Coming soon: "Pints & Union to open in New Albany, will be inspired by classic European pubs."

For more than a year, I've been working with my friend Joe Phillips on a pub project at 114 E. Market in downtown New Albany called Pints & Union.

On Wednesday this week, the cat slipped from the bag in the form of a fine write-up by Kevin Gibson at Insider Louisville KY.

Paraphrasing Robert Frost, we have promises to keep -- and miles to go before we sleep. The first link leads to Gibson's story, with a few thoughts of my own; the second offers some information about how we refer to drinking establishments; and the third provides an overview of my thought process in devising a revolutionary throwback old school progressive beer program.

As there is further information to report, I'll copy here from NA Confidential.

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THE BEER BEAT: "Pints & Union to open in New Albany, will be inspired by classic European pubs."

First and foremost, Pints & Union marks a return to the ethos that originally compelled me to go into the beer business. For this opportunity, all thanks to Joe Phillips -- and serendipitously, Taco Steve (Powell) ...

Pints & Union to open in New Albany, will be inspired by classic European pubs, by Kevin Gibson (Insider Louisville KY)

Leave your cellphone in your pocket, and if you want to watch the local college hoops game with some cheap wings, well, you’ll be going somewhere else.

Pints & Union, which owner Joe Phillips hopes will open sometime in April at 114 E. Market St. in New Albany, will be inspired by European-style (or “Anglo-Irish”) pubs, built for conversing over a pint — or five. Even the name reflects typical pub names in Europe and the United Kingdom.

“We’re going to resurrect the spirit of what a real pub is,” Phillips told Insider.

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SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: On taverns, pubs, Gaststätten and Bung -- with a Mencken chaser.

It's an understatement to say we have lots and lots of work to do, but it's good to have plans, goals and timetables. Until the grand opening, we might spend hours parsing the similarities and differences of pubs, taverns, bars, cafes and the like, as with this chat at Trip Advisor about three German-language descriptors: Gasthof / Gasthaus / Gaststätte ...

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ON THE AVENUES: Golden oldie classic comfort beers at an old school pub? Sounds like Pints & Union to me.

I’ve had enough of venues with 20 beers on tap, the inevitable majority of them IPAs, with the remainder Imperial-this, barrel-aged-that, most of universally high gravity. I’m driven to utter distraction when returning to the same venue two weeks later, only to find that 18 of them have changed, with a whole new crop of “what do you have that’s new,” which might actually mean something if there was an outside chance that the best of the new beers would reappear in less than a year ...

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AFTER THE FIRE: We are dispirited in the post-factual world.

AFTER THE FIRE: We are dispirited in the post-factual world.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

If I’m to judge from the electronic bushel baskets filled to overflowing with social media-borne exclamation marks, the biggest news in Indiana “craft” beer last week was the arrival in Hoosierland of brews from Maui Brewing Company, courtesy of Cavalier Distributing, Inc.

Cursory due diligence reveals that Maui still brews in Hawaii and ships to the mainland, damn the expense. Good for them. This authenticity is commendable, given that I can still remember my befuddlement back in 2006 after being served relatively inexpensive Kona at an eatery in Orlando, yielding shortly to raging annoyance when I learned that it was contract-brewed at Widmer, or maybe Redhook – same thing.

Damned insufferable Craft Beer Alliance. How is it Hawaiian if it isn’t even brewed in Hawaii?

(curmudgeonly grumbling sounds and periodic gnashing of teeth)

Of course, conventional beer geek wisdom has long since overruled me. Sierra Nevada can be brewed in North Carolina, and Stone in Berlin, Germany. Appellations of origin mean almost nothing as “craft” beer crawls steadily forward, toward becoming exactly the same problem a revolution previously was required to rectify.

Note that I don’t exclude overruling myself, having purchased Sierra’s Nooner Pilsner on more than one occasion. In a time when beer appreciation is many miles wide and a scant millimeter deep, who am I to rant and rain on these multi-locational parades of profitability?

Besides, most of the beers I typically drink are locally produced in the metro Louisville area at comfortably small breweries.

I’ve got this localism fetish going for me, if little else.

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Anyway, let’s go back to Maui Brewing’s triumphant arrival into Indiana. It strikes me that I’ve seen dozens, maybe hundreds of similar press releases over the past five years, and on behalf of NABC, I’ve written my fair share of them.

“Finally, your chance to wrap your greedy Rate Advocate-stained fingers around (fill in blank), now coming to (fill in blank) for the very first time.”

I always omitted the exclamation marks, as there are plenty of them floating in the wort-laced ether, sadly homeless. They need loving shelter -- or to be mercilessly slaughtered.

