Headlines from February 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, at NA Confidential.

You'll find them there via the all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat. However, whenever the urge strikes, I'll collect a few of these links right here.

Here are another month's worth of them, with the most recent listed first. One of my columns sneaked in there, too.

Apologies if topicality has gone out the window. I'm still groping for a working routine.

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THE BEER BEAT: Some great ink for Floyd County Brewing Company.

Crucially for Floyd County Brewing Company, the business is a classic brewpub model. The beer is brewed and consumed in-house. It's the right model for the here and now. The object is to dial in the beer at FCBC's home base, and then become a can't miss destination for local beer lovers.

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ON THE AVENUES: A stern side view of Gravity Head, nineteen times over.

Gravity Head might be staged differently, but as they pertain to what unexpectedly has become a bona fide tradition, an array of minor and often weirdly eccentric points adds up to a greater sum.

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THE BEER BEAT: A compendium of local and regional craft beer headlines.

Once upon a time the pace of change in regional brewing circles was fast, but not so rapid as to defy the efforts of an intrepid observer or two to consistently document the phenomenon.

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THE BEER BEAT: Why not a Session Beer Day pub crawl in downtown New Albany?

With Session Beer Day 2017 less than two months away, it's time for me to decide how I'll be honoring the occasion this year, and here's what I've come up with. This year, I'd like to make my Session Beer Day stroll in downtown New Albany. You're welcome to join me.

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THE BEER BEAT: You may need pickle brine after the Stupor Bowl, or throughout Trump's term.

Welcome to the pickleback: A whiskey shot with pickle brine as a chaser. Thanks to K for the link.

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THE BEER BEAT: "There is not ONE FREAKING IOTA of truth about how AB got started in this beautifully-crafted, button-pushing, faux-sensy-poo, piece o’ trash ad."

For those readers who may be coming late to my beer-related scribblings, know that Stevefoolbody is my hero. He is so awesome that typically I have nothing whatever to add, and merely attach a link and brief teaser to encourage you to go to his page and read.

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THE BEER BEAT: It took a week to get the details straight, but BBC is leaving its current St. Matthews location after 23 years and hopes to reopen elsewhere in Louisville KY.

So, to recap: Owner Pat Hagan bowed (intelligently, in my view) to leasing and area development realities and now hopes to move BBC to a new location, one that will allow the expansion of brewing into bottling and/or canning. The 3rd Street brewery and restaurant remain open, and the 4th Street branch will reopen when the Kindred building is finished. The coming week will be a victory lap for BBC in St. Matthews, and I hope to make it over and learn the future of my Wort Mug, number 66.

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THE BEER BEAT: No selfies necessary, because localism is why I believe the impending Falls City expansion is good news.

But localism as an economic doctrine provides another way of looking at the world – capitalism with a more human face, complementary to a good beer ethos, and also a different collection of information that permits tying a singular love of mine (beer) to another (the community in which I live, and how to make it better). It offers sense and sensibility out of relative scale, and suggests differing standards of value and achievement.

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THE BEER BEAT: Tailspin Ale Fest returns to Bowman Field on Saturday, February 18.

In my view, Tailspin Ale Fest has become Louisville KY's premier beer festival, and it's the brainchild of New Albany's own Tisha Gainey.

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THE BEER BEAT: Green Mouse sez the rumors are unsubstantiated and it's business as usual at BBC St. Matthews.

If and when further information becomes available, I'll let readers know. Until then ... can someone bring daddy a nice growler of David Pierce's signature BBC APA? I've been known to pay cash for such favors.

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The past month on THE BEER BEAT.

The PC: Budweiser explains the Doctrine of Trojan Geese Transubstantiation.

The PC: Budweiser explains the Doctrine of Trojan Geese Transubstantiation.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

The Super Bowl means very little to me.

Back when the NFL was all about mud, blood and grizzled steelworkers gouging each other’s eyes out – on and off the field – I sometimes paid attention, but these days, not so much.

It’s true that I've never been a diehard football fan at any level. The last college game I saw in its entirety ("watched" would be insinuating a level of unattainable sobriety) was the last one I attended in person, a University of Louisville game in the late 1980's.

Professional football has slightly more appeal to me, and yet in recent years, I've seldom bothered viewing more than a quarter or three until the playoffs start. This year, I paused long enough to watch the very end of the fourth quarter when the Packers imploded, and that’s it.

As an aside, it occurs to me that my disinterest in football has been cemented by the increasingly well-documented phenomenon of brain injuries and the regrettable, lifelong physical toll suffered by players. We have ever more concise medical insight into these injuries, and how they impact lives after football, often explaining erratic adulthoods and the onset of dementia at impossibly youthful ages. How can anyone watch this sport without pondering the human toll?

That said, it’s the Super Bowl, and just as one stands for rote readings of the Pledge of Allegiance without ever thinking about what any of it really means, or whether the content actually matters at all, I watched a few minutes of the first half. Periodically I’d glance at the Twitter feed in my usual, once-yearly and entirely futile effort to comprehend the phenomenon of mass market advertisement envy.

It transpired that at some point during the first half, there was a Budweiser commercial with a puppy. I yawned and gulped my gin even faster.

