Allow me to explain several reasons why this blog is going on hiatus (psst ... go to NA Confidential instead).

Ever since I began the process of disengaging from NABC, which diligent future historians will observe taking place at various intervals in the year 2015 (and which isn't yet concluded), my relationship with beer has been in flux.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just different.

The world of beer has changed considerably during the past decade, and so have I. So have all of us. At times these days I want to throw Molotov cocktails at what I perceive beer is in the process of becoming, but at other times I love it as much as I always did.

Yeah, it's complicated.

To get to the point, and stated simply, my head currently isn't in alignment with the effort required to maintain two blogs. For whatever reason, NA Confidential -- which I've always referred to as my "public affairs" outlet -- has absorbed most of my time in recent years, with results that better reflect my interests, and that have produced gains in terms of readership.

As my column there Thursday explains, it makes more sense to fold my beer writing into NA Confidential, while keeping The Potable Curmudgeon as an archive (and ready source for cannibalizing past ideas).

All of these considerations also feed into an impending personal reality check. It was planned for me to take a year off to regroup, and the missus has been patient, but now the year is over. The column explains it; just know that easing back into the game via altered circumstances is the path I'll likely be pursuing.

In the meantime, look for beer writing at NAC prefixed by THE BEER BEAT, and remember that everything I've just explained could be obsolete the day after tomorrow. I'm playing things by ear, readying to go to the mattresses, and whichever other tired cliche might be inserted here.

Of course, anyone who might be in the market for an unemployed curmudgeon who can write a bit and probably is otherwise unemployable might be able to delay my entrepreneurial plans. 

To those of you who've been eavesdropping here these many years, I cannot thank you enough. There'll yet be a few things to tidy up here, and I'll get to them soon enough. Cheers!

---

ON THE AVENUES: It’s never too late to beer all over again.

It isn’t that I’ve fallen out of love with beer. We’re not divorced or anything. A better word is estranged, which implies an alienation of affection, but doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility of reconciliation.

These thoughts occurred to me recently as I was contemplating the future of The Potable Curmudgeon, my beer-themed blog. It dates to 2005, and has enjoyed some fine moments over the years, though recently my commitment to maintaining it has waned.

Slightly less so Roger’s Simple Beer Pleasures, a page at Facebook that I started in late 2015. It is far better suited to the truncated social-media-driven attention spans ruling the planet at present, including my own, at least as it pertains to beer and brewing.

In spite of my efforts, I can’t seem to make The PC blog and Simple Pleasures work in harmony the way NA Confidential’s blog and Fb page do, primarily because my efforts are half-hearted.

There’s the rub.

I care more about what I’m writing at NA Confidential than The Potable Curmudgeon, so I’m willing to make the time at one and not the other. Taking it a step further, this indiscipline owes to my sense of estrangement from the world of beer and brewing. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy writing about beer, thinking about it and even drinking it, just that it isn’t a daily priority at present.

Consequently, I’ll be altering the routine in the weeks to come. The beer writing I undertake will be featured here at NA Confidential, and I’ll allow The Potable Curmudgeon to remain dormant as an archive.

Perhaps Fridays will be NAC’s Beer Day, or some such. Since so much of my beer writing has sought connectivity between beer and other interests in my life, putting them all in one place rather than separating them makes the most sense.

That is, until it doesn’t.

Read the rest here.

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About the Montague Bookmill, and a few beers in the Massachusetts countryside.

I'm gradually describing (and backdating) the Curmudgeons' eastern road trip, with cultural highlights usually recorded at NAC, and beers here at PC.

Eastern USA Road Trip 2016, Day 5: Ruby welcomes the Confidentials to Massachusetts.

On Saturday morning, we drove from Brattleboro, Vermont to South Hadley, Massachusetts, which didn't take very long, and my wife Diana enjoyed a long-awaited (well, five months) meeting with her niece's baby.

Later that same day, we all piled into one car to visit another niece. The choice of venue was near and dear of the heart of this drinking reader: A bookstore with food, beer and tunes.

