Headlines from December 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.

Previously, I've explained why this blog has gone on hiatus, adding that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, over yonder at NA Confidential. You'll find them there via the helpful all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat.

However, whenever the urge strikes -- I seem to have settled on monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are December's ruminations, with the oldest listed first.

Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.

Thanks for reading, if belatedly.

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THE BEER BEAT: The pervasive fog of Hoosier regulatory wars.

The overarching topic of conversation was the ever-expanding intersection of beverage alcohol production, agriculture and tourism. Examples of places where these pursuits come together are farmers markets, special events and fests, and the floor plan of Huber's.

What is the Alcohol and Tobacco Commission's stance on regulating these activities -- and what will it be tomorrow? Those are the questions.

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THE BEER BEAT: What a beer guy like me can learn from Master Sommeliers like Brett Davis and Scott Harper.

The world of wine generally remains mysterious to me, and I aim to keep it that way. Hit or miss, wine remains fun; I know too much about beer to revert to amateur status, so grasping the basics about wine suits me just fine.

The educational opportunities are welcomed whenever they materialize, but I don't always seek them out.

For the past decade and a half, Brett Davis and Scott Harper have represented the other side of this wine appreciation spectrum. They're the Louisville KY area's Master Sommeliers, which is a very big deal, indeed.

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THE BEER BEAT: Praljak, Yugoslavia's civil war, the brewery in Sarajevo and the bridge in Mostar.

Let's begin with the brewery in Sarajevo, which dates from 1864 and remains in operation today. I drank the typical golden lager beer back in '87, although remembering exactly what it tasted like is another matter entirely.

Significantly, it would be difficult for any brewery anywhere to continue brewing without predictable supplies of barley and hops, but since old-school breweries were built in proximity to their water sources, the wells kept functioning -- and helped keep people alive.

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THE BEER BEAT: This iconic (and ironic) photo of Dan Canon and Rosa L. Stumblebus.

In spite of the many reasons that seeing this photo might annoy me, only one of which pertains to the candidate himself, I can't convey my pleasure in seeing it continually pop up during coverage of Dan Canon's congressional campaign.

The photo dates to Canon's campaign kickoff party in July at the downtown NABC location, whatever it's being referred to these days.

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THE BEER BEAT: The La Chasse-Dauntless beer dinner menu is released, Porter versus Stout, and other beery odds and ends.

We haven't had many chilly days this fall and early winter, but about a month ago stouts and porters started tasting good.

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MATCHing ensembles of cigars, bourbon, beer and cigars at Match Cigar Bar in New Albany.

Perhaps an introduction is in order, because I have the distinct impression many of my readers aren't aware of Match Cigar Bar's second location at 147 East Main in New Albany.

(Sad note -- Match New Albany closed at the end of December. The Jeffersonville location remains open)

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THE BEER BEAT: Sunday sermonizing about the arduous path to pints, and union.

During my time as a beer revolutionary, I often asked myself what would happen when the revolution began devouring itself -- and if this isn't a perfect analogy, the question might better be stated this way: What's to be done when the beer world gets crazy, and I can't make sense of it any longer?

Obviously, this is the juncture when one goes back to the mattresses and the basics ... the simple pleasures, the timeless virtues, and the bedrock foundations.

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THE BEER BEAT: The Bechdel Test, and what 1980s lesbians can teach us about beer.

It's best just to read what Emma Inch has to say about what 1980s lesbians can teach us about beer, with a minimum of commentary on my part, but a brief diversion to signpost the Bechdel Test.

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THE BEER BEAT: Beer and the Christmas Truce, France, 1914.

"The two barrels of beer were drunk, and the German officer was right: if it was possible for a man to have drunk the two barrels himself he would have bursted before he had got drunk. French beer was rotten stuff."

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THE BEER BEAT: Of seminars, books and beer: Louisville KY brewing history with Kevin Gibson.

Another friend, Bob, phoned last night. During the conversation he mentioned his membership in Rotary; bizarrely, I awakened this morning to a confusing mishmash of Kevin Gibson, Rotary and Louisville KY Beer (those eight ales yesterday may have been a contributing factor) until it dawned on me that I'd previously combined these elements in a blog post -- last year, maybe?

Um, nope. It was July 16, 2015, when I connected dots to a review of Kevin's beer book which I'd contributed to Food & Dining the preceding year.