What I’m wondering is how many of these latest, greatest beers remain in circulation two or three years after their arrival. Surely there is an attrition rate, because as endless as those rows of wholesaler SKUs seem already, they’d be even more voluminous if new breweries kept piling on, one atop the other, without a withdrawal now and then.

My suspicion is that when you get past the top tier of biggest sellers at a wholesaler, about as many breweries depart as arrive, which suggests that there’s an informational market niche in need of filling, namely the exit announcement.

“Finally, your chance to say goodbye to (fill in blank), now leaving (fill in second blank) following a period of brave hopefulness and bold optimism, only to be crowded off store shelves by AB-InBev’s pay-to-play mockrobrews – and 145 new “craft” brewery arrivals.”

By the way, any bottles of NABC's Elsa Von Horizon you might happen to see are to be regarded as collector’s items for label art, only.

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Recently while perusing social media, all the while imagining that it would be a better use of my time to be clubbed senseless with a slab of semi-frozen whale blubber, I noticed a blurb from a local eatery with a better-than-average bar program.

“Cheap” beer coming, it trumpeted.

It made me think of all those times I’ve seen breathless announcements for “cheap wine” -- except there’ve never been any of those. Half-price bottles, perhaps, but never the word “cheap.”

Come to think of it, contemporary cocktail-driven bar programs seldom advertise on the basis of “cheap” whiskey, do they?

Verily, it’s top shelf and upscale with wine and spirits, but when it comes to beer, the dumbing-down always lies waiting, just around the corner.

Noting that my observations here are confined primarily to restaurants, and I’m not speaking of specialty beer bars and any other establishment which is eligible for an exception because it evinces signs of willful designer … so, disclaimers aside, why does good beer still get treated like bad beer used to?

A possible answer is the weird recurring cultural habit of otherwise intelligent food and drink people to excitedly exonerate the utilitarian adaptability of rank mass-market swill.

“Well, you know, there’s a time and place for Miller High Life.” No there isn’t – not if you’re actually beer literate.

Ah, yes; literacy. Hence, the other possible answer: There is far less beer knowledge lurking behind the typical metro area bar than one might imagine.

As BJCP judge Gomer Pyle once said, “Surprise, surprise, surprise.”

Too many draft selections and bottle lists are what happens when beer “education” is derived from rote readings of Thrillist at 3 a.m. while drinking purely wretched Pabst Blue Ribbon and pretending it’s for a purpose. The only purpose I can see is not being driven to do better.

Pray tell, where the hell are all the Cicerones? Weren’t they supposed to be the beer sommeliers of the future, and the faces of a fresh, factual approach, brimming with stylistic nuggets, and both ready and able to transform beer programs into principled bastions mirroring the typical edgy eatery’s wine and bourbon lists?

The cicerones may be out there somewhere, but I’m wondering if they have any active input into the beer selections I see in metro Louisville. It makes no sense to me that restaurants eager to differentiate themselves in terms of cuisine during these hyper-competitive times seem utterly unable to sort through the beers available to them and to come up with something more distinctive that six IPAs, two wheats, a sour and Coors Banquet.

Silly me.

I thought the revolution was about enabling bar management to eschew passive interpretation of customer demand, the bias of wholesaler reps and the skewing effect of brain-dead swag.

I thought the revolution was about pro-actively creating and nurturing customer demand by offering well-chosen “craft” beers intended to enhance and showcase the talents of the kitchen.

To my way of thinking, it takes only a few “craft” beer fans to justify the more thoughtful approach, and to return the favor with word-of-mouth – still the most cost-efficient means of advertising, and very nearly better than selfies.

In the end, I suppose none of this is possible without a better knowledge base than currently exists, and the knowledge base isn’t likely to improve unless owner and upper management decide it’s a priority. It’s a shame, because lots of wonderful opportunities are being missed.

Then again, maybe I'm completely full of spent grain, in which case this column space is yours, to make the case in rebuttal.

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July 4: AFTER THE FIRE: Euro ’85, Part 34 … The final chapter, in which lessons are learned and bridges burned.

June 27: AFTER THE FIRE: Out and about in America, Europe … and my cups.

June 20: AFTER THE FIRE: Less can be more.

June 13: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: I know I’m gonna change that tune.

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The Pour Fool: "AB/InBev Buys SABMiller: Corporate Cluelessness as Fine Art."

AB/InBev Buys SABMiller: Corporate Cluelessness as Fine Art, by Steve Foolbody (The Pour Fool)

There are times when I stare into the sky with humble earnestness and ask the biggest, most important question of all.

The Pour Fool and I -- were we separated at birth?

