year without fail, someone writes a column like this one lamenting Indiana's undisputed legal weirdness, and it always ends with the broad claim that there is a prohibition on Sunday sales. But beer, wine and spirits are available for carry-out on Sunday from small Indiana's brewers, vintners and distillers -- and there are virtually no restrictions pertaining to on-premise consumption.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-beer-beat-ive-decided-to-skip-this.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: I've decided to skip this year's Session Beer Day observance. See you in 2018.</a></h3><br />
As most readers know by now, (my mother) died two weeks ago, and I'm happy to have kept my vow of sobriety (if not outright abstinence). We're never to old to learn, or to feel. Session Beer Day was to be the resumption of normality, and yet to be honest, I'm not feeling it. I can see myself having a couple of beers somewhere, just not in the previously suggested format.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/03/shanes-excellent-new-words-meets-beer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS meets THE BEER BEAT: Boontling, a local dialect made famous by Anderson Valley Brewing Company.</a></h3><br />
Hop Ottin' was a precursor to our IPA-crazed contemporary era, and it also serves to introduce today's lingo. <br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-beer-beat-bryan-roth-on-sexism.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Bryan Roth on sexism, anonymity and speaking openly about diversity.</a></h3><br />
If the guild is supported by the majority Indiana breweries, and it is, and if these breweries agree that it's a good thing for the guild to lobby on their behalf, then the corollary is for them to accept an obligation to be socially responsible -- precisely because the Indiana legal regime stipulates that irresponsibility (serving minors, etc) is grounds for the revocation of the brewing privilege.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-beer-beat-pinup-versus-pin-her-down.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "'Pinup versus pin her down': Indiana beers stoke controversy."</a></h3><br />
Last December, I was revisited by ghosts. It's a recurring phenomenon with me.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-beer-beat-airline-pricing-for-movie.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Airline pricing for movie theater drinks, although we've little idea which ones.</a></h3><br />
If I were an editor at <i>Business First</i> -- well, that's unlikely, given that business-oriented publications contain far too many numbers for a humanities major like me, and anyway, it's my habit to refrain from fetishizing grubby capitalists -- I'd ask the contributing writer why some of the following beers are tagged by brand name, but the wines are identified by style.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-beer-beat-highlights-but-no-lites.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Highlights but no Lites, or a beer news roundup.</a></h3><br />
Coincidentally, as I ponder the most recent effort (fingers crossed) to bring the NABC buyout saga to a conclusion, All About Beer offers a wonderful tip about the power of realism.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-beer-beat-no-beer-but-whole-lotta.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: No beer ... but a whole lotta mezcal in the new edition of <i>Food & Dining</i>, including a previously unpublished feature-length essay.</a></h3><br />
The assignment began as a column-length look at <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a> resident Marcos Mendoza and his Mala Idea line of mezcal, then John Carlos White turned me loose to write about mezcal at length -- and at deadline, we'd see where it took me.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-beer-beat-hopcat-is-craft-beer.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "HopCat is the craft beer lover’s meow."</a></h3><br />
Since <i>Food & Dining</i> is a quarterly, I wait until the current issue is published, then backtrack three months for the reprint, so this profile of HopCat is from Winter 2016; Vol. 54 (Aug/Sept/Oct) -- and yes, HopCat is a chain pub and eatery.<br />
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background: url("https://resources.blogblog.com/blogblog/data/rounders3/icon_arrow.gif") 10px 0.5em no-repeat rgb(238, 238, 204); border-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); border-image: initial; border-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 1px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 23.3091px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 2px 14px 2px 29px;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-beer-beat-revenge-of-analog-in.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">THE BEER BEAT: The revenge of analog in terms of drinking beer? I like the idea.</a></h3><br />
The single most memorable beer article I came across during the past week didn't so much as mention beer, not even once. Instead, the article in question is a brief rumination on the message to be gleaned from a new book by David Sax called <i>The Revenge Of Analog: Real Things And Why They Matter</i>.<br />
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__The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-30232908470855982692017-03-03T09:15:00.008-05:002020-10-15T16:07:46.504-04:00Headlines from February 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Previously, I <a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/12/allow-me-to-explain-several-reasons-why.html">explained several reasons why this blog has gone on hiatus</a>, and explained that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, at <i><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/">NA Confidential</a></i>.<br />