It's hard not to like a bookstore with a tag like this: Books you don't need in a place you can't find. Accordingly, the Montague Bookmill is a used bookstore housed in an 1842 grist mill, located along the highway somewhere north of Amherst, Massachusetts.

This article summarizes the attraction.

Montague Bookmill is a hidden gem with books and beer, by Jon Mael (Boston Globe)

Part treehouse, part shopping center, part historical site, and part dining destination. The Montague Mill is impossible to categorize. But it’s entirely cool and timeless. Nice views, used books, and good food don’t go out of style.

The mill serves a diverse clientele including families seeking a fun day out, tourists, and college students longing for a quiet place away from the hustle and bustle of their busy campuses. Five businesses share the space on the banks of the Sawmill River, which flows into the Connecticut River a few miles downstream ...

In addition to the bookstore, there is a casual cafe, slightly upscale restaurant, record store and artists' collective, all situated in the old mill complex.

If memory serves, my beer choice was an IPA and a Porter, both from the region. The names weren't recorded and are lost to posterity. Perhaps I should have posted to untappd.

It was a relaxed and eclectic afternoon, and soon we returned home to dine on a meal of grilled beef, corn and tomatoes, washed down with cans of Hermit Thrush. Here are two photos of the bookstore cribbed from the Internetz:

And another one I took. The afternoon was so laid back that I couldn't be bothered to exercise the camera.

At some point in the evening, the husband of Diana's niece observed that a brewery nearby made a Rauchbier.

Sunday was going to be fun.

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A hand-pulled pint at McNeill's Brewery in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Borrowed from Trip Advisor. 

I'm recapping our summer vacation, and the beer story goes here at PC, with further narrative at NAC:

Eastern USA Road Trip 2016, Day 2: Across Ohio and New York to Brattleboro, Vermont.

On Day Two, we drove from Cleveland to Brattleboro, Vermont, proceeding directly to our Airbnb lodgings. Once the flag had been planted, it was time to get our bearings and go downtown, perhaps a half-mile away, which brought us to McNeill's Brewery.

I've no idea what has happened at McNeill's since 2005, when the following article appeared, although a more recent on-line account suggests that little has changed apart from the plug being pulled from a second brewing facility owing to the owner's bout of bad health.

After reading Crouch's wonderful character study, it's perfectly clear to me why I liked this place so much.

Alternately brash, arrogant, kindly, brusque, and passionate, Ray McNeill, the owner of McNeill's Brewery, is an intriguing mix of personalities, by Andy Crouch (BeerScribe)

... When he opened McNeill's Brewery in a rundown building in downtown Brattleboro, a structure that once served as a police station, a town office hall and a jail, McNeill had a vision. "I was trying to create a sort of social meeting house for the town. You know that stupid television show 'Cheers'? That actually happens here. That's what this bar is like." The bar's insular atmosphere can prove challenging for outsiders. "Some of them get it right away and some of them don't," says McNeill. "Some people from out of town just figure it out right away. I've seen people from out of town, within twenty minutes, were on a first name basis with another half dozen people. If some people live in some real cloistered suburban place, they're probably not going to figure it out. But a lot of them do. If people don't know who I am, I certainly try and encourage that. If I see someone from out of town, I try and start a conversation with them right away. I go a little bit out of my way to do that."

Even before reading the preceding, I wrote a review of McNeill's on Facebook.

We stopped in McNeill's during the afternoon while visiting Brattleboro, and again the following day, and enjoyed it. Someone else said McNeill's is a dive bar with great beer, and to me, this is both accurate and commendable, because increasingly, pretentiousness kills the joy of "craft" beer. I had excellent cask pours, including a yummy Old Ale. The bartender was great; she treated us like family and offered spot-on advice about other dining and drinking options. Loved it for what it is.

My instincts are still fairly sharp, after all. One of the bartender's most enthused recommendations was Turquoise Grill, an intimate Turkish spot. My Lamb Köfte was outstanding.

One Brattleboro brewery down ... two to go.

