The advent of THE BEER BEAT, and three links to it.

Previously, I explained several reasons why this blog is going on hiatus, indicating that my thoughts on beer will be posted alongside my thoughts on everything else, at NA Confidential. You'll find them there via the all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat.

However, whenever the urge strikes, I'll collect a few of these links here. First, a flashback.

THE BEER BEAT: Addressing diversity in "craft" beer, with Naughty Girl once again on the wrong side of the debate.

Let’s put an old saw to the test: Is it really true that any publicity is good publicity?

Specifically, if a New Albanian Brewing Company beer and beer label, as conceived on my watch in 2011, appears alongside an article by a national recognized blogger in 2016 and then is linked on Facebook by a brewing superstar, that’s wonderful, right?

Next, when good people succeed.

THE BEER BEAT: Localism in action, from Big Woods to Quaff On, now also Hard Times.

I've always like the people at this company, and it's been instructive to watch as they've expanded the business, geographically and in terms of product lines.

Finally, saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

THE BEER BEAT: Words like "local" and "unique," and beers for cold weather.

According to what I'm hearing, Flat12 as currently constituted has no plans to brew in Jeffersonville. Of course, this could change.

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Come to Forecastle and enjoy 4-oz samples of local "craft" beer.

Handmade thimbles -- photo credit.

It says so, right here in the article.

Local Beer at Forecastle Festival 2016, by Cresant Smith (Louisville Beer)

The Forecastle Festival will be held on the Louisville Waterfront July 15 – 17th 2016. All of this great music deserves great local beer. You have seen the list of artists that are scheduled to perform, however, you may not be aware of the craft beer selection that will be available.

Here are the Louisville and Kentucky breweries and what they will be offering:

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THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A Mile Wide sidewalk superintendent.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A Mile Wide sidewalk superintendent. 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

To be perfectly honest – but then again, why let the accumulated truth spill out, all at once? – demonstrable elements of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can be spotted amid otherwise encouraging signs of the Curmudgeon's ongoing recovery from the vicissitudes of small business ownership.

For instance, there is a recurring nightmare. I’m stuck in a roofless maze, trying to find my way out. Every time I spot a seemingly safe exit corridor, out pops a familiar impediment – some times a do-nothing gasbag from Heidelberg Distributing, at others a phalanx of Floyd County Health Department bureaucrats carrying clipboards.

Worst of all is the RateBeer luminary, waving his hop garland like a priest with bobbing censer, and screaming about my Doppelbock’s failure to taste like an IPA. When I glance up to the sky, the sun is blocked by the doughy faces of bankers, looking down at me and laughing.

Consequently, when I read previews like Kevin Gibson’s recent piece on Mile Wide Beer Co., it's like being at the harbor, watching as the Titanic sets sail, all the while expecting dreadful things to happen sooner rather than later ... then I fall asleep again.

Mile Wide Beer Co. announces it will open in late summer, by Kevin Gibson (Insider Louisville)

The mysterious Mile Wide Beer Co. announced this week it will open in late summer, also detailing what types of beers customers should expect.

Located at 636 Barret Ave., behind Diamond Pub & Billiards in a former live music space, Mile Wide is owned by four partners: Scott Shreffler, Kyle Tavares, Matt Landon and Patrick Smith, the latter of which also owns River City Drafthouse. Shreffler and Tavares are former representatives for Schlafly Beer, which is based in St. Louis, while Landon has worked in construction …

… The brewhouse will consist of a 15-barrel, three-vessel system with an initial annual capacity of about 1,700 barrels, thanks to two 15-barrel fermenters, three 30-barrel fermenters, and a pair of bright tanks.

Other amenities will include a circa-early 1990s jukebox, plus a retail space that will include a crowler station; at Mile Wide, 32-ounce crowlers, which are cans sealed on site, will be a specialty for taking beer off site and maintaining its freshness longer than growlers. In fact, Mile Wide will be the first brewery in Louisville to offer crowlers ...

... Shreffler says the space has room for growth if the need arises. Future plans, pending success of the brewery, include a canning line. In the meantime, there is plenty of build-out work left to do, and recipes to perfect.

Of course, my anxiety is just a mirror, reflecting a scalded publican shunning the fire, even if he continues to adore Rauchbier.

This feeling of impending terror has nothing whatever to do with the merits of the start-up brewery in question. Mile Wide’s principals have certifiable pedigrees, and assuming the brewery is sufficiently capitalized, there is no reason to believe they won’t do fine, although it won’t stop me from offering astute analysis in just a moment.

Meanwhile, professional therapy may eventually be necessary.

When the whistle blew for opening day at Bank Street Brewhouse in 2009, I thought we had a great business plan. By the time Day Two rolled around, this plan had all the value of Confederate banknotes, crisp and baled.

In the months and years to follow, things seldom worked as intended, and even when they did, critical mass stubbornly refused to occur. It was an amazing and educational ride, and so help me Jeeebus, never EVER again.

For six years at BSB, we performed too well to fail, and yet not well enough to succeed, and as the experience of World War I amply illustrates, there isn't much to be said for the daily stalemate of trench warfare.

On those rare occasions when the shelling stopped, I found myself questioning my worthiness to exist in an atmosphere of peace and quiet, fully expecting the blows to keep raining down.

For the past year, I’ve been convalescing, in part by immersing myself in local politics. Compared to today’s “craft” beer business, the snarling, backstabbing, soul-crushing viciousness of a small town mayoral campaign comes off as serene and hushed, like libraries used to be.

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Because you’re entitled to my opinion, here’s what I think about Mile Wide’s prospects, using Kevin's Insider Louisville survey as the sole basis for my armchair quarterbacking.

This means I’ll probably be wrong, but so are most weather forecasters.

There is no mention of a kitchen at Mile Wide, and that’s good. At Bank Street Brewhouse, we had enough money to either open a restaurant or a brewery, so naturally we tried to do both. Apart from the maddening fickleness of the food service business, there’s a reason for the wise old brewer’s adage.

“Wanna make a million in the brewing business? It’s easy – start with $5 million.”

Better to spend the additional $4 million supporting the beer your brew, which after all is a brewery’s primary reason for being, and conversely, if one is intent on being a restaurant owner, don’t bother brewing at all – or find another $5 million.

(As an alternative, one might serve the basic Belgian beer café menu of spaghetti with meat sauce, meat plate, cheese plate and a grilled ham and cheese sandwich (Croque) capable of being prepared by one employee with a kitchen stove, crockpot and panini press.)

