There'll be good beer at New Albany's Riverfront Independence Day Celebration on Sunday, July 3.

In a tradition started by former mayor Doug England, the city of New Albany celebrates Independence Day on July 3, not July 4, with a concert and fireworks at the Riverfront Amphitheater.

I mention this not because I'm particularly patriotic in any conventional sense, but because you deserve to know what sort of beer to expect.

The news is good.

All of New Albany's breweries will be present and pouring (Donum Dei, Floyd County Brewing Company and NABC). Big Four Burgers + Beer (the beer garden permittee) has the mass market concession, and wine will be served by River City Winery.

Here's the link.

Riverfront Independence Day Celebration

The Riverfront Independence Day Celebration will be on Sunday, July 3 at the scenic Riverfront Amphitheater. The event begins at 6pm. This year's lineup includes the local favorite country music act Wildwood and the always entertaining Louisville Crashers. So grab a lawn chair or a blanket and come join us for a wonderful night of family-fun along the Ohio River.

Now that I'm no longer involved with NABC, perhaps city employees will switch back to real beer from their preferred Bud Light.

__

"Why I’m banning the C-word."

Lew Bryson passed this one along on Fb.

"This is a Brit talking about why 'craft beer' has become a largely useless term, but I wholeheartedly endorse it. Not saying I'm happy about that, but I think it's true."

I second (third?) this notion, although it won't stop me from chanting "Death to Chains," insisting on supporting independent local brewers whenever possible, and jabbing my fingers in the eyes of multinationals at every opportunity.

Ultimately, in this as in so many other discussions, it comes down to this: Information is good. The more one knows about beer, the better, and the judgment calls can be made with confidence and aplomb.

Read on ...

Why I’m banning the C-word, by Tony Leonard (The Publican's Morning Advertiser)

... Debates and definitions don't stand for much in English; it is everyday usage which creates our language. Some words change or even reverse meaning; a 'hussy’ transformed from ‘housewife’ to ‘a woman of easy virtue’ over centuries. Some words just get neutured by indiscriminate overwork ('awesome', I'm looking at you!) until they collapse in sheer exhaustion and come to mean absolutely nothing at all.

Such is the case with the C-word, which is why I’m banning it!

Yes, "Craft Brewing Has a Sexism Problem."

I've been on this tangent before, and have only one thing to add.

Given the fact that I no longer have much in the way of clout even in my own building (see Girl, Naughty), it strikes me that if (a) I have a any future in the "craft" beer business at all, and (b) it's something I genuinely want to pursue in the years to come, depending on how the mayoral campaign turns out this fall, then it may well be the case that only by being outside the "craft" beer biz entirely will it be possible to address such issues with any degree of truthfulness.

Why do I say this? Because it isn't always possible to tell the truth when you're selling your own product, or standing too close to something you love dearly. Sometimes, you just have to go to the mattresses instead -- and this is NOT a sexual reference.

But for the moment, once more with feeling ...

Craft Brewing Has a Sexism Problem, by Will Gordon (Slate)

There are gross puns and derogatory illustrations on far too many beer labels. The misogyny needs to stop.

1978 was the worst year for beer diversity in post-Prohibition America, with only 89 breweries operating in the entire country. Most of those breweries sucked, so a nation addled by other drugs might not have realized that things were starting to look up. President Carter decriminalized home-brewing that year, empowering a generation of garage-based drinkers and dreamers to develop their own recipes and techniques. A lot of these hobbyists eventually went pro, leading to the well-chronicled rise of craft beer.

Now the U.S. is home to more than 3,500 breweries, half of which have opened since 2010. There are currently thousands of companies making beer that’s better than pretty much anything that was available up through the mid-1990s. The new-wave brewers have distinguished themselves from their predecessors by employing better ingredients in innovative ways. But there’s one area in which they’re stuck in 1978: A lot of craft beer marketing is astonishingly sexist.

"Drinking a locally brewed craft beer is the best way to stick it to The Man and support your community."

AB-InBev cannot fit into this equation, can it?