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

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

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Thirty-fourth and final in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

It was late in the evening on August 8, 1985.

In fact, it may have been past midnight, making it the 9th, not the 8th, but no matter.

I was back home again in Indiana, after three glorious months in Europe.

Now what?

Luxembourg City had disappeared far too quickly into the Icelandair jet’s rearview mirror. The European continent receded into cloud-blanketed expanses of ocean. After subsequent trips, I’d allow myself a moment’s melancholy at each westward departure, though not this first time.

There was too much to think about.

Many hours later, allowing for an obligatory Reykjavik shopping layover, I stumbled somewhat groggily from a customs checkpoint into the arrival hall at Chicago O’Hare. There John and Kevin were waiting to meet me. They were troopers and true friends, following through just as we’d agreed back in May.

As a bonus, the brothers were holding a cheesy cardboard sign, hand-lettered BAYLOR TAXI.

In this primitive rotary dial era, it had not occurred to any of us to prepare contingency plans in case of problems – a flight delay or cancellation on my part, or a flat tire on theirs. I hadn’t phoned home even once. European pay phones were old-school mystifying, as well as overly expensive. Only a handful of post cards were dropped into letter boxes.

That’s because the entire point of Europe was to get away from the United States, and this is exactly what I’d done. I went away, got away and broke away. Hurdles real and imagined were cleared, and the first pilgrimage was completed.

Now what?

At times, clichés are all we really have, so I can attest that even then, passing through customs, I definitely knew things weren’t going to be the same for me, ever again.

Once wasn’t enough. There’d have be another, and if so, how would I arrange my life for what might be two long years, until my funds enabled the next escape from our stifling Reaganite compound?

I didn’t know the details, only the imperative.

---

We traveled five hours straight home from Chicago, stopping only to devour sliders at a White Castle along the way. This reversion to indigenous form was the first broad hint that in spite of my best efforts to be a new European man, bad American habits surely would worm their way back into my world.

So they did, and so it went.

Within days of returning home, I was filling shifts at the liquor store. Soon school was back in session; teachers immediately started taking off work, and substitute teaching began anew. Money trickled in, and the budget again could be written in black ink.

After a few weeks, there was sufficient revenue to develop those rolls of slide film still hidden in the lead-lined pouch, and at last I could see where I’d visited. Bills were paid, bar tabs settled, and a faint dribble of cash was stashed under the mattress.

Sadly, fiscal restraint suggested a return to inexpensive mass-market beer, except predictably, American swill no longer tasted very good. Eventually it would occur to me to drink less and drink better, but not just yet. Too many hormones required sedation.

Choking down the cheap beer, I grinned, rationalized, and accepted these cost-cutter hardships, keeping two eyes fixed very firmly on 1987, and the expected sequel. Anyway, I worked at a package store.

When all was said and done, Bass Ale and St. Pauli Girl tasted surprisingly good when the employee discount enabled an occasional splurge.

Thirty pounds had disappeared from my frame during three months across the pond. The medical experts probably will say it’s too much, too fast, and accordingly, unlikely to last. They’re absolutely right, and by the end of 1985, I’d found each and every of those lost pounds, and added a few more for good measure.

It all came down to exercise, or the lack of it. When the daily formula is to work two jobs, drink, sleep, rinse and repeat, physical self-care isn’t much of a consideration.

Rather, it was entirely psychological. It was get back to Europe, or bust.

---

Far more than high school and college graduation dates, the year 1985 marks the first great dividing line in my life. There is what came before the European journey, and what happened after it.

Later there would be numerous other narrative junctures involving the usual suspects: Thru-ways, dead ends, lovers, careers, wins and losses; all the things that go to make up a life. There’d also be 34 more trips to Europe, perhaps bearing out the extent of the obsession that blossomed in 1985.

What did it all mean, way back then?

Three decades later, it’s a question I’m still trying to properly assess, and in many ways the available answers are uniformly embarrassing.

I can see more clearly now than before. In spite of the many qualifications and evasions available to me, the mere fact that I took a trip to Europe in 1985 speaks to privilege, not privation. It speaks to how lazy and formless I’d been up to that point.

