Reach out and touch Against the Grain on the occasion of its 5th anniversary party.

Strangely, the e-mail did not generate virtual chicken feathers. Here's the story.

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Against the Grain
401 E. Main Street
Louisville KY, KY 40202
502-515-0174
atgbrewery.com

It’s a quinquennial celebration!

Our five-year anniversary is not to be taken lightly as we’ve been planning it all these years! We’ll be opening our time capsule filled with treasure from our first year, along with, music from Tony and the Tan Lines, a giant chiquen piñata, and more oohs and ahhs to party all night long. Everyone who is anyone is going to be there, so you might as well come too.

For more information on our anniversary party or any other happenings at Against the Grain, please reach out!

Katie Molck
Marketing & Media Maven

Hugh E. Bir's to celebrate 50 years at the ORIGINAL 4th Street Live on Sunday, June 5.

New Albany Craft Beer Week ends on June 4, and Hugh E. Bir Cafe might not fit everyone's definition of craft beer, but that's irrelevant, because we'd be remiss by failing to mention that on Sunday, June 5, the bar will celebrate its 50th birthday.

It's a milestone, and if you're down that way, help them celebrate.

Enough said.

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New Albany Craft Beer Week Calendar, 2016

Sunday, May 29
Boomtown Ball & Festival
A New Albanian Brewing Company beer and others will be available for purchase.

Tuesday, May 31
Beer dinner at Gospel Bird with Falls City Beer (details TBA)

Wednesday, June 1
Surf & Turf Tap Takeover (Sierra Nevada and The Exchange)

Thursday, June 2
Monty PINT-thon Night at Floyd County Brewing Company

Thursday, June 2
Gospel Bird Welcomes Sun King Brewing Company 

Saturday, June 4
Keg Liquors Fest of Ale
100+ Breweries, 7 Craft Beer Distributors, 8 Fine Wine Distributors, over 250 craft and import beers, wine, food, charity raffle and more.

Saturday, June 4
The official Keg Liquors Fest of Ale after party will take place at The Exchange pub + kitchen.

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Happy 25th birthday to Broad Ripple Brewpub.

Tristan and Lord Hill at the party, courtesy of Tristan's Fb page.

The anniversary party was yesterday, and unfortunately I missed it, but this excellent essay by the Brewers of Indiana Guild's communications director (who as we can see needs to write more often) provides the rundown on why Broad Ripple Brewpub matters so much to so many of us.

(Take note -- only 75 days until the 8th Annual Brewers of Indiana Guild Winterfest)

My first visit wasn't until the late 1990s. The first ale I had there was the ESB, and to this day, I'll always drink at least one of them when visiting. A flagship is a flagship, after all. I can taste it now.

Best wishes to John Hill and the hundreds of others at BRB who've made beers and memories over a quarter-century.

BROAD RIPPLE BREWPUB CELEBRATES 25 YEARS OF CRAFT BEER AND COMMUNITY, by Tristan Schmid

Broad Ripple Brewpub–Indiana’s first brewpub and oldest operating craft brewery–celebrates 25 years of craft beer and community at their anniversary party.

As Brewers of Indiana Guild‘s Communications Director, I typically don’t write in first person when I post about our beer festivals, Tomlinson Tap Room, and our other efforts to support Indiana’s brewers and rapidly growing craft brewing industry.

But for me and many others, Broad Ripple Brewpub is particularly special.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Fifteenth in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

In 1985, I wasn’t a very good flier.

Given my lack of experience in the air – in life itself – perhaps this is understandable. Up until then, I’d made only two round-trip flights ever, and the first one was when I was a small child. It was a prop plane, and the destination was Detroit. We taxied forever.

That’s all I’ve got.

The second was in 1978, to San Francisco and back, and it was unpleasant in the extreme. I probably required sedation. My problem wasn’t an aversion to enclosed spaces, or to the Hare Krishna devotees still roaming airports back then, but a fear of heights, which plagues me to this very day, even if I’ve gotten better managing it.

Consequently, the prospect of leaving on a jet plane instigated a fair share of anxiety. Everything about it made me nervous, and to make matters worse, I’d gotten absolutely hammered in Chicago the night before the flight.