<br />
You'll find them there via the all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat. However, whenever the urge strikes, I'll collect a few of these links right here.<br />
<br />
Here are another month's worth of them, with the most recent listed first. One of my columns sneaked in there, too.<br />
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Apologies if topicality has gone out the window. I'm still groping for a working routine.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-beer-beat-some-great-ink-for-floyd.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Some great ink for Floyd County Brewing Company.</a></h3>
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Crucially for Floyd County Brewing Company, the business is a classic brewpub model. The beer is brewed and consumed in-house. It's the right model for the here and now. The object is to dial in the beer at FCBC's home base, and then become a can't miss destination for local beer lovers.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/02/on-avenues-stern-side-view-of-gravity.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">ON THE AVENUES: A stern side view of Gravity Head, nineteen times over.</a></h3>
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Gravity Head might be staged differently, but as they pertain to what unexpectedly has become a bona fide tradition, an array of minor and often weirdly eccentric points adds up to a greater sum.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-beer-beat-compendium-of-local-and.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">THE BEER BEAT: A compendium of local and regional craft beer headlines.</a></h3>
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Once upon a time the pace of change in regional brewing circles was fast, but not so rapid as to defy the efforts of an intrepid observer or two to consistently document the phenomenon.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-beer-beat-why-not-session-beer-day.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Why not a Session Beer Day pub crawl in downtown New Albany?</a></h3>
<br />
With Session Beer Day 2017 less than two months away, it's time for me to decide how I'll be honoring the occasion this year, and here's what I've come up with. This year, I'd like to make my Session Beer Day stroll in downtown New Albany. You're welcome to join me.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-beer-beat-you-may-need-pickle-brine.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">THE BEER BEAT: You may need pickle brine after the Stupor Bowl, or throughout Trump's term.</a></h3>
<br />
Welcome to the pickleback: A whiskey shot with pickle brine as a chaser. Thanks to K for the link.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-beer-beat-there-is-not-one-freaking.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">THE BEER BEAT: "There is not ONE FREAKING IOTA of truth about how AB got started in this beautifully-crafted, button-pushing, faux-sensy-poo, piece o’ trash ad."</a></h3>
<br />
For those readers who may be coming late to my beer-related scribblings, know that Stevefoolbody is my hero. He is so awesome that typically I have nothing whatever to add, and merely attach a link and brief teaser to encourage you to go to his page and read.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beer-beat-it-took-week-to-get.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">THE BEER BEAT: It took a week to get the details straight, but BBC is leaving its current St. Matthews location after 23 years and hopes to reopen elsewhere in <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a>.</a></h3>
<br />
So, to recap: Owner Pat Hagan bowed (intelligently, in my view) to leasing and area development realities and now hopes to move BBC to a new location, one that will allow the expansion of brewing into bottling and/or canning. The 3rd Street brewery and restaurant remain open, and the 4th Street branch will reopen when the Kindred building is finished. The coming week will be a victory lap for BBC in St. Matthews, and I hope to make it over and learn the future of my Wort Mug, number 66.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beer-beat-no-selfies-necessary.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">THE BEER BEAT: No selfies necessary, because localism is why I believe the impending Falls City expansion is good news.</a></h3>
<br />
But localism as an economic doctrine provides another way of looking at the world – capitalism with a more human face, complementary to a good beer ethos, and also a different collection of information that permits tying a singular love of mine (beer) to another (the community in which I live, and how to make it better). It offers sense and sensibility out of relative scale, and suggests differing standards of value and achievement.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beer-beat-tailspin-ale-fest-returns.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Tailspin Ale Fest returns to Bowman Field on Saturday, February 18.</a></h3>
<br />
In my view, Tailspin Ale Fest has become <a href="http://www.louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com"><a href="http://louisvilleky.com">Louisville</a></a> KY</a>'s premier beer festival, and it's the brainchild of New Albany's own Tisha Gainey.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beer-beat-green-mouse-sez-rumors.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">THE BEER BEAT: Green Mouse sez the rumors are unsubstantiated and it's business as usual at BBC St. Matthews.</a></h3>
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If and when further information becomes available, I'll let readers know. Until then ... can someone bring daddy a nice growler of David Pierce's signature BBC APA? I've been known to pay cash for such favors.<br />