In 1942, my 17-year-old father ran away from home to fight in a world war, and I was spared this tough choice. We didn’t always agree, but my parents worked hard and sent me to university – for a philosophy degree.

I didn’t go to work in a sweat shop at age 12, didn’t endure domestic violence, and didn’t have many hard decisions to make. In short, I was lucky. It was easy muddling through my youth, such that there was ample time for me in my early twenties to decide at long last to get my act together and set off on a quest, purely elective, to “find” myself.

Most humans on the planet don’t have this luxury. And yet, this life is the only one I’ve ever had, and all I can do is live it.

Europe in 1985 is where and when I grew up, insofar as I’ve ever grown up, which is debatable. Europe was the exact opposite of my undergraduate experience, and far more of an advanced educational seminar than a non-stop party. It’s where things began making sense to me.

Honestly, I was as surprised as anyone. Somewhere inside there were the genes I needed to plan ahead, work hard, save money, and challenge myself.

This is the ultimate point, because at first, I got it backward. I kept thinking that a tenure in Europe was required to gain the experience necessary for growth and self-knowledge, and of course being there proved to be a big part of it, and yet what changed me the most, more than three months in Europe, was the two-year period preceding the trip.

Yes, Europe changed my life. What I didn’t notice at the time was my life changing in order to get to Europe. Finally, I cared about something, and finally, out of nowhere, emerged a work ethic.

Who’d have guessed it?

---

This 1985 travelogue began in 2005. It proceeded by fits and starts until completion in 2016. At this pace, you’ll be lucky if I make it into my 1990s travel history before dying at 101.

There seems to be no good way to end a story that has taken so long to write, so as an attempted coda, subject to future revision, here are three personal legacies of Euro ’85.

Food, cooking … and beer.

Moussaka, clam sauce, blood sausage, Wiener schnitzel, herring and beef tartare are just a few of the culinary high points of Euro ’85. I’d never enjoyed foods like these, and the fact that even a poor tourist might still be able to taste them was impressive.

Coming from a background of largely flavorless meat and potatoes, this exposure was revelatory, but since few of these meals were readily available back home, it was time to take cooking seriously. The only way I’d be able to get the dishes I wanted was to cook them myself, and while much has changed since then, cooking remains a rewarding pursuit.

Meanwhile, beer as a career wasn’t yet apparent to me, and my first European trip wasn’t about compiling or rating brands and styles. My beer understanding remained decidedly imperfect afterward. However, experiencing first-hand the prevailing beer culture in places like Germany, Austria and Ireland was absolutely invaluable, and it obviously informed the Public House.

Language.

In 1985, I’d been exposed to almost as many languages as countries, but the problem with constant movement was a reduced opportunity to make sense of any in detail. Upon return, I vowed to learn a European language, and began stockpiling books, instructional cassettes and videos.

Alas, it came to very little in the end, and three decades later, I still lack proficiency in a second language. However, I know a few words in two dozen languages, and prior to my second journey in 1987, managed to teach myself the Cyrillic alphabet, which made Moscow’s subways navigable.

The lure of urbanism.

I grew up in the Southern Indiana countryside, then went to Europe for the first time and spent nearly all of the trip exploring cities. I’ll grant that it took a while for these urban lessons to be absorbed, but the conversion was genuine.

These days, it seems to me that I inhabit a neighborhood (New Albany) of a larger city (Louisville), albeit it without all of the amenities in infrastructure that made European city life what it was, and remains.

Shouldn’t I be able to board a bus, switch to the subway, and be in downtown Louisville in minutes without once considering the use of my car? Why our endless sprawl? Can’t we fill in those tragic empty spaces where the downtown buildings used to be?

I must stop.

The older I get, the more normal my European interlude in 1985 appears to me. It’s the long trip since then that’s been so damned strange.

