AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Bourbon-barrel aged Imperial Stouts.

AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Bourbon-barrel aged Imperial Stouts.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

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).

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Bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stouts

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.

Brewer’s pitch is a resinous substance used to line wooden barrels so liquid doesn’t come into contact with the wood.

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.

But what if beer’s modification is the stated aim of the exercise?

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.

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.

However, this once-used barrel retains considerable evidence of Bourbon. Why not repurpose these flavors and aromas by aging beer in it?

It seems a forehead-slapping moment, and yet the genuinely strange thing is how long it took for someone to grasp the possibilities.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No timelessness for the impatient

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Save that cigar for the second bottle

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.

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.

Here’s how not to do it

Head Brewer: “We’re making our Bourbon-barrel-aged beer today.”

Assistant Brewer: “Great. How many fifths of Old Rotgut should I pick up at the package store?”

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.

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.

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.

It’s Black Friday, on Thanksgiving weekend.

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November 21: AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Goodwood Brewing Company: Touched by a Barrel.

October 17: AFTER THE FIRE: These old, old habits die hard.

October 10: AFTER THE FIRE: The Great Taste of the Midwest is the best beer fest of them all.

October 3: AFTER THE FIRE: New Albany’s Harvest Homecoming occupation isn't alleviating my "craft" beer Twitter depression.

September 26: AFTER THE FIRE: The seasonality of Oktoberfest in time, beer and year.

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Hip Hops on HopCat: Yes, the current issue of Food and Dining Magazine is on the street.

The latest issue of Food & Dining was released just as we were boarding our flight for Sicily, so I'm a wee bit late in posting this quarter.


Food & Dining -- Winter 2016, Vol. 54 (November/December/January)


I have my usual beer column byline in the current edition. It's about the advent of HopCat Louisville KY, and to be truthful, I had a blast writing it.

HIP HOPS | HopCat is the craft beer lover’s meow ... with 132 taps, it might be a good idea to bring a sleeping bag.

Printed copies of F & D are available throughout the metro area in bars, restaurants, coffee shops and bookstores -- and they're free of charge.

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AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Goodwood Brewing Company: Touched by a Barrel.

AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Goodwood Brewing Company: Touched by a Barrel.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

I'm always an quarterly issue behind when it comes to reprinting my columns from Food & Dining Magazine. This one is from Summer 2016; Vol. 52 (May/June/July).

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Goodwood Brewing Company: Touched by a Barrel

It is a deceptively simple notion to modify the flavor of beer by aging it in Bourbon barrels.

Just as char and time transform simpler corn-based spirits into a sipper’s elixir, so a barrel’s second use with beer can create a characterful hybrid, balancing the chosen base beer with notes of vanilla and spices.

This principle holds true when using barrels previously filled with other liquors or wine, and to a more subtle extent, by exposing beer to various types of wood (most often oak) through chips or spirals.

Currently there are at least 4,200 breweries in America, and many of them have experimented with wood during the aging process. Often these are small batches for limited release, though Alltech’s Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale is a flagship, available year-round.

Then there is Goodwood Brewing Company, where all of its beers are touched by wood and brewed with limestone water.

Goodwood’s identity dates to 2015 and a rebranding of the entity once noted for brewing Bluegrass Brewing Company’s beers under license for packaging and distribution. The brewery’s new name is fully intentional, meant to inform beer lovers of the roles played by wood and water.

“We became Goodwood because we are known throughout the region and industry as experts in barrel aged products,” says Goodwood’s CEO, Ted Mitzlaff.

“Our barrel-aged program quality is second to none.”

Brewmaster Joel Halbleib adds, “Kentucky water is fantastic for many reasons; our yeast is happy about the extra calcium. Louisville KY has a global reputation not only for our water quality, but the unique and historic way in which we process it.”

Of course, oak barrels and limestone water are not exactly revolutionary concepts in Kentucky. They form the backbone of the state’s geographically determinate libation, and a tradition informing Goodwood’s tagline.

“What’s good for Bourbon is even better for beer.”

In fact, beer and Bourbon are grain-based cousins, beginning life similarly during the mashing stage, then diverging into fermented and distilled forms. Goodwood’s aim of reinserting beer into a Bourbon-based equation may strike some as audacious.

Others will find it a delightfully appropriate adaptive reuse, both for barrels and ideas.

Pretty used bourbon barrels, all in a row

Goodwood occupies an old industrial warehouse at 636 East Main Street in downtown Louisville KY. Beer has been brewed there since Pipkin Brewing Company opened in 1998, and in fact, Pipkin produced Louisville KY’s first Bourbon Barrel Stout in 2001.

In 2006, BBC’s began brewing its Jefferson’s Reserve Bourbon Stout here. It was a mainstay in markets outside Kentucky, and remains the basis of Goodwood Bourbon Barrel Stout.

Goodwood’s stretch of Main Street used to be lonely unless the Louisville KY Bats Triple-A baseball club was playing at Louisville KY Slugger Field, a few hundred yards to the west. These days the area is changing, and fast.

Angel’s Envy distillery will open soon opposite the ball yard, and the burgeoning NuLu district lies a block away to the southeast. A 200-unit upscale apartment complex is rising directly across from Goodwood, and adjacent industrial acreage is for sale, seemingly destined for residential construction.

Inside Goodwood, there is a tap room and production area packed with stainless steel brewing and fermenting vessels. Upstairs is a vast space that might someday host special events.

In the basement, dozens of barrels are lined in repose. The barrels are used only once by Goodwood, and before being filled, must be closely sniffed, inspected and tested for contamination. Beer remains in the barrel for 30 to 90 days, depending on the type.

Beer ages “in” these barrels, as opposed to “on” them. Mitzlaff explains the difference:

“All our beers are aged either ‘in’ or ‘on’ wood. Aging ‘in’ wood refers to barrel aging from 30 to 90 days, depending on the type of beer we are producing. Aged ‘on’ means we are adding wood to the process.”

Goodwood’s aged-in-the-barrel line includes Bourbon Barrel Stout and Bourbon Barrel Ale, as well as Red Wine Barrel Saison and Brandy Barrel Barbarian Honey Ale. Among those aged “on” wood are Louisville KY Lager (ash), Pale Ale (poplar) and Walnut Brown Ale (walnut). Intriguingly, a seasonal IPA is planned, with an uncommon twist of aging “on” native aromatic cedar.

Wood changes beer; breweries change neighborhoods

The Goodwood line of beers is available in Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio and Virginia, and with other states queued and ready for their share, Mitzlaff has a plan to serve them.

It is called Paristown Pointe, a $28 million project to be located approximately a mile away from Goodwood’s current location on a patch of ground where Barrett Street meets East Broadway.

Paristown Pointe is a certifiably ambitious neighborhood redevelopment proposal involving multiple investors who are seeking to leverage state tourism tax credits to create an arts and culture district.

Plans call for an enlarged Louisville KY Stoneware factory, a multi-use theater for the Kentucky Center for the Arts, renovated housing, commercial space … and yes, a new Goodwood brewery.

“We’ll have a 70,000-barrel brewery and a significant taproom, beer garden and rooftop bar in Paristown Pointe,” says Mitzlaff. “We’ll continue to operate our existing brewery and taproom.”

Make no mistake: 70,000 barrels is a substantial amount of beer. It represents a potential brewing capacity four times larger than Goodwood has today. In 2014, a craft brewery producing this much beer would have placed 44th in production for the entire country.

Yet such a rate of growth has ample precedent in craft brewing, and Goodwood’s rebranded identity can only be enhanced by participation in what might be a nationally celebrated redevelopment project.