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THE BEER BEAT: Saying goodbye to 2017 with an assortment of links.

Looking ahead, the fifth anniversary presentation of Tailspin Ale Fest 2018 on February 17 draws ever nearer. We'll be in Portugal, crawling from one port lodge to the next in Vila Nova de Gaia (be still, my throbbing heart), but if you'll be around for Tailspin and want to attend, it's time to start planning.

I'm guessing that NABC's Gravity Head will follow on Friday, February 23, but as Liam Gallagher once sang, it's nothing to do with me.


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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: Post-Boomtown reflections.

The PC: Post-Boomtown reflections.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

The state of Indiana’s laws governing temporary alcoholic beverage serving permits are not overly complicated, unless one takes enduring human nature into consideration.

Then it gets weird.

For instance, there is the concept of enclosing such temporary events, typically through the use of portable fencing, and providing attendees with delineated points of entry and exit. It is what we had to do in order to stage the Boomtown Ball on May 25 – not what we’d have preferred to do, but what the law requires us to do.

Whomever pulls the temporary alcoholic beverage sales permit is obliged to enforce the rules, or risk fines -- or even losing the yearly permit upon which daily business depends.

As such, I understand that you’d like to carry your beer from the enclosure and wander the streets outside. Unfortunately, we cannot allow you to do that. Alcoholic beverages sold within the enclosure are supposed to remain there and not be carried out. Similarly, alcoholic beverages purchased outside the enclosure are not supposed to be brought inside.

Stringing green plastic event fencing around the perimeter of Boomtown and posting policemen at the entrances to monitor containers were two essential components necessary for us to be issued a license, and to operate the event in a way suiting the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission.

Another was the inner fencing around the bar area. This was to delineate the actual serving area as an over-21-only place, as opposed to the all-ages space (everything else within the perimeter fencing). These measures satisfied the state, but not all of those in attendance.

For instance, there was the woman who walked up to a section of fencing we’d just repaired, and began tearing it apart to create her own exit.

“Excuse me, but that’s not an exit. It’s a fence.”

“But it isn’t clearly marked.”

Note that the state of Indiana does not yet require us to post signs stating the obvious, as in “THIS IS A FENCE.” To be sure, as a lifelong malcontent, I’ve often had the same reaction to fencing as the woman. But one looks at reality differently when his name’s on the festival permit.

A different lesson was grasped on the other side of the compound, where families were seated at tables adjacent to the mandated fencing. A feet away, there was a green, grassy, open area owned by St. Marks church. After Sunday, I know that in such situations children cannot be deterred from destroying fencing to go play in the grass, pushing the fence upward on the crawl while adults mashed it down in pursuit of their wayward kids.

Overall, the first-ever Boomtown festival went quite well, even if my own stress levels did not subside until the closing bell and final teardown. Being obliged to enforce rules that ordinary blokes are unaware exist (and why would they be aware?) is a challenge, but I suppose we all need to be good at something. We’ll do a better job of it next year, if there is a next year.

Until then, while the grass may truly be greener on the other side of the fence, would you consider using the actual exit portals to access it? And no, you can’t take the beer with you.

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It has been two weeks since NABC’s Bank Street Brewhouse relinquished its food service and began a new life as brewery taproom, and while I’ll miss the Asian chicken wings, early returns are quite encouraging. It may prove to be the best decision we ever made.

We’ve been selling house-brewed beer, both on premise and for carryout, at a steady clip. The Big Four Burger mobile stand will set up shop outside on Fridays through August 22, concurrent with the Bicentennial Park concert series, and as word gets around, we’re seeing customers starting to bring their own food from nearby eateries.

On Sunday night, after the Boomtown festival shut down and the Houndmouth show commenced at The Grand, four of us ordered carry-out from Dragon King’s Daughter (literally, a stone’s throw from BSB) and spread it atop a metal table on the front veranda at the brewhouse. Progressive pints arrived as accompaniment. Sashimi flatbread and fried calamari proved to be quite well matched with cask-conditioned Beak’s Best Bitter.

The central point is that now, with the kitchen shuttered (albeit fully licensed, just in case), numerous ideas and opportunities are open to us. We can judge these many options by how they contribute to making Bank Street Brewhouse a place where various things happen, as enhanced by great beer, and as opposed to being a restaurant where only some things can happen.

It isn’t only what we can plan for the space as owners and managers, but what our customers bring to it in terms of utility. It’s now a placemaking project as much as anything, and that’s exciting.

About the only thing customers cannot bring to BSB is their own alcohol. It’s those pesky state regulations again.

I know there’ll be many “former” customers, primarily those who came to Bank Street Brewhouse for the food, and many of whom didn’t once drink a beer. I only hope that they have fond memories.

However, as much as we threw ourselves into the food component for five years, and hated to see it go away, the numbers don’t lie even if the health department routinely does. At inception, BSB was intended to be all about the beer. Now, it truly is all about the beer, come what may.

Thanks to all those who have taken the time to offer ideas and encouragement. More than ever, ideas matter, and yours are important to us.

Cheers!

Wineries expressly permitted, breweries expressly prohibited. What gives?

In effect, the state of Indiana allows wineries to use regulatory logic one way, and denies breweries the opportunity to use it in the same manner. It's bogus, and it's bull. Is there an Indiana legislator alive who can explain why?

(crickets chirping, pins dropping)

Indiana microbrewers want to sell beer on Sundays, by Bill Ruthhart (Indy Star).

When visitors tour Indiana wineries on a Sunday afternoon, not only can they sample the wine, they can take some home.

Now, Indiana's microbreweries say it's time their visitors were given the same opportunity.

A beer's not as good as a wine -- to a blind legislator.

As noted previously, my pizza & beer business will depart from our customary Sunday closing time and open the doors for the Super Bowl. We've done it for the last four years, and if experience is any indicator, Sportstime Pizza will be selling quite a large number of carryout pies on Sunday afternoon and evening as game time draws near.

However, we’ll not be selling carry-out growlers of locally brewed beer, because the state of Indiana prohibits all Sunday carry-out sales of alcoholic beverages.

But wait – that’s not entirely so.

At the same time as the state of Indiana bans the vast majority of beer, wine and spirits sales on Sunday, it permits small craft wineries to sell their wines for carry-out ... on Sunday. This is seen as promoting tourism, but more so than that, it's a testament to the wine industry's dazzling, decades-long success at espousing the notion that a 750 ml bottle of the grape is more worthy of approbation (and legislative exceptions, and free rides) than our 64-ounce growler of the grain.

It’s hypocrisy, and a transparent travesty, and in the end, the major difference between a small craft brewery and a small craft winery is the ability of the latter to lobby effectively without the dead weight of America’s mainstream beer barons (A-B, Miller, et al), which for a half-century have pursued a policy of self-defeatism by persistently behaving in such a boorish manner as to give the “beer = dumb/wine = smart” stereotype undue credence -- and by doing so, unintentionally and hilariously spawning the Mike "Workingman's Drink" Seates of our nation.

However ... once again in 2007, there will be legislation introduced to rectify the native Hoosier inanity. This time around, it appears to be part of a startlingly comprehensive regulatory reform package that is long overdue and makes perfect sense – and consequently, probably has next to “zero” chance of passing.

The following update comes from the Indiana Beer website:

House Bill 1323 was introduced by David Crooks this week is one of the most far-reaching we've seen in Indiana in quite some time. "Requires a local alcoholic beverage board to allow an individual to make oral comments at a public meeting or hearing. Provides that a holder of an alcoholic beverage permit who is authorized by law to sell alcoholic beverages for carryout may sell carryout on Sunday from noon until 6:00 p.m. Allows a retailer to sell alcoholic beverages for consumption on the licensed premises on Sunday from 10 a.m., prevailing local time, until 3:00 a.m. Allows alcoholic beverages to be sold on election day from noon until 3 a.m. Allows alcoholic beverages to be sold for carryout on New Year's Day."

Perhaps apart from those rare times when the Colts advance to the Super Bowl, it isn’t quite as obvious in Indianapolis as it is to those of us on the borders that each and every Sunday, Indiana fairly hemorrhages tax revenues to surrounding states.

Furthermore, to me, Sunday sales restrictions are a vestige of faith-based blue laws that need to be scourged from the books.

Hey, I’d just like a level playing field – both commercially and conceptually. Craft is craft, whether wine or beer – what’s so hard about understanding that, guys?

And what's so bad about keeping tax revenue right here in Indiana?