---

Previously:

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 33 … All good things must come to a beginning.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 31 … Leningrad in three vignettes.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 30 … Or, as it was called at the time, Leningrad.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 29 … Helsinki beneath my feet, but Leningrad on my mind.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 28 … A Finnish detour to Tampere for beer and sausages.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 27 … Stockholm's blonde ambition, with or without mead-balls.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 26 … The Hansa brewery tour, and a farewell to Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 25 … Frantic pickled Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 24 … An aspiring “beer hunter” amid Carlsberg’s considerable charms.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 23 … A fleeting first glimpse of Copenhagen.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 22 … It's how the tulips were relegated.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not "The Longest Day."

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.

_

A tail of two Yetis: Red Yeti sued by Great Divide.

Although I recall hearing about this dispute previously, it seems I neglected to mention it here at the PC blog. Maybe it was on social media. No matter.

Whatever one's position on Great Divide's trademark claim, ignoring a cease and desist order might not be the best legal maneuver.

Having recently been compelled to engage the services of an attorney, who prices hourly services very fairly, it occurs to me that a few hours on the clock can wipe out a Friday night's take -- and Great Divide probably has deeper pockets.  

We await further developments. If it were me, and the lawsuit goes badly for Red Yeti, I'd go with Red Trotsky as a replacement. There may even be posters somewhere.

Colorado brewer sues Jeffersonville’s Red Yeti brewpub in trademark dispute, by Marcus Green (WDRB)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Since opening in 2013, The Red Yeti brewpub and restaurant in Jeffersonville, Ind., has used a sunglasses-clad, arm-swinging creature as its logo.

But to Denver’s Great Divide Brewing Co., the beast that adorns the Spring Street business is an abomination that needs to go.

Great Divide filed a federal lawsuit against Red Yeti on Friday, accusing the Southern Indiana company of trademark infringement, deceptive trade practices and unfairly using the image. It seeks an injunction banning Red Yeti from displaying the “confusingly similar” designer, a jury trial and unspecified damages.

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Coming to Lexington in September: "Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture," Version 2.

In 2014, I was humbled, honored and slightly terrified to be among the speakers at Jeff Rice's inaugural craft writing symposium at the University of Kentucky.

On belonging: Stan Hieronymus has the last word (for now) about craft writing.

At Hey Brewtiful: "Beer Nerds Unite Over Kentucky Craft Writing Symposium."

Two more craft writing recaps: Digital takeaways and a Beer Trappe's perspective.

Hoperatives: On the Craft Writing Symposium.

Gary Spedding of Brewing and Distilling Analytical Services on the Craft Writing symposium.

The PC: Conformity, contrarianism and a craft writing symposium.

The PC: Not so simple a symposium.

Craft Writing symposium: It's fine by me if craft beer gets all introspective.

Yes, I took it very seriously, and now, two years later, it's time for Son of Craft Writing. Best of all, because it's on a Friday, I can attend.

Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture

A one day symposium at the University of Kentucky showcasing writing in craft beer.

September 30, 2016
Memorial Auditorium
Free and open to the public
10:00 am - 5:00 pm

This one day event will bring to UK brewers and professional writers from the craft beer industry. Craft beer, the annual production of under six million barrels of beer by small breweries, is one of the fastest growing areas of the food industry. According to the Brewers Association, craft beer provides over 108,000 jobs and its retail dollar value in 2012 was estimated at $10.2 billion. In the last twenty years, over 2,000 new breweries have come online, commanding almost 6% of the overall American beer market. These breweries have, in turn, helped revitalize city neighborhoods, generated new jobs in related industries, and played a key role in expanding digital and social media usage.

This event will showcase the professional writing – in print and digital media – that is dominant in the craft beer industry. Writing has played a major role in promoting the business of craft beer. Craft Writing will serve as an event that draws interdisciplinary attention to the ways industry utilizes writing – in various digital forms – to promote, inform, highlight, argue, market, brand, and foster relationships between products, consumers, and other relevant parties.