Beer writer Jeff Baker ... (is) a fan of both punk rock and craft beer and says there are similarities between the two communities.

No, it cannot, so stop making feeble arguments to the contrary and read this.

Drinking local is rebellion, by Jeff Baker (BTV Foodie)

... Both communities at their cores are centered around a sense of rebellion. Rebellion against big business, against blandness, against cheap commodities in favor of something with heart and soul, with substance.

There was probably a day in the history of punk when drinking a craft beer would have been considered too bourgeois. But here in Vermont, where "local" is rebellion against Big Agriculture, drinking a locally brewed craft beer is the best way to stick it to The Man and support your community.

Horseshoe Cincy has local craft beer. That's nice. Were it so elsewhere.

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Granted, the Cincinnati area might be different.

We at NABC tried hard at Horseshoe Southern Indiana, which is about seven miles from New Albany, just over the Harrison County line. It took forever to get corporate approval for draft beer there in spite of a spirited effort by several employees, and once it had been approved, another lapse when we turned over our wholesaling to Cavalier, then ... well, it's embarrassing to concede that at one point I was at the casino for a concert, got Community Dark, and used it on my fish and chips instead.

I'm guardedly optimistic that more of the gaming emporiums are featuring better beer. Years ago, when our Horseshoe casino began as Caesar's and I made my first visit, one look at the crowds told me this couldn't be a "craft" success story. They were there to gawk at the glitz and gamble, not explore the nuances of beer. Maybe things have changed. I have enough bad habits without blackjack being one of them.

The PC (Hip Hops): What “Craft Beer” Is, and What It Isn’t.

The PC (Hip Hops): What “Craft Beer” Is, and What It Isn’t

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

"Hip Hops" is the name of my column for Louisville's Food & Dining Magazine. The following appeared in the Spring 2015 issue (No. 47). 

Hip Hops: What “Craft Beer” Is, and What It Isn’t

In 1976, the birth of New Albion Brewing Company in California presaged a revolution in beer. Four decades later, under the nom de plume of “craft beer,” the revolution seems permanently embedded in American culture, although the attendant hysteria about its growth may be obscuring a fundamental question: What is craft beer, anyway?

When it comes to epistemology, former president Bill Clinton is my choice for getting to the heart of the matter – It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. Keeping Clinton’s Theorem in mind, let’s take a quick look back at Craft Beer Nation’s year in 2014, as viewed by the numbers.

Never have there been this many brewers in America. More than 3,000 craft brewing entities are operational, not including multiple brewing site licensees. On average, one and a half more craft breweries are opening each day. Craft beer sales grew 18% in the first half of 2014. Craft beer’s fan base is diversifying, with 32% of its present volume being consumed by women. The number of craft brewers canning beer has doubled since 2012. Surveys show that in 2014, 38% of American households purchased craft beer at some point during the year.

But what “is” craft beer, anyway?

Imponderable questions for the industry

Is craft beer an objective or subjective label? Can it be made by a big producer, or must it always be from a small brewing operation? Must it be made near to its consumers, or can craft beer have a far-flung consumer base?

The Brewers Association, craft brewing’s trade group, has a vested interest in these questions, as does the federal government’s Tax and Trade Bureau. State legislators and alcoholic beverage control agencies are eager to know, too.

Covetous multinational monoliths, watching with alarm as their traditional flagship lagers erode, desire craft beer’s imagery and demographics. They prefer consumers to regard “craft” as a vague advertising term, and to ignore the small print.

Simply stated: From business and regulatory standpoints, craft beer keeps getting bigger and bigger, making it ever harder for the segment to espouse a foundational ethos of smallness. Craft beer remains an artistic phenomenon best experienced locally, but one inevitably destined to mimic commercial imperatives through distribution.

For many, the essence of craft beer is spiritual, not numerical, but while poets and purists prefer to rhapsodize about hoppy, malty, sweet and sour aesthetics, politicians and bureaucrats demand quantifiable criteria, transferable to a ledger sheet, because awarding “small” businesses an excise tax reduction implies an accepted, concrete definition of small, and in beer, this measure begins with annual production by the barrel (31 gallons).

