On tasting Cincinnati and the stalking Budweiser attorney.

Brew Professor looks to be a good place to keep up with Cincinnati beer news, which has exploded so rapidly in recent years that a casual observer is hard-pressed to keep tabs.

When I caught the headline below, a song came to mind.

The problem is, I've heard it so many times before.

Taste of Cincinnati, yes. Drinks of Cincinnati, no, by Mike Stuart

One of city’s largest summer festivals, Taste of Cincinnati, is intended to showcase local culinary talent and unique local flavors. Most would agree they succeed on this front but their selection of Cincinnati beers have some room for improvement.

For a food festival there are certainly a large number of beer options (warning, some of these “beers” are Bud Light’s mixed drinks). However, for a locally focused festival, it’s sorely lacking an accurate representation of what is produced locally.

Of the 68 beers, only 15 are local from four of the more than 20 locally operating breweries. Yep, about 20% of the beers offered are made here in our community. The rest range from Cleveland to Kalamazoo to St. Louis to Portland.

Paying to play in whatever convoluted fashion serves only to remind us that American capitalism never has been pure or pristine, and when we hear a politician suggest such, our first reflex should be to reach for the rotten fruit and begin mimicking big league fastballs down the (wind) pipe.

In turn, this reminds me of a tangentially related story at Facebook, as relayed by Tom "Orange Blossom Brewery" Moench, who once saved my life in Orlando by providing alcoholic diversions as we were stranded for an afternoon during a family reunion. I've never thanked you enough, Tom, and your words here are sheer poetry.

What are the chances
I walk into a bar downtown and step up to order a couple craft beers for my crew
The fellow next to me barks out
"I'm a Budweiser attorney, explain to me the big deal this craft beer shit"
I tried to engage him, telling him that Bud is fast food and craft is fine dining
"where do you get off selling 3pks for $9" he says
I then tell him I don't want to talk to him anymore
He wouldn't shut up
We walked 25 feet away and he got up and came over to continue berating craft beer
I say "don't come at me like that"
He then insists on buying us Buds
We walk outside to get away from the fool but here he comes, beers in hand
I refuse them, and he tells me he knows the cops and will wipe the street with me
I hold my own hoping he will take a swing, but he was trying to incite me to swing also
I even called him "little fellow" (he was 6'3', I'm 6'4")
Stay Classy Bud

Bud's always classy, Tom.

Like Joe Stalin.

There is something wrong with this picture.

To begin, let it be understood that my head does not customarily explode over the topic of "proper" glassware for better beer.

That said, on Friday evening, we stopped for a bite in an out-of-town eatery. We were away form the weekend. My first beer was a draft Rodenbach Classic, served in a signature glass.

My second was a bottle of Orval, coming in at $9. The price seemed normal to me. The bottle was brought to our table by a server who already had conceded that he was new. He popped the cap, placed the bottle on our table, and started to walk away.

Pardon me, I said. Could I, er, have a glass for this?

Of course.

As you can see, he returned moments later with a chilled shaker pint, of which he was very proud, pausing to observe how nicely cold the glass was.

Okay. It's better than drinking from the bottle.

I shrugged and enjoyed my merguez sandwich. Every other aspect of our dining experience was exemplary -- apart from Orval in a chilled shaker pint, and it isn't really a server's fault that he or she has not been taught properly. That's management's job.

Now, teaching moments are elusive on a Friday night in any busy place, and I offer none of this in a spirit of "slag 'em with one star" internet snark. As noted, things were fine otherwise. I don't even believe that signature glasses are necessary; experience has taught how much more likely it is that a branded Orval glass goes out the door in a coat pocket or purse than bare, see-through glass.

A generic, wide-rimmed, quasi-Belgian glass of any sort would have worked just fine with my Orval.

My overarching point is gentle and constructive: Folks are going to detect a higher bar and expect more from an eatery called Taste of Belgium, because in Belgium, there are precious few frosted shaker pints. Just saying.

I still heartily recommend Taste of Belgium, which is located on Vine Street in OTR.

Night of the living plastic bottled swill Hell … but a good time for the discerning.

Imagine that you’ve paid the very reasonable price of $80 for a chartered bus seat, a ticket in the right field stands to watch the Chicago Cubs vs. the homestanding Cincinnati Reds, a pre-game picnic meal of barbecue and the fixings, and all the craft draft beer you can drink before and after the game.

Imagine that the three craft beers on tap on the bus are BBC APA (Main & Clay), Browning’s She-Devil IPA, and Browning’s Helles, the latter a German-style golden lager perfectly familiar to any person who has ever suckled an ice-cold Bud Light.

Imagine that such an unprecedented deal isn’t quite good enough for you, so you ignore the craft beer you’ve already paid for, pack a cooler with canned and bottled swill, throw back a dozen or more overpriced “waters,” as Sergio would call them, during the ballgame, and at a moment of supreme self-revelation during the journey home, begin belting out an off-key version of the best-forgotten, hoary seventies paean to piddling Parrotland, “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw” – all the while believing that in your choice of beer, music and life, you’re being somehow clever and the life of the party.

I can’t imagine it, although I experienced it on Saturday, July 28.

However, it is my pleasure to report that entirely apart from redneck contingents originating in my (sighhh) home town of New Albany, there is good beer to be found at the Hofbrauhaus Newport, and even at Great American Ball Park itself. Within 100 yards of our seats at the home field of the Reds, I found Great Lakes Burning River Pale Ale, BarrelHouse Red Legg and an unidentified Flying Dog, along with a Red Hook IPA -- all ridiculously priced at $7.25 per plastic cup, but at least bearing tangible sign of hops and hope.

Meanwhile, mainstream America supped predictably at the altar of mainstream plastic bottles as the Reds bowed unconvincingly to the Cubs by an 8-1 score before a sellout “home” crowd of 42,500, of whom at least six of ten were Cubs, not Reds, supporters.

That’s surreal, but not as surreal as the bizarro-world spectacle of swill-hounds eschewing all-inclusive craft beer for the nadir of American brewing. Might I have been able to assist by providing salt, limes and other irrelevancies?

Verily, I should be used to it by now, but there are times when New Albany can really get to a guy ... and follow him back and forth during an otherwise marvelous break.

(Originally published at NA Confidential)