It seems that the four partners in Mile Wide each possess an important primary skill set: Physical plant, front-of-house, brewing and sales. That's a good mix, and it echoes Against the Grain’s four-pronged ownership structure, which has proved viable.

Crowlers and retail swag? By all means. Big cans sealed on site is a novelty, albeit one with genuine utility for the consumer.

As for shirts, caps, jackets, thongs and signature condoms, it remains a matter of much regret to me that NABC wasn’t ever able to maximize sales for items like these, in spite of my wonderment at the well-stocked, high-volume souvenir shops at breweries like North Coast and Schlafly, among other travel destinations visited prior to the advent of BSB.

Those visions again. I kept snapping my fingers, and the damned genie never appeared.

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Obviously, the biggest question of all concerns Mile Wide’s inevitable move into off-premise distribution.

Granted, Kevin's preview doesn’t explicitly mention distribution, apart from a reference to the possibility of canning. However, because of the Schlafly connection – Kyle as trained production brewer and Scott as a brand rep and salesman – it seems likely that Mile Wide will eventually mount its bid to appear wherever finer beers are sold.

You know, right alongside 4,500 other brewing contestants, with new brewery openings coming at an exponential rate, while shelf space and taps remain static.

Hence, the conundrum. New breweries planning to operate as brewpubs, with business plans predicated to maximize on-premise sales, are probably better placed for stability amid the bizarre market madness facing production brewers. However, brewpubs must entice customers to come spend money on-premise, and often this implies food (see "millions" above).

Perhaps Louisvillians finally are coming around to the free-standing taproom with food trucks, delivery and brown-bagging. Apocalypse Brew Works does quite well with this most sustainable of approaches.

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Naturally there are variables too numerous to explore, but what I’m most eager to see unfold at Mile Wide is Scott’s strategy for selling his own company’s local beer in the Louisville market, because when he sets about selling his own company’s local beer, he’ll no longer be the local guy selling some other city's non-local beer – read “Schlafly.”

And, in doing so, he’ll come face to face with the 800-lb “craft” beer gorilla in Louisville, which is the local beer snob’s raging antipathy to localism, which is predicated on the sheer impossibility of local beer bearing quality, apart from Against the Grain whenever Beer Advocate’s arbiters graciously allow it, because just as in the Middle Ages and spice shipments from the exotic east, style and status points absolutely must come from elsewhere, not here.

Except for bourbon, but that's not beer, apart from the rule that all beers, from Hefeweizen through Wee Heavy, must be aged in bourbon barrels.

I’m not saying Scott can’t or won’t do it. He knows his stuff, works hard and is much loved by a segment of the demographic. If anyone can succeed, he can. I respect him and his abilities. I'll be transfixed, having traversed the same learning curve when NABC went from beer bar to brewery.

Now it’s going to be different for Scott – beer sales without a net, minus the institutional support of a regional-sized brewery. Now it’s truly understanding what those principles of economic localization mean, because there’s nothing like becoming the owner of a local business to open one’s eyes to the economic reality of big boxes, chains and multi-nationals (yes, AB-InBev counts), and sadly, to the way that so many beer snobs throw locals under the bus with palpable glee if it means getting their hands on the one special beer that will make those masturbatory selfies sing with narcissistic delight.

A flagship Belgian Wit? Good idea. It worked for Upland. Now all Mile Wide must do is break through the shadiness of Blue Moon and Shock Top placement, find a bar manager in town capable of explaining the algorithm behind his or her constant tap rotation, and get a start-up’s flagship pouring at establishments dedicated to the chaos principle of specialty drafts.

Good luck, Scott. This isn’t at all facetious. I root for local indies, not against them, and I hope Mile Wide rocks it. If you ever need advice on how NOT to do it, I happily consult for beer and pretzels, and the occasional tin of kippers -- crackers, thanks, not bread.

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May 30: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: “The Drinker” (A Book Review).

May 23: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part Two).

May 16: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part One).

May 9: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Hip Hops ... A look at two new New Albany breweries.

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Why does local matter? Let me count these three ways, courtesy of Tristan at BIG.

Authored by Tristan Schmid, communications director for the Brewers of Indiana Guild (BIG), it's a three-part refresher course on the theory and practice of localism in beer.

Taught him everything he knows ... well, not really.

First, follow the money.

Why does “local” matter when it comes to craft beer and beer fests? Part 1: Economics

“Money from the beer value chain is made up of producer-distributor-retailer (and taxes). Where that money goes varies by retail channel, product, etc., but on average, roughly one-third ends up with the producer. When that producer is local, that means the money goes to local workers, investments, businesses, taxes, and more. When that producer isn’t, you still get the value from the other portions, but you simply lose that 1/3 that would have gone to the producer.”

Next, think about the community.

Why does “local” matter when it comes to craft beer and beer fests? Part 2: Community

You may have heard of Ray Oldenburg’s concept of “third places,” those which “host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.” Nearly 2/3 of Hoosier breweries are brewpubs–the epitome of Oldenburg’s “third place.”

These are places where, in addition to beer direct from the source, you can enjoy local food, artwork, music, events, and much more. Locally owned brewpubs are places to hang out with family, meet new friends, and talk with the brewers about the beer you’re drinking.

Finally, take a bow.

Why does “local” matter when it comes to craft beer and beer fests? Part 3: You

Consumer support of finely crafted local beer is key to the industry’s continued growth and strength. Thanks to demand for a good, local product, it’s been possible for Brewers of Indiana Guild to lobby for efforts like legalizing Sunday growler fills at Hoosier breweries.

People like you made it possible to raise barrelage limits last year from 30,000 that could be sold in state to 90,000–meaning that it’s easier to get Three Floyds and Sun King across Indiana because they can legally sell more of it in their home state.

If it weren’t for Hoosiers supporting their local brewers, we wouldn’t have been able to launch the Drink Indiana Beer campaign or the app or the forthcoming DrinkIN magazine (which–plug!–features a handy-dandy regional map of all the state’s breweries.)

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THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Birracibo’s local/regional “craft” beer percentage rides the bench.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Birracibo’s local/regional “craft” beer percentage rides the bench.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear. I have nothing whatever against Ulysses “Junior” Bridgeman, although if I were the sort to nurse ancestral grudges, there might be bad blood.

You see, unlike many basketball fans nearby who pledge allegiance to the University of Louisville Cardinals, it was my good fortune to see Bridgeman play when he was in high school, even if I was only 10 years old at the time.