Goodwood’s brewery at Paristown Pointe will concentrate on aged-in-the-barrel beers, and will boast a fully automated brew house as well as both bottling and canning lines. If all goes according to plan, brewing will start in summer, 2017.

Halbleib is bullish about Goodwood’s overall prospects. “Craft beer as an industry has come too far with barrel aging to think of it as a fad,” he concludes. “The sheer variety of brews aged in barrels or on wood these days is mind boggling.”

It is, and it seems only natural that a Kentucky brewery should lead the way by specializing in this emerging art.

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October 17: AFTER THE FIRE: These old, old habits die hard.

October 10: AFTER THE FIRE: The Great Taste of the Midwest is the best beer fest of them all.

October 3: AFTER THE FIRE: New Albany’s Harvest Homecoming occupation isn't alleviating my "craft" beer Twitter depression.

September 26: AFTER THE FIRE: The seasonality of Oktoberfest in time, beer and year.


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An overview of Barrel Aged Imperial Stout and a profile of Brooklyn and The Butcher headline the current issue of Food and Dining Magazine.

The latest issue of Food & Dining is on the street, as I speak. Click through to the preview and compendium of articles, then follow the links to issuu.

Or, go straight there:

Food & Dining -- Fall 2016, Vol. 53 (August/September/October) 

I have my usual beer column byline in the current edition ...

Hip Hops: Bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stout — The complex but agreeable relationship between beer and used Bourbon barrels.

... and there's also a detailed profile by the inimitable Greg Gapsis about Southern Indiana's own Ian Hall and his Brooklyn and The Butcher.

Vision and Experience in a Historical Setting — New Albany restaurateur Ian Hall adds another jewel to his crown with the sharp, elegant restoration of a historic downtown building.

Printed copies are available throughout the metro area in bars, restaurants, coffee shops and bookstores -- and they're free of charge.

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Read about Goodwood Brewing and Ballotin Whiskey in the current issue of Food and Dining Magazine.

The latest issue of Food & Dining is on the street, as I speak. Click through to the preview and compendium of articles, then follow the links to issuu.


Food & Dining -- Summer 2016, Vol. 52 (May/June/July) 

I have two bylines in the current edition.

Hip Hops: Goodwood Brewing Co. — Goodwood Brewing Co. stakes its future on barrel-aged and wood-seasoned craft beers — without splinters.

Ballotin Chocolate Whiskey — Roger Baylor learns that the basis for four chocolate-flavored whiskeys is a spectrum of natural whiskey flavors.

Both assignments were a blast, especially when bartender extraordinaire Stephen Dennison introduced me to Ballotin -- though any chance to enjoy a Goodwood Louisville Lager is appreciated, too.

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THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Hip Hops ... A look at two new New Albany breweries.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Hip Hops ... A look at two new New Albany breweries.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

I'm always an issue behind when it comes to reprinting my columns from Food & Dining Magazine. This one is from Spring 2016; Vol. 51 (February/March/April). 

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HIP HOPS: A LOOK AT TWO NEW NEW ALBANY BREWERIES

In 1906, thirsty residents of New Albany had the choice of three local breweries to visit when it came time to refill pails gone dry.

Paul Reising’s plant was the granddaddy of them all, taking up a whole West End city block, where Bavarian-style beers had been brewed on-site since just after the Civil War.

A half-mile away, Virt Nirmaier crafted a well-regarded “common” beer at his brewery on State Street, the western route out of New Albany, up Buffalo Trace and through the Knobs. Nirmaier’s Common sold to taverns for $1.25 a keg or $5.00 a barrel. His charge for smaller quantities is unknown.

Near the present-day high school on Vincennes Street, the Nadorffs brewed beer and cut ice in winter from a pond on their property. In 1907, the family stopped brewing and opened a wholesale beer distributorship, which survives to the present day.

Soon the scourge of Prohibition descended, ending the first great era of American brewing, but in truth, our failed national temperance experiment merely hastened the passage from independent local brewing to larger economies of scale regionally and nationally.

Pendulums have a fortunate way of swinging back, and brewing returned to New Albany in 2002, when the New Albanian Brewing Company first mashed in.

Then, in 2015, there was an abrupt tripling of numbers: Donum Dei Brewery and Floyd County Brewing Company (FCBC) both opened, and while it may seem novel for such a small city to have so many breweries, this pattern is being repeated all across the country.

Late last year, the Brewers Association reported the existence of 4,000 breweries in America — more than in 1906, and in fact, the most ever at any point in the nation’s history.

New Albany’s two newest breweries typify this upward arc. They’re independent, small and family owned. You can have a pint, grab a bite and take beer to go. Donum Dei is on the north side, down the road from Indiana University Southeast, and FCBC lies a short caber toss from the downtown YMCA.

Let’s take a look at these two local brewing start-ups.

A “Gift of God”

Rick Otey is a 50-something electronics engineer who didn’t like the taste of beer until work took him to Seattle during the 1990s. There Otey enjoyed a transformative encounter with Red Hook Extra Special Bitter (ESB), inspiring him to brew at home and seek craft beers on his own turf.

Facing a career juncture in 2014, Otey and wife Kimberly decided to redirect a portion of their retirement portfolio toward greater liquidity, and Donum Dei Brewery is the fruit of their investment.

By personal disposition and designer, the brewpub’s ethos is thoughtful and unhurried. “It’s not so much what we do, as what we don’t do,” Otey explains. “There’s no rush. Beer is a living thing, and we wait until it’s ready.”

This mantra extends to the compact, café-style food menu, with appetizers, soup and paninis: “It’s as simple and local as possible, at a decent price,” Otey says.

The décor and lighting are almost Scandinavian, with clean and modern wooden accents. There is neither television nor Wi-Fi. Otey would prefer your phone remain sheathed, because he seeks to encourage conversation and reflection.

Donum Dei is Latin for “gift of God,” and although Otey offers it in a broader metaphysical context, the history of beer and brewing is intertwined with the pursuit of higher truth, as with Trappist brewers fashioning their ales for sale, barter and communal consumption.

Otey’s delicious Enkel (single) Belgian Gold is the ideal example. As brewed at 4.4% abv in a classic Abbey mold, it is gently fruity, as befits a monastic table beer intended to accompany meals.

Donum Dei’s beer range reflects Otey’s principled eclecticism. There has been a Saison, Brown Porter, India Pale Ale and Red Ale. During the first quarter of 2016, expect to see a big, malty Wee Heavy in the Scottish stylistic vernacular.

He’ll serve it when it’s ready.

Quest for the Ale

Floyd County Brewing Company (FCBC) anchors a corner of Main and W. First St. in rapidly changing downtown New Albany. In addition to the bustling YMCA, neighbors include The Exchange Pub + Kitchen, Feast BBQ, and Seeds & Greens Natural Market and Deli.

The new brewpub bears owner Brian Hampton’s strategic imprint. “The beer names, graphics and décor all come from me,” he says. “I did most of the woodwork, too. Right now the kitchen learning curve is taking up most of my time.”

Like his counterpart Otey, Hampton is a home brewer and beer-seeking engineer, and he views the ideal pub as a place of refuge and escape, outfitted to provide a comfortable setting to get away from it all.

Hampton sought to refit an older building, creating modern comfort with Old World ambiance. The result looks something like a medieval banquet hall, but scaled down to a Yorkshire public house, then filtered through Monty Python outtakes from “The Holy Grail.” A hundred-year-old house was connected to a new annex built to house brewery and bar areas, and it feels far more venerable than it is.

All that’s missing is the mead bench, but give Hampton time. He’ll build one.