I went to the "Bluegrass Beer Geek" page at Facebook and posted the link to this amazing essay, prefacing it with this:

"The Pour Fool is a living, breathing deity."

Alas, only one reply was offered amid the hundreds of "see my latest big haul" photos.

"By 'living, breathing deity', do you mean 'child with too much free time and a keyboard, but poor Google skills'?"

No. I mean this.

This final point is the one I want everyone to remember: it is very possible, even likely, that we current American beer lovers - those who honor the ideals of "Drink Local", independent ownership, small business growth, individual achievement, choices, and better beer - can and should(!) be the generation of drinkers who drive AB/InBev into its eventual niche as a quaint remnant of the infancy of American brewing and a small curiosity section at the end of your supermarket beer aisle. Beers like Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Coors, Pabst, etc., will never disappear entirely because there will always be people who prefer them and that's as it should be. But the relative quality and economic consequences of those beers do not merit their being perennial Top Dog in the American beer marketplace. I'm asking, flat out, that people who truly love and care about craft brewing NOT, ever again, create a stylistic exception which says that a cold Bud Light on a hot afternoon or on your beach weekend in Cabo is allowable. I'm requesting, plainly, that you not reward those brands which sell out to AB with your dollars and your implied approval of their puppet status. I'm asking that you actively seek out locally or domestically-made substitutes for those "summer beers", those insipid Pilsners that are the mega-brewers' only working offering, from the rosters of your local brewers...and they're out there. The majority of American brewers, these days, offer at least a couple of hot-weather beers and many of those actually are Pilsners, but Pilsners done right, with flavor and body and hops and craftsmanship showing with every sip. I'm asking you to simply remove all the corporate beers, the mass-produced, cynical, watery pablum beers from foreign conglomerates, from your worldview. Ignore the entire end of your grocery store cooler that's devoted to the idea that we're all the same and that we value repetition and sameness over Choices and variety.

Diary: On the Gooseislandization of 10 Barrel Brewing by the aesthetic assassins at AB-InBev.

Who gives a flying fuck?

10 Barrel's dead as Monty Python's parrot. Find a cheap preacher, pay your respects and bring flowers. Then move on.

10 Barrel's just Zombie "Craft" now.

It's Trojan Ten Barrel.

Don't confuse me with someone who gives a fuck.

You see, back before the beer narcissists were born, we had a revolution to take beer back from the grimy corporatist likes of AB-InBev, which has been, and always will be, the foremost enemy of better beer in this world, as we know it.

Obviously, AB-InBev has the ample resources to buy its way to alleged respectability. Just as obviously, this is the fundamental problem, because money cannot buy authenticity. Even more obviously, drinkers of better beer have hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of legitimate small breweries to choose from, ones that have not been irrevocably bastardized by association (and ownership) with a company that's the closest thing to a Great Beer Satan as we're likely to see in this world ... as we know it.

If you doubt it, do some cursory research on AB-InBev's repellant company history as a symbol of everything wrong with beer and capitalism. It ain't pretty, and I'm sorry if it steps all over your sense of entitlement. Appeasing it does not change the paradigm.

You see, selling one's soul isn't about gray areas. When you sell your soul, you sell your soul. That's what this is about, and whenever possible, in a probably doomed effort to hold onto what tiny bits of soul I may as yet possess, I try not to hand my money over to those who've sold theirs. It's as simple as that. Better beer owes its existence to pride, ideas and principles .. to its very soul.

Sacrifice the soul and you're handing over the revolution to the very same soulless vampires it was fought against in the first place.

It's as simple as that.

10 Barrel's unfortunate demise signals yet again AB-InBev's dull intent to buy what it cannot create. Fortunately, 3,000 other breweries remain that are small, local and real. Pick a few, enjoy their beers, and give your soul some nourishment. Be local. Case closed.

Rest in peace, 10 Barrel Brewing. I'm sure your beers were great, but you're dead now. Who gives a fuck? 

Let's have a better beer, shall we?

Amid the KBS auto-erotic narcissism, Dale Moss grasps a good point.

Prior to the e-borne fragmentation of traditional print media in metropolitan Louisville, the Courier-Journal was the newspaper of record for the region. There was an Indiana section, and in it, Dale Moss wrote about a quarter-century's worth of columns before moving on just a couple years ago, as the C-J's death throes disgorged another group of long-serving journalism veterans.

Now he has returned, and can be read at the News and Tribune, the local (CNHI chain) newspaper of Floyd and Clark counties.