The issue is the total number of barrels, with beer style and brewing methods generally superfluous, leading to numerous statistical anomalies and Jesuitical reckonings.

Big vs. small, local vs. national

What is the difference between Samuel Adams, a company traded on the New York Stock Exchange with more than 2.5 million barrels shipped and $600 million in sales in 2013, and the newly opened My Dream Nanobrewery located in the former ice cream stand down the street, which might produce 125 barrels this year if the owner somehow can swing crowdsourcing on another piece of used dairy equipment to act as a fermenter?

According to the Brewers Association, none. They’re both craft brewers, and both should receive discounted excise tax bills owing to their small-scale, artisanal size.

Then again, perhaps size doesn’t matter as much as technique. Until 2014, the Brewers Association would not accept Yuengling, America’s oldest (started in 1829) and largest family-owned brewer, as worthy of membership in the club. Why? Because Yuengling has continued to brew American-style “adjunct lagers” with corn and rice, a practice regarded by purists as bastardization.

Is it really? Many craft beer enthusiasts detest adjunct lagers, but these remain legitimate American hybrid styles, as improvised by 19th-century German immigrant brewers, who found themselves working on the wild frontiers of “civilized” brewing and adapted accordingly.

Craft Beer Nation gave it a rethink, and now breweries like Yuengling and Schell can be stamped “craft,” because adjunct lagers aside, at least they’re not owned by robber baron multinationals.

Don’t be confused. Ownership is very much a part of craft beer’s Clintonesque equation, and that’s why Goose Island has become Trojan Goose. The Chicago brewing company’s venerable Bourbon County Stout series is the status symbol of choice for hoarders, collectors and narcissists, but since Goose Island was wholly absorbed by AB-InBev, it no longer can be considered craft.

When craft beer is defined in these ways – by barrels produced, approved recipes and corporate structure – and consequently, when self-identified craft beer drinkers persists in enjoying certain beers lying outside the “official” definition, from Goose Island to Blue Moon, then the results are cognitive dissonance and a commonly stated, exculpatory point of view holding that craft definitions don’t matter at all, so long as the beer in question is “good.”

This brings us full circle: It depends on what the meaning of “good” is. Good luck with that one.

Whither craft beer now?

I’m as confused as anyone else, but here’s what I think.

In 2015, expect to see a growing divide within Craft Beer Nation, reflecting an evolving marketplace as it pertains to brewpubs and production breweries.

The superlative Lafayette Brewing Company in northern Indiana is an example of a brewpub that does not distribute its beers outside its own building, or does so only sparingly. People come to it.

Conversely, Lexington’s Alltech (Kentucky Ale) relies on production and wholesaler distribution of its packaged beers to bars, restaurants and package outlets in Kentucky, Indiana and numerous other states. It sends beer to the people.

Some regional breweries, including Bluegrass Brewing, West Sixth, NABC and Three Floyds, are both brewpubs and production brewers. Given that by early 2015, the state of Indiana will be home to more than 100 breweries, with another two dozen in Kentucky, and that in 1982, when I graduated from college, there were fewer than 100 breweries in the entire country, we come to the primary tankard of contention within Craft Beer Nation: Is there a point of saturation?

Probably so. My personal view is that soon, most of America’s “small” breweries will be compelled to devote an all-hands-on-deck mentality to one or the other, either a brewpub business model or a production and wholesale distribution model. It doesn’t mean there’ll cease to be overlapping, only that the craft beer market as symbolized by finite tavern faucets and store shelves will cease to support an exponential expansion of brands.

Brewpubs will survive and thrive as breweries, restaurants, civic novelties, watering holes, community centers and tourist destinations, but you won’t find their beers elsewhere to any great degree.

Those sufficiently capitalized craft beer production breweries capable of adapting to changing tastes in styles and packaging, and supporting sales teams and marketing budgets – in short, the ones able to successfully emulate the multinational beer sales playbook – will have beer in every Costco and Liquor Barn.

What is craft beer, anyway?