Boarding Icelandair for Luxembourg via Reykjavik, and the long-awaited adventure of a lifetime, I was in the throes of a brutal hangover, immune to hair of the dog, constitutionally and existentially challenged, and with certain doom lurking just around the corner.

Was it too late to call the whole thing off?

At least there was a bright side. I wasn’t in the smoking section, which in those days still existed in the back of the plane. Strange, isn’t it? Using the toilet meant cutting through a wall of cigarette smoke, and of course, one couldn’t just step outside for a breath of fresh air.

Later I realized that for a nicotine addict, being deprived of cigarettes stood to greatly compound the sort of fears gripping me, and in physically wrenching ways I’d mercifully never understand because I didn’t smoke.

However, the Rubicon was ripe for crossing. After the usual pleasantries, instructions and delays, we took off and soon reached cruising altitude. The trip was inexorable and irreversible. Europe finally was coming, and I could feel the level of stress slowly ebbing.

Then there was a random act of turbulence, and the plane abruptly took a big, swooping roller coaster dip.

WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

Pulse skyrocketing, my heart pushed into my throat, and with a panic attack about to ensue, at least I had the presence of mind to look around the cabin, where dozens of fellow passengers were snacking, reading, talking and napping, utterly serene and oblivious to the commonplace.

Relief yielded to chagrin as I worried whether anyone else had seen me lose my composure.

In short, it was my life of naïve underachievement in a nutshell, but a good lesson for a hick from somewhere near French Lick: Fake it until you can make it. Just stop, look, listen and imitate. I tried mightily to apply it once on the ground, and for the thirty years since, with only varying degrees of success.

Eventually I became a better flier, although it didn’t happen overnight. By the 1990s, I actually began looking forward to transatlantic flights as the only time I could untether, relax and not be bothered. Nowadays, these commuting hours are sacred times for decompression and meditation. I’ve come a long way in this regard.

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As noted previously, one of the factors most influencing my decision to spend three months in Europe in 1985 was an absolutely debilitating level of self-doubt. It’s nice knowing you’re capable of connecting with reality just enough to get by, but sheer hell being bright enough to realize you’re doing nothing and going nowhere.

Would I return to university and get my public school teaching credits? What about law school? I’d done relatively well on the LSAT. Maybe get a real job at last, instead of stringing together part-time gigs?

In fact, I was damned fortunate to have the space for dawdling rumination. There were no wars to be drafted into fighting, no nearby mines with coal for extracting, and no babies with mouths to feed. I worked, ate, drank and slept alone, because it hadn’t yet occurred to me that the opposite sex’s interest in knowing me just might be enhanced by me knowing something about myself.

Looking back after three decades, it’s quite clear that once I’d made the decision to spend time in Europe, it was necessary to up the ante. To be sure, it was a legitimate fork in the road for me, but one I didn’t randomly encounter. It was self-engineered.

I’d never spent so much time working toward something tangible. Traveling simply had to be an act of self-redemption. There was no Plan B, apart from returning home and following meekly into the mundane world of home, car, job and IU basketball season tickets.

I had to jump, damn it, and trust the parachute would open.

Fortunately, it did.

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Thirty years later, with the consummate luxury of perspective, there are times when I’d like nothing more than to return to the blissful, uncomplicated life of the 24-year-old me (who celebrated his 25th birthday in Leningrad), except I’d have to retain what I’ve learned since, and there’s the eternal rub.

No debt or encumbrances and dumb as a rock, or achieving periodic glimpses of wisdom amid being mortgaged to the hilt, both literally and figuratively.

I’ll settle for the latter, because in 2015 it comes equipped with my partner in life, without whom little of it would make much sense. Her presence does not prevent me from trying to imagine a simpler all-around life, one allowing for a return to those long-ago fundamentals – and that’s what they were, too: Fundamentals.

It was about fundamentals, basics, and growing into a conceptual framework for interpretation of much that followed 1985. Eventually I witnessed the collapse of the post-war European order, stumbled into a career in beer, experienced the transformational impact of the wider-wired world, raised my share of hell, learned, fought, loved, lost and even sometimes won, and now, 30 years on, it seems that I’ve arrived at another of those forks in the road.

