Headlines from March 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.

Previously, I explained several reasons why this blog has gone on hiatus, and explained that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, over yonder at NA Confidential.

You'll find them there via the all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat. However, whenever the urge strikes -- probably monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Here is another month, with the most recent listed first. Apologies if topicality has gone out the window. I'm still groping for a working routine.

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THE BEER BEAT: An assortment of headlines for beer and dissection.

Every year is the same, and I repeat once again: SUNDAY SALES ALREADY EXIST. Each year without fail, someone writes a column like this one lamenting Indiana's undisputed legal weirdness, and it always ends with the broad claim that there is a prohibition on Sunday sales. But beer, wine and spirits are available for carry-out on Sunday from small Indiana's brewers, vintners and distillers -- and there are virtually no restrictions pertaining to on-premise consumption.

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THE BEER BEAT: I've decided to skip this year's Session Beer Day observance. See you in 2018.

As most readers know by now, (my mother) died two weeks ago, and I'm happy to have kept my vow of sobriety (if not outright abstinence). We're never to old to learn, or to feel. Session Beer Day was to be the resumption of normality, and yet to be honest, I'm not feeling it. I can see myself having a couple of beers somewhere, just not in the previously suggested format.

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SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS meets THE BEER BEAT: Boontling, a local dialect made famous by Anderson Valley Brewing Company.

Hop Ottin' was a precursor to our IPA-crazed contemporary era, and it also serves to introduce today's lingo.

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THE BEER BEAT: Bryan Roth on sexism, anonymity and speaking openly about diversity.

If the guild is supported by the majority Indiana breweries, and it is, and if these breweries agree that it's a good thing for the guild to lobby on their behalf, then the corollary is for them to accept an obligation to be socially responsible -- precisely because the Indiana legal regime stipulates that irresponsibility (serving minors, etc) is grounds for the revocation of the brewing privilege.

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THE BEER BEAT: "'Pinup versus pin her down': Indiana beers stoke controversy."

Last December, I was revisited by ghosts. It's a recurring phenomenon with me.

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THE BEER BEAT: Airline pricing for movie theater drinks, although we've little idea which ones.

If I were an editor at Business First -- well, that's unlikely, given that business-oriented publications contain far too many numbers for a humanities major like me, and anyway, it's my habit to refrain from fetishizing grubby capitalists -- I'd ask the contributing writer why some of the following beers are tagged by brand name, but the wines are identified by style.

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THE BEER BEAT: Highlights but no Lites, or a beer news roundup.

Coincidentally, as I ponder the most recent effort (fingers crossed) to bring the NABC buyout saga to a conclusion, All About Beer offers a wonderful tip about the power of realism.

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THE BEER BEAT: No beer ... but a whole lotta mezcal in the new edition of Food & Dining, including a previously unpublished feature-length essay.

The assignment began as a column-length look at Louisville KY resident Marcos Mendoza and his Mala Idea line of mezcal, then John Carlos White turned me loose to write about mezcal at length -- and at deadline, we'd see where it took me.

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THE BEER BEAT: "HopCat is the craft beer lover’s meow."

Since Food & Dining is a quarterly, I wait until the current issue is published, then backtrack three months for the reprint, so this profile of HopCat is from Winter 2016; Vol. 54 (Aug/Sept/Oct) -- and yes, HopCat is a chain pub and eatery.

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THE BEER BEAT: The revenge of analog in terms of drinking beer? I like the idea.

The single most memorable beer article I came across during the past week didn't so much as mention beer, not even once. Instead, the article in question is a brief rumination on the message to be gleaned from a new book by David Sax called The Revenge Of Analog: Real Things And Why They Matter.

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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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Apparently everyone likes HopCat, and that's just dandy.

You're entitled to my opinion, and in the case of HopCat, I've already inflicted my viewpoint in this June post.

HopCat is coming to Louisville, and it's gonna be yuuuge.