I know craft beer when I taste it, and it is best tasted locally. Beyond these two affirmations, maybe we’ve traveled past the point of knowing – the boomerang has returned, and it’s all just Beer now … again.

Craft beer costs dissected.

This strikes me as a sensible explanation for a non-specialist readership. Thanks to BC for the link.

Here's How A Six-Pack Of Craft Beer Ends Up Costing $12, by Joe Satran (Huff Post)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: There's never been a better time to be a beer drinker in America. The skillful innovation of American craft brewers over the past decade has pushed beer in delicious new directions. It wouldn't be hard to argue that the craft beer renaissance is the most exciting development in the country's culinary world right now.

But this explosion in quality comes at a price. Literally. With few exceptions, prices for good craft beer are far higher than for mainstream macrobrews from brewing conglomerates such as MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch. A six-pack of beer from breweries like Dogfish Head, Ballast Point or Cigar City almost always costs more than $10 -- and routinely exceeds the $15 mark. You could easily get a 12-pack of Bud Light for that much.

Part of the price differential is due to pure marketing. Like vendors of designer clothing, acclaimed craft breweries can charge more because their customers expect to pay more for luxury goods. I recently spoke with more than a dozen people involved at all levels of the craft beer world to get a sense of the industry's cost structure. It turns out that craft brewers incur far higher costs than mainstream brewers. Indeed, once you learn about all the work and material that goes into each six-pack, $12 starts to seem like a bargain.

Brewing company needed in Eyota, Minnesota.

It's an informal tally, but so far in 2014, I've received a half-dozen contacts, either by e-mail or phone, from economic development officials in Indiana towns and cities. Some have been general inquiries, perhaps owing to my presence on the board of the Brewers of Indiana Guild. Some have been quite specific: Come here to my city/town/hamlet and open a brewery, and we'll incentivize you.

It isn't clear whether my own city has yet fathomed such conclusions, although neighboring Jeffersonville has. This is another story for another day.

Meanwhile, thanks to Ray L. for this link.

Eyota needs beer, by Mark Reilly (Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal)

Craft beer, that is. Officials in the southeastern Minnesota city have eased up on alcohol laws and added development incentives, hoping to entice a brewing company to the neighborhood.

"Craft" beer could stand some of its own revitalization first.

Should we be excited by developments like this one, or head for the Grampian Hills to plot strategies for starting all over?

Craft Breweries as Neighborhood Revitalization Tools (American Planning Association, Indiana Chapter)

Learn from industry experts about the benefits of local breweries and what it takes to help one locate in your area!

Trouble brewing? Tell me something new, will ya?

The authors peel back the layers without getting all the way to the bottom of the disconnect.

Trouble Brewing for Craft Beer; Regulations are creating harmful barriers to the craft beer industry, by Matthew Mitchell and Christopher Koopman (US News & World Report)

... A more direct and effective solution would be to clear the tangle of regulations that stand between craft brew­ers and their customers.

Regulatory issues are the easiest target of all, and brewers certainly aren't the only working group in a position to complain about them. In my mind, there is another level to any paean to deregulation, this being the religious moralism that still is brought to bear against alcoholic beverages. It's what helped bring about Prohibition in the first place, and one need spend very little time among legislators to learn that it still flourishes.

Trans fat initiatives aside, at least chefs forced to contend with health department fascists aren't being told that God is against their burgers.

The PC: Moss the Boss, his Dazzling, and what they taught me about “craft.”

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on April 21, 2014)

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Moss the Boss, his Dazzling, and what they taught me about “craft.”

In my view, the “craft” modifier for better beer has outlived its usefulness, at least without earnest industry-wide introspection as to what the practice of “craft” might actually mean if/when practiced.

Until then, I’ll begin with an anecdote. If my luck holds, I may end with it.

In October of 1995, when the Public House was only three years old, I departed the comfortable confines for a ten-day beer tour of European beer destinations, including Dusseldorf, Cologne and Belgium. There also was a brief two-day side trip by train to Copenhagen to visit my friends there. Accompanying me was David Pierce, John Dennis and Ron Downer.

Much beer was consumed.

