Craft Beer is dead. Long live Indie Beer. It's about "supporting local small business rather than a global entity."

To me, "craft" beer's conceptual basis always has been, and should remain, localism.

The inevitable rejoinder: "You're not using local ingredients, therefore you're not local." However, just as there are many styles of beer, there are differing ways of principled thinking.

The finished value of any product can be the result of individualized local creativity rather than widespread, industrialized production; accordingly, a substantial local component is present even if local hops are not. After all, beer doesn't often brew itself.

This isn't the most important point, because an independently-owned local brewery is an independently-owned local business, and the positive economic factors for independent local businesses in their communities are one and the same.

Sorry, but if you're buying Goose Island at Wal-Mart, you might be missing the point in multiple areas. Let's work to make shift happen -- indie breweries, indie middlemen.

Often I've pointed to organizations like AMIBA and BALLE, and asked skeptics to visit their web sites and consider the information therein. My impression is this seldom happens, probably because it takes less time to post a selfie with Bourbon County than read a few pages of economic facts.

Bizarrely, unfamiliarity with the economic realities of independent local business might be expected of consumers in general, but often it's something not understood by folks who own their own small businesses. Must we cut our own throats?

Meanwhile, I like this vibe coming out of San Diego. May it take root, and convince readers to go back to first principles.

Craft is dead. Now we drink Indie Beer: As Big Beer creeps into town, locals want to change the lingo, by Ian Anderson (San Diego Reader)

The term Craft Beer may be in need of a makeover. The Union-Tribune reported this week that Bend, Oregon's 10 Barrel Brewing Co. has proposed a 10,000-square-foot brewpub in East Village. In response, local beer industry podcasters have doubled down on a push to describe independently owned breweries as Indie Beer companies, rather than craft.

A couple of individuals have tried to coin the term Indie Beer before, but they had different reasons.

Not because 10 Barrel hails from Oregon but because in 2014 the company was purchased by AB InBev, the conglomerate responsible for one-third of the planet's beer supply, including core brands Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois. It owns 10 Barrel brewpubs in Oregon and Idaho and recently announced plans for one in Denver.

The podcasters' believe consumers who patronize 10 Barrel brewpubs mistakenly believe they are supporting small business rather than a global entity ...

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Coming soon to a Hoosier legislature near you: Sunday alcohol sales, with huge question mark attached ...

Sikich's overview is one of the best I've read, given that  "booze on Sunday" in America is more totem for tribalism than topic for dispassionate discussion. The author duly notes the Sunday exceptions for Indiana's breweries and wineries. I might add that while the Brewers of Indiana Guild has interest in a few bits of legislation possibly being considered in 2013, this isn't one of them.

As a guild director, believe me when I say that we have our own side of the street to work -- and we're doing so. This particular issue isn't our fight.

Speaking personally, part of me is eternally annoyed that "moral" considerations as defined by religious interests should be a part of the Sunday equation. Another part entirely understands that small independent business will suffer if big boxes go into Sunday sales. I'm forever willing to sock it to the preachers and health fascists, and at the same time, giving an inch to mega-retail is odious to my own inner moral structure.

When I'm declared dictator, it's an easy call: Let the indie package stores open if they wish, and keep the chains shut. Then again, some might say I'm an extremist. In the end, Senator Alting probably is right: Change will be incremental, in bits and pieces, because such hesitancy truly reflects a state of division.

Need I add: Support your local breweries and wineries. That's the best solution, and it beats the Silver Bullet every damned time.

Sunday liquor sales battle brewing: An effort is afoot to change Indiana's law, but owners of liquor stores say the move would be devastating, by Chris Sikich (IndyStar)

Indiana is the toughest place in the nation to buy take-home beer or liquor on Sundays.

While most states limit Sunday alcohol sales in some ways, Hoosiers face the broadest restrictions.

Indiana prohibits Sunday sales of beer, wine and liquor at grocery and packaged liquor stores. Connecticut lifted a similar ban in May, leaving Indiana standing alone.

The longtime ban has remained in place for religious and economic reasons. And though it has been eroded somewhat in recent years, state lawmakers trying to do away with the ban this year aren't hopeful.

Chains: Usually there is an exception to the rule.

My standard reply when asked about "chain" restaurants and bars is to echo my hero, Lew Bryson, and respond: Death to Chains.

However, there was a thread on the Louisville Restaurants Forum asking which chains the purported foodies there regularly visit, and what they ate when visiting, and so I peered deep into my soul for this:

For the most part, I'd rather gnaw on fallen tree bark rather than give my money to multinational chains, but at the same time, I've never denied going to the regional chain Skyline Chili for a five-way, and as many others here have noted, alcohol mixed with White Castle is inevitable a couple times a year. It's the bane of professional drinkers everywhere, and somewhat unavoidable.

That's pretty much it.

I strive to find a local alternative -- coffee boiled in an unrecycled lard can rather than Starbucks,or NA's own locally-owned Honey Creme rather than Krispy Kreme -- and stick with it. Admittedly, integrity is harder while traveling the purposefully barren Interstates, and in airports and sports venues, because the latter are permitted to use spaces constructed with public money to enforce chain monopolies, which frankly sickens me.

But there it is.