Once again I’ve gamed it, because a change has to come, but this time there’s a twist.

The fundamentals that most interest me are currently are undervalued in my career in beer, but they’re sorely necessary in a broader sense in my city, New Albany.

That’s the first fork, and it’s irrevocable. I’m running for mayor, and soon, I intend to be an ex-brewery owner, although I know it will take time to complete the forms.

The next choice is just over the horizon, and depends on the whim of the electorate. Win or lose, it’s time again to jump, and trust the parachute will open.

I trust it will.

Next week: The route to Ireland.

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Previously:

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.

Diary: Taking the day off for my birthday.

I'm filling this space after the fact for the sake of posterity.

There was no weekly column on Monday, August 3, 2015, because it was my 55th birthday, and I had a combination party and campaign fundraiser to consider.

It went well. I drank Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Marzen all night, destroyed a medium deep-dish (roundhouse) herbivore pizza all by myself, and raised a few dollars to boot.

For the sake of my Euro '85 narrative, I can jump forward just a few weeks and note that for my 25th birthday on August 3, 1985, I was joined by an Australian named Mark at a restaurant in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).

There was vodka, with predictable results.

It seems like a thousand years ago now.

The PC: A Birthday Drinking Song.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on March 10, 2014)

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A Birthday Drinking Song

(The Potable Curmudgeon seeks to avoid self-aggrandizement when it comes to his own place of business. However, today is a special case)

Today is the 5th anniversary of Bank Street Brewhouse.

As luck would have it, Monday is our Ruhetag (in German, “rest day”), so the toasts must wait until the 11th.

The first official day of business at BSB came on March 10, 2009, and ever since then, NABC has been a three-legged stool: A front-of-the-house in two different buildings, plus a brewery at each, which we treat as one. Let’s see; that’s three, two and one, and it equals three.

Happy 4th, BSB.

I've been so busy that an important date yesterday was entirely forgotten.

Four years and half my liver ago, on Friday, March 13, 2009, it was the first "official" day of business for Bank Street Brewhouse.

Quite a lot has changed since then. What hasn't is our commitment to cooking, brewing and placemaking downtown.

Thanks to everyone. Year Five has begun. Cheers.

Gumbo Family Quartet on the Bank Street patio tomorrow night (Wednesday, April 27).

Wednesday update - GFQ is going to set up inside BSB for dry music ... don't let the weather keep you from coming down.

It's An Evening With The Gumbo Family Quartet, and it's tomorrow night at BSB.

As if the music weren't enough to entice, now hear this:

The "last" keg of C2 for the year (some will return during future Gravity Heads) will be on tap to celebrate Jared Williamson's birthday (26th), plus a pin of Extra Ordinary will be served via gravity pour. Talk about opposite sides of the spectrum.

Come and get some -- music and beer. I'll be there once I'm done with class.

Wednesday Weekly: The importance of being ancient.

I do this very seldom. This week's Wednesday Weekly doubles as my weekly column submission to the New Albany Tribune, and I've waited until it was published on-line to reprint below.

BAYLOR: The importance of being ancient ... "Did road rage exist in ancient times? Just ask Ben Hur."

Here's the full text.

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To be ancient is to be venerable. Ancient items are very old ones. In historical terms, ancient refers to dates and times long passed. In short, there is nothing novel about being ancient.

However, when considering the very concept of ancient, there are aspects of relativity and nebulousness. In the current era, ancient history generally is taken as describing periods in human civilization prior to the fall of Rome. Will this assumption still be accepted a thousand years from now?

Precisely when will our here and now become the ancient epoch of tomorrow?

It remains that an original Model-T is an ancient automobile, "Justified & Ancient" was a song performed by a defunct band called The KLF, and Ancient Age© was and is a Kentucky bourbon whisky, so called because it supposedly spends more time aging in charred oak barrels than competing brands.

Long ago, during the remote, ancient history of my life, I was infatuated with Ancient Age©, although not the firewater itself. Back then, the merits of bourbon flavor mattered far less than the imperative of masking it with cola and quaffing huge quantities through the inevitable grimacing. In this manner, Ancient Age© somewhat ironically became a rite of youthful passage.

