Headlines from March 2018 on THE BEER BEAT.

The Pints & Union build-out continues to be of interest.

This blog has gone on hiatus, probably permanently, and primarily because these days my thoughts about beer are being posted alongside my utterances about everything else, over yonder at NA Confidential. You'll find them there in reverse chronological order via the helpful all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat.

However, at the end of each month I'll collect the links right here. Following are March's (2018) ruminations, with the oldest listed first. Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.

Thanks for reading, if belatedly.

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THE BEER BEAT: Taco Steve back at BSB, and a year's hiatus for the Bloomington Craft Beer Festival.

On Saturday, Taco Steve debuted at the freshly painted and recently redubbed Bank Street Brewhouse; the word "cafe" never really sounded right, did it? About a dozen customers were eating and drinking on site when I stopped by around 3:30 p.m. to chat with Heather Morris, who runs the front of the house.

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THE BEER BEAT: Narrower focus, deeper appreciation -- or, a few words about the Pints & Union beer program.

If you're curious about those five fixed taps, here's the way it looks to me today.

Guinness Stout
Pilsner Urquell
Fuller's London Pride
Anchor Porter
Bell's Two Hearted

Conjecture this lineup augmented by (for example) Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, Tripel Karmeliet, as well as Steve's scrumpy; furthermore, imagine it remaining in place for two months, allowing repeated samplings of the sort that fix lasting and affectionate memories, rather than hurried reviews at a crowd-sourced scrum.

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THE BEER BEAT: Sunday sales in Indiana: "Now that we have today out of the way it's just 7 days a week of normalcy."

Todd "Keg Liquors" Antz contributes this list of media coverage centering on Opening (Sun)Day, 2018.

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THE BEER BEAT: Let's review a few headlines, from Louisville KY (and Indy) Lager to Brimstone Big.

I had a lunch meeting on Friday, and the three of us met at the recently re-refashioned Bank Street Brewhouse for some Taco Steve treats and NABC libations.

Now cast irrevocably as a member of the "former owner" camp, it still feels a bit weird for me to return as a civilian. This said, everything was fine. Taco Steve is impeccable, and the four beer samples all were solid.

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THE BEER BEAT: "Belgian bars put the boot into tourists who steal beer glasses."

At out forthcoming pub Pints & Union, the bottle and can selection will include beers that should be served in specialty glasses. I'll try my best to find generic examples of these, and it will work out. After all, it's about the beer, first and foremost.

Meanwhile, get over to Belgium. Once there, enjoy the excellence of the country's many beer-friendly drinking venues -- and get your shoes back when you leave.

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THE BEER BEAT: Paint your sombreros green, and Erin Go Blagh -- a timeless classic for a green-hued holiday.

Yes, tomorrow it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Time once again to endure the tasteless annual outbursts of shamrock-mounted hokum fueled by wretched green-colored lager, not to mention the inability of many revelers to get the holiday’s nickname right.

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THE BEER BEAT: In search of beerways, with side orders of New Albany Social and Thunder is #SoIN.

The point of this digression?

If the Southern Foodways Alliance chose to include documentation about Louisville KY bartenders, certainly the same notions that preface folkways and foodways also apply to beer, whether as a stand-alone idea or as a subset of either (or both), and yet when I google “beerways,” most of the links that come up are about beer-themed pathways in the sense of scenic highways or bike routes.

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THE BEER BEAT: This is why the classic British-style pub CAN and DOES make it in America.

Logically speaking, there cannot be British (or Irish) pubs in America. They can be British-style and Irish-style, which is why so far during the short life of the Pints & Union project, I've taken great pains to clarify that inspiration is being derived from British pubs.

We're building a pub, not a Disney cookie cutter.

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THE BEER BEAT: England, or one man's heightened cholesterol panic is another man's nostalgic repast (2013).

I found myself hungry for English comfort food and daydreaming about Real Ale, and with the pantry barren of Marmite, made do instead with kippers and my last bottle of Fuller's ESB.

The words of Inspector Morse, classic British television police crime solver, popped into my head.

“The secret of a happy life is to know when to stop – and then go that bit further.”

I was plunged into a reverie about our last trip to the United Kingdom in 2013.

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THE BEER BEAT: A Pints & Union preview video at New Albany Social... plus the new Falls City taproom and a Michael "Beer Hunter" Jackson birthday greeting.

Joe Phillips did a live Facebook video earlier today at Pints & Union, courtesy of Kelly Winslow and her New Albany Social juggernaut. Embedding seems a challenge, so here's New Albany Social video link -- as well as a couple of interior shots (below) from when I ambled past this morning and chatted for a bit with Resch's crew.

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Coming soon: "Pints & Union to open in New Albany, will be inspired by classic European pubs."

For more than a year, I've been working with my friend Joe Phillips on a pub project at 114 E. Market in downtown New Albany called Pints & Union.

On Wednesday this week, the cat slipped from the bag in the form of a fine write-up by Kevin Gibson at Insider Louisville KY.

Paraphrasing Robert Frost, we have promises to keep -- and miles to go before we sleep. The first link leads to Gibson's story, with a few thoughts of my own; the second offers some information about how we refer to drinking establishments; and the third provides an overview of my thought process in devising a revolutionary throwback old school progressive beer program.

As there is further information to report, I'll copy here from NA Confidential.

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THE BEER BEAT: "Pints & Union to open in New Albany, will be inspired by classic European pubs."

First and foremost, Pints & Union marks a return to the ethos that originally compelled me to go into the beer business. For this opportunity, all thanks to Joe Phillips -- and serendipitously, Taco Steve (Powell) ...

