"Kentucky Common beer to stand out at BrewFest."

This one's been on the docket for a while. It takes place tomorrow.

At LouisvilleBeer: "Derby City BrewFest: An 'Uncommon' Beer Festival on Derby Eve."

To summarize, tracking down facts about the historical presence in Louisville of a style referred to as "common" (or reflecting the German still being spoken locally then, "Komon") poses many challenges, but it existed, and appears to have varied widely. The term itself might have more to do with price point than anything else, in the form of a "session" or "table" beer, inexpensive, and suitable for daily consumption at a time when cultural mores would have embraced such a brew as a thirst quencher, as opposed to soda, water or iced tea.

Whether sourness was an intrinsic property of Kentucky Common remains the great debatable. It may have been a by-product of handling, as Leah Dienes of Apocalypse Brewery suggests in the article below. The idea the common might have been loosely connected with sour mash (see: bourbon) in some fashion may or may not be supported by available evidence, although it makes sense even if only in an isolated or accidental way, and undoubtedly bolsters the storytelling possibilities.

In Louisville, the Kentucky Derby is on Saturday, and the day before is the Oaks, a racing day generally claimed by locals as their own. Churchill Downs is a money-making conglomerate, which for several years has forged an alliance with the Stella Artois, making carbonated Belgian dishwater the "official" beer of the Kentucky Derby. Naturally, if you're interested in what's really brewing locally, Derby City BrewFest is a required destination tomorrow night. Here's another preview.

Kentucky Common beer to stand out at BrewFest, by Bailey Loosemore (Courier-Journal)

Also, don't forget to reject Stella Artois as faux Derby beer.

A few other seasonal Derby links:

The classic: Director’s Cut: ‘The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,’ by Hunter S. Thompson.

The outrage: Tradition, Americana, Churchill Downs and Stella Artois.

On horse pimps: "The Kentucky Derby Really Is Decadent and Depraved."

Just be patient: Derby Festival begins, bad beer flows, and so we learn to wait.

Let's keep that line moving.

Killa Stella

(thanks to Rick for the photo)

The PC at Louisville Beer: "Killa Stella."

Stella is Belgian for beer just like Foster's is Australian for beer, which is to say, not at all.

Killa Stella

In his autobiographical book, “The Factory of Facts,” the Belgian-American writer Luc Sante recalls the drab post-WW II industrial reality of his childhood home of Verviers, a city in the Wallonian rustbelt. Reading Sante’s reflections on a society stratified by factory life and traumatized by its wartime experiences, my thoughts turned to lager beer, which originated in and around the German lands, to the east of Belgium.

We know that lager developed in lockstep with the industrial revolution throughout Europe, gradually departing from its original, artisanal methods to fatally embrace pure science utterly devoid of a guiding aesthetic, eventually supplanting traditional ale styles – many of which survived only in the countryside in cantankerous places like Sante’s Belgium.

Annual Kentucky Derby poster ... or poseur?

How many furlongs to Leuven?

My new column at LouisvilleBeer.com: "How many furlongs to Leuven?"

It's a major rewrite of something I posted here previously, and I trust, a good deal more confrontational than the first time.

Let’s face it: Subway’s new Italian sandwich collection is more authentically local (in a vaguely tri-colored Neopolitan, fake Gucci, prosciutto gangsta sense of genuine) than Churchill Downs’ fiscal embrace of AB-InBev’s “classic Belgian lager."

How many furlongs to Leuven?

Posted by Roger Baylor in Baylor on Beer | 0 comments

I freely admit to getting no kick out of juleps. Horse pimps don’t thrill me at all, and the fireworks during Flatulence Over Louisville are an excellent annual pretext to skip town for somewhere that’s both quiet and civilized by comparison, and which has craft beer readily available to wash away the bad taste of the air show’s martial glorification of pure garishness.

Nowadays the year-round availability of locally-brewed beer in Louisville is something we take for granted, but unfortunately, the Kentucky Derby isn’t really about anything other than thoroughbred horses, gamblers and maybe the Ohio River filled with bourbon – as long as you keep that accursed mint out of it, and take it neat, the way your personal deity intended.

If it's Stella, it means that Churchill Downs does not give a flying **** about local-anything.

So why give a **** about Churchill Downs?

With all due credit to Sara "Bar Belle" Havens (her complete LEO story is reprinted below), here's the other side of my writing assignment for Food and Dining Magazine's next quarterly issue, May/June/July, which is to be released just prior to the Kentucky Derby.

My job? Inform the magazine's readers, many of whom will be visitors from out of town, about the nature and whereabouts of Louisville's craft breweries. Included are bits of recent history, as in this brief preview.

The Kentucky Derby has taken place right here in Louisville every year since 1875. From 1979 through 1992, there was no locally brewed beer to celebrate the Run for the Roses, but when Sea Hero captured the race in 1993, a few hardy and pioneering microbrew fans could be found drinking Silo Red Rock Ale. Later that fall, Bluegrass Brewing Company was founded, and there Louisville’s present-day craft beer story really begins.

Amid the usual fanfare surrounding Derby "tradition", let's put it this way. Subway's new Italian Collection is more authentically local in a Naples sense of genuine than anything Churchill Downs manages with its exaltation of AB-Inbev's "classic" Belgian lager (lager just isn't a classic Belgian style, is it?) as the beneficiary of soulless sponsorship dollars, all of which happily reinforces my usual bilious point: It should have been AB-Inbev's Goose Island, not AB-Inbev's Stella. At least Goose Island was once legit craft before its big-buck absorption, and Chicago's considerably far closer as a source than Leuven.

Stella named Derby’s official beer

Stella Artois has been named the “official beer sponsor” of Churchill Downs, Oaks and Derby. According to the press release, “Churchill Downs Racetrack today announced a multi-year partnership, naming the world’s best-selling Belgian beer Stella Artois as ‘The Official Beer Sponsor of Churchill Downs, the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby.’ While attending this year’s Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks, fans will be able to experience classic Belgian lager Stella Artois and its iconic Chalice, which will feature the Kentucky Derby 138 logo. Continuing its affiliation with Churchill Downs, Stella Artois also will serve as the presenting sponsor of “Opening Night” and four “Downs After Dark” nighttime events in 2012.”

I’m not a big fan of Stella, but I suppose it’s better than PBR or something. I will stick to the Mint Juleps.