"Playing Nice With Bad Beer"? I'd rather not, although adjuncts aren't necessarily the deal killer.

I generally agree with what the Brewers Association does for my industry, but even after these many years, there is an element of wariness. After all, it's the house that Charlie Papazian built. There's also a palpable infusion of Kremlinology when it comes to observing the workings of the BA.

Conceding from the start that "craft" as an adjective has long since descended into utter nonsense, even if I still use it as a variety of colloquial shorthand, for a very long time the BA has chosen to impale itself on the use of adjuncts. Perhaps finally this is changing.

"While this division made sense in earlier days of the craft brewing revolution, we see evolution leading many craft brewers to consider the use of adjunct grains in their recipes," the association said. "Some craft brewers do use adjuncts to bring greater palatability by lightening some of their stronger beers. Other brewers are deliberately going for lighter bodied beers in sessionable offerings. When one looks at the millennia of brewing practice, one common thread for the vast majority of time is that brewers employed ingredients that are readily available to them."

Once each year in summer, my brewery releases a Pre-Prohibition Pilsner brewed with adjuncts. While clocking in at a higher ABV than I prefer, it is nonetheless delicious. It can be done, but of course, doing so is not the same thought or brewing process as churning out alcoholic soda pop.

Which leads me to Kevin Patterson's recent column. It reads so much like my 1990's era pieces in the FOSSILS newsletter that I'm tempted to begin comparing passages to see if I've been sampled.

(Not really, of course)

After 12 years owning a brewery, I've modified my stance only a little. Ya gotta have science in the brewhouse, even if I failed it in high school. But Kevin's right: As it pertains to stirring the heart and emboldening the mind, we need art. Art sometimes tries the patience, but that's better than wet air, anyday.

As is true love.

Screwed Up Beer Week (vol 9) - Playing Nice With Bad Beer- Not This Guy!, by: Kevin Patterson (LexBeerScene.com)

A diplomat walks into a bar. And by diplomat, I mean a professional craft beer brewer. While not exactly a diplomat, he was acting all diplomatic when he was talking with his customers and fans. Taking the high road when asked about the efforts of "big beer," such as Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Pabst, etc., He was happy to lament on the difficulty of their tasks, how tough it is to make beers so light, so clean, so consistent- acting like his mind has been blown at the success of such large enterprises. And though I applaud him for being the bigger man, I call bullshit!

Beer is back where it belongs: In church.

A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation. -- William Blake (1757-1827)

I can hear the anguished wailing of the prohibitionists; how dare alcohol be mixed with the only true religion -- except, of course, there is no true religion. As an atheist without an anthropology background, it's nonetheless plausible for me to suggest that combining religion with hallucinogens and intoxicants has the been the norm in human history far longer than bizarre notions of abstinence. Without them, does any of it even make sense?

To Stave Off Decline, Churches Attract New Members With Beer, by John Burnett (NPR)

With mainline religious congregations dwindling across America, a scattering of churches is trying to attract new members by creating a different sort of Christian community. They are gathering around craft beer.

Some church groups are brewing it themselves, while others are bring the Holy Mysteries to a taproom. The result is not sloshed congregants; rather, it's an exploratory approach to do church differently.

The PC: Aren't we leftists all?

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on November 1, 2013)

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Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?

The sensation of which I speak isn’t an irrational state like paranoia. Rather, it’s the sneaking suspicion that you’re being toyed with, prompted and set up … suddenly confronted with a situation so weirdly surreal that a hidden camera surely must be aimed your way, primed to capture your dumbfounded, flailing reaction for speedy editing into a video for posting on YouTube, to be greeted virally with the guffaws of the uneducated, addled masses.

My former manager at Scoreboard Liquors must have felt this way on the infamous day thirty years ago when a complete stranger walked in, pointed at the door to the rear office, and asked, “Do you mind if I go back there and change my pants?”

YouTube obviously didn’t exist back then, but Candid Camera did, and the late Lloyd “Duck” Cunningham’s unprintable reply to the unknown man’s request would have played well in syndication, with Allen Funt joyfully suffering the brunt of bleeped-out epithets.