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THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part one.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part one.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It is worth noting for the sake of posterity that I was not physically present at the precise moment when a failing “Ignoble” Roman’s Pizza franchise situated off Grant Line Road in New Albany, Indiana, quietly was shifted into the “local” column by the O’Connell family and redubbed Sportstime Pizza, setting into motion subsequent events that changed numerous lives (some perhaps even for the better), and subsequently led to what today is known as the New Albanian Brewing Company.

Such are the vagaries of serendipity. Human beings put great stock in planning and preparation, and to be sure, there are times when advance thinking genuinely matters. Yet, much of the time, little of it is relevant. The Fickle Finger of Fate makes the final call.

The reason for my absence in 1987 was a four-month European sojourn – my second such trip overall. It has taken more than a year to write the 33 chapters of Euro '85 (the postscript is yet to come), stretching from the 30th anniversary of my founding epic into the 31st. Seeing as 2017 marks three decades since the sequel, perhaps it's time to begin the next chronicle in a series intended to arrest the encroaching mists of an ever-more-distant past.

My 1987 overseas pilgrimage was divided into three rollicking acts, with ample time for education, recreation and debauchery: One month in Western Europe, with extended stays in Benelux, Switzerland, Austria and Italy; two months behind the Iron Curtain, including Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, the USSR, Poland and Czechoslovakia; and then a final month’s swath of perpetual motion danced with considerable glee through West Germany, France, Ireland and Denmark.

To this very day, I am amazed, humbled, enlightened and utterly stupefied by my good fortune, when considering the places seen, the experiences savored, and the people encountered while on the road in 1987. Three months in Europe in 1985 had taught me the helpful rudiments of budget travel, and in 1987, because the daily budgetary regimen was established as a habit of sorts, much more time remained to absorb, to cherish, to live and to drink the occasional beer for breakfast.

These many years later, there can be no doubt that the single most abiding outcome of my wandering the continent in 1987 is an enduring friendship with three fellows I met there. The three Danes of the apocalypse are Kim “Little Kim” Wiesener, Kim “Big Kim” Andersen and Allan Gamborg. I’ve now known them for more than half my life, an existence immeasurably enriched by their camaraderie in myriad ways too profuse to recount.

But my motive at present for name-checking the three Danes, and by extension, recalling the manner by which we became acquainted during the summer of 1987, is the drinking bout dubbed “The Battle of the Titans,” held at the venerable Copenhagen pub called the Mouse & Elephant (sadly, it has since gone out of business). I cannot verify the exact date of this grand spectacle, although a solid guess would be August 12, 1987.

It is a day that will live in enduring forgetfulness.

---

This story is inexorably intertwined with that of my high school and college classmate, and illustrious, longtime partner in mischief, Barrie Ottersbach, who occupied a formidable role in the narrative of that long-ago summer.

An unsuspecting Kim Wiesener was the tour leader for a “youth” travel group visiting the Soviet Union and Poland, and Barrie and I were enthusiastic, if only marginally youthful participants (we were 27 at the time).

Legend has it that Kim fell under Barrie’s spell (or was it the other way around?) on a hair-raising Aeroflot flight from Copenhagen to Moscow, where I had arranged to meet the remainder of the group, having arrived in the capital of Ronnie Raygun’s evil empire by way of a 36-hour train trip from Hungary, during which my sole company was a bag of fresh cherries, two loaves of bread, a sizable salami from Szeged, and two bottles of delectable Egri Bikaver (Bull’s Blood) wine.

Water? I can’t recall drinking any of it.

On the hazy morning following the boozy evening of the group’s belated arrival at the hotel, all of us were supposed to meet in the hotel lobby for orientation before setting out on a bus tour of Moscow. Kim was mildly concerned when Barrie failed to appear for roll call; I reassured him that all was well, and that Barrie was in safe hands, having ventured into the Soviet underworld with “Bill,” the friendly neighborhood black market sales representative whom I’d met earlier under similar circumstances the previous afternoon.