Brewer Jeff Coe is charged with alchem-izing Hampton’s ideas into fermented form. He is concentrating on a bedrock repertoire, including Braun Jovi (Brown Ale), Hefe’ns Gate Hefeweizen and Vlad’s India Pale Ale.

FCBC’s best-selling menu item is fish and chips, but oversized turkey legs often are spotted being gnawed. Both pair wonderfully with Arrow Smith Amber, marrying a malty ale of medium strength to orange peel and coriander flavorings otherwise expected in a Belgian-style Wit. It’s reminiscent of Blue Moon with caramel malt, only better, and it serves to remind us of the medieval tradition of “gruit,” an ale flavored and balanced with spices rather than hops.

For my best advice to Donum Dei and FCBC as they move forward, I propose these highly appropriate words from Richard Atkinson to Leonard, titular sixth Lord Dacre, in 1570, as quoted by Martyn Cornell:

“See that ye keep a noble house for beef and beer, that thereof may be praise given to God and to your honour.” 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Donum Dei Brewery

3211 Grant Line Road,

New Albany, IN 47150

(502) 541-2950

www.donumdeibrewery.com

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Floyd County Brewing Company

129 West Main Street,

New Albany, IN 47150

(470) 588-2337

www.floydcountybrewing.com

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April 26: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part two.

April 25: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part one.

April 18: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 33 … All good things must come to a beginning.

April 11: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

April 4: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Birracibo’s local/regional “craft” beer percentage rides the bench.

_

The PC: "A True Local Approach ... Kentucky Beer and Food Take Center Stage at Crescent Hill Craft House."

The PC: "A True Local Approach ... Kentucky Beer and Food Take Center Stage at Crescent Hill Craft House."

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Please excuse me for tardiness. As regular readers know, I write a quarterly beer column for Food & Dining Magazine (Louisville Edition). The magazine is free of charge and can be read at issuu concurrent with the print release, and yet I like to wait a bit before adding the columns to the public record here.

Eight months is more than a bit, so here is something different from the Summer 2015 (Vol. 48; May/June/July) issue, in that my "Hip Hops" column about Crescent Hill Craft House was expanded to feature length. With a second Craft House under construction in Germantown, at least the topic remains somewhat timely.

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A True Local Approach ... Kentucky Beer and Food Take Center Stage at Crescent Hill Craft House.

It remains a golden age for craft beer in America, but while artisanal brewing continues to grow and prosper on Kentucky soil, another satisfying libation retains the bulk of bragging rights in the Commonwealth.

It’s bourbon, and bourbon is ascendant.

With considerable justification, Kentuckians view their native spirit not merely as intoxicating, but representative of a local art form belonging uniquely to them. Strictly speaking, bourbon is a process and not an appellation, and can be produced anywhere in America. However, don’t expect a Kentuckian to accept this fact without an argument – and splashes of branch water are purely optional.

Verily, a bourbon aficionado residing in Kentucky probably is the most rigorous practitioner of localism in all of these United States: A specific distillery’s venerable layout, its historic pot still, a particular limestone water source, gentle aging in oak (from which preferred cooper’s grove?) and the comprehensive guiding intelligence of a wily master distiller, all combining to create a topographic, geographic and mythic elixir like no other.

Yet it is rightly said that bourbon is a form of distilled beer without the hops, and surely craft beer’s explosive Kentucky growth with hops is intriguingly comparable with bourbon’s, but significantly, not always so much in terms of its acceptance as a manifestation of localism.

It is depressingly common for Louisville-area craft beer enthusiasts to openly eschew locally brewed beers, reserving their fevered approbation for new and different beers coming into Kentucky and Indiana from far, far away. As such, localist beer instincts compete with perceptions of “exotic” value, which are as old as humanity itself.

Unfortunately, these perceptions often have little to do with the actual liquid occupying one’s glass.

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When the shipping-borne international spice trade commenced in Europe several hundred years ago, a form of consumer demand was created. A “need” arose to obtain previously unknown spices from overseas, owing not to their supposed usefulness in masking otherwise rancid food, as is often erroneously imagined today, but because the spices themselves were quantifiable and visible measures of social status according to prevailing, evolving and subjective value systems.

In essence, anyone who was anyone just had to have these spices – or risk not being anyone, any longer. Possession was a palpable, tangible symbol of status, and the key to their value was distance: These spices were from somewhere else – exotic, expensive and hard to obtain, and as such, infinitely sexier than piddling local norms, with magical and totemic properties.

No one thought it necessary to bother with explanations as to why the rare spices proffered at the wedding feast mattered. It was understood. Peers compared the quantity of their spice stocks to establish social pecking orders, and any stray servant or cowed peasant in proximity of the scene knew immediately that strength and power were conferred on those who possessed the requisite spicy symbolism … while by contrast, he or she remained a degraded underling.*

Happily, we’re here to consider local beer and not saffron; after all, that stuff’s almost as expensive as trendy finishing hops from New Zealand.

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Present-day metro Louisville boasts numerous bars and restaurants where the distilled variant of localism is stirringly endorsed by means of encyclopedic Kentucky bourbon lists: Haymarket Whiskey Bar, Down One Bourbon Bar, Bourbons Bistro, the Silver Dollar – surely there are barber shops in a Shively strip mall boasting “century” bourbon lineups – but not one metro multi-tap or specialty beer bar of appreciable size has followed suit with similarly exhaustive local craft beer selections.

Until now. At the Crescent Hill Craft House, 40 taps pour locally brewed beers to the exclusion of all others, and as much kitchen fare as possible is sourced from regional farms and suppliers. For good measure, there is a list of 40-plus bourbons.

Co-owner Pat Hagan explains: “We’re going with all Kentucky beers, including Southern Indiana. That’s the way economies should be going, and are. Customers want to support the local area and they want local products, so offering them beer and food from the area makes sense.”

Hagan’s name might be familiar. In terms of Louisville craft brewing, he is an undisputed elder statesman, and his family’s Bluegrass Brewing Company (founded in 1993) now includes three on-premise Louisville locations. There also is a BBC production brewing facility, owned separately but working in concert with the BBC brewpubs.

In 2014, after two decades of building and nurturing his own locally popular breweries, Hagan began thinking about what has come of craft brewing’s proliferation in BBC’s wake. A new concept began to take root, and with business partners Brad Culver and Beau Kerley, he bought and remodeled a longstanding bar space located at 2634 Frankfort Avenue – a locale where independent small businesses tend to thrive.

At the Crescent Hill Craft House, amid exposed brick and stripped beams, beers from Against the Grain, Alltech (Kentucky Ale), Apocalypse, Bluegrass Brewing, Country Boy, Cumberland, Eight Ball, Falls City, Flat12, Great Flood, New Albanian and West Sixth are featured, and according to Hagan, their massed presence initially caused confusion.

“The biggest resistance we had, pre-opening, was convincing bar managers, distributors and salesmen that you don’t need Bells and Southern Tier,” he said, nicely name-dropping two out-of-state brewers.

“But breweries in Kentucky make great and diverse beer, so serving just those beers is no downgrade. I think both locals and visitors like to be able to come to one place and see everything that the area has to offer.”

Chef Tim Smith enthusiastically agrees, and has designered the Craft House’s food program to reflect localism from the ground up. Hagan approached Smith in the early stages of the project.

“Pat asked if I could put together a locally sourced menu, and I said sure. He liked it, then wanted to know who could pull it off in the kitchen. I said, well, might as well be me.”

And why not? Smith has been cooking professionally in the Louisville area for as long as Hagan has been brewing beer, putting in stints with the Grisanti family, Napa River Grill and 60 West Martini Bar.