Junior Bridgeman’s senior year in 1970-71 ended with his East Chicago Washington squad crowned as undefeated state champion, arguably the finest team in Hoosier high school history. All five starters for the Senators received four-year college scholarships, including Pete Trgovich at UCLA and Tim Stoddard at North Carolina State. Interestingly, Stoddard subsequently lasted more than a decade in the major leagues as an above-average relief pitcher.

In winning the 1971 title, East Chicago Washington defeated my Floyd Central Highlanders by a score of 102-88 in the championship semi-final in Indianapolis. At the time, it was a record for most points scored by a losing team in the Final Four.

Bridgeman went on to Louisville, enjoyed a 12-year NBA career, and has had a very successful post-athletic business career, primarily as the owner of several hundred Wendy’s and Chili’s franchises.

Meanwhile, I became a professional beer drinker and went straight to hell in a bottomless, used peach basket – but that’s a fun story for another day.

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My mornings do not begin with television or radio. Rather, I check my iPhone for updates from the world’s few remaining reputable national and international news sources (Economist, Guardian, New York Times), generally of the sort that don’t rate beers.

Local news comes from the Twitter feed and e-mail headlines. Among my many sources for local information are the Courier-Journal, News and Tribune, Insider Louisville and Louisville Business First. The first two purport to offer comprehensive news coverage, while Insider and LBF typically compete to provide histrionic, breathless “scoops” for that saddest of all human archetypes, those among us who somehow derive erotic jollies from business and finance news.

Restaurant and bar items remain of vague interest to me. Concurrently, gleeful tales of housing prices, stock options and hospital groups have precisely the same effect as an ice-cold outdoor shower in January.

Accordingly, last week Insider Louisville contributed a pulse-quickening, purely sponsored press release from the cuddly Cordish Companies, collector of formulaic, cookie-cutter chain stores, and extractor of municipal economic “development” subsidies from sea to shining sea.

In this for-pay “news” release, I learned that there’s a new restaurant at Fourth Street Live, Louisville’s engorged Cordish outpost. I’ve edited the rhetorical carnage to omit flagrant, self-congratulatory rhetoric, both on the part of Cordish and its best political friend, Mayor Greg Fischer.

SPONSORED

Local business leader and sports legend opens Birracibo at Fourth Street Live!

The Cordish Companies and local business leader and former NBA and University of Louisville basketball player, Ulysses “Junior” Bridgeman, proudly opened Birracibo at Fourth Street Live! last month. The newest restaurant specializes in artisanal pizzas, wine, and craft beer …

… “We are proud to partner with the Cordish family to create a truly special restaurant for downtown Louisville,” stated Junior Bridgeman, President and CEO of B.F. South Inc. “Birracibo is committed to quality, local ingredients, and an artisanal food and beverage program.”

“Birra” and “cibo” translated from Italian mean “beer” and “food” respectively. Birracibo honors that namesake by showcasing the best local and regional craft beers, as well as a menu that will assuage sophisticated palates and casual diners alike.

I hope IL paid well for that one. How very, very dreadful to write such drivel.

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Truthfully, we’ve long since pole-vaulted the critical juncture where bracketing “craft” is required, seeing as “craft” has ceased to have any coherent meaning. Though strictly provisional, my current preferred formula is this: “Craft Beer Is Dead; Long Live Indie Beer.” 

Because: As an identifier, “indie” is vital. It reconnects better beer’s conceptual origins to the small, local business revolution, something increasingly forgotten by the boastful white whale chasers. My personal beer values system tells me that it’s just as important to follow the money as to prattle on about quality, especially when hardly anyone can agree on what quality means in a time of raging personal subjectivity.

Of course, the problem with indie beer is that “indie” (and “alternative”) long since were victimized as concepts by the music business in precisely the same way as “craft” has been gutted and wielded by brewing multinationals.

At any rate, we’re told that Birracibo features “the best local and regional craft beers,” and so not unlike a Missourian, I looked at the drinks card, which helpfully is available online. I’ve unilaterally divided the Birracibo beer list into categories that are more truthful than the blanket term “craft.”

MULTINATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL (15)
By definition, neither local nor regional “craft.”

Draft
BIRRA PERONI // Italy, Lager - 4.7% ABV
BUD LIGHT // St. Louis, MO, Lager - 5% ABV
HOEGAARDEN // Belgium, Witbier - 4.9% ABV
STELLA ARTOIS // Belgium, Lager - 5% ABV

Bottles
AMSTEL LIGHT // Netherlands
BIRRA MORETTI LAGER // Italy
BIRRA MORETTI LA ROSSA // Italy
BUDWEISER // St. Louis, MO
CORONA // Mexico City
ESTRELLA DAMM DAURA // Barcelona
GOOSE ISLAND SEASONAL // Chicago, IL
HEINEKEN // Netherlands
MAGIC HAT #9 // South Burlington, VT
MENABREA LAGER // Italy
MICHELOB ULTRA // St. Louis, MO

ISN’T BEER AT ALL (1)

Bottles
ANGRY ORCHARD // Cincinnati, OH

“CRAFT,” BUT NOT REALLY LOCAL/REGIONAL (3)

Draft
NEW BELGIUM FAT TIRE // Colorado, Amber Ale - 5.2% ABV
GREAT LAKES BURNING RIVER PALE ALE // Cleveland, OH, Pale Ale - 6% ABV

Bottles
LAKEFRONT NEW GRIST GINGER // Milwaukee, WI

LOCAL/REGIONAL “CRAFT” (13)

Draft
ALLTECH KENTUCKY BOURBON ALE // Lexington, KY, Bourbon Aged Ale - 8.8% ABV
FALLS CITY ENGLISH PALE ALE // Louisville, KY, Pale Ale - 5% ABV
GOODWOOD LOUISVILLE LAGER // Louisville, KY, Lager - 4.6% ABV
GOODWOOD BOURBON STOUT // Louisville, KY, Bourbon Stout - 8% ABV
NEW ALBANIAN HOPTIMUS // New Albany, IN, Imperial IPA - 10.7% ABV
NEW ALBANIAN ELECTOR // New Albany, IN, Imperial Red - RHINEGEIST COUGAR BLONDE ALE // Cincinnati, OH, American Blonde Ale - 4.8% ABV
WEST 6TH IPA // Lexington, KY, IPA - 7% ABV

Bottles
BELL'S SMITTEN GOLDEN RYE ALE // Galesburg, MI
FALLS CITY HIPSTER REPELLANT IPA // Louisville, KY
FOUNDER'S BREAKFAST STOUT // Grand Rapids, MI
GOODWOOD WALNUT BROWN ALE // Louisville, KY
GOODWOOD RED WINE SAISON // Louisville, KY

Tossing aside the Angry Orchard (cider is not beer, is it?), we’re left with 31 beers on the Birracibo list. Stylistically, it makes no sense, but indisputably, there is a good core of local/regional “craft” beers.