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<a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-past-month-on-beer-beat.html" style="color: #ba8247; text-decoration: none;">The past month on THE BEER BEAT.</a></h3>
The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-67984781887706051642017-01-22T19:34:00.001-05:002017-01-22T19:34:05.370-05:00The past month on THE BEER BEAT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqOD05z7Mm1Z4fMj_WI2yKC2pHpQLmr68AzT3PjSYv7bm_lEO0thAWxnEyP71aBC546V2Kf4pTB5dRgYUoupXPg00XmG1d8Dz8urn8Mqsy4zpGcofLQZxyOEA4_e3GolQKrFEL/s1600/head-happiness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqOD05z7Mm1Z4fMj_WI2yKC2pHpQLmr68AzT3PjSYv7bm_lEO0thAWxnEyP71aBC546V2Kf4pTB5dRgYUoupXPg00XmG1d8Dz8urn8Mqsy4zpGcofLQZxyOEA4_e3GolQKrFEL/s320/head-happiness.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Previously, I <a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/12/allow-me-to-explain-several-reasons-why.html">explained several reasons why this blog has gone on hiatus</a>, and explained that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, at <i><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/">NA Confidential</a></i>. You'll find them there via the all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat. However, whenever the urge strikes, I'll collect a few of these links right here.<br />
<br />
Here are a month's worth of them, with the blockbuster first.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beer-beat-rumorama-insists-that.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: small;">THE BEER BEAT: The rumorama insists that Bluegrass Brewing Company (St. Matthews) will soon cease operations, but is a plot twist coming?</span></a></h3>
<br />
As for my sporting habits, times have changed, as have the beers that used to accompany them.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beer-beat-football-how-it-used-to.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: small;">THE BEER BEAT: Football, how it used to be for me, why I seldom watch it at all -- and don't even mention those horrid beers.</span></a></h3>
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My recent podcast was tremendous fun.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beer-beat-in-which-we-talk-beer-on.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: small;">THE BEER BEAT: In which we talk beer on the "Flies on the Wall" podcast at Crescent Hill Radio.</span></a></h3>
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For greater insight as to why people would ever stand in line for rare beers, there is this wonderful essay by Bryan Roth, otherwise known as "my kind of beer writing."<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beer-beat-rarity-beer-quality.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: small;">THE BEER BEAT: Rarity, beer quality, authenticity, and why it's so difficult to love the beer you're with.</span></a></h3>
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Lew rocks.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beer-beat-beer-and-whiskey-that-lew.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: small;">THE BEER BEAT: The beer and whiskey that Lew Bryson wants to drink in 2017.</span></a></h3>
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There was a roundup of Southern Indiana beer news.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beer-beat-news-and-views-from-local.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: small;">THE BEER BEAT: News and views from local breweries, and an incredible Uff-da.</span></a></h3>
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And, if you're not aware of the Pearl Street Taphouse, you need to be.<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beer-beat-pearl-street-taphouse-in.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: small;">THE BEER BEAT: The Pearl Street Taphouse in downtown Jeffersonville.</span></a></h3>
The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-39369769880103015772016-12-18T09:19:00.001-05:002016-12-18T09:20:25.434-05:00The advent of THE BEER BEAT, and three links to it. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV1FbrrPBdLbHCDRtrNHpQY39ZQvw_9-KOMsUbJ7fY7v3nTIBZ-eC6NCCCx8jKx2TrBKe9KwJXL8ncuNiA3DvWTHKsJHs4Mflby1R6NDZakvoDA1RxOm9Pj0PJnSli95lcG7m0/s1600/Diversity+Article+Naughty+Girl.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV1FbrrPBdLbHCDRtrNHpQY39ZQvw_9-KOMsUbJ7fY7v3nTIBZ-eC6NCCCx8jKx2TrBKe9KwJXL8ncuNiA3DvWTHKsJHs4Mflby1R6NDZakvoDA1RxOm9Pj0PJnSli95lcG7m0/s320/Diversity+Article+Naughty+Girl.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
Previously, I <a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/12/allow-me-to-explain-several-reasons-why.html">explained several reasons why this blog is going on hiatus</a>, indicating that my thoughts on beer will be posted alongside my thoughts on everything else, at <i><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/">NA Confidential</a></i>. You'll find them there via the all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat.<br />
<br />
However, whenever the urge strikes, I'll collect a few of these links here. First, a flashback.<br />
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<blockquote><b><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beer-beat-addressing-diversity-in.html">THE BEER BEAT: Addressing diversity in "craft" beer, with Naughty Girl once again on the wrong side of the debate.</a></b><br />
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Let’s put an old saw to the test: Is it really true that any publicity is good publicity?<br />
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Specifically, if a New Albanian Brewing Company beer and beer label, as conceived on my watch in 2011, appears alongside an article by a national recognized blogger in 2016 and then is linked on Facebook by a brewing superstar, that’s wonderful, right?</blockquote><br />