Smith’s first priority at Craft House is local and regional sourcing, whenever possible: Beef from Marksbury Farms and aquaponic greens raised at Groganica Farms; spent grain from the BBC brewhouse in St. Matthews to top his delicious cobblers, and crusty Blue Dog bread baked a few blocks away to produce a beer-friendly bruschetta oozing bacon jam.



Even when a local source isn’t available, menu items are “finished” on site (smoking salmon, curing pork belly) and strategically paired, as with the Sheltowee Farms mushroom risotto accompanying Smith’s pan seared scallops.

Smith gently rejects the notion of any specific style or cuisine as ideally suited to a venue like Craft House. “The idea is good food you can pair with beer in an unpretentious atmosphere,” he said, adding a crucial point: “It always takes a team, and it’s up to the servers to know.”

That’s huge. At Craft House, both the beers and the food constantly change with the season, and so servers are the ultimate frontline aggregators of information. What’s in the “seasonal vegetable medley”? Is that ale hop- or malt-forward? What makes this dish and that beer work together?

In Louisville, the Crescent Hill Craft House is answering these questions. Why not local beer and local food? Why not harness subjective value systems to objective local quality, and celebrate the beers that make us special, as brewed right here, in and near our own neighborhoods?

The philosopher’s advice rings true: “Think globally, drink locally.”

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* For more see “Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants,” by Wolfgang Schivelbusch.

_

The PC: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes?"

The PC: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes?"

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Yes, it's been a while. When last we met:

Euro ’85, Part 26 … The Hansa brewery tour, and a farewell to Norway.

The next installment of the Euro '85 travelogue has resisted my best efforts at corralling a huge volume of content and forcing it into a vague 1,500 word framework -- which is to say, I can't seem to remember much about three days in Stockholm.

It may be time for hypnosis, or maybe Scandinavian mead. Wait ...

Until then, here is the full text of my last column at Food & Dining Magazine (Winter 2015; Vol. 50; November/December/January). The next issue will be published in February, and should include my profile of Donum Dei Brewery and Floyd County Brewing Company.

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes?

When Food and Dining Magazine published its inaugural edition in 2003, there hadn’t yet been an American Craft Beer Week. It came along three years later.

As for the descriptive term itself, “craft” first arose in the mid-1990s, and it took a long time for many of us to assimilate the usage. When we finally moved past “microbrewery,” it already was time to question the meaning of craft. Truly, the curmudgeon’s work is never done.

However, developments entirely divorced from semantics have contributed mightily to how we see craft beer today, and in the most literal of senses.

The first camera phones were developed in South Korea in 2000. After a period of Japanese honing, they reached America in late 2002, to become widely available amid continuing technical improvements.

Camera phones were absorbed and redefined by smart phones equipped with increasingly sophisticated capabilities, all of which has brought us to an unprecedented juncture in the history of contemporary beer appreciation.

Suddenly, beer taste became visual, and at times viral. First a revolution in brewing changed the way we think about beer, then technology changed the way we process, document and disseminate these expanded thoughts. Nowadays, craft beers are micro, and beer drinking rituals macro.

Mere seconds after gently popping the cap on a prized, hard-to-find Westvleteren 12, Pliny the Elder or rosy periwinkle-infused Malagasy Saison from the hottest new nanobrewery in southwestern Madagascar, a quality photo of the beer, glassware and bottle is ready for staging, a scene captured by the ever-present phone camera, and one quickly reaching a huge potential audience of friends and followers on social media.

Enjoy a sip – and tell everyone about it

Having been properly certified and accredited, the beer is ready for drinking, but the ritual has only just begun. A review must be written at one’s favored on-line beer ratings aggregator, destined to join thousands of others, which collectively form the basis for beer decision-making by countless beer nerds all over the world.

If this tableau plays out at home, the mere possession of prized beers may owe to ubiquitous electronic connectivity. Beer lovers construct vast networks of like-minded acquaintances to track rare and unusual beers, and once they’ve been located, the gray market opens for business, and the haggling begins in earnest.

Thousands of beers are available through normal distribution channels, and may be purchased at package stores for carry-out, or consumed at specialty beer bars and multi-taps. Increasingly, all manner of restaurants stock craft and imported beer: Pizza joints, taquerias, Chinese buffets, gastropubs, weenie wagons, steak houses; you name the concept, and a range of better beer probably is being offered.

Wider beer availability makes it even more complicated for the well-rounded beer geek, because not only must the beer be rated, but the establishment as well.

There is so much to do: Check in with social media, scan voluminous beer lists, critique the omission of crucial stylistic ranges, match available choices with ratings aggregators, ensure the beer isn’t a repetition of a previous choice, determine whether wait staff has a clue, dip a thermometer into the liquid, parse issues of beer freshness, and at some point, at long last, once the housekeeping tasks finally are collated and nearby planets helpfully fall into alignment, there’ll be time to chase a bowl of fiery chili with an honest ale, and maybe – just maybe – have some fun.

Old assumptions, new realities

I may be slightly exaggerating these accounts of modern times. You’ve heard it all before, from every ancient geezer who ever hugged a handy bar stool and spun tales of snow drifts, deprivation and the unreliability of younger generations.

This being a magazine centered on food, I readily concede that you may wish to take my musings with a grain of Himalayan salt.

Still, I’m sticking with my basic hypothesis: The visual-oriented immediacy of instantaneous mobile communications has obliterated the craft beer landscape and swapped old assumptions for a new reality, which continues to mutate and evolve.

In retrospect, there was a steady cadence to the arc of craft beer growth and acceptance from 1976, when New Albion Brewing was founded in California, to the early 1990s, when a great spurt took place. Unfortunately, the exuberance was premature, and in 1997 the bubble burst.

Craft beer growth in 1997 was only 2%, following a 58% surge just two years before. During the period 1997-2003, growth remained in the low single digits. Beginning in 2004, there was a healthy escalation, and double-digit increases have occurred ever since.

By this point, a new generation of craft beer drinkers was coming of age. They were familiar with craft, and had never seen a rotary dial phone.

Ratings sites like Rate Beer and Beer Advocate already existed on-line, and soon adjusted to mobile communications. The advent of mainstream social media brought Untappd, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, among others.

No longer is it necessary to live drinking lives of silent enjoyment. We have become broadcasters, style arbiters and photographers, relying on visual cues whenever the thicket of raw information becomes impenetrable.

The craft beer enthusiast is better off than ever before, with a caveat: Aren’t appearances only skin deep?

Where we are now

From its inception in 2003, this publication has been exemplary in its devotion to twin virtues: Thoughtful, cogent writing and mouth-watering photography.

Moreover, it has deployed these dual strengths to document the Louisville area food and dining scene, which deserves it. My beer column has been but a tiny component in this bill of fare, and yet it bears noting that when the column began, it wasn’t at all common in our part of the country to associate better beer with better food.

Now it is, and the point is constantly reinforced through the very same electronic and communications mediums.

Up the revolution, but let’s not forget that in its most glorious and expressive format, Food and Dining Magazine remains real, tactile and capable of occupying space on a table top, to be discovered by the next reader, or actually arrive in the mail, as did the beer publications we used to pluck from the postbox after navigating pesky snow drifts … and hangovers.

Ironically, now that craft beer verges on mainstream acceptance, thanks in part to communications technology altering the way we think, my own thoughts continue to turn toward grassroots counter-revolution, to beer as a singular joy, embracing tastes and places.

As a contrarian, I’ve no choice except seeing it differently. Perhaps I’ll start carrying a blindfold with my bottle opener.