Overall, the picture is less than pleasing. 16 beers genuinely rank as local/regional “craft,” and the remainder do not. The percentage works  out to 52% local/regional, to 48% multinational. Unsurprisingly, reality on the ground does not correspond with the press release’s gushing promises.

Yes, I know: It’s Fourth Street Live, and it’s an imported entertainment concept – so what?

Yes, considering what it surely takes to play ball with Wendy’s, Chili’s and Cordish, the act of appeasing AB-InBev’s monopolists with roughly 30% of an allegedly “local/regional” beer list makes perfect sense. It’s probably in the Fourth Street Live contract somewhere that a business must do so.

But everything I’ve read about Junior Bridgeman’s business career suggests that he’s always been uncommonly hands-on. He famously worked the Wendy’s shop floor before he bought one, and has continued to swoop into his franchises, even as they’ve numbered into the hundreds.

It’s the sort work ethic you’d expect from someone raised by the East Chicago steel mills, and widely admired for professionalism during his basketball playing days. I respect it, even if Wendy's isn't my idea of lunch, now or ever.

Allow me to suggest that the same work ethic – the same respect for what’s true, and the same nose for what isn’t – as applied to the beers carried by an establishment trumpeting an “artisanal food and beverage program,” implies a willingness to do a lot better than this list.

52% is a good shooting percentage, but if “craft” is to retain any palpable meaning whatever, all 52% should buy is a seat on the pine.

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March 14: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Two decades of Beer Corner barrels.

March 7: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Can I get a “do-over” on Naughty Girl?

February 22: The PC: Beef Steak and Porter always made good belly mortar, but did America’s “top” steakhouses get the memo?

February 15: The PC: Swill in youthful times of penury and need.

When the Euro '85 series returns: Leningrad USSR, continued. 

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Local + good cause = Tailspin Ale Fest (Feb. 20), so let Connecticut host its own damn gig.

The photo above was taken at the first Tailspin on February 22, 2014. The late Jimmy Mann's t-shirt attests to an unseasonably warm day.

Watch video of the Tailspin Ale Fest, yesterday at Bowman Field in Louisville.

Last year, we'd had snow three times by February and it was more wintry, although no one noticed, and Tailspin got even bigger.

Kevin Gibson previews the 2016 installment of Louisville's only beer festival held at an airport, and in doing so, he should be forewarned, because from sheer joy I might plant a wet one on his cheek next time we run into each other, congratulating him for emphasizing Tailspin's charitable component and "local flavor," then upping the ante by telling the truth about for-profit beer fests like the coming weekend's Louisville On Tap.

Tailspin Ale Fest turns 3 with more beer and more charity, by Kevin Gibson (Insider Louisville)

 ... one of the key focuses of (Tailspin) continues to be on maintaining its local flavor. For instance, the first Tailspin featured seven Kentucky breweries. This year, there will be up to 20. Throw in local food trucks and other vendors, and a whole lot of local artisans and businesses are benefiting, in addition to the charity.

Other Louisville beer festivals operate similarly, from the Fest of Ale to Highlands Beer Festival to Brew at the Zoo. By contrast, a number of people likely will attend Louisville On Tap this Saturday. While there will surely be plenty of beer to sample, this festival is one of more than 80 “On Tap” events produced by a Connecticut-based company called Townsquare Media, which primarily owns radio stations in mid-market cities and does live events.

There is no charity beneficiary; profits go to the parent company, so in essence, it is an out-of-town cash grab.

Preach it, Brother Gibson. We don't need no stinkin' Townsquare Media carpetbaggers 'round here. If anything, Tailspin founders Tisha Gainey and Trevor Cravens are overly diplomatic with regard to the outsiders.

As for Louisville On Tap, the Tailspin folks hold no ill will, but it bears noting that a festival like that one is aimed at a different demographic. In other words, it might not be as desirable for the hardcore beer lover.

“It’s kind of a beginner’s beer festival,” Gainey said, echoing a promotional video on the America On Tap website.

“They get to an audience we’re probably not reaching,” Cravens agreed ...

You've probably already guessed my question: If there is merit to the position that a "beginner's" festival is needed, then why defer to a Connecticut media conglomerate? Let's do that one, too.

Just thinking out loud. Of greater importance is attending Tailspin.

Wonder if I could get a media pass and pay? After all, it's for a good cause.

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Support your independent local brewer, and tell AB-InBev to go Busch itself.

As far as I'm concerned, AB-InBev is a terrorist organization.

Like most terrorist organizations, the key to defeating them is withholding money from them. In terms of my personal spending habits, I regard this as the most important shift of all. There is nothing the zombie (former) craft brewers can brew -- no Goose, Breckenridge or Elysian -- that's good enough for me to give the corporate overlord blood money to use against us.

As AB-InBev carpet-bombs craft with money derived from swillmongering, it's time for clarity of vision and purpose.

Consequently, the three most important breweries in the world are those located closest to me, in my city of residence: Donum Dei, Floyd County Brewing and NABC.

Next: All the other breweries in the Louisville metropolitan area.

Next: The breweries in Indiana and Kentucky. It goes from there, according to who is independent and best exemplifies the founding ideals of better beer. Dozens of breweries, hundreds of beers. It's enough for me.

The craft beer revolution was, and remains, local and regional in orientation. It spreads outward only after insuring the health and well being of genuine local options.

At this precise moment, as I try to negotiate an exit from brewery ownership, it remains imperative for me to continue helping in any way I can to keep grassroots brewing vibrant and to improve its quality, where it is being done closest to me and with greatest impact on my daily existence.

I cherish the idea of the money I send on beer going into the pockets of grassroots entrepreneurs, and not the slimeball likes of Carlos Brito. Dollars spent locally circulate locally, and remain in the local economy longer. I'll continue to shift my spending in this manner even when I'm not an "owner," and revert to a mere baseline consumer.

Because principle is important, and ideas count.

Because fighting for what matters, does matter. Less narcissism, more commitment to fundamentals.

Fluff the corporate shareholders if you wish. I prefer spitting in their eyes.

Thumbs up: Anderson Brewfest "was about supporting local businesses."

Much earlier in the year, Anderson Brewfest organizer Shanna Henry spoke to me about her local festival back home, and asked whether NABC would participate.