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Next, when good people succeed.<br />
<br />
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<blockquote><b><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beer-beat-localism-in-action-from.html">THE BEER BEAT: Localism in action, from Big Woods to Quaff On, now also Hard Times.</a></b><br />
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I've always like the people at this company, and it's been instructive to watch as they've expanded the business, geographically and in terms of product lines. </blockquote><br />
<br />
Finally, saying what you mean and meaning what you say.<br />
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<br />
<blockquote><b><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beer-beat-words-like-local-and.html">THE BEER BEAT: Words like "local" and "unique," and beers for cold weather.</a></b><br />
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According to what I'm hearing, Flat12 as currently constituted has no plans to brew in Jeffersonville. Of course, this could change.</blockquote><br />
__The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-11564776345853179882016-12-10T19:31:00.001-05:002016-12-10T19:33:36.094-05:00Allow me to explain several reasons why this blog is going on hiatus (psst ... go to NA Confidential instead). Ever since I began the process of disengaging from NABC, which diligent future historians will observe taking place at various intervals in the year 2015 (and which isn't yet concluded), my relationship with beer has been in flux. <br />
<br />
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just different.<br />
<br />
The world of beer has changed considerably during the past decade, and so have I. So have all of us. At times these days I want to throw Molotov cocktails at what I perceive beer is in the process of becoming, but at other times I love it as much as I always did.<br />
<br />
Yeah, it's complicated. <br />
<br />
To get to the point, and stated simply, my head currently isn't in alignment with the effort required to maintain two blogs. For whatever reason, <i><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/">NA Confidential</a></i> -- which I've always referred to as my "public affairs" outlet -- has absorbed most of my time in recent years, with results that better reflect my interests, and that have produced gains in terms of readership.<br />
<br />
As my column there Thursday explains, it makes more sense to fold my beer writing into <i><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/">NA Confidential</a></i>, while keeping <i>The Potable Curmudgeon</i> as an archive (and ready source for cannibalizing past ideas).<br />
<br />
All of these considerations also feed into an impending personal reality check. It was planned for me to take a year off to regroup, and the missus has been patient, but now the year is over. The column explains it; just know that easing back into the game via altered circumstances is the path I'll likely be pursuing. <br />
<br />
In the meantime, look for beer writing at <i><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/">NAC</a></i> prefixed by THE BEER BEAT, and remember that everything I've just explained could be obsolete the day after tomorrow. I'm playing things by ear, readying to go to the mattresses, and whichever other tired cliche might be inserted here.<br />
<br />
<i>Of course, anyone who might be in the market for an unemployed curmudgeon who can write a bit and probably is otherwise unemployable might be able to delay my entrepreneurial plans. </i><br />
<br />
To those of you who've been eavesdropping here these many years, I cannot thank you enough. There'll yet be a <a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/11/im-taking-some-time-off-posting-will.html">few things to tidy up here</a>, and I'll get to them soon enough. Cheers!<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2016/12/on-avenues-its-never-too-late-to-beer.html"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ON THE AVENUES: It’s never too late to beer all over again.</span></b></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It isn’t that I’ve fallen out of love with beer. We’re not divorced or anything. A better word is estranged, which implies an alienation of affection, but doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility of reconciliation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">These thoughts occurred to me recently as I was contemplating the future of <i><a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/">The Potable Curmudgeon</a></i>, my beer-themed blog. It dates to 2005, and has enjoyed some fine moments over the years, though recently my commitment to maintaining it has waned.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Slightly less so <i><a href="https://www.facebook.com/PotableCurmudgeon/?fref=ts">Roger’s Simple Beer Pleasures</a></i>, a page at Facebook that I started in late 2015. It is far better suited to the truncated social-media-driven attention spans ruling the planet at present, including my own, at least as it pertains to beer and brewing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In spite of my efforts, I can’t seem to make <i>The PC</i> blog and <i>Simple Pleasures</i> work in harmony the way <i>NA Confidential’s</i> blog and Fb page do, primarily because my efforts are half-hearted. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There’s the rub. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I care more about what I’m writing at <i>NA Confidential</i> than <i>The Potable Curmudgeon</i>, so I’m willing to make the time at one and not the other. Taking it a step further, this indiscipline owes to my sense of estrangement from the world of beer and brewing. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy writing about beer, thinking about it and even drinking it, just that it isn’t a daily priority at present. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Consequently, I’ll be altering the routine in the weeks to come. The beer writing I undertake will be featured here at <i>NA Confidential</i>, and I’ll allow <i>The Potable Curmudgeon</i> to remain dormant as an archive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Perhaps Fridays will be <i>NAC</i>’s Beer Day, or some such. Since so much of my beer writing has sought connectivity between beer and other interests in my life, putting them all in one place rather than separating them makes the most sense.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That is, until it doesn’t. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2016/12/on-avenues-its-never-too-late-to-beer.html">Read the rest here.</a></span></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>__</i>The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10691910.post-57059820120278390452016-11-28T18:48:00.000-05:002016-11-30T19:42:37.069-05:00AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Bourbon-barrel aged Imperial Stouts.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Bourbon-barrel aged Imperial Stouts.</b><br />
<b><br />
</b> <i><b>A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.</b></i><br />
<br />
<i>I'm always an quarterly issue behind when it comes to reprinting my columns from Food & Dining Magazine. This one is from Fall 2016; Vol. 53 (August/September/October).</i><br />
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<b><a href="https://issuu.com/foodanddiningmagazine/docs/f_d_fall16/14">Bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stouts</a></b><br />
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You’ll hear one sort of pitch at a sales meeting, and see another thrown during a baseball game, but brewer’s pitch is completely different. <br />
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Brewer’s pitch is a resinous substance used to line wooden barrels so liquid doesn’t come into contact with the wood. <br />
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That’s because exposure to a wooden barrel affects the flavor of its contents, and generally over the centuries, brewers have preferred their wooden vessels to be neutral. Brewer’s pitch remains a handy means to this end, and anyway, stainless steel long ago supplanted wood for beer’s storage and serving. <br />
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<i>But what if beer’s modification is the stated aim of the exercise? </i><br />
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If submerged wood can positively complement the taste of beer, as with white ash chips or oak spirals, and if wooden cooperage harboring funky microorganisms can leverage its own intended outcome (for example, in some styles of sour beer), then barrels formerly harboring spirits offer a wide potential range of flavor and aroma characteristics for beers aged inside them.<br />
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Consider an emptied oak Bourbon barrel. It was charred in order to properly host Kentucky’s indigenous corn-based liquor, and after a period of years, the mellow finished whisky was removed for bottling to proof. <br />
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However, this once-used barrel retains considerable evidence of Bourbon. Why not repurpose these flavors and aromas by aging beer in it?<br />
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It seems a forehead-slapping moment, and yet the genuinely strange thing is how long it took for someone to grasp the possibilities.<br />
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Lost Abbey brewmaster Tomme Arthur, no stranger to the nuances of barrel aging, identifies Bourbon Barrel Zero in this 2013 excerpt from All About Beer magazine.<br />
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In 1992, Greg Hall from Goose Island Beer Co. in Chicago might very well have become the first American brewer to produce a bourbon-barrel-aged beer when he filled six oak barrels that previously contained Jim Beam. He poured this experiment at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in Denver that fall, inducing rumors, appreciative nods and whispers of something entirely new. <br />
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I can second Arthur’s emotion, for at a GABF vintage beer tasting in 1997, the late, great beer writer Fred Eckhardt was seated next to me. When I asked him the beer he considered the festival’s finest ever, he didn’t hesitate: Goose Island Bourbon County Stout. <br />
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In our contemporary craft beer era, all manner of spirit-soaked barrels are being merrily procured by enterprising craft brewers as creative mediums for aging and experimentation. <br />
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The number of beer styles deemed appropriate for barrel again also has expanded, although certain combinations strain credulity to such an extent that I’m almost afraid to joke about Organic Free Range Mezcal-Barrel-Aged Imperial Kolsch lest it somehow comes to tragi-comic fruition. <br />
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<b>No timelessness for the impatient</b><br />
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Such embellishments are hip, and I’m square. 25 years are more than enough to concede the elegant pre-eminence Hall’s foundational Bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stout. <br />
