Beer in today's LEO.

(For a current Gravity Head 2007 update, go here)

Beer takes center stage in the Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO) today. First up is Robin Garr, who attended last week's Extreme Belgian beer dinner at the Bistro New Albany and reports on the pairings.

Critic yells ‘beer me’ as suds go upscale, by Robin Garr.

If you don’t think there’s any class distinction between wine and beer, you might consider whether you’ve even seen a drunk slouch into a bar and yell, “Wine me!” Beer, let’s face it, owns a downscale, blue-collar image that contrasts with wine’s perceived position as the drink the beautiful people sip.

But need this be so? In an age when artisanal brewpubs and microbreweries abound and the term “quality American beer” is no longer an oxymoron, it’s arguable that beer — fine, crafted beer made in a wide variety of styles — deserves as much connoisseurish attention as wine enthusiasts are accustomed to lavishing on their grape juice.

Also, Sara Havens takes a righteous stand against green beer even as elsewhere in the newspaper, regular advertisers like Fourth Street Live shamelessly tout algae-colored clueless lotion for the yokels to consume on St. Patrick's Day.

The Bar Belle: The tragedy that is green beer, by Sara Havens.

Friends don’t let friends drink green beer. Seriously. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it. If you have to, order a bottle … or a Guinness … or a Harp … to commemorate St. Patrick’s Day. Just don’t walk around with a goofy grin and a pint of syrupy green sludge that leaves stains all over your face. It looks like you just blew a leprechaun. Or had a threesome with Papa Smurf and Homer Simpson.

The Velocity beer reviewer strikes again.

At least give Velocity, otherwise known hereabouts as the Courier-Journal’s shameless “Generation ?” advertising supplement, a slight degree of credit for knowing not to challenge its readership's ever shorter attention spans.

Year of the Beer: Celebrate the Chinese New Year with a sampling of Asian brews, by Danielle Bermingham.

We toured the beer world to bring back some Asian brews for you to imbibe while embracing another culture (and a great excuse to party).

The majority of the brews we sampled had a pungent sour flicker and a gold to golden-red tone. The beers were light and best served cold, a perfect accompaniment to spicy curries or zinging stir-fry.

Surprise -- each beer reviewed today is a standard golden lager, none of which have anything to contribute to a good meal other than a price tag higher than that of bottled water. Singha? Admittedly good when fresh, perhaps better than many, and still inferior to numerous world pilsners and even a few Euro lagers.

Imagine the possibilities with those “spicy curries.” Foreign-style export stout, India Pale Ale … Aventinus Weizen Doppelbock.

Frank Zappa was right to suggest that a country must have a beer to be a real country, but just because a country has a beer, it doesn't mean the beer is worth a damn. The time-honored "shop for beer by national flag" approach always struck me as ironic at best, since most of the imports are weak lagers with the most to lose during transit. Consequently, whole generations have grown to adulthood thinking that cardboard is a noteworthy flavor profile of imported beer. And it is -- just not in a favorable way.

I swore to myself that I wouldn’t let this reviewer get to me, but so far she’s done fruit beers, light beers, Asian beers … it’s enough to make me run to the fridge for a delectable, dark, rich Okocim Porter.

Wait … I actually have one.

No cabbage rolls or mushrooms, though. Looks like I’ll just have to drink it all by itself.

That wasn't so hard, was it?

Cash Bar Talkin' Swill Blues: Depressing, but no fault of the organizers.

On Thursday evening, I attended the Jeffersonville Main Street Chili & Beer Bonanza on Groundhog's Eve at Kye's II in Jeffersonville, and had a ball pouring generous samples (“how much would you like?”) of NABC’s Kaiser 2nd Reising and Old Lightning Rod.

It was a retro Thursday, given the pre-Prohibition and Colonial motifs, respectively, of the beers we chose to showcase.

Fellow brewers BBC (Main & Clay) and Upland also were on hand to help quench the flames and raise funds for downtown Jeffersonville revitalization. It was a first-rate event, and I look forward to participating next year, but I must confess that I saw something profoundly disconcerting while manning the taps.