—

So it was earlier this year, when my inbox disgorged a question from an unhappy customer.

A little while ago I noticed there was a room that had pictures of several mass murdering, genocidal, tyrannical dictators on the walls. As a customer what meaning should I take from that? In my opinion it seems to show support from the owner of New Albania of these tyrants?

I enjoy the pizza at NABC but I don’t enjoy the thought of supporting someone that idolized people like the pictures and posters you seem to proudly display. Maybe I misunderstand their meaning.

My initial reaction was annoyance: Who had gone in there, pulled down my Commie posters and replaced them with fascists – Franco, Mussolini, Idi Amin and Dick Cheney?

Then I realized he was referring to the usual Red Room stalwarts like Lenin, Castro and Gus Hall. Well, that’s fair enough, because it all depends on where you’re standing at the time.

Here’s what I told him in reply.

It isn’t necessarily a misunderstanding on your part, but what I can tell you with certainty is that there is no idolatry on mine.

I remain a leftist, broadly speaking, and I traveled in the East Bloc and USSR as a young man in the 1980s, but while I found these countries fascinating from a number of standpoints, they were not places where I ever wished to live.

Your question is asked every now and then, and my answer always has been the same: The Red Room means whatever the observer wishes for it to mean: Kitschy poster art emporium, spoils of Cold War victory or a shrine of reverence.

However, the primary intent for me is for it to serve as a talking point to help keep a piece of still-recent history living, in the sense that with each passing year, fewer (mostly younger) customers have any clue what the era even was about.

The verdict of history is fairly clear when it comes to the legacy of Stalin and Mao, and I have confidence that interested parties will reach that conclusion, as you and I surely have. But they must first be interested, and motivated to investigate. In my view, the Red Room periodically serves that purpose.

To the best of my rapidly declining base of pop culture knowledge, the preceding explanation is true.

As for what I might have been thinking twenty years ago with regard to the space now known as the Red Room, it’s also true that my prime motivation at the time was to have a place to display the many period propaganda pieces hauled home from travels abroad. One thing led to another, and there it was. It came together non-metaphorically.

I’m the first to admit there is as little to idolize on Stalin’s part as Hitler’s, but to repeat, the point lies elsewhere. Now that decades have passed and the older generations have departed, precious little discussion takes place about the “-isms” dominating the entirety of the 20th century … and sorry, yonder Teahadists, but loud ranting amid voluminous ricocheting spittle about Communism in the context of “Obamacare” does not suffice as earnestness.

Forgetting history begets repeating it, as either Santayana or Carlos Santana once said … or sang. It is my intention not to do so.

—

But my favorite example of work- and history-related consumer behavior occurred not at the Public House, but at Bank Street Brewhouse not long after we opened in 2009.

One of our servers was asked to explain Roger’s political beliefs in light of the red stars and leftist images on the shiny new brewing equipment visible just past the window.

Our man on the floor at the time, who’d studied some history and poli-sci, made a game effort to interpret these complex threads of geopolitics, economics and the art of brewing, and to phrase them in snappy sentences reproducible on bumper stickers for a Lexus, and yet the customer remained unimpressed, writing this on his charge card receipt:

“Tell your Commie boss to share the wealth.”

In order to accentuate his displeasure with my cheeky political proclivities, this rather boorish scion of an identifiably Falangist regional family left the gratuity column empty, thus stiffing the server while doing me no harm whatever.

Classy, eh? Not only that, but the customer was mistaken; in fact, I share the wealth of my knowledge every day, as teachers are wont to do, and in this vein, permit me to repeat my advice to the server, should such a question ever be asked again:

“We don’t care what sort of ‘ist’ Roger is, just as long as he keeps signing our paychecks.”

The PC: Beer is broad, not narrow.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on July 15, 2013)

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Ronnie Raygun had just been elected king when two of my friends returned from college bearing liquid gifts.

One of them carried bottles of Pilsner Urquell, and the other Guinness Export Stout. I’d already developed a taste for what nowadays would be called American Dark Lager, but these two new imported beer brands made a deep, lasting impression, and I found myself turned in a completely new direction.