Kevin Gibson asks the important questions and gets the requisite answers. I still think "crack" fries is offensive, and if I venture into HopCat's Louisville hood, I'd rather go to Holy Grale and Cumberland Brews.

But it isn't about me, is it?

Rise of the super bars: Will HopCat affect the craft-beer scene?, by Kevin Gibson (LEO Weekly)

The popularity of craft beer is a trend that continues to skyrocket. At the end of 2015, Kentucky ranked only 38th in the U.S. in number of breweries, but the economic impact of craft beer in the state was $495 million, good for 27th nationwide, according to the Brewers Association.

Louisville has more than a dozen breweries, with more set to open. We also have World of Beer with 50 taps and some 500 bottles, two Craft House locations focusing on regional craft beer, and the well-established Sergio’s World Beers, which carries in the neighborhood of 1,500 bottled and draft beers at any given time.

Craft beer is big business, and big business brings big competition.

Enter HopCat, the growing, Michigan-based chain set to open its latest location, at 1064 Bardstown Road in The Highlands, this Saturday. The restaurant-bar will pour from 132 different taps, with a focus on American craft beer and a few ciders and imports. It advertises itself as having “the state’s largest selection of craft beers on tap.”

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HopCat is coming to Louisville, and it's gonna be yuuuge.

HopCat (no spacing, alas) is a regional chain out of Michigan, one of those "bigger is better" ideas that proliferate in America, where "craft" beer long since has been claimed as a victim of Disneyesque Capitalism, though it cannot be denied that immediately upon planting a location in Broad Ripple (Indianapolis), HopCat started pouring (a) sponsorship money into the Brewers of Indiana Guild, and (b) lots of Indiana-brewed beers.

Duly noted. Duly appreciated. Here's how the Indy branch of HopCat describes itself on Twitter.

130 all-craft drafts, ciders, wines, cocktails + food your Mom would make if she loved beer. Lunch, Dinner, Sunday Brunch.

The forthcoming HopCat location to Louisville has been mildly controversial owing to the familiar spatial and parking issues on Bardstown Road.

Massive Highlands beer bar now has an opening date, by David A. Mann (Louisville Business First)

HopCat – Louisville will open July 30. The big bar, boasting about 11,000 square feet, has been under construction on Bardstown Road in the Highlands, at the former Spindeltop Draperies Inc. property, since last year.

The first 200 people in its doors that day will get a card good for a free order of its "crack fries" every week for a year.

I don't think "crack" is particularly funny as it pertains to fries, or for that matter to much of anything else (remember "crack babies," anyone?) but to each his own. I suppose if a brewery called Special Ed can talk about "'tard tested, 'tard approved," then crack fries is a relatively mild linguistic offense.

Meanwhile, it's bigger and bigger and better and better. One gets the impression that if "cat houses" were legal, the marketing tie-in would be only nanoseconds away.

(The Highlands HopCat) will feature 132 varieties of craft beers on tap, a full menu, three event spaces (including two with private bars) and a rooftop deck with outdoor seating. It will also have more than 200 whiskey selections, including many many Kentucky bourbons, and a small-batch in-house brewery featuring its own creations and collaborations.

Louisville's HopCat will be the chain's ninth, with a tenth outpost to follow in Lexington, late 2016 with the Lexington outpost having opened in the fall of 2015. As Mark Twain once presciently noted, there are lies, damned lies, and press releases.

“We’ve worked hard to make HopCat – Louisville unlike any other,” Mark Sellers, founder and CEO of BarFly Ventures, said in the release. “I believe we’ve created a location that will serve as a hub for Kentucky craft beers and a magnet for local beer lovers as well as those visiting Louisville from around the world.”

The usual dreary boilerplate code language, concocted to gladden the hearts of fetishists who read business news for their jollies.

But HopCat still isn't AB-InBev, so I'd heartily recommend the Kentucky Guild of Brewers prepare an invoice and get out in front of the chain's arrival in Kentucky.

Finally, am I being cynical? Yes, but only when absolutely necessary.

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