Actually, it was the name itself that always appealed to me. Ancient Age© implied experience, dignity and respectability, but eventually I matured just enough to realize that while the words captivated me, the experience of consuming whisky did not. It’s probably been thirty years since I tasted Ancient Age© -- although only thirty minutes since my last beer, which is where I stake my personal claim to knowledge.

In this quest for the higher ground, it’s time to revert to the lower case.

Only one additional letter is required to render ancient age into ancient sage, no longer a trademarked bourbon, and well beyond mere chronology, passing into the wider realm of pure wisdom: Sage as practitioner of sagacity, the quality possessed by the impossibly gnarly old man atop the high mountain, greeting exhausted searchers with impenetrable quasi-Delphic instructions for living, commandments regarded as all the more brilliant for being utterly incomprehensible.

One might turn the page, earn a wage or rattle a cage, but take away the “s” from sage and insert instead the consonant coming just before it in the alphabet, and the game changes dramatically, from ancient sage into ancient rage.

Did road rage exist in ancient times? Just ask Ben Hur.

As we commonly use it today, the word rage conjures images of furious anger, passionate intensity, and violent depth of emotional feeling. Rage comes from the same Latin root as rabies, not a condition to be confused with calm and deliberation. Whether enraged or outraged, we are primal.

Rage deriving from far-off places and times might legitimately be termed ancient rage, and for all the reasons listed here, brewer Jared Williamson of the New Albanian Brewing Company created a special edition beer for release on August 3, my 50th birthday: Ancient Rage, a Smoked Baltic Porter.

As a genial and trusting sort, I persist in believing that the half-century mark will prove to be a milestone more than a millstone. Just the same, there is the creeping perception of impending menace as calendar dates slip away and the actuarial tables inexorably turn against me … sadly, against us all.

At 40, there’s a plausible argument to be made that half your lifespan has yet to pass. At 50, that’s no longer the case. Throughout human history, life expectancy has been far shorter than today, and the age of 50 indeed has often qualified as ancient. Some days I feel that way myself, others not so much. Mostly, in a condition embracing both exhaustion and bemusement, I’d like to think of whatever length of time remains as a triumphant sprint to the finish, not a downward spiral.

What does ancient rage have to do with my 50th?

I concede to seldom being an exemplar of peace, love and understanding. Since childhood, prime motivators have been indignation, disgruntlement, exasperation and annoyance; it says something when one’s favorite writer is H. L. Mencken. I’m neither proud nor ashamed by this. It’s my psyche, nothing more, nothing less.

During hormonal days of youth, I often felt consumed by anger to the exclusion of placidity and thoughtfulness. These episodes never manifested in physical violence; rather, my verbal and written abilities evolved in accordance with a compelling need to express previously inexpressible rage.

These outbursts have been directed against stupidity and cupidity, naked power and destructive greed – against fascists and corporations, despoilers of the environment and enslavers of peasants, chain restaurants and nasty light beer, and the sadness, superstition and desperation in life itself – and maybe, on widely scattered occasions, against my own fear, impotence and inability to go a bit further than fulminate against injustice and actually offer something to the wider world in return.

Self-doubt and inner turmoil are pitiless taskmasters, and I suspect they’ll always be unwelcomed companions. Yet, there is considerable happiness in arriving at 50 in good health, working in a growing business, enjoying the company of my mother, friends and family, and eager to give profuse thanks to my wife, my partner in life, who has been both tenderly loving and unsparingly honest in helping propel me to a new place where the rage seemingly recedes.

The principles and motivation haven’t subsided, and will not. There’ll be lapses, but “mad as hell” is a poor recipe for living. I don’t look back in anger at my ancient rage. Today is the best day, and tomorrow better still.

BBC's "15 Year Anniversary Ale & Art Festival" is Saturday, November 1.

Time flies when you’re drinking beer.

It doesn’t seem possible that 15 years have passed since I returned from a European vacation, drove out to the Capshew residence for a picnic, and chatted with David Pierce about the beers planned for the forthcoming Bluegrass Brewing Company.

Specifically, I’d just been in Cologne and Dusseldorf, and Dave was interested in what the local Kolsch and Alt ales were like because versions were being formulated for the new BBC.

All that’s gone down in the intervening years would require a volume lengthier than the blogging format, and time that I don’t have require for compiling it. Someday, someday. Until then, BBC’s celebrating a birthday at the original location in St. Matthews, and it looks like a great opportunity to taste some of BBC pub brewer Jerry Gnagy’s seasonals and specialties.

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Bluegrass Brewing Company
15 Year Anniversary Ale & Art Festival
Saturday, November 1st, 3:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

"A look through the beer view mirror"

Samples of 15 seasonal beers from the past five years & an anniversary glass for $15.00. List of seasonals available….

Amber Waves of Pain, Steam, Pilsner, Vienna, Smoked Bock, Leah's Entrage, Riley's Rye, Kotbusser, Ultra, Son of Quad, Heine Brothers Coffee Stout, Belgian IPA, Gros Batard, Rock out with your Bock out, Dubbel Dribbel, Kick in the Baltic Porter(gold metal Great American Beer Festival Winner 2008), and more!

An outside event with food, brews, fire pits, local artists.

Art Festival ... Glassblowing demonstration, Pottery, Jewelry, Paintings, Wood Working, Metal Working, Handmade Soaps and Candles

Also, a Silent Auction with BBC memorabilia to benefit Shawn Bowen, a 5-year-old child with Acute Lymphatic Leukemia.

Time warp: Pizza, beer and Glasnost?

See: Sportstime Pizza will be 20 years old on July 14, and we're having a party.

Thanks to graphic artist in residence Tony Beard for another great design.

Sportstime Pizza will be 20 years old on July 14, and we're having a party.

It will surprise some readers and patrons to learn that Sportstime Pizza came first.

Before Rich O's Public House (1990), before I became a part of the business (1992) and before the New Albanian Brewing Company (incorporated in 1994, and brewing 2002), there was Sportstime, occupying the space that previously had been a Noble Roman pizza franchise.

Rich O’Connell -- eventual namesake of the public house, husband of Sharon and the father of current co-owners Amy and Kate -- took over the Noble Roman operation in the summer of 1987. He pronounced it hopeless, began reshuffling the deck, severed the franchise agreement and changed the name to Sportstime Pizza. Around that time I began drinking (bad) beer there with my friends at the time, and eating the first of several thousand pizzas. Shortly thereafter, through sheer coincidence, Rich added bottled Pilsner Urquell to the menu and contracted to buy the whole building.

In 1990, two of his cronies opened Rich O’s BBQ, which passed to Amy’s control within weeks when they became bored with trite notions of labor and effort. In 1992 my tenure at what became the Public House began, and then Amy and I were married, and then her parents divorced … and in 1994 we formed the New Albanian Brewing Company with Kate, who later married Jeff. In 2002 brewing began, the following year Amy and I were divorced, and if this whole story sounds like something lifted from the pages of the afternoon soaps, I can assure you that all of it is quite factual.

Through these many roller-coaster plot twists, Sportstime has endured, and while lately we’ve made a conscious decision to market the NABC name as a means of increasing its visibility as a brand name for the house beers, it’s obvious that the Sportstime brand isn’t going away and has an enduring appeal for several generations of customers. For this, we’re thankful – whichever name one chooses to call us.

On Saturday, July 14, we’ll devote the day to a birthday party in Prost, with business as usual elsewhere in the building. Old photos and accounts are being collected, and if readers have any that they’d be willing to share just for the day, please let us know. Did you work for us at any point during the past two decades? If so, and there are no lawsuits pending, we'd like to hear from you, too. There’ll be beer and food specials and a few surprises, although my effort to engage Def Leppard for the day didn’t work out.

Roz Tate, are you and the 600 Hitlers reading?

Remember, this one’s about the venerable Sportstime dining area, which often gets short shrift compared to the cachet of Rich O’s and the brewery. But we've not forgotten our upbringings, and July 14th will be an observance of our roots. Both old-timers and newbies are invited to poke their heads into Prost and glimpse the progression.