You’ll notice that with the price of admission guaranteeing virtually unlimited portions of 13-14 different craft beers from three different breweries, some in attendance chose instead to pay for bottled mass-market swill at the cash bar.

I couldn’t believe my own eyes, and that’s why the camera came out.

Verily, you can lead a person to ideas, but you can’t make him or her think. Apart from my personal angle in espousing the joys of craft beer, there is a philosophical consistency to the ethos of craft beer and downtown revitalization. Consider that one fundamental purpose of a fundraiser such as Jeffersonville Main Street’s is to raise consciousness about buying locally and supporting local businesses, and yet more than one or two workers for the small businesses on hand dispensing chili, not to mention at least two prominent community “movers and shakers,” refrained from local beer in favor of paying for multi-nationally brewed Budweiser.

In effect, they were paying twice (or more, in fact) for one inferior product – hardly something to be expected from “real men of genius,” but funny in an apocalyptic sort of way.

Thanks to Jesse and Jared for setting up, and Todd for helping me tear down and corrupting the remainder of my evening.

Beer-induced, Flaming Cougarhawk mania.

Perceptive reader Edward has noticed the inscription on the Gravity Head 2007 mascot’s basketball jersey, and he asks, undoubtedly smirking:

Can you tell the story behind Flaming Cougarhawks?

Not without pain, but here goes.

It is a widely and deservedly forgotten fact that while serving acne time during high school, your faithful Curmudgeon was a two-year varsity basketball player at Floyd Central. My active hoops participation ceased after our ignominious defeat in the morning session of the Seymour regional in 1978, after which spent the afternoon drinking Little Kings with friends in their Daze Inn hotel room before proceeding to an equally lackluster career of grabbing innings of varsity baseball pine.

Upon graduation, a regimen-free summer was spent lounging with like-minded pals, especially those with skills at being served, which magically added 25 pounds of non-muscle mass (i.e., goo) to an otherwise spindly frame.

A steadily growing affection for beer in its cheapest available incarnation accompanied four years of intramural basketball competition at Indiana University Southeast, and it should come as no surprise that my best-ever senior IM squad was called the Inebriates. By the mid-1980’s, activities like softball, walking and riding trains between European beer shrines had replaced organized basketball as my generally preferred forms of exercise, but as so often is the case, and without warning, there was to be an entirely unexpected roundball comeback.

It happened in 1999.

A group of Rich O’s Public House regulars, all of whom love the game of basketball – some of them can still be glimpsed limping to the bar for their daily medicinal pints – somehow fell into a summertime routine of meeting on Sundays atop the asphalt parking lot of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and shooting hoops, which led to half-court games followed by restorative ale drinking at the Shelbyville Road location of BBC … and, fueled by these post-game sessions, led eventually to a bizarre delusion that we were good enough to compete in the autumn YMCA recreational league in Clarksville.

Mark, our starting guard and coach, did the paperwork, and I purchased garish bluish purple team jerseys for the team, which had been dubbed the Flaming Cougarhawks in honor of … owing to … hmmm, the ironic thing is that I have no memory of the naming process other than to suggest that we must have been drinking BBC APA when it happened.

When the newly minted Flaming Cougarhawks stepped onto the hardwood for their first-ever game, the average age of the starting lineup was about 35, and it quickly doubled when we suddenly realized that a regulation full court is very, very big, and that the opposing team of recently graduated 19-year-olds was very, very fast.

We outweighed them, though, and this came in handy on those rare occasions when one of us could catch up with one of them. Calling on long-neglected reserves of thespian talent, I duped the referee into calling a shooting foul and scored the first point in team history on a free throw. Moments later I jammed my right ankle and was lost for the season. The Flaming Cougarhawks dropped each and every game on the schedule, although we came close enough once to justify another BBC drinking spree.

Those young pups couldn’t touch us there, on our true home court.

(Thanks to Jared and Tony for remembering)