The PC: "Gordon Biersch: Still Leading with Lager."

The PC: "Gordon Biersch: Still Leading with Lager."

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.


Coming next to the Euro '85 travelogue is the story of my visit to the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen, and since Carlsberg plays a central role in the historical development of lager, a brief sidestep seems merited.

Following is my Food & Dining Magazine column from the Fall 2015 issue (Vol. 49; August/September/October). You also can read the column at issuu, as formatted for the magazine.

Nicholas Landers brews all the Gordon Biersch beers right here in Louisville, and while he is understandably excited to have the leeway to brew a selection of American and Belgian ales, my focus is the lager side of the Biersch portfolio.

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Gordon Biersch: Still Leading with Lager

Brewing comes full circle with locally-crafted beer styles in the Central European tradition

Märzen, known as Oktoberfest in its autumnal guise, is an Old World style of lager beer originating in the German state of Bavaria.

Talk is cheap, so let’s have a sip – strictly for research purposes.

This Märzen is orange-tinged amber, with a rich, malty aroma. There is a toasted, malty sweetness in the mouth, yielding to impeccable balance and dryness in the finish, albeit without discernable hoppiness. The body is medium, and the flavor is clean and crisp, as lager should be, with absolutely none of the fruitiness characteristic to ale.

The elegant Märzen in my glass disappears all too quickly, even as it conjures totemic images of sausages, dirndls, onion-domed churches and festive maypoles.

However, while my brain screams “Munich”, the growler before me calmly reads “Louisville”, as referring to our local 4th Street branch of the Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant network.

Here in River City, Märzen is an everyday Gordon Biersch draft, brewed on site by brewer Nicholas Landers, who is a transplanted Cincinnatian who sharpened his skills at Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee after attending Chicago’s Siebel Institute.

Most American brewpubs of a similar capacity (circa 700 barrels per annum) do not specialize in lager styles, which take longer to brew than ale. However, Gordon Biersch, named for founders Dan Gordon and Dean Biersch, has always been something different.

Befitting Dan Gordon’s brewing studies at the prestigious Technical University of Munich, a core of lager styles from the German, Czech and Central European pantheon has comprised Gordon Biersch’s niche since its 1988 inception in Palo Alto, California.

These include Märzen, Export, Pilsner, Dunkel and Maibock, all brewed according the Reinheitsgebot (beer purity law), and all familiar to anyone who has traveled in Bavaria or dined stateside at a good German restaurant like Louisville’s Gasthaus.

In recent times, brewers like Landers at Gordon Biersch’s 34 company-owned locations have considerably more freedom than before to create seasonal and one-off ale styles, providing guests with counterpoint to the lagers and “guest” beers already on tap.

“We’re holding to tradition with our lagers, but being able to do India Pale Ales now is awesome,’’ Landers says, noting that in addition to his house lagers and certain contrarian German ales (Hefeweizen and Kölsch), he’s also been crafting limited editions of Porter, Stout and even a few Belgian styles.

However, here we must pause, because an important question needs to be addressed.

What is the difference between ale and lager?

It’s fundamental, and the legendary Fred Eckhardt, dean of American beer writers, offers a deceptively simple answer.

Ale and lager are both beers; that is, they are fermented from grain. The major difference between these two beer families stems from the temperature at which fermentation is carried out. And the importance of these differences in temperature is that chemical reactions happen more slowly at lower temperatures.

From the very beginning, mankind has harnessed the natural process of fermentation to produce alcoholic beverages, using grains, grapes, fruits, vegetables and honey. Eons of experience abundantly illustrate that when humans mix water, sugar and yeast in stray bowels or pottery, it takes little time before fermentation gets underway.

However, the story of ale and lager is one of contrasting brewing methodologies, and it is a specifically Eurocentric tale, evolving comparatively recently with the march of science.

Beginning in medieval times, brewers in Central Europe learned through trial and error that cooler fermentation temperatures and lengthier aging (the word “lager” in German means “to store”) made for a crisper, cleaner and mellower end product. But why?

They couldn’t possibly know until the invention of the microscope, which provided the means to view the activity of yeast, the living micro-organism that diligently converts sugars into alcohol. Once yeast’s role was unmasked, science started deciphering fermentation’s perennial mysteries, and by the 1830s lager yeast began coming into common use.

Lager brewing’s cooler fermentation temperatures slow chemical reactions, and by doing so, substantially reduce flavor and aroma by-products.

Conversely, at warmer fermentation temperatures, these flavors and aroma by-products are purposefully enhanced, and remain cherished components of ale’s “fruity” charm.

Like the Beatles much later, lager brewing blossomed at just the right time. By the late 19th century, lager was an international sensation, perfectly suited to burgeoning consumer cultures, industrial economies of scale and a zeal for scientific advancement. Lager consciousness swept the world, and ale was pushed into localized (and stubborn) corners like Great Britain and Belgium.

Inevitably, lager became too perfect. Crisp, clean and mellow yielded to cynical mass-market flavorlessness, which inspired the American craft beer backlash of the present era.

In 1988, Dan Gordon saw the issue from a different angle.

To the Bavarian-trained Gordon, lager wasn’t something to be overthrown and excluded. Rather, lager needed reclaiming and rehabilitation. He would emphasize the flavorful origins of classic lager styles, and localize their production as his new company grew.

Consequently, unlike some other national brewery concepts, all Gordon Biersch house beers right here in Louisville, where chain or not, the company helped launch the Kentucky Guild of Brewers, working alongside the state’s independent small brewers.

“At first, some of them probably wondered who we were,” says Landers, “but we’re all brewers, and we all helped get KGB started.”

Jason Smith is Gordon Biersch’s general manager, and when asked to specify the single most important aspect of his work, he does not hesitate.

“Commitment,” Smith replies, and then elaborates.

“Commitment to the Reinheitsgebot in the brewery, and to locally sourcing food in the kitchen. We’re committed to this community, and to helping local charities. Yes, it may be a company checkbook, but we’re local guys.”

Chain skeptics, of whom the author is one, might yet scoff; after all, 4th Street Live lies at Gordon Biersch’s front door. However, the prevailing evidence illustrates that ample localism is being served alongside the beer and food, owing to the daily commitment of the people working for Gordon Biersch.

Me?

I’m just sitting here finishing this growler of Märzen, watching the craft beer pendulum swing back and forth.

Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant
Open seven days a week at 11:00 a.m.
400 S. 4th Street
Louisville, KY 40202
502-589-8935

Celebrate Food & Dining: The magazine's 50th issue is on the street, and my column is inside it.

It's here: The Louisville edition of Food & Dining's 50th issue. It's the Winter 2015 issue (Vol. 59; November/December/January), available at hundreds of locations throughout metropolitan Louisville. You also can read right now at issuu: Winter 2015 (Vol. 50).

Food & Dining is a Louisville-based lifestyle publication focused on food & cooking, the enjoyment of wine & spirits, and the experience of dining out in one of the nation’s top restaurant cities.

We have all the sensibilities of a local magazine, but with the designer and photography of a national magazine.

We pack the magazine and with gorgeous photography, engaging feature stories, entertaining articles, unique recipes and a restaurant guide that details over 1,000 restaurants.

The quarterly magazine began in 2003, and I started writing beer columns for John Carlos White a few issues into his run. The mag's his baby, and I'm delighted for him. Lots of other folks have played a part in launching and maintaining the publication, so thanks to all of them, too. May there be many more to come.

For the current edition, my "Hip Hops" column is intended as the answer to a question asked me by John: What's changed about beer since Food & Dining debuted in 2003?