Then I took a leave of absence to run for mayor of New Albany, and Shanna lost her job at Flat12 in Jeffersonville -- not the only person to go in a company-wide shakeup that remains curiously undocumented by the state's beer press.

NABC did not participate, and I didn't go.

But ...

The description here confirms a commitment to localism, and that's very good to know. Congratulations to Shanna for doing something that's becoming increasingly difficult: Offering a beer fest with a twist.

ANDERSON BREWFEST HIGHLIGHTS LOCAL BUSINESSES ALONGSIDE EXCELLENT BEERS, by Tyler McCord (Indiana on Tap)

 ... You see, they went above and beyond for this fest. As great as having a fest with hundreds of brewers can be, it was great to see one that featured around 20 local Indiana breweries but also gave local artist, crafters, and businesses space to set up booths. Sure you’ll find a few of these booths at the bigger fests, but not like this. There were just as many local vendors as there were breweries. There was live music, there were educational showcases about brewing your own beer, food trucks, and so much more. This gave you the opportunity to take a small break from the beer and enjoy some of the finer things from around the state. Overall, this fest wasn’t just about the beer; it was about supporting local businesses.

Say hello to Bologna Beer. Kinda sorta.

Most readers will quickly guess that smokiness is the "meat" in the bologna beer, but the overarching point here is the tying together of localist threads.

Locals react to "bologna beer" in Lebanon: Snitz Creek Brewery serves-up Seltzer's Bologna in a new way, by Meg Frankowski (WGAL)

LEBANON, Pa. —Would you drink your favorite deli variety in the form of beer? Snitz Creek Brewery is now serving-up Lebanon, Pa.'s, famous Seltzer's Bologna in liquid form.

While Seltzer's Bologna is a secret recipe, we do know that it's placed in wood smokehouses for three days to cure. Still, there's no actual meat in the beer mix. Adam Szajda, co-owner of Snitz Creek, says the secret is in the grains.

"We use grains that were smoked in the Seltzer's smoke house in Palmyra, Pa.," said Szajda.

The PC: Getting our SHIFT together … again.

The PC: Getting our shift together … again.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

It may surprise some readers to learn that I have determined to stand in this year’s New Albany municipal elections as a candidate for mayor.

It should surprise no one that my aim is to do so as an independent candidate, freed from the encumbrances of America’s two-party duopoly – whether Democratic and Republican ... or AB InBev and MillerCoors.

Are the thought processes prefacing the advancement of better beer all that different from those encouraging improved local governance? Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, founder of Denver’s Wynkoop brewery, surely has thoughts on the matter.

It’s hardly a secret that many of us frequently borrow ideas from the world outside beer, primarily because beer hardly exists in a vacuum, although try telling this to (a) burrowed survivalists, or (b) chasers of the current Great White Whales of rare beer.

Whether it’s better beer or the little shop on the corner, concepts of shift and economic localization are cross-disciplinary. The following essay was originally published at LouisvilleBeer.com on January 15, 2013, and has been edited to reflect a handful of altered details.

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Political stump speeches differ very little from religious sermons, and that’s probably why we call it a bully pulpit, not a milk crate.

However, a soapbox might be useful, or better yet, a couple cases of Bud Light in tall cans, because if the pet shampoo is too disgusting to drink, at least you can stand atop it and preach.

(By the way, President Theodore Roosevelt was the originator of the “bully pulpit” usage. Roosevelt was one of the last and best examples of a species now extinct, the progressive Republican)

During these past few years at the bully pulpit, I’ve endeavored to echo two important, recurring themes – economic localization and shift – because both notions should be of interest to the well-informed contemporary beer drinker, even if their foundations are rooted elsewhere.

Beer loving Louisvillians are familiar with LIBA, the independent business association that coordinates the annual Louisville Brewfest. LIBA works to “Keep Louisville Weird,” primarily through advocacy and education about the fundamental merits of economic localization. My city’s version of the same is called New Albany First, and my company, New Albanian Brewing Company, belongs to both organizations.

A chart provided by LIBA illustrates in simple, introductory fashion one aspect of the stakes involved with localism. The chart has to do with circulation and reinvestment.

These and other topics pertaining to economic localization can be explored at one’s leisure, and at numerous web sites. Here are two of them: AMIBA and BALLE.

At LIBA’s web site, I’m struck by this single, brief paragraph. There is much to consider in just these few words.

Each time we spend a dollar, LIBA encourages you to weigh the full value of your choices, not solely to yourselves immediately, but for the future you want for Louisville.

Granted, it may not seem immediately evident that one’s spending choices have value, although we’ve long seen that a principled refusal to spend can make a difference when such a calculated abstention aims at facilitating a desired end, as in the practice known as the boycott – so named after Charles C. Boycott, a 19th-century English property manager in Ireland, who was targeted by an organized, non-violent, systematized campaign of disinvestment that eventually came to be named in his dishonor.

A more recent example of sustained economic sanctions came during the 1980s, when numerous investors, from institutions to corporations, and from individuals to governments, expressed their protest against apartheid in South Africa by an international campaign of disinvestment. The objective of this boycott was to compel South Africa to commence the dismantlement of institutionalized discrimination, which in time did indeed occur.

However, for those readers despairing of history lessons buried within a beer column, LIBA’s wording suggests outcomes ranging beyond those pertaining merely to the withholding of expenditures. In fact, one’s spending choices absolutely can reflect positive, active shadings of value beyond the short term and ephemeral … so long as they are weighed, a notion that implies thought and at least some measure of deliberation.

I believe that most self-identified beer lovers/enthusiasts/aficionados grasp instinctively this crucial point in a broad sense. They realize that in a modern consumer society driven by mass marketing, saturation advertising and various insider tricks (legal or otherwise), those dedicated to pursuing better beer must learn to disregard norms previously judged as acceptable, and instead to think their way past the easiest and most commonly available beer, not to mention the cheapest.

Grasp is one thing and reach quite another, and for this reason, I view the second significant pillar of economic localization to be the ongoing process of shift, which by its very nature is gradual.

In an economic system largely predicated on non-local spending, where there may not be an independent grocery or filling station (whether it dispenses gasoline, beer or both) to patronize, going cold turkey isn’t always a viable option.

Rather, one begins to support economic localization by shifting spending where and when such a shift is practical.

Perhaps the single greatest misconception greeting soapbox speakers like me who tout economic localization is that the listener is being expected to boycott non-local entities in their entirety, and either buy local or starve. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the forward march of better beer is a fine example.