From that summer forward, like fading lights on a distant, murky shore, the default mass-market American lagers of youth began to recede inexorably from view. The only question during that lost age was whether I could work often enough at inconsequential, non-binding jobs to pay for better beer at home while still amassing the savings necessary to travel to Europe in search of the beer culture that seemed to be lacking here at home.

Sometimes the answer was yes, and at other times, no. Every now and then, it would be back to the egg, reluctantly choking down brain-dead swill and pretending it was nectar, at least until the coffers again were replenished.

You do what you have to do, until you needn’t do it any longer – and I haven’t, for a very long time.

Eventually matters improved and I stopped punishing myself with ersatz alcohol delivery devices. Serendipitously, beer then became my line of work. There was a pub, then a brewery, and later another of each, all of them affording ample opportunity to drink the profits. Like the wise German once said: “In heaven there is no beer; that’s why we drink it here.”

Granted, little of this back story matters very much at this late date. Thirty years is the same as three decades, whether they’re the times of your life or mine. I didn’t consciously set out to be a lifer in the beer business, although now it increasingly looks like it will turn out that way. The cracked rear view mirror now encompasses far more terrain traveled than mileage to come, and sometimes I look into the mirror to adjust my beard beads and ponder:

Given that it’s been such a long, strange, trip, exactly where am I standing today?

—

First and foremost, it’s still all about the beer for me. Craft beer, good beer, real beer, better beer … terminology itself can become a hindrance. I know it when I taste it, but the cognitive process never is altogether that simple for me.

Just as surely as quality is to be desired, narcissism is to be avoided. Analyzing a beer to the exclusion of its back story is an exercise in futility, because I’ve always known that in terms of human history and culture, beer doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and accordingly, it cannot be consumed with a mindset divorced from its surroundings. An awareness of localism informs my choices these days.

As a brewery and restaurant owner, I know that our businesses are community based. We’re small and independent, making our way in a corporatized world of chains, franchises and economies of scale designed to enforce the depravity of conformity, and both as a contrarian and a true believer, I simply cannot regard even the “best” beer ever brewed (a concept I find quite ridiculous, by the way) apart from factors behind the label.

Plainly, origins matter. Moreover, where does the money trail lead? The beer renaissance in America is artistic and aesthetic, and wedded to principles we blithely abandon to our extreme detriment. A return to commodity status cannot be discounted – and that’s why external vigilance is preferred to self-centered absorption. Craft beer is “better” than mass-market beer, but when craft emulates every aspect of the commodity-based money market that preceded it, nothing except the flavor has changed.

In which case, flavor isn’t nearly enough.

Every single day, I think carefully about where I spend my own money, and my company’s, and insofar as spending can be shifted to small indie businesses like my own, that’s what I try to do. It’s impossible to be entirely pure in this sense, but angelic purity never was the whole point. Shift is, and recognizing the degree to which we engage in existential struggles each and every day.

Having fundamental beliefs and seeking to apply them in an often uncooperative world – fighting the good fight – is what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Yes, I still remain an unrepentant fan of beer at its best, and I retain a childlike, gleeful wonderment much of the time even if I may seem cynical and aloof, but there is considerable discomfort in what passes for my soul with labels like “geek,” “aficionado” and even “enthusiast,” which I once preferred. Of course, anything’s better than being a “snob.”

Categorizations inevitably lead to stereotypes, and to an extent, I’m as guilty of this as anyone, as evidenced by my reluctance to surrender the word “swill” in pursuit of daily polemics. But as a beer polemicist, I’ll just stick to my precepts and risk caricature.

I’m more convinced than ever that localism is the proper course for craft beer, and the reason for my conviction is that I’ll always be a beer traveler at heart, even when forced to be stationary and fixed to a spot. What is local, distinctive, and different about a place and its people? There’s little of interest being there otherwise.

The contrarian in me seeks diversity and uniqueness. When you’ve experienced it elsewhere, you see how important it is in your own locale. The point isn’t to escape one’s hometown blandness for too few days each year, only to return to the same old detached despair. Rather, one brings back experience and insight along with more ephemeral souvenirs, and seeks to make his or her own place on the planet unique, diverse and interesting.