No longer is it necessary to live drinking lives of silent enjoyment. We have become broadcasters, style arbiters and photographers, relying on visual cues whenever the thicket of raw information becomes impenetrable.

The craft beer enthusiast is better off than ever before, with a caveat: Aren’t appearances only skin deep?

You can read it here: Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes?

May, 2015

I profile the Crescent Hill Craft House in the new issue of Food & Dining Magazine.

August, 2015

My column in the latest Food & Dining Magazine is about Gordon Biersch.

My column in the latest Food & Dining Magazine is about Gordon Biersch.

The current issue of Food & Dining Magazine (Louisville Edition) has hit the streets, and is available at hundreds of locations throughout metropolitan Louisville. It's the Fall 2015 issue (Vol. 49; August/September/October).

Food & Dining is a Louisville-based lifestyle publication focused on food & cooking, the enjoyment of wine & spirits, and the experience of dining out in one of the nation’s top restaurant cities.

We have all the sensibilities of a local magazine, but with the designer and photography of a national magazine.

We pack the magazine and with gorgeous photography, engaging feature stories, entertaining articles, unique recipes and a restaurant guide that details over 1,000 restaurants.

For the current edition, my "Hip Hops" column is about the Louisville branch of Gordon Biersch, where I spent some time with Nicholas Landers and Jason Smith. Nick brews all the GB beers right here in Louisville, and while he is excited about doing a few American-style ales, I focused on the lager side of the Biersch portfolio.

You can read it here: Gordon Biersch: Still Leading with Lager.

“We’re holding to tradition with our lagers, but being able to do India Pale Ales now is awesome,’’ Landers says, noting that in addition to his house lagers and certain contrarian German ales (Hefeweizen and Kölsch), he’s also been crafting limited editions of Porter, Stout and even a few Belgian styles.

You can read the whole issue here: Fall 2015 (Vol 49). In November, it's the 50th issue of Food & Dining. Even I'm not exact about when I started writing for the magazine, although it was at least a year into the run.

Where were you in 2003, and what sorts of beer were you drinking? Let me know.

I profile the Crescent Hill Craft House in the new issue of Food & Dining Magazine.

The current issue of Food & Dining Magazine (Louisville Edition) has hit the streets, and is available at hundreds of locations throughout metropolitan Louisville. It's the Summer 2015 issue (Vol. 48; May/June/July).

Food & Dining is a Louisville-based lifestyle publication focused on food & cooking, the enjoyment of wine & spirits, and the experience of dining out in one of the nation’s top restaurant cities.
We have all the sensibilities of a local magazine, but with the design and photography of a national magazine.

We pack the magazine and with gorgeous photography, engaging feature stories, entertaining articles, unique recipes and a restaurant guide that details over 1,000 restaurants.

Trends come and they go, and yet I've been writing a column about beer in Food & Dining almost since the magazine's inception. It's been a great opportunity, and I'm grateful. For the current edition, my "Hip Hops" column about the Crescent Hill Craft House was expanded with added text and photos.

You can read it here: A True Local Approach.

At the Crescent Hill Craft House, 40 taps pour locally brewed beers to the exclusion of all others, and as much kitchen fare as possible is sourced from regional farms and suppliers. For good measure, there is a list of 40-plus bourbons.

Co-owner Pat Hagan explains: “We’re going with all Kentucky beers, including Southern Indiana. That’s the way economies should be going, and are. Customers want to support the local area and they want local products, so offering them beer and food from the area makes sense.”

Below are additional links to the new issue of Food & Dining.

Entire issue

COMINGS & GOINGS

$10 CHALLENGE - El Taco Luchador

HUMOR

COPPER & KINGS

CHEF Q&A – Dustin Staggers

URBAN BOURBON TRAIL - Dish on Market

ANOOSH BISTRO

COOKING WITH RON – Tomatoes

RESTAURANT GUIDE

RESTAURANT MAPS

The PC (Hip Hops): What “Craft Beer” Is, and What It Isn’t.

The PC (Hip Hops): What “Craft Beer” Is, and What It Isn’t

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

"Hip Hops" is the name of my column for Louisville's Food & Dining Magazine. The following appeared in the Spring 2015 issue (No. 47). 

Hip Hops: What “Craft Beer” Is, and What It Isn’t

In 1976, the birth of New Albion Brewing Company in California presaged a revolution in beer. Four decades later, under the nom de plume of “craft beer,” the revolution seems permanently embedded in American culture, although the attendant hysteria about its growth may be obscuring a fundamental question: What is craft beer, anyway?

When it comes to epistemology, former president Bill Clinton is my choice for getting to the heart of the matter – It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. Keeping Clinton’s Theorem in mind, let’s take a quick look back at Craft Beer Nation’s year in 2014, as viewed by the numbers.

Never have there been this many brewers in America. More than 3,000 craft brewing entities are operational, not including multiple brewing site licensees. On average, one and a half more craft breweries are opening each day. Craft beer sales grew 18% in the first half of 2014. Craft beer’s fan base is diversifying, with 32% of its present volume being consumed by women. The number of craft brewers canning beer has doubled since 2012. Surveys show that in 2014, 38% of American households purchased craft beer at some point during the year.

But what “is” craft beer, anyway?

Imponderable questions for the industry

Is craft beer an objective or subjective label? Can it be made by a big producer, or must it always be from a small brewing operation? Must it be made near to its consumers, or can craft beer have a far-flung consumer base?

The Brewers Association, craft brewing’s trade group, has a vested interest in these questions, as does the federal government’s Tax and Trade Bureau. State legislators and alcoholic beverage control agencies are eager to know, too.

Covetous multinational monoliths, watching with alarm as their traditional flagship lagers erode, desire craft beer’s imagery and demographics. They prefer consumers to regard “craft” as a vague advertising term, and to ignore the small print.

Simply stated: From business and regulatory standpoints, craft beer keeps getting bigger and bigger, making it ever harder for the segment to espouse a foundational ethos of smallness. Craft beer remains an artistic phenomenon best experienced locally, but one inevitably destined to mimic commercial imperatives through distribution.

For many, the essence of craft beer is spiritual, not numerical, but while poets and purists prefer to rhapsodize about hoppy, malty, sweet and sour aesthetics, politicians and bureaucrats demand quantifiable criteria, transferable to a ledger sheet, because awarding “small” businesses an excise tax reduction implies an accepted, concrete definition of small, and in beer, this measure begins with annual production by the barrel (31 gallons).

The issue is the total number of barrels, with beer style and brewing methods generally superfluous, leading to numerous statistical anomalies and Jesuitical reckonings.

Big vs. small, local vs. national

What is the difference between Samuel Adams, a company traded on the New York Stock Exchange with more than 2.5 million barrels shipped and $600 million in sales in 2013, and the newly opened My Dream Nanobrewery located in the former ice cream stand down the street, which might produce 125 barrels this year if the owner somehow can swing crowdsourcing on another piece of used dairy equipment to act as a fermenter?

According to the Brewers Association, none. They’re both craft brewers, and both should receive discounted excise tax bills owing to their small-scale, artisanal size.

Then again, perhaps size doesn’t matter as much as technique. Until 2014, the Brewers Association would not accept Yuengling, America’s oldest (started in 1829) and largest family-owned brewer, as worthy of membership in the club. Why? Because Yuengling has continued to brew American-style “adjunct lagers” with corn and rice, a practice regarded by purists as bastardization.

Is it really? Many craft beer enthusiasts detest adjunct lagers, but these remain legitimate American hybrid styles, as improvised by 19th-century German immigrant brewers, who found themselves working on the wild frontiers of “civilized” brewing and adapted accordingly.