That’s because better beer itself did not explode full-blown into the phenomenon it is in this day and age. Better beer evolved and grew slowly and continuously over three decades, incorporating constant shift as breweries were established and communities served. Now most of the country is within range of a local brewery, and with proximity comes a wider array of choice.

When it comes to craft beer, the implications of economic localization and shift are increasingly obvious. You needn’t digest them all at once. Little sips work just fine.

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In 2014, the NABC shipped limited quantities of 22-oz bomber bottles to Indiana, Ohio and Florida (via Cavalier); Kentucky (River City Distributing); and Massachusetts and Rhode Island (Humboldt Imports). In 2015, we’ll pick up most of Kentucky through Clark.

Appropriately, a friend and NABC supporter proffers this excellent question:

How does shipping beer to Ohio, Rhode Island, et al, fit in with a "buy local" message?

Economic localization involves the incremental shifting of spending choices. Shift is ongoing, and shift happens. It’s real. As the shift evolves and market for better beer further progresses, brewery owners must nonetheless continue to view our marketplace the way it actually functions, not the way we wish it to function some day in the future. We live and work in the present as we strive for the ideal. We make decisions accordingly, and hope they bear fruit.

During his Indiana U.S. Senate campaign in 2012, eventual winner Joe Donnelly was asked by a reporter whether he would renounce PAC money from outside the state’s boundaries – a particularly plentiful source of campaign financing for his opponent, the GOP’s Richard Mourdock. Donnelly said no. He would continue to accept out-of-state contributions, and explained why he didn’t view this act as hypocritical.

To paraphrase Donnelly:

Until campaign finance reform is bilateral and the playing field becomes level for all, a candidate cannot pursue campaign finance reform unilaterally; after all, the object in politics is to win, because without winning, how can the candidate pursue his platform?

The same goes for my business.

Shift may be happening, but pieces of brewing equipment still are machines that make beer; using them makes money, and unfilled excess capacity costs money. Losses impede the business cycle, and the business cycle remains in large measure dependent on larger-scale market precepts. The regulatory regime largely precludes genuine marketing innovation.

If one can do what must be done while retaining the bulk of his principles, there can be periodically restful sleep … and the bills get paid. My fundamental objective remains as before: Shifting toward economic localization on as many fronts, whenever and wherever possible.

As I pursue this objective, selling more beer to the folks nearest to our brewery is a priority, and that's precisely where most of our beer is sold: Close to home. Concurrently, pragmatism ordains a clear view of other business prospects in other places.

Given the innate complexities of life and living, it's impossible for human beings to entirely escape shadings of hypocrisy. The trick is to shift inexorably away from self-contradiction, and to keep moving progressively forward. This I intend to continue doing.


Last week's PC column: Ripped straight from the pages of an Onion satire: “13 white males not really so eager to discuss issues like racism and sexism.”

Being a "local hero" may require the use of a different set of muscles.

Let's expand upon this:

No, we'll likely never return to the time when three huge brewers dominate the entire beer marketplace. However, as the big "craft" players from the West Coast continue to establish production facilities on the Eastern Seaboard (Sierra, Oskar Blues, New Belgium and now Stone), aren't we looking at a scenario wherein retail shelf space comes to be their province in much the same way?

Schumacher offers an interesting comparison, one that points to another level of the brewery proliferation discussion.

How do 2,000 wineries in California survive?

Knowing quite little about it, I'd guess that their business models radically differ. Gallo has wine in every supermarket nationwide. Conversely, a small mom 'n' pop vintner ships a few hundred cases a year of something not at all plonk, and achieves his or her goals. California wineries predate "craft" breweries. Legal regimes vary. They've had time to dope it out, evolve and rationalize.

If every community is to play host to its own brewery, and all of them thrive, my guess is that the avoidance of a bubble bursting depends on economies of scale, and accompanying business plans. What worries me are all the new brewers who posit growth (and assume debt in accordance) according to outside distribution. It simply cannot be the case in the way this market currently works. I weary of collective 13% growth blurbs unaccompanied by a breakdown of production size. How much of that percentage is Sierra, and how much the brewpub in Anywheretown?

To be more succinct, it is the case now, and will be so increasingly in the future, that the interests and strategies of a 300-bbl pub brewer and a 30,000-bbl production brewer differ. NABC and Sam Adams are not alike. We're very different. We may both be "craft" in some nebulous way, but the differences are becoming wider, not narrower.

The practical consequences? I'll save those for another day.

The Beer Curmudgeon: LOCAL HERO, by Harry Schuhmacher (All About Beer Magazine)

 ... One of the most commonly asked questions within the beer industry today is: How many new breweries can the market support? Are we becoming saturated with too many breweries opening up? The answer is: not yet, not even close. There are over 2,000 wineries in California alone. If this local thing keeps going, every community will play host to its own brewery, and that’s not such a bad thing.

Ten vital commandments for localism in beer.

On Thursday and Friday this week, I richly enjoyed a one-sided debate (we were Netherlands to their ineffectual Spain) about the merits economic localism, which flared up after I published my weekly column at NA Confidential.

ON THE AVENUES: As a journalist and entrepreneur, I’m not tired of the “Buy Local” argument. Not at all.

Yesterday, I revisited a column from 2012.

REWIND: My column at Food and Dining: "Localism + Beer."

Following is an excerpt from the ON THE AVENUES piece. These ten commandments are not unique to the burgeoning world of better "craft" beer ... they just explain that world's origins and vitality, as well as providing a common sense warning of what stands to occur as we allow our world to become exactly like the one we fought a revolution to depose.

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... Why does (localism) matter? The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (www.ilsr.org) offers these ten vital commandments. The sooner New Albany grasps them, the better, but slowly, the shift indeed is happening.

1. Protect Local Character and Prosperity
New Albany is unlike any other city in the world. By choosing to support locally owned businesses, you help maintain New Albany’s diversity and distinctive flavor.

2. Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong neighborhoods by sustaining communities, linking neighbors, and by contributing more to local causes.

3. Local Decision Making
Local ownership means that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

4. Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Your dollars spent in locally-owned businesses have three times the impact on your community as dollars spent at national chains. When shopping locally, you simultaneously create jobs, fund more city services through sales tax, invest in neighborhood improvement and promote community development.

5. Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.

6. Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.

7. Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.

8. Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

9. Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.

10. Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

REWIND (2012): My column at Food and Dining: "Localism + Beer."

The following first appeared here on November 9, 2012. First the 2012 preface, then the main text.

