Crouch: "The craft brewing industry still suffers from a serious cleverness deficiency."

File under "classic elegance."

Telling it like it is. Is anyone paying attention? Earlier in the week at my public affairs blog, I indulged in conjecture.

ON THE AVENUES: An imaginary exercise tentatively called The Curmudgeon Free House.


It can't help being noticed that the list of European classic beers suggested therein for the most part contains beers with names simple and direct: Brewery name + style.

Schneider + Weiss.
Bell's + Two Hearted.
Samuel Smith + Oatmeal Stout.

Not a penis innuendo to be found, although this isn't a one-method-fits-all suggestion. It's merely an observation. At the end of the day, it's all about the beer, isn't it?

Time to Grow Up: Beer Branding’s Cleverness Deficiency, by Andy Crouch (Beer Advocate)

... Despite the clear value in welcoming outsiders and newbies, our behavior and messages often send signals of exclusion. The first way many potentially interested consumers interact with beer brands is through labels, tap handles, and point of sale materials. Slogans, imagery and appeals joking about breasts, dicks, vaginas, crapping, bestiality and ejaculation are awesome if we’re trying to sell beer to seventh-grade boys. But I’d like to think that even the most immature of fan boys, after a quick chuckle, think such attempts are pathetically juvenile.

If craft brewing wants to extend its audience beyond the traditional market of youngish, wealthy dudes, then it should encourage its more adolescent-obsessed elements to grow up a bit. To call out any particular brewery or beer here would only give it greater attention, which is perhaps the point of these efforts. But we all know such brand immaturity is rife in the industry.

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New Albany's Donum Dei Brewery, coming soon to Grant Line Road.

Since the following was written and posted at NA Confidential in early January, I've met Richard "Rick" Otey on several occasions. He and his business partner are moving steadily forward, with a target date of May to be up and running. Otey's goals -- local beer, light food and comfy coffee shop-style seating -- strike me as reasonable. There may be yet another brewery in the works for New Albany; if you know anything about Wrecker Brewing Company, give me a shout.

(January 7, 2014)

I must confess to finding is somewhat amazing, and perhaps even admirable, that a fellow New Albanian has planned a new brewery, bought equipment and signed a lease without someone, somewhere telling me about it.

Well, why not? It's the sort of era when not one but two separate groups look to start a brewery in Tell City. I think it's a great thing, and so here's what little I know about the advent of Donum Dei Brewery.

My first clue came two months ago, when I saw a list of Indiana breweries in development, as prepared by the Brewers of Indiana Guild. Then John Wurth at LouisvilleBeer.com put together a page tracking the progress of brewing start-ups in metro Louisville, which pinpointed an address that sounded curiously similar to that of NABC's Pizzeria & Public House.

And so it is: 3211 Grant Line Road, which as it turns out, is the precise storefront once occupied by Earth Friends Cafe, in the 1990s strip building behind El Nopal. Where'd that garage door come from?

Yesterday Blake drove me past, and I snapped the photos above. Donum Dei means "Gift of God." And that's about all we know about it at present.

For quite some time, it has been a goal of mine to convince both city and indie business operators in the Grant Line Road commercial zone between McDonald Lane and the interstate to combine efforts and market the area as College Park, University Woods (prescient, those apartment builders of old) or some such tag to make the connection with IU Southeast and beautify and rationalize the vicinity. Having another brewery across the street fits perfectly. The Blair family is renovating the ramshackle former employment office into a dance studio. Now all we need is for a family-owned Turkish joint to move into the space left vacant when The Exchange moved downtown.

We just might succeed in spite of ourselves, which is the time-honored (read: only) formula in New Albany.