Craft Beer Nation gave it a rethink, and now breweries like Yuengling and Schell can be stamped “craft,” because adjunct lagers aside, at least they’re not owned by robber baron multinationals.

Don’t be confused. Ownership is very much a part of craft beer’s Clintonesque equation, and that’s why Goose Island has become Trojan Goose. The Chicago brewing company’s venerable Bourbon County Stout series is the status symbol of choice for hoarders, collectors and narcissists, but since Goose Island was wholly absorbed by AB-InBev, it no longer can be considered craft.

When craft beer is defined in these ways – by barrels produced, approved recipes and corporate structure – and consequently, when self-identified craft beer drinkers persists in enjoying certain beers lying outside the “official” definition, from Goose Island to Blue Moon, then the results are cognitive dissonance and a commonly stated, exculpatory point of view holding that craft definitions don’t matter at all, so long as the beer in question is “good.”

This brings us full circle: It depends on what the meaning of “good” is. Good luck with that one.

Whither craft beer now?

I’m as confused as anyone else, but here’s what I think.

In 2015, expect to see a growing divide within Craft Beer Nation, reflecting an evolving marketplace as it pertains to brewpubs and production breweries.

The superlative Lafayette Brewing Company in northern Indiana is an example of a brewpub that does not distribute its beers outside its own building, or does so only sparingly. People come to it.

Conversely, Lexington’s Alltech (Kentucky Ale) relies on production and wholesaler distribution of its packaged beers to bars, restaurants and package outlets in Kentucky, Indiana and numerous other states. It sends beer to the people.

Some regional breweries, including Bluegrass Brewing, West Sixth, NABC and Three Floyds, are both brewpubs and production brewers. Given that by early 2015, the state of Indiana will be home to more than 100 breweries, with another two dozen in Kentucky, and that in 1982, when I graduated from college, there were fewer than 100 breweries in the entire country, we come to the primary tankard of contention within Craft Beer Nation: Is there a point of saturation?

Probably so. My personal view is that soon, most of America’s “small” breweries will be compelled to devote an all-hands-on-deck mentality to one or the other, either a brewpub business model or a production and wholesale distribution model. It doesn’t mean there’ll cease to be overlapping, only that the craft beer market as symbolized by finite tavern faucets and store shelves will cease to support an exponential expansion of brands.

Brewpubs will survive and thrive as breweries, restaurants, civic novelties, watering holes, community centers and tourist destinations, but you won’t find their beers elsewhere to any great degree.

Those sufficiently capitalized craft beer production breweries capable of adapting to changing tastes in styles and packaging, and supporting sales teams and marketing budgets – in short, the ones able to successfully emulate the multinational beer sales playbook – will have beer in every Costco and Liquor Barn.

What is craft beer, anyway?

I know craft beer when I taste it, and it is best tasted locally. Beyond these two affirmations, maybe we’ve traveled past the point of knowing – the boomerang has returned, and it’s all just Beer now … again.

The PC: On barrelage, Dean Smith and diversity studies.

The PC: On barrelage, Dean Smith and diversity studies.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It’s a potpourri kind of snowy day in the Ohio Valley, so let’s begin with a preview of my latest Hip Hops column for Food & Dining Magazine. It’s called “Craft Beer: Where It Has Been, and Where It’s Going,” and can be viewed in its entirety here: Spring 2015 (Volume 47).

This excerpt from a column written well in advance of the current Indiana legislative session seems fairly prescient as bills begin coming out of committee. As a wee bit of foreshadowing: In Indiana, (craft’s) size is starting to matter.

Is craft beer an objective or subjective label? Can it be made by a big producer, or must it always be from a small brewing operation? Must it be made near to its consumers, or can craft beer have a far-flung consumer base?

The Brewers Association, craft brewing’s trade group, has a vested interest in these questions, as does the federal government’s Tax and Trade Bureau. State legislators and alcoholic beverage control agencies are eager to know, too.

Covetous multinational monoliths, watching with alarm as their traditional flagship lagers erode, desire craft beer’s imagery and demographics. They prefer consumers to regard “craft” as a vague advertising term, and to ignore the small print.

Simply stated: From business and regulatory standpoints, craft beer keeps getting bigger and bigger, making it ever harder for the segment to espouse a foundational ethos of smallness. Craft beer remains an artistic phenomenon best experienced locally, but one inevitably destined to mimic commercial imperatives through distribution.

For many, the essence of craft beer is spiritual, not numerical, but while poets and purists prefer to rhapsodize about hoppy, malty, sweet and sour aesthetics, politicians and bureaucrats demand quantifiable criteria, transferable to a ledger sheet, because awarding “small” businesses an excise tax reduction implies an accepted, concrete definition of small, and in beer, this measure begins with annual production by the barrel (31 gallons).

The issue is the total number of barrels, with beer style and brewing methods generally superfluous, leading to numerous statistical anomalies and Jesuitical reckonings.

Enjoy the remainder of the column. If memory serves, 2015 is my tenth anniversary writing columns for John White at Food & Dining.

It's been a blast.

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Former North Carolina Tar Heels basketball coach Dean Smith died on February 7, 2015. You may know that Smith retired from coaching in 1997 as the winningest coach in NCAA history (a record since eclipsed), but perhaps you didn’t know this.

Beloved Basketball Coach Dean Smith Spoke Out On Segregation, Prison System, Nuclear Warfare

… Smith’s celebrity owes to his off-court demonstrations of character as well. As a high school basketball star in Topeka, KS, Smith urged his school to integrate its two racially segregated basketball teams … (and later) as head coach at UNC, Smith didn’t have to ask anyone else to desegregate the basketball community he was part of. He just did it …

… the causes Smith chose to exert himself on go beyond racial equality. Smith publicly supported efforts to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world and vocally opposed the death penalty, reportedly even taking players to visit prisons and death row inmates on some occasions to show them the injustices of the American prison system.

College basketball ceased to be of interest to me long before Dean Smith’s retirement, and I cannot lay claim to detailed knowledge of the coach’s life on or off the court. Curiously, from what little I recall, Smith’s principled activism garnered few column inches while he was active, perhaps because it contrasted with the hypocrisy-laden college basketball narrative.

It’s pure speculation, but perhaps a common thread links a coach like Dean Smith, a musician like Woody Guthrie, and a brewing company owner like me, because basketballs, guitars and breweries all are perfectly capable of serving as metaphorical fascist-killing machines, at least when placed in the proper hands, with aligned minds and attitudes.

Writer John Feinstein provides the best possible coda.

To me, (Dean Smith’s) legacy is summed up in something that happened that I was involved in peripherally, years and years ago when I first learned about his involvement in desegregating the restaurants in Chapel Hill. And I asked him about it 'cause it was his minister who told me the story.

And he said, I wish Reverend Seymour hadn't told you that. And I said, Dean, why? Why would you want that? You should be proud of being involved in something like that. And he looked at me, and he said, John, you should never be proud of doing the right thing. You should just do the right thing.

And that's who Dean Smith was.

It’s just one beer drinker’s opinion, of course, but the contemporary American “craft” beer scene would be vastly improved if more adherents took Dean Smith’s advice to heart.

Call it craft, or just plain beer, but a periodic reminder is full merited: It began as a radical, revolutionary movement away from the beer business as usual, and it remains relevant only insofar as this point isn’t forgotten. When we lose sight of this fact, we risk losing our origins.

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Earlier in February, I attended the bi-monthly meeting of the Brewers of Indiana board of directors in Indianapolis. As referenced above, this being an even-numbered year, the Indiana General Assembly holds a long, two-month session. Much of what we discussed at the BIG meeting pertained to the guild’s legislative agenda, and one must accept that little of certainty can be said about the legislature’s activities until the session is concluded, and the dust settles.