Think globally, drink locally. It’s true more than ever before. Drinking is easy.

It’s the other part that’s hard.

At NPR: "Guess Who's Fighting To Keep Indiana Dry On Sundays?"

"Indiana is the only one where you can't buy packaged beer, wine and liquor on Sundays."

Wrong.

In fact, even reporters based in Indiana invariably miss a key point: You most certainly can get cold beer to go on Sunday in Indiana ... from the state's 65+ small craft breweries. The first day for such sales was July 4, 2010.

Indiana's small wineries have been able to sell their wine to go on Sunday for many years, too.

Guess Who's Fighting To Keep Indiana Dry On Sundays?, by Sara Wittmeyer (NPR)

When you think summer, you might think of cold beer at a barbecue, maybe a bottle of wine with a Sunday picnic. A lot of people take it for granted that they can just go to the store and pick up alcohol.

Not in Indiana.

While many states have laws restricting liquor sales, Indiana is the only one where you can't buy packaged beer, wine and liquor on Sundays, and it's the only state that regulates alcohol sales based on temperature. Only liquor stores can sell cold beer.

With RiverRoots drawing near, here's the NABC beer list for the fest.

It’s almost time for RiverRoots, the annual music and folk arts festival on the banks of the Ohio in historic Madison, Indiana.

It takes place on Friday and Saturday nights, May 17 and 18, and for the eighth year running (actually, since the fest’s inception), NABC will be on hand to share beer vending duties with craft-brewing Hoosier friends: NABC’s lineup at RiverRoots 2013.

At the Carnival Barker’s Blog: "Thunder, craft beer, river ... "

If you're a fan of craft beer AND Thunder Over Louisville, check into the craft beer extravaganza at Buckhead Mountain Grill in Jeffersonville. It's this Saturday, April 20, and I cover the basics here:

Carnival Barker’s Blog: Thunder, craft beer, river

Columbus Clippers: Locally brewed craft beer is a positive enticement. Imagine that.

The Louisville Bats are in Columbus for games against the Clippers at Huntington Park, which opened in 2009, just shy of a decade after the inception of Louisville Slugger Field.

I was wondering: Are there craft beer options at Columbus's home park, and if so, how do they compare with the perennially disappointing macro-mania situation in Louisville?

My verdict after light Internetz research: Thumbs mostly up.

There's a disclaimer to be considered any time one cannot actually be there to see things up close and personal, and it pertains to the bastardization of the "craft" concept by multinational, industrial brewers. Absent qualification, it remains likely that "craft" in these and most other PR-speak contexts probably includes beers that are "crafty" (i.e., mockrobrews like Shock Top and zombie crafts such as Goose Island) and not locally-brewed craft beer.

However, Columbus Brewing Company has at least two beers inside the yard, and not only that, the ball club seems to have refrained from burying these choices behind bags of hot roasted nuts. Amazingly, Columbus seems to regard locally brewed beer an an enticement.

After all, Ohio is a blue state.

Here are a few links that tell the story. Excerpts are from the articles, and are not mine.

Have you attended games in Columbus?

Let me know how it works there as we continue to build a case for proper, genuine craft beer at Louisville Slugger Field.

At Stadium Journey, the presence of Beer Ahoy and two locally brewed Columbus Brewing Company beers is duly noted.

 ... If you would like to grab a beer, then "Beer Ahoy" is a good place to stop. Here you can find one of the local Columbus Brewing Company Beers, including the pale ale and a very good I.P.A. ($6.25 or $8.50).

---

wordpress.com/2012/04/05/columbus-clippers-and-huntington-park/">COLUMBUS CLIPPERS AND HUNTINGTON PARK, by John Schumacher

... I find myself back in Columbus and still can’t think of a better way to spend a summer day than at Huntington Park, watching a Clippers game with a cold Columbus Brewing Company India Pale Ale in hand.

Previously: Toledo's Fifth Third Field