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Hall sourced oak Bourbon barrels in Kentucky, and he filled them with Imperial Stout, the stout family’s brawniest hitter. This inspired pairing remains the bellwether. Bourbon and Imperial Stout are burnished and challenging, richly assertive and subtly intricate. They bring out the best in each other.<br />
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At strengths typically in excess of 10% abv, Imperial Stout’s dense, black, viscous intensity lends itself to a panoply of descriptors, including roastiness, coffee, caramel, smoke, vanilla, sultana, plums, figs, cherries, chocolate, brown sugar, licorice, fruit cake and bubblegum. <br />
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A wooden barrel saturated with Bourbon offers similar and complementary flavors and aromas, as well as a pinch of added alcoholic potency. The brewer’s objective is to choreograph these delightful factors by calibrating, aging and blending with ultimate “Bourbon Stout” balance in mind. <br />
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Consequently, Bourbon-barrel aging is a thoughtful, time-consuming process. Used barrels must be visually inspected for imperfections, and kept from drying out. While uncut whiskey is an effective disinfectant, it’s better to fill the barrels with beer relatively quickly, lest undesirable microorganisms find a safe haven.<br />
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Once filled with beer, the barrels need a place to rest, and you’ll sometimes see stacks of barrels in the brewhouse. Ambient temperatures matter, as well as ready access, because brewers will need to pull samples for taste testing. Often they’ll drill holes in the wood and use stainless steel nails as plugs after regularly scheduled nipping. <br />
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Just as most Bourbons are blended to achieve uniformity of character, typically beers from multiple Bourbon barrels are, too. Brewers often blend in a second batch of base beer. Aging and blending take time and money, explaining why Bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stouts tend to be limited cool-weather seasonal releases, both rare and expensive. <br />
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<b>Save that cigar for the second bottle</b><br />
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Imperial Stout is ideal, but it isn’t the only style of beer suitable for Bourbon-barrel-aging. From the hoppy (Double India Pale Ale, Barley Wine) to the malty (Doppelbock, Belgian Quadrupel), characteristics of Bourbon can meld with those beer styles boasting the heft and complexity to compete. <br />
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Balance, smoothness and harmony are the watchwords when seeking worthy Bourbon-barrel-aged beers. Beer and barrel must co-exist as equals, with discernible contributions from each. If they don’t, a glorified boilermaker is the likeliest outcome.<br />
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<b>Here’s how not to do it</b><br />
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<u>Head Brewer:</u> “We’re making our Bourbon-barrel-aged beer today.”<br />
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<u>Assistant Brewer:</u> “Great. How many fifths of Old Rotgut should I pick up at the package store?” <br />
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A small number of Bourbon-barrel-aged beers are available year-round (Goodwood Bourbon Barrel Stout, New Holland Dragon’s Milk). Others are the sporadic targets of fervent cult appeal, like Against the Grain’s Bo and Luke. <br />
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Plan now for the approach of winter. On-line ratings aggregators like ratebeer.com and beeradvocate.com are the best sources for building your shopping list. Brewery web sites list seasonal release dates, and it’s always a good idea to befriend the beer buyer at your neighborhood package outlet. <br />
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Goose Island Bourbon County Stout endures, more widely available than ever thanks to AB-InBev, the Chicago brewery’s parent. BCS remains an impeccable example of Bourbon-barrel aged Imperial Stout, these days the elder statesman in an extensive, ever-changing yearly barrel-aged program. Even I can remember the annual release date for BCS.<br />
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It’s <i>Black</i> Friday, on Thanksgiving weekend. <br />
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November 21: <b><a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/11/after-fire-hip-hops-goodwood-brewing.html">AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Goodwood Brewing Company: Touched by a Barrel.</a></b><br />
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October 17: <b><a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/10/after-fire-these-old-old-habits-die-hard.html">AFTER THE FIRE: These old, old habits die hard.</a></b><br />
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October 10: <b><a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/10/after-fire-great-taste-of-midwest-is.html">AFTER THE FIRE: The Great Taste of the Midwest is the best beer fest of them all.</a></b><br />
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October 3: <b><a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/10/after-fire-new-albanys-harvest.html">AFTER THE FIRE: New Albany’s Harvest Homecoming occupation isn't alleviating my "craft" beer Twitter depression.</a></b><br />
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September 26: <b><a href="http://potablecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2016/09/after-fire-seasonality-of-oktoberfest.html">AFTER THE FIRE: The seasonality of Oktoberfest in time, beer and year.</a></b><br />
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__The New Albanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10757531658514051905noreply@blogger.com0