Friday feast at Louisville's Gasthaus.

You have to love a place that kicks off its menu with a newspaper article on the importance of keeping children under control while dining out.

But Louisville's Gasthaus restaurant is much more than that, and has been bringing great German food to metro residents since 1993. In this second consecutive year of being unable to visit Europe, I've made do with memories, beers and meals in various locales, and as for the latter, Gasthaus ranks above both the Glarner Stube (Swiss/German; New Glarus WI) and Jasper, Indiana's Schnitzelbank in terms of authenticity and a purely Pavlovian ability to transport me to the continent, if only briefly.

The important detail missing from my photo of the Gasthaus's colossal Wiener Schnitzel a la Holstein are the anchovy filets. Heavens! The sauerkraut was fully cooked, savory and worthy of entree status itself. You can see the strawberry torte. Aventinue Weizen Doppelbock is the star of a short but effective German bottled beer list.

Gasthaus is a splurge, and fully worth it: Two salads, two entrees, a side, two desserts and two drinks came to $125, including gratuity. Hours are short and reservations (for tables as well as desserts) recommended. The location on Brownsboro Road is easy to find, and adjacent to a well-stocked Party Mart package store.

BJCP listing of Lager, minus Bock, at tonight's Office Hours with the Publican.

The format of Office Hours this fall was described in a previous post: Office Hours with the Publican returns on Monday, September 13, with a special "guest bottle" theme.

For tonight's session, we begin in earnest, with BJCP style guidelines as a broad overview, plus our own pre-existing guest bottle list, and a half-dozen beers for sampling. We'll be tackling and tasting the first four BJCP lager categories (and their sub-categories): Light Lager, Pilsner, European Amber Lager and Dark Lager. In case you're wondering, Bock is being reserved for its own night of exploration.

Given limitations in inventory, and the sheer size required of any comprehensive list attempted in this day and age, what stays and what goes? Which styles are necessary to educate? How do we decide?

We'll start at 6:30 p.m. in Prost.

Lousville Craft Beer Week's Strassenfest at the Riverfront Amphitheater will be September 25.

The first-ever Louisville Craft Beer Week will run from September 24 through October 2. LCBW is a cooperative venture organized by Louisville area brewers and purveyors of craft beer, designed to, "Educate ... Inspire ... Imbibe."

There'll be big beer events every night during the week, and numerous smaller happenings around the metro area staged and hosted by pubs, restaurants and package stores. The majority of American craft brewers with a presence in Louisville will be represented at some point during the week.

Facebook page with schedule
August 9 LCBW golf scramble details

Craft beer fans in New Albany should mark their calendars for Saturday, September 25, when the Strassenfest already scheduled for the Riverfront Amphitheater will partner with Louisville Craft Beer Week to produce an Oktoberfest-style party with German-themed draft beers from participating LCBW breweries, both local and regional, along with appropriate food and music.

NABC is happy to host this Sunnyside Strassenfest on behalf of the LCBW, and thanks go to the riverfront committee for so eagerly embracing the concept. It's a natural conclusion to the amphitheater's summer season and just as obvious segue into Harvest Homecoming (kickoff parade on Oct. 2).

NABC Abzug now on tap.

Jared Williamson's recipe for our new Abzug is derived from his research into archaic German beer styles in the run-up to the Happy Helmut (Fraconian) lager we did a couple of years back. To this very day, Germans and some other Central Europeans brew to fit into tax classifications based on alcohol content or starting gravity. In olden times, Abzug would have fallen into the lower end of Vollbier, and perhaps the higher end of Schankbier. Heater-Allen Brewing in Oregon brews an Abzug based on an Austrian interpretation:

Abzug - In the mid to late 1800s, Viennese brewers produced a series of amber lager beers. The strongest was what we now call Marzen or Oktoberfest and the middle beer was just called Vienna. The weakest of the three was called Abzug, which means reduction in German. With less lagering time and a much lower original gravity, Abzug lacks some of the smoothness of Bobtoberfest, but it make a very nice session beer. (1.013 BG, 3.80%, 28 IBU, 8 SRM)

In similar fashion, our Abzug is a conscious effort on the brew team's part to develop a golden-colored beer that NABC can keep on tap all the time at Bank Street and the Pub & Pizzeria. We didn't want to brew something called Kolsch that really wasn't Kolsch. Abzug uses the hybrid California Common yeast, fermented cool, and without the lagering time required by Kaiser, NABC's pre-Prohibition Pilsner, meaning it can be turned over faster, not unlike the common beers of Americana.

Stats: 6-row malt, Vienna and a dab of rye; German select hops, California Common yeast fermented cool, 3.8% abv, 26 IBUs, and lagered in the keg for a week. Note that German Select hops are bred to resemble the characteristics of the Spalt/Tettnang/Saaz grouping.

Give Abzug a spin and let me know what you think.