Pints & Union to open in New Albany, will be inspired by classic European pubs, by Kevin Gibson (Insider Louisville KY)

Leave your cellphone in your pocket, and if you want to watch the local college hoops game with some cheap wings, well, you’ll be going somewhere else.

Pints & Union, which owner Joe Phillips hopes will open sometime in April at 114 E. Market St. in New Albany, will be inspired by European-style (or “Anglo-Irish”) pubs, built for conversing over a pint — or five. Even the name reflects typical pub names in Europe and the United Kingdom.

“We’re going to resurrect the spirit of what a real pub is,” Phillips told Insider.

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SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: On taverns, pubs, Gaststätten and Bung -- with a Mencken chaser.

It's an understatement to say we have lots and lots of work to do, but it's good to have plans, goals and timetables. Until the grand opening, we might spend hours parsing the similarities and differences of pubs, taverns, bars, cafes and the like, as with this chat at Trip Advisor about three German-language descriptors: Gasthof / Gasthaus / Gaststätte ...

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ON THE AVENUES: Golden oldie classic comfort beers at an old school pub? Sounds like Pints & Union to me.

I’ve had enough of venues with 20 beers on tap, the inevitable majority of them IPAs, with the remainder Imperial-this, barrel-aged-that, most of universally high gravity. I’m driven to utter distraction when returning to the same venue two weeks later, only to find that 18 of them have changed, with a whole new crop of “what do you have that’s new,” which might actually mean something if there was an outside chance that the best of the new beers would reappear in less than a year ...

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The beer list at Doc's Cantina in Louisville.

Photo credit: WDRB TV.

Doc's Cantina has opened in the former Tumbleweed on the riverfront in Louisville. The drinks list is here. It's obvious that a great deal of thought was put into the assemblage of wine, bourbon, mezcal, rum, tequila and other libations.

My soapbox, please.

It is my recurring observation that eateries tend to have an absolutely firm idea of how their cuisine, wine and spirits mesh, but most beer lists I see are without any organizing principle at all. I look at the hundreds of  available options and note the opportunity to riff on numerous styles and stylistic variations, rather than the crazy quilt revolving door that sadly has become the norm.

Also, commitments to localism/regionalism in sourcing seldom extend past the swinging doors to the kitchen, with notable exceptions like the Crescent Hill Craft House. This probably addresses a fundamental contradiction on the part of consumers, for while they increasingly want to know that the food comes from down the block, they insist against all available evidence that the quality of local beer cannot match what is brewed a couple thousand miles away.

Looking at the Doc's Cantina draft list ... well, Ritterguts is a Shelton Brothers import from Germany. Ballast Point sold out to Constellation. Moortgat has an ownership stake in Boulevard. Bud Light and the two Mexican lagers are multinational-owned.

Country Boy is independent and regional.

DRAFT BEER
Ritterguts Gose 16 oz
Ballast Point Grapefruit Sculpin 16 oz
Country Boy Nacho Bait 16 oz or 22 oz
Boulevard 80 Acre Hoppy Wheat 16 oz or 22 oz
Bud Light 16 oz or 22 oz
Negra Modelo 16 oz or 22 oz
Pacifico Clara 16 oz or 22oz

It looks like canned beer only, no bottles at Doc's Cantina. CAN-tina. Get it?

CAN BEER

Rhinegeist Semi Dry Cider 12 oz
Sierra Nevada Otra Vez 12 oz
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale 12 oz
Steigl Grapefruit Radler 16 oz
Stella Artois 16 oz
Tecate 12 oz
Victoria Lager 12 oz
West 6th Amber Ale 12 oz
West 6th Cocoa Porter 12 oz
West 6th Lemongrass Wheat 12 oz
Wild Ginger Beer 12 oz
Wittekerke Witte 12 oz
Against the Grain Brown Note 16 oz
Founders All Day IPA 12 oz
Coors Light 16 oz
Corona Extra 12 oz
Corona Light 12 oz
Country Boy Cougar Bait Blonde 12 oz
Bell's Two Hearted IPA 16 oz
Boulevard Ginger Lemon Radler 12 oz
Dos Equis Especial Lager 12 oz
Bud Light 16 oz
Budweiser 16 oz
Evin Twin Bikini Beer IPA 12 oz
Miller Lite 16 oz
Modelo Especial 12 oz
New Belgium Fat Tire 16 oz
Pabst Blue Ribbon 16 oz
Pilsner Urquell 16 oz

Of course, whenever the food is derived from Mexican, we're doomed to a thematic array of taste-alike Mexican lagers. If the other organizational conceit is canned beer only, choice is vastly reduced even with the expanded range of beers in cans.

There are 28 beers in cans (and one cider), of which 14 (half) are not independently owned. 5 of 28 are local/regional. Without going into excruciating detail, 18 of 36 (50%) of the products on this list are variants of golden lager or golden ale.

As a side note, there's one beer style missing from both draft and canned lists that I guarantee would wonderfully accompany the food at Doc's Cantina.

That's German-style Hefeweizen.

My comments aren't intended as a slight against Doc's Cantina. There are a number of good beers on this card. It's just that to my increasingly jaundiced eye, too many of them are too much alike, with the result that opportunities for creativity are missed. I hate to see it.

Even now, in a time of unparalleled choice, it seems to me that better beer still is slighted when compared to wine and spirits. There is a mode of thinking about wine and spirits that isn't applied to beer.

Then again, I just might be completely full of it, baying at the moon. Could this be why I'm drinking more gin than beer?

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