Seeing as I’d already booked my own Super Bowl halftime show via the good offices of YouTube (Kasabian at Glastonbury, 2014 – an excellent choice), the television volume was turned all the way down, and so I didn’t catch what Carlos Brito’s mutts were doing or saying, although in the predictable time warp of my cultural appreciation, ancient notions of forcibly neutering Spud McKenzie came bubbling to the surface.

Thus aroused to wax cynical, I posted a tweet and went to bed to read a damned book.

And while you're scoffing at Budweiser's ads, always remember -- and never forget -- that Goose Island IS Budweiser! #trojangoose

On Monday morning, I groggily awoke to mass annoyance over AB InBev’s Super Bowl ad, as summarized in this tweet from a friend:

If Budweiser thinks craft beer is pretentious, why are they buying up all those craft breweries?

I was confused.

Were the puppies I'd silenced actively denouncing Jim Koch, or more likely, urinating into a Lagunitas tumbler?

Neither, because as it turns out, my throwaway #trojangoose tweet proved unintentionally prescient. During the second half, AB InBev lobbed a potshot at what Ad Age ineptly describes as “fruity micro-brews and beer geeks.”

Budweiser stole the Super Bowl pregame with a cuddly, cute puppy. But the King of Beers came out swinging in its second Super Bowl spot with a hard-hitting approach that proudly declared the nation's third-largest beer as a "macro" brew. The ad, which aired for the first time during the game, also revived the old "This Bud's For You" tagline that will anchor a new campaign to replace "Grab Some Buds."

The campaign's debut ad is notable for its swagger. The spot, by Anomaly, takes what appear to be shots at fruity micro brews and beer geeks. Bud is "brewed for drinking, not dissecting," the ad declares over footage of three men who are caricatures of beer snobs. Then comes this: "Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale, we'll be brewing us some golden suds."

Fans of better beer immediately took to social media to return AB InBev’s backhanded compliment, showering the multinational brewing conglomerate with amusing abuse centering on the notion of all-encompassing hypocrisy, because after all, AB InBev possesses its own product lines brimming with fruity mockrobrews, and besides, it is conjuring Zombie Craft beer subsidiaries (those pesky Trojan Geese again) faster than GOP presidential hopefuls book their flights to Iowa.

But why is anyone surprised? It's not like AB InBev ever possessed a moral compass. The Pour Fool explains:

… In their everyday actions at limiting the growth and distribution of craft beers, AB/InBev shows the hollowness of their claims of being a friend of brewers everywhere and big fans of craft beer. They’re fighting craft on dozens of fronts simultaneously, from Florida’s ongoing dust-up over allowable growler sizes (Bud and its associated brands and not, of course, growler-fill items) to its bloodthirsty attempts to obfuscate the issues in South Carolina’s bid to get a Stone satellite brewery and pub in Charleston. Anyone who thinks for a second that AB’s goal in acquiring Elysian, Goose, 10B, and Blue Point is anything other than an attempt to either control or kill craft beer simply doesn’t know history or is so spiritually vacant that they can easily rationalize away all that messy fluff like business ethics and morals and customer loyalty and independence and American entrepreneurship and what’s right and wrong. For those empty meat sacks, “It’s all about the beer, man!” and they areexactly the brain-dead geese AB relies onto keep their markets profitable and their ink black.

This part will be on the test: When I issued my random tweet last night prior to the offensive ad, I intentionally capitalized the word “IS,” and am underlining it in today’s column, because it helps to clarify AB InBev’s seeming hypocrisy. Think of it as the doctrine of Trojan Geese Transubstantiation.

Transubstantiation (in Latin, transsubstantiatio, in Greek μετουσίωσις metousiosis) is the change whereby, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, the bread and the wine used in the sacrament of the Eucharist become, not merely as by a sign or a figure, but also in actual reality the body and blood of Christ.

Consequently, it isn’t at all hypocritical of AB InBev to savage “craft” beers and beer geeks, because the products AB InBev peddles from its own specialty portfolios are no longer “craft” beers even if “beer geeks” still embrace them. In actual reality, they ARE Budweiser. The evil empire’s theological rationale is impeccable, and by the standards of multinational corporate logic, even unimpeachable.

When you drink Bourbon County Stout, you ARE drinking Budweiser.

However, the situation is not without consolation. The doctrine of Trojan Geese Transubstantiation points to a noticeable flaw in ad agency thinking, because in this scenario, lifted straight from Aquinas's scrolls, beer “geeks” are not being pretentious.

Just painfully naïve.

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Last week's column: Getting our SHIFT together … again.

The week before: Ripped straight from the pages of an Onion satire: “13 white males not really so eager to discuss issues like racism and sexism.”

Dumbass AP reporter misses super point about Sunday sales in Indiana.

Indiana's small breweries and wineries can sell their own beer and wine for carry-out on Sundays, Jim Suhr.

Indiana liquor law could crimp Super Bowl parties

INDIANAPOLIS — Rich Pontolillo might merit a toast for his Super Bowl party preparations. He has beer and liquor stocked up ahead of the first Super Bowl ever held in his home state.