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2012 Blog Preface

I usually get around to publishing the columns I've written for Food and Dining magazine, but I seldom think to do it until a few weeks (sometimes months) after the quarterly issues hit the street. This time, I'll make an exception. Vol. 38 (Winter 2012) of Food and Dining has been released, and you can read the issue here. My column is called Hip Hops, and this quarter's piece is entitled "Localism + Beer." For the near future, consider this as a blueprint for my advocacy. It's time to go to the mattresses and return to the grassroots, and it's going to be plain fun.

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HIP HOPS: LOCALISM + BEER

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
--Henry David Thoreau

It always has been my aim to accurately describe various aspects of my beer-infused everyday world, but even as I’ve done so, my everyday world persists in evolving. Apart from necessarily using the word “beer,” I’m increasingly unsure how to view any of the rest of it.

Long ago, good beer was about imports exclusively, because there wasn’t very much good beer in America. Several thousand domestic brewery start-ups later, there’s plenty of good beer here, and these days, we refer to it collectively as “craft” beer. This term is fine by me, except that the definition of craft beer starts on a tiny end with the scant barrels produced by a nano-brewery, and ends voluminously with the nationwide airport lounge availability of Samuel Adams.

Semantics aside, the real point of this digression is to acknowledge that I’m changing, too. Back in 1982, St. Pauli Girl probably was the best beer we had during my first-ever gig as a liquor store clerk. Thirty years later, there are dozens – nay, hundreds – of far better beers available hereabouts, and while I’m entirely comfortable in making a “good, better, best” value judgment, it isn’t as simple as it used to be.

Amid the giddy, exploding exuberance, which I’ve long professed and will continue to advocate, it seems that something important is lost. There exists an understandable zeal to embrace the unprecedented availability of international craft beer, but I find myself thinking back to points of origin, and what has made so many of my beer travels memorable: Localism.

It’s drinking great beer at or near its birthplace, primarily because it never tastes fresher than by doing so, but also because the place itself matters. Beer and community reflect each other, and although we must continue to think globally, I’m sensing a new imperative to drink locally.

Home, Not Away

My professional reputation as a beer purveyor was established owing to a stubborn determination to stock the best legally obtainable (well, most of the time) beer, as brewed in locales across the planet. Nowadays, I’m far less inclined to look past my own geographical proximity. The Louisville metropolitan area has its own great beer, with plenty more quality beer being produced within a hundred mile radius.

I’ll never entirely dismiss Belgian Lambics, German Maibocks and Irish Stouts. There’ll forever be a spot for India Pale Ales from San Diego and New York-brewed Saisons, and yet they’re no longer essential to me; rather, they’re for special sampling occasions, as they were years ago when availability was limited. Inexorably, my beer drinking is shifting to local and regional sources, and for the best of all reasons: Drinking local makes me happy.

Places, Not Prizes

Shift happens. It is perhaps the single, fundamental tenet of emerging economic localism, and when it comes time to have a beer, the concept of shift means putting this principle into liquid practice.

Having acknowledged the efficacy of buying local, as measured by factual indices consistently recognizing that localism keeps more money in one’s community, my household is incrementally shifting toward local sources of goods and services, whenever practical. Shift is a process, not an all-or-nothing crusade. If my shift to locally brewed beer implied being compelled to drink an inferior product, obviously I would think differently. Fortunately, it does not.

Another contemporary societal trend to consider is the notion of placemaking, generally described as “a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces.” Placemaking is a grassroots, community-based phenomenon, in which those ordinary people using a public space help to determine how that space is used. Placemaking may help in part to explain my re-emerging interest in community-based beer consumption -- keeping the beer drinking venues local, listening to the local beer drinkers, and knowing who supplies the beer.

Eyes and Palates, Wide Open

Not so long ago, Goose Island Brewing Company was a proud independent, but now it is 100% owned by the multinational monolith called AB-Inbev, meaning that in cold, hard fact, Goose Island is no more independent than an Ignatius J. Reilly-themed weenie wagon on the streets of Pyongyang, North Korea. Honkers Ale remains certifiably better than Budweiser, but to me, it really matters where the money goes … and dollars paid for Honkers ultimately travel to corporate headquarters in Leuven, Belgium, not Chicago, Illinois.

Sorry, but Goose Island sold out. Craft beer drinkers need to examine their consciences lest they sell out, too.

Session, Not Sledgehammer

I’m in my sixth decade, and my body reacts differently these days to the excesses of my profession. American craft brewing has excelled in the creation of highly alcoholic genre classics, including Imperial India Pale Ale, Barley Wine and Quadrupel, and while I still adore these styles, increasingly my palate turns to an evening’s reasonable sustainability, in the form of session beers.

The Pennsylvania-based beer writer Lew Bryson is the founder of the Session Beer Project, and he provides these helpful parameters.

Session beers are:

► under 4.5% alcohol by volume
► flavorful enough to be interesting -- no light beers, please
► balanced enough for multiple pints
► conducive to conversation
► reasonably priced

In brief, low-alcohol, but not low-taste. It's deliberately vague. The great thing about session beers, especially the ones that come in under 3.5%, is that you can enjoy several beers, and still have a BAC of under 0.04.

Craft Beer Is A Journey

Maybe some day I’ll come full circle, and find myself craving bottles of Bud Light iced in a pickle bucket. Doubtful, but entirely possible, because beer is less a destination than a journey, and you make the road signs yourself. All I’m asking is that craft beer drinkers resolve to be unafraid of where thinking can lead drinking, especially when thoughts turn to local options.

This one says it all about localism and better beer.

It's from the Mile High Business Alliance in Denver, and perfectly encapsulates my viewpoint as to the marriage of localism and better beer.

Before I steal this and have Tony rework it, I'll ask permission.

From Nov. 1, 2011: "Homes Away from Home."

I'm in reruns for a few days, posting past columns of note.

It really is a form of religion for me.

Homes Away from Home

We went for a stroll last Sunday and passed one of those fly-by-night evangelistic churches, this one occupying an old shotgun house.

A man I’d never seen before waved as we passed, and he called out, “One of these Sundays, why don’t you come to church with us?”

I thought about it, and answered: “Sure, as long as you’ll come to my church with me.”

He answered, “Where’s your church?”

“Any brewpub will do,” I replied, and walked on.

Diary: Swill, inferiority, and the irony-free priestly caste.

My diary entries are designed to accommodate venting without excessive rhetorical polish. They may or may not go on to become columns.

It was asked by a neophyte who might be expected to know better, "Should I drink local swill just because it's local."

Clarification was requested of her, which yielded this: "Swill might have been too harsh, but if I prefer the taste of Hopslam to Hoptimus, should I drink the inferior Hoptimus just because it's local?"