At that exact point, not even a full day into the excursion, Kim surely understood it would be a very long journey, but he was reassured when Barrie appeared later that afternoon, brandishing a softball-sized wad of colorfully useless rubles. For the remainder of our stay in the USSR, he grandly depleted this ridiculously huge bankroll on lavish restaurant meals, caviar, vodka and champagne; beer was difficult to find, and the rubles were non-convertible inside or outside the country. It was fling time, and fling we did.

For a brief time, Barrie himself occupied a crucial position on the fringe of the black market, a mirthful capitalist amid communism’s decay, profitably reselling his rubles back into hard currency for those members of our group who were too frightened, squeamish or senselessly law-abiding to trade on the streets.

Our introductory lesson in entrepreneurial initiative thus completed, we moved on to Leningrad by overnight sleepless express train just in time for an impromptu Fourth of July celebration. Kim, Barrie and I gathered on the grassy, mosquito-infested bank of an urban canal, a scene made complete when a bottle of the finest Russian vodka materialized from Kim’s backpack. Illuminated by the White Nights, we were introduced for the first time to Allan Gamborg, who coincidentally was passing through the city with a tour group of his own.

Ominously, as the bottle was passed around from person to person, its silky contents ingested without any semblance of a chaser, Kim and Allan began speaking in hushed tones about Denmark’s answer to Barrie: Kim Andersen, hereafter to be known as Big Kim. Their descriptions of Big Kim were offered to us in impeccable English, although occasionally they would lapse into Danish or even Russian in search of the proper words to explain this larger-than-life phenomenon from their homeland.

We scratched our heads and made mental notes.

Would we meet Big Kim, and if so, where?

(Part two is tomorrow, and will take the place of next Monday's column. It's spring break for the Curmudgeon)

---

April 4: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Birracibo’s local/regional “craft” beer percentage rides the bench.

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?

_

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 33 … All good things must come to a beginning.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 33 … All good things must come to a beginning.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Thirty-third in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

---

The Travela agency’s chartered motor coach departed Leningrad just after breakfast on Sunday, August 4. By mid-afternoon, I was situated in Turku along with the antebellum Mississippians, their fingernails on my metaphorical blackboard, Northerner and Southerners waiting together to catch the ferry boat from Finland to Sweden.

The island-strewn Baltic was crossed during the night, and Stockholm’s efficient subway connected the city’s docklands to its central train station for the next leg to Copenhagen, Denmark.

It seemed that nothing could stop this relentless momentum, and as the rails steadily clicked past, I made leisurely work of the previous evening’s Silja Lines buffet doggie-bag, all the while plotting a final “Sleep-In” hostel evening in the Danish capital, followed by an early morning train in the direction of the Duchy of Luxembourg.

Way back in May, I’d taken the precaution of reserving a dorm bed at the Luxembourg City Hostel for my last two European nights, but first, there’d be time in Copenhagen for another heaping platter of fried potatoes and eggs at the Vista Self Service Restaurant, a couple bottles of Tuborg, and a decent night’s sleep in something roughly approximating a bed.

Alas, it was not to be.

Somewhere between Stockholm and Copenhagen, surrounded by leafy rural copses, amber waves of grain and cloudless blue skies, the train shuddered to a halt. It remained motionless for a full three and a half hours.

The stoppage had something to do with engine failure, and better a train than a plane in such cases, but the delay necessitated an itinerary rethink. By the time we made Copenhagen, there was little sense paying for a bunk when another train soon would be queueing for the overnight run to Germany. I might as well keep moving.

Scraping together the haggard remnants of my Danish kroner stash, I found fruitful foraging near the station: Three bottles of Carlsberg from a shop across the street, a handful of rødpølser (hot dogs) from the pølsevogn out front, and an International Herald-Tribune. It was enough.

Providentially, there was ample room in the trains’ 1st class car to stretch out across the seats. It wasn’t a bed, though it was an improvement on the ferry’s unyielding floor the long night before.

Morning found me in Kӧln, Koblenz, or maybe Aachen? I can’t tell you exactly where I debarked on Tuesday morning. The most likely explanation is Kӧln, with a change to Koblenz for the final approach to Luxembourg City, via Trier. Wherever it was, two memories have survived reasonably intact.