In Indiana, he didn’t have much choice about planning ahead: The state is among a handful that ban carryout liquor sales on Sundays, even with the NFL’s most-celebrated spectacle on the schedule

Super Bowl Sunday at Bank Street Brewhouse: Asian Chicken Wings and to-go growlers.

Straight up, and as a prelude to what follows, kindly note that in the purest and most objective of senses, I believe that whenever Bank Street Brewhouse's Chef Josh Lehman has his Asian Chicken Wings on the menu, BSB is the place to go for wings -- in all of Kentuckiana.

Chef Josh has revealed that for the Super Bowl on February 6th, the BSB kitchen will be preparing Asian Chicken Wings for consumption both in-house, and carry-out. Not only that, but there'll be special Super Bowl pricing.

Your first dozen wings purchased on Super Bowl Sunday cost $9; nine is the total Super Bowl wins between the two teams, with the Green Bay Packers winning three, and the Pittsburgh Steelers six.

Each additional wing (after 12) will cost .45 cents apiece, this being Super Bowl XLV.

You must purchase the first dozen before the individual .45 cent wings can be purchased, and you are highly encouraged to call ahead for orders larger than two dozen.

If, like me, you're wondering why BSB's Asian Chicken Wings are so consistently good, here is Chef Josh's explanation.

The chicken wings are brined for twenty four hours to impart moisture and flavor, deep fried, and then tossed in a mixture of hot chili sauce, sweet chili sauce, soy, sesame oil, ginger, coriander and rice wine vinegar.

Furthermore, if you ask me, the quality of chicken that Chef Josh uses is far above the local standard, and his wings are invariably plump, juicy and delicious.

Also on Sunday, don't forget that NABC's Bank Street Brewhouse is the only establishment in Floyd, Clark and Harrison counties (and points beyond in Southern Indiana) permitted to sell carry-out beer. The growlers should be going out the door quickly, and alongside those wings ... heavens. I might even be able to tolerate the idiotic commercials.

Busy NABC weekend ahead, highlighted by a firkin of Dry Knob.

It just might be an insane weekend at Bank Street Brewhouse, and I’m not complaining.

Earlier in the week, we started running our first-ever ads at the Louisville Restaurants Forum. Then we learned that we had been reviewed in the Louisville Courier-Journal. The review was on-line yesterday, and is in this morning's print edition. Then Food & Dining magazine came out, featuring a cover story about New Albany's nouveau dining scene and a cover photo by Dan Dry of Chef Josh's pesto lasagna. Finally, there’s the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Previously I told you about the plan for Super Bowl Sunday at Bank Street Brewhouse. We’re giving Chef Josh part of the day off so he can watch his beloved Colts, and he’s so excited about the offer that he’s letting Steve and Amy use his kitchen to prepare Asian Wings, Pork BQ and Scotch Eggs from 3:00 p.m. to game’s end.

NABC’s brew crew didn’t want to be left out, so Jared has delivered a firkin of Dry Knob to BSB, where it will be tapped and served by gravity pour from the bar top on Sunday at the special price of $3.00 … while it lasts.

Dry Knob is an American-style Pale Ale, and a variant of our Wet Knob Hop Harvest Ale. The difference is the use of dried hops from Abstonia Farms in Floyds Knobs, as opposed to the freshly picked “wet” hops used late last summer.

For more information, flash back to this posting: NABC Wet Knob Hop Harvest Ale: Early release date is Tuesday, September 15.

One Super Bowl, two menus at Bank Street Brewhouse.

Everyone knows that Bank Street Brewhouse’s Chef Josh Lehman is a rabid, fanatical fan of the Indianapolis Colts. With the Colts in the Super Bowl, NABC’s managerial cadre badly wanted to find a way of sparing Josh kitchen service during the big game.

It was decided to offer the usual Sunday fare from 12:00 noon to 3:00 p.m., coinciding with the times of operation for the Build Your Own Bloody Mary bar (Sarah might stay longer this Sunday if the trade’s good), and then to let Josh take off the remainder of the day.

Bank Street GM Steve Powell and NABC co-owner Amy Baylor have devised a special Super Bowl menu that will take over at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday. The normal menu resumes at our 2:00 p.m. opening on Tuesday, February 9.

There'll be a beer special, too ... look for the announcement later today.

New Albanian Bank Street Brewhouse
7 February, 2010 - Super Bowl Sunday Menu

Asian Style Chicken Wings
Twelve Wings with Spicy Sauce
$11

Pulled Pork Barbeque
South Carolina, Spicy Red, or Kansas City Style BBQ Sauce
$8

Scotch Egg
Deep-Fried Sausage and Panko Wrapped Hard-Boiled Egg
4

NABC open for Super Bowl: Sportstime open from 4:00 p.m.

The nation's annual sporting excuse to venerate noxious television ads, otherwise known as Super Bowl XLII, takes up most of the day on Sunday, February 3, and as in previous years, Sportstime Pizza will be open.

Special "Super Bowl Sunday" operating hours run from 4:00 p.m. until the game's over.

It will be business as usual: Dine in, carry-out, full menu and all the beers.