The brewing plan at Tell City's Pour Haus.

Thanks to my friend Mark for forwarding this link. We visited the Pour Haus last fall.

Four views of the Pour Haus in Tell City.

I've always been supportive of the notion of brewing returning to a place like Tell City, and I wish these guys the very best. At the same time -- and I'll try to keep it gentle -- let's hope the brewing business plan as briefly outlined below has more nuance than we're shown here.

The "craft" beer market currently isn't in a space where new beers take over the planet (or a tri-state area) just because they're new beers. Pour Haus needs to begin brewing with the idea that they'll be selling A LOT of their own beer in-house ... and have they prepared their customers to become the vanguard? There was A LOT of mass market beer being consumed on the night of my visitlast October, and frankly, that's Tell City's reputation. It can take time.

This isn't intended to be negative, just instructive. I've lived these successes and these mistakes, and feel as though I'm in a position to offer advice. I'll be pulling for them, and will make the drive down as soon as Pour Haus's beers are flowing.

Tell City restaurant to open brewery, by David DeLong (WFIE)

After being open for just over a year, a Tell City restaurant is close to opening up a brewery.

The owner says the new beer will be available for people across the Tri-State.

Eight fermenters at the Pour Haus in Tell City are ready to go, but first the crew needs to decide what recipes they like.

“They taste pretty good,” says Co-Owner Derek Cronin.

At LouisvilleBeer.com: A Great Taste wrap with a brewpub focus.

This year at the Great Taste of the Midwest, I patronized the less well publicized. The epiphanies continue.

Where is Winona, anyway?

Posted by Roger Baylor in Baylor on Beer | 0 comments

Over a quarter-century of the Great Taste of the Midwest’s evolution, during which I’ve had the sheer pleasure of attending six, this legendary beer festival in Madison, Wisconsin, has evolved into one of those signature “tale of the tape” events.

Give or take five hours, a couple dozen portable johns, 140 breweries, 500 sticks of bacon, 1,000 kegs, 6,000 attendees, and you begin to get a vague impression of the scrum that awaits. Furthermore, what you’ve always heard is true: Participating brewers plunder their top-most cellar shelves, bringing rare, innovative, barrel-aged, secret-ingredient-infused beers to suit the eager completist’s zeal.

Given civilization’s steady technological advancement, it’s only a matter of time until willing beer enthusiasts can implant a microchip into their noggins, enabling an optical scanner linking directly to RateBeer’s database, permitting the collector to make the absolute best use of limited time at the Great Taste, and drink only the most highly rated, elusive, badge-of-honor styles.

I believe this would be a mistake, and here is why.

Musings on the hiring.

Okay, so we’ve hired David Pierce to join the NABC team.

You have questions. Why? Now what?

It’s important to understand that Dave brings a perfectly complementary set of professional skills to an existing brew team that includes our longtime brewers of record, Jesse Williams and Jared Williamson.

From the start, we’ve been a brewpub brewery, and as such, we’ve had the luxury of indulging a full range of creative artistry on the part of the current brewers (and Michael Borchers before them). The fact that we’ve always aimed for flexible stylistic interpretations as a means of weaving our house beers into the broader palette of the many beers on tap at the Public House means that we now have distinctive brands to deliver to a wider world. Without that, there’d be no brewing expansion plan.

Accordingly, our brewing expansion plan alters the old dynamic, but not in terms of fundamental creativity. Now, there are added challenges posed by consistency and production on a larger scale, and the efficient distribution of the finished product to our wholesalers, first in kegs, and then later, in cans.

That’s why Dave is on board. Remember that it’s a challenge for him, too, because it will be the first time he has undertaken to brew and ship someone else’s formulas. He's a pro's pro. 'Nuff said.

I’m sure that at some point in the future, Dave will be able to brew his own creative ideas, probably at the smaller Grant Line brewery, along with Jesse and Jared, as part of a brewmaster’s signature series. I can’t wait, although for now, the plan is to receive the brewery, build the brewery, and then brew our existing beers for distribution to metro Louisville and the state of Indiana.

The sooner this gets underway, the better, and the closer we’ll get to the next stages.

Does this help explain matters more clearly?