Most importantly, the train station in question was “old school” and still had a for-pay locker room with hot showers, where filth-encrusted budget travelers could pay a few Deutschmarks to be clean and fresh again. These facilities seemed entirely obsolete even then, and I sensed they were doomed, but it was blissful to have a scrub.

Then, feeling human again, I visited the train station bistro and pointed at a dish that appeared to be chopped steak on a roll, ready to be cooked to order -- and it was, in a manner of speaking, except that the beef was supposed to be served raw, with the added bonus of an uncooked egg on top.

Such was my introduction to Steak Tartare. Had I not already paid for it, rejection likely would have ensued, but funds were running low. Silly American squeamishness had no choice except to be surmounted, and so I ate it. It wasn’t bad, and I did not die.

So it goes.

---

This is truly a remarkable story for such a small country (Luxembourg) that originated from an old Roman fort sold to a Prince by some monks.
-- Andre Sanchez

In early afternoon on Tuesday, August 6, my three-month European adventure finally came full circle. Once again, I stood on the plaza in front of the Luxembourg City train station, and this time it was without the incapacitated drunkard.

Roughly 54 hours and 1,750 miles had passed since the bus left Leningrad. My emotions were jumbled and conflicting. Exhaustion vied with exhilaration, and a reluctance to return to America was balanced by the inevitability of the air ticket.

In May, it had taken me almost two hours to find the hostel on Rue du Fort Olisy. In August, a quick stop at the handy tourism kiosk in the station produced a free city map and concise directions in English. I found the hostel after a pleasant 20-minute walk.

In May, confused and probably delirious, I’d noticed very little about my surroundings. Now, in August, Luxembourg City was revealed as a place worthy of exploration in its own right.

The hostel itself reposed in the shadow of a huge stone bridge spanning a quiet valley, north of the promontory where the centerpiece of the city’s fortifications formerly straddled. Two rivers snaked through the historic downtown area, a place seemingly devoid of flat ground.

Luxembourg’s blend of German and French cultural influences was newly evident, especially as reflected by the local language, Luxembourgish. It seemed a hybridized and impenetrable German dialect with French loan words.

Billeted and unburdened of baggage, there remained ample time late on Tuesday afternoon for a visit to the Bock casemates, accessible by climbing the hill behind the hostel.

The Bock casemates are underground passages remaining from Luxembourg City’s castle, formerly placed astride a rocky ridgeline surrounded on three sides by the looping River Alzette. Famed for its impregnability, the castle’s construction began in the year 963, and for 900 years, it was augmented with formidable walls and ramparts.

The Treaty of London in 1867 established a neutral Luxembourg and called for the demolition of the castle and adjacent defenses. The casemates remained. Originally, these radiated from the castle’s cellar. A long, central passageway leads to what were storage areas, workrooms and kitchen capable of being used when the castle was attacked or under siege.

Smaller tunnels radiate from this passageway, leading to artillery emplacements in the walls of the cliffs. After demilitarization, with most exterior structures removed, the casemates still had their uses, most memorably as bomb shelters during WWII.

---

Wednesday was my final opportunity to wander European byways with dreamy, aimless intent. It dawned a flawless summer’s day in the Duchy, warm and sunny, but without the oppressive and muggy humidity of the Ohio Valley.

I walked to the train station and exercised the magical powers of the Eurailpass for the very last time. The idea was to ride the slow locals northward to Clervaux and back, perhaps stopping to examine other small towns along the way, and getting a feel for the Ardennes.

As I was to learn the hard way from the saddle of a bicycle 19 years later, the Ardennes may not be lofty mountains by world standards, but they’re far more mountains than hills. They’re also beautiful and filled with history.

Clervaux was the scene of fierce fighting during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. In one of the war’s great military feats, George S. Patton’s 3rd Army broke off combat in Germany, reversed course in impossibly rapid fashion, and relieved American forces trapped 20 miles to the west of Clervaux in Bastogne, Belgium.

In the Great War, nearby Troisverges marks the spot in 1914 