There followed a digression, in which I was asked whether trade sanctions should be imposed against non-local beer. I yawned at the predictable over-simplification of the sort that usually occurs when previously unused muscles are stressed, and gave it a stab.

No, I'm not saying there should not be out of town beer.

Rather, I'm making a snide aside with reference to the inevitable hosannas that greet the arrival of beers from elsewhere; most recently in Louisville, these would range geographically from Mississippi to Georgia to Oregon.

Yes, I still try lots of different beers in a year, and objectively speaking, perhaps one of every ten of these is genuinely memorable -- which is not to say they're inferior swill. To the contrary, most are quite nice, and nationwide, craft beer quality is pretty darned good overall ... but outstanding examples of any particular style are few and far between. Even rarer are instances of objectivity when it comes to judging them, What we see instead are outbursts of Beatles-at Shea pandemonium and a few more notches on Rate Advocate.

I'll take the fresher IPA from nearer to here, rather than subscribe to the notion that the ideal nirvana-like state for beer appreciation is reached when beers traveling thousands of miles by 18-wheeler pass one another on lonely interstates, racing in opposite directions.

That's because building localism interests me. Trucking companies and circle jerks do not.

But really, I can't help adding that the knee-jerk use of words like "swill" and "inferior" assists greatly in making my point, and points to a desperate need for gadflies now that a new orthodoxy is being erected. In any espousal of economic localism I've ever uttered, not once have I suggested that one should stoop to drinking inferior beer. What I have consistently suggested is that determinations of inferior vs. superior are often being made for every other reason except objective comparison.

Thirty years into beer as a profession, and it's increasingly clear to me that while people think they're being objective, they're mostly being subjective. If we couldn't see the packaging, didn't know the "official" ratings before lifting the glass, and tasted all these various excellent beers blind -- local, imported or Martian -- we'd discover very few differences in those ordained as chic and others derided for being local. It would be highly instructive, and as Lord Cornwallis once observed, the world would be effectively turned upside down.

But I am grateful for all comments. It is my intent is to solicit them. That's because my overall aim is to promote thinking, the paucity of which among today's beer enthusiast is cause for consternation.

Diary: I'd rather see their asses starve than let them have Trojan Goose money.

Two fat cat AB InBev shareholders are at the teller's window cashing their dividend checks, and one says to the other: "You know what's funny?"

The other says, "No, what?"

The first one says: "All the beer snobs used to call us crap, and now they say we're craft, and all we did was buy one of their breweries."

As I wrote last year, and seeing as nothing has changed in what increasingly appear to me as diametrically opposed "craft" camps of localism and narcissism:

You’re free to deny reality until the end of time, but Goose Island is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the beer world’s largest extortionate conglomerate, and it contradicts virtually every tenet of my daily business existence.

Of course, if one is not engaged in owning an independent business and seeing what economic localism means on the ground, in this place and time ... well, you know.

Local illustrations, local beer. Artists here, not there.

Localism in design, localism in beer. Beer and design driving home the message of localism. In such a fashion, we revel in opportunities to refocus the attention of radical beer geeks on the places where they actually live and work.

Magazines, websites and ads using more of local artists' handiwork, by Matt Frassica (Courier-Journal)

... Illustrators, and the companies that solicit their work, say they’ve seen a renewed interest in hand-drawn illustrations, such as cartoons, because they often capture people’s attention and can drive home some kinds of messages better than photography.

Publications such as LEO and Louisville Magazine frequently showcase local illustrators.

NABC's Tony Beard is included among these, as is Robby Davis, who designs labels for Against the Grain.

Across the river at the New Albanian Brewing Company, Tony Beard started with the company 10 years ago, working in the kitchen. But his boss, Roger Baylor, found out about his drawing hobby and asked him to design a logo for Hoptimus, an imperial pale ale. Beard gave the beer a Transformers-inspired robot in yellows and oranges.

In which I offer friendly advice to the good people at Headliners Music Hall.

If the question is, "How does the locally owned and operated Headliners Music Hall compete against Live Nation-owned and -operated Mercury Ballroom?", then the answer is this:

Headliners needs to be MORE local than Mercury.

Not that Headliners isn't locally oriented already. In many ways, it is. The point, and my not necessarily unbiased advice: Be even more so. As much as possible. And rub the corporate entity's nose in it.

Restricting the focus to beer: Every multinational starter beer being served at Headliners negates the venue's argument v.v. Mercury's corporate advantages. Yes, of course the Headliners bar must make the customers happy and reap the mark-up whirlwind. But karma can be quite the bitch, and we've seen from our temporary experience with Houndmouth beer at Houndmouth's show that local products can compete. Craft beer, craft music. Forecastle can't or won't do it; Headliners should.

Some Headliners loyalists apprehensive over opening of the new Mercury Ballroom music venue, by Michael Tierney (Insider Louisville)

Developer Bill Weyland‘s CITY Properties Group and Live Nation have teamed up in Louisville to open the Mercury Ballroom. Though the new music venue isn’t set to open until April, its concert calendar has already sparked concern over how the locally owned Headliners Music Hall will be affected.

Jeffery Smith runs Crash Avenue, a locally owned media and management company with offices in Louisville and New York City. Last week Smith posed this question on Facebook, stirring the pot in the Louisville music scene:

Do you boycott Mercury Ballroom because they’re going to be in direct competition with our locally owned / local fave Headliners Music Hall? Understand, they’re going to be competing for the same talent coming through Louisville… but Live Nation has the money to essentially throw at the talent until they drown out the competition. If you’re going to be diligent about eating locally, should you not be diligent about extending where you choose to take in your smaller national acts?

Insider Louisville interviewed Smith, who claims Live Nation — the publicly traded (NYSE, LYV), Los Angeles-based entertainment company — may snatch a market that Billy Hardison built.

Hardison owns Headliners and is a partner in the local talent-buying agency Production Simple, alongside Joe Agabrite III, John Grantz, and Lizi Hagan ...

The PC: Is This the World We Created? (was: “My Year in Beer”).

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on January 6, 2014)

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Is This the World We Created? (was: “My Year in Beer”) by Roger Baylor

Remember that clichéd caricature?

No, not the Facebook meme republished weekly by your conservative uncle – you know, that bloviating elderly fascist who blames President Obama for his inflamed hemorrhoid – but the familiar cartoon depicting a wide-eyed, energetic baby sauntering into a new year, while the grizzled old man shuffles shakily … perhaps even gratefully … off stage, and into oblivion.

The image bears a considerable ring of truth.