We customarily discuss many items, and among them in February was a broader consideration of what might be called “diversity” in “craft” beer and brewing circles.

(Note that in rhetorical terms, I favor a gradual weaning from usage of the modifier “craft,” as it has come to mean very little.)

Prior to the meeting, DJ McAllister, the owner and brewer at the Black Swan brewpub in Plainfield, had messaged me with an idea, one I endorsed unreservedly. He proposed recommending to the board that a work group be formed to gather information on beer and diversity. DJ introduced the idea, and it was approved. I’ll be working with him on this project, and am delighted that he took the lead.

A work group’s information gathering will strike some as a flaccid response to our previous spirited debate about sexist beer names and images, but I must disagree with this characterization. They’re called baby steps for a very good reason.

A work group is a good place to start, and a plausible way of gathering facts under the imprimatur of the guild. Any suggestions as to sources of information are deeply appreciated; please e-mail them to me.

My review of Kevin Gibson's Louisville Beer book, in the Winter edition of Food & Dining magazine.

My Hip Hops beer column still runs quarterly in Food & Dining magazine, the current issue of which is available throughout Louisville and Southern Indiana.

Via issuu Clip, you can read the full column here: Winter 2014 (Volume 46). It's a book review of Louisville Beer: Derby City History on Draft, by Kevin Gibson.

Here's a tease.

Louisville Beer Now and Then

... Louisville Beer is especially useful in providing descriptive attention to the two decades elapsing since brewing’s return. What’s more, this section of Gibson’s narrative offers context, and the inescapable conclusion is that the present-day craft constitutes a revolution all its own, rather than a restoration of past glories.

The late Tony Judt had this to say about the historian’s purpose: “You cannot invent or exploit the past for present purposes.” In this sense, although previous epochs of Louisville beer share similarities, they were very different from what craft beer has become.

REWIND (2012): My column at Food and Dining: "Localism + Beer."

The following first appeared here on November 9, 2012. First the 2012 preface, then the main text.

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2012 Blog Preface

I usually get around to publishing the columns I've written for Food and Dining magazine, but I seldom think to do it until a few weeks (sometimes months) after the quarterly issues hit the street. This time, I'll make an exception. Vol. 38 (Winter 2012) of Food and Dining has been released, and you can read the issue here. My column is called Hip Hops, and this quarter's piece is entitled "Localism + Beer." For the near future, consider this as a blueprint for my advocacy. It's time to go to the mattresses and return to the grassroots, and it's going to be plain fun.

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HIP HOPS: LOCALISM + BEER

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
--Henry David Thoreau

It always has been my aim to accurately describe various aspects of my beer-infused everyday world, but even as I’ve done so, my everyday world persists in evolving. Apart from necessarily using the word “beer,” I’m increasingly unsure how to view any of the rest of it.

Long ago, good beer was about imports exclusively, because there wasn’t very much good beer in America. Several thousand domestic brewery start-ups later, there’s plenty of good beer here, and these days, we refer to it collectively as “craft” beer. This term is fine by me, except that the definition of craft beer starts on a tiny end with the scant barrels produced by a nano-brewery, and ends voluminously with the nationwide airport lounge availability of Samuel Adams.

Semantics aside, the real point of this digression is to acknowledge that I’m changing, too. Back in 1982, St. Pauli Girl probably was the best beer we had during my first-ever gig as a liquor store clerk. Thirty years later, there are dozens – nay, hundreds – of far better beers available hereabouts, and while I’m entirely comfortable in making a “good, better, best” value judgment, it isn’t as simple as it used to be.

Amid the giddy, exploding exuberance, which I’ve long professed and will continue to advocate, it seems that something important is lost. There exists an understandable zeal to embrace the unprecedented availability of international craft beer, but I find myself thinking back to points of origin, and what has made so many of my beer travels memorable: Localism.

It’s drinking great beer at or near its birthplace, primarily because it never tastes fresher than by doing so, but also because the place itself matters. Beer and community reflect each other, and although we must continue to think globally, I’m sensing a new imperative to drink locally.

Home, Not Away

My professional reputation as a beer purveyor was established owing to a stubborn determination to stock the best legally obtainable (well, most of the time) beer, as brewed in locales across the planet. Nowadays, I’m far less inclined to look past my own geographical proximity. The Louisville metropolitan area has its own great beer, with plenty more quality beer being produced within a hundred mile radius.

I’ll never entirely dismiss Belgian Lambics, German Maibocks and Irish Stouts. There’ll forever be a spot for India Pale Ales from San Diego and New York-brewed Saisons, and yet they’re no longer essential to me; rather, they’re for special sampling occasions, as they were years ago when availability was limited. Inexorably, my beer drinking is shifting to local and regional sources, and for the best of all reasons: Drinking local makes me happy.

Places, Not Prizes

Shift happens. It is perhaps the single, fundamental tenet of emerging economic localism, and when it comes time to have a beer, the concept of shift means putting this principle into liquid practice.

Having acknowledged the efficacy of buying local, as measured by factual indices consistently recognizing that localism keeps more money in one’s community, my household is incrementally shifting toward local sources of goods and services, whenever practical. Shift is a process, not an all-or-nothing crusade. If my shift to locally brewed beer implied being compelled to drink an inferior product, obviously I would think differently. Fortunately, it does not.

Another contemporary societal trend to consider is the notion of placemaking, generally described as “a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces.” Placemaking is a grassroots, community-based phenomenon, in which those ordinary people using a public space help to determine how that space is used. Placemaking may help in part to explain my re-emerging interest in community-based beer consumption -- keeping the beer drinking venues local, listening to the local beer drinkers, and knowing who supplies the beer.

Eyes and Palates, Wide Open

Not so long ago, Goose Island Brewing Company was a proud independent, but now it is 100% owned by the multinational monolith called AB-Inbev, meaning that in cold, hard fact, Goose Island is no more independent than an Ignatius J. Reilly-themed weenie wagon on the streets of Pyongyang, North Korea. Honkers Ale remains certifiably better than Budweiser, but to me, it really matters where the money goes … and dollars paid for Honkers ultimately travel to corporate headquarters in Leuven, Belgium, not Chicago, Illinois.

Sorry, but Goose Island sold out. Craft beer drinkers need to examine their consciences lest they sell out, too.

Session, Not Sledgehammer

I’m in my sixth decade, and my body reacts differently these days to the excesses of my profession. American craft brewing has excelled in the creation of highly alcoholic genre classics, including Imperial India Pale Ale, Barley Wine and Quadrupel, and while I still adore these styles, increasingly my palate turns to an evening’s reasonable sustainability, in the form of session beers.

The Pennsylvania-based beer writer Lew Bryson is the founder of the Session Beer Project, and he provides these helpful parameters.

Session beers are:

► under 4.5% alcohol by volume
► flavorful enough to be interesting -- no light beers, please
► balanced enough for multiple pints
► conducive to conversation
► reasonably priced

In brief, low-alcohol, but not low-taste. It's deliberately vague. The great thing about session beers, especially the ones that come in under 3.5%, is that you can enjoy several beers, and still have a BAC of under 0.04.

Craft Beer Is A Journey

Maybe some day I’ll come full circle, and find myself craving bottles of Bud Light iced in a pickle bucket. Doubtful, but entirely possible, because beer is less a destination than a journey, and you make the road signs yourself. All I’m asking is that craft beer drinkers resolve to be unafraid of where thinking can lead drinking, especially when thoughts turn to local options.