MOSS: Some thoughts while dreaming of a nap, by Dale Moss (News and Tribune; beware the paywall guard towers and really mean dogs patrolling them)

... Anyway, as part of my reintroduction to you, after all those years in that other newspaper, here is some else of what I believe:

I believe New Albany’s Roger Baylor, and his soulmates around the world, are to be toasted for convincing we rubes to drink better beer. The good-beer evolution resembles revolution. Just check the beer aisle at mainstream sellers such as a Meijer.

I'm glad Dale mentioned this, not so much because I need to see my name yet again in print (or my company's best selling beer referenced at an orchestral performance), but because I spent much of the past week reading various on-line portals inhabited by real salt-of-the-earth beer narcissists, complaining bitterly because they couldn't get enough Founders KBS to earn their personal geek points and merit the inevitable masturbatory selfie on Instagram.

This new age whimpering self-aggrandizement constitutes devolution, not evolution or revolution. The revolutionary part is as Dale Moss views it: Good beer on the shelf at a chain grocery; good beer at ballgames, and good beer enjoying ready availability in places where you spend the times of your life. That's the point. It's what we've spent 25 years pursuing.

And by good beer, I mean just that: Pale Ale, Porter or maybe even a Pilsner done right.

We continue to grow this thing we call craft beer not by commending narcissists for the forbearance in the face of pitiable discrimination, but by expanding the market penetration of good beer and taking the time to chat with those folks standing outside the tent, and wanting to step inside so long as they're not criticized for failing to discern the faint petunia nose on a soured breakfast stout, bottle conditioned with eau de tangerine, and corked, not capped, with a set of Chinese-made pliers conveniently attached ... only $30, if your local liquor store respects your patronage enough to shun and abuse the others who want it, too.

Thanks, Dale. I needed that. Good points have a way of getting you back on point.

"Questions for the Revolution," at LouisvilleBeer.com

My most recent column at LouisvilleBeer.com is up, and the next Pint/CounterPint with Adam Watson of Against the Grain will appear next week. The link on the graphic is active ... so click it.

Questions for the revolution?

Posted by Roger Baylor on Jan 5, 2012

When it comes to beer, I’ve sworn off end-of-the-year lists, enumerations and reflections, primarily because the sheer volume of great beers and wonderful drinking experiences in.

Me and Sierra.

Last week, I briefly found myself having a conversation with what seemed like half the country, by way of Twitter and www.beernews.org. It made my fingers tired.

A Healthy Distrust Part Deux: New Albanian and Sierra Nevada debate on Twitter

Ostensibly, the chat had to do with the possibility that Sierra Nevada, which has been brewing in California for 31 years, might soon open a second brewery in the vicinity of Asheville, North Carolina.

The questions I was asking of Sierra Nevada last week had to do with ideas in the form of concepts of locality and appellations of origin, formal or implied. These might be summarized like this: If your metaphorical image has derived from one sense of place for three decades, does it remain the same image should production be conducted elsewhere? Are you still the same, or do you change?

A representative from Sierra Nevada joined the discussion, and it became obvious that the company had been thinking deeply about questions like mine for quite some time. I’d be very surprised if it hadn’t. Significantly, it was evident that I was speaking the same language as Sierra Nevada’s people; my questions were understood there, and their answers were understood here.

My eyebrow was raised by the language being spoken by other participants. I was disappointed by the aggressive tone of some remarks, but even more so by the credulity of others. One person held that businesses don’t ever revolutionize, they merely capitalize; this assertion undoubtedly would amuse Steve Jobs and probably Sierra Nevada’s Ken Grossman, too.

Another wrote that Grossman can do no wrong. Really? I submit that craft brewing surely is a revolution, and also that absolutely none of its standard-bearers is infallible, including me. I seriously doubt that Grossman, whom I have not met, fancies himself as perfect.

Of course, there was not a shred of hostility from this end, nor will there be. At the time of the talk, the NABC Public House & Pizzeria had these three Sierra Nevada beers on tap: Celebration Ale, Torpedo IPA and Ovila Quad. Not a bad lineup, is it? If I really had a grudge against Sierra Nevada, would I be pouring these?

Look, craft beer is growing up. There are many questions to be asked as it does, and in the course of answering these questions, there’ll be much to discuss (over beers, of course). What I learned last week should come as no surprise in "America the Polarized"; while some craft beer lovers feel a sense of entitlement when it comes to the plethora of choice in the marketplace, they have precious little notion of how that cornucopia came to be. 

Our Craft Nation, circa 2011, came to be because of a revolution, and that revolution had (and continues to have) certain precepts. These are mutable and subject to revision. Questions constitute an opportunity to educate, to learn, and to know. They are not threats. 

C'mon, people. Without better thinking, what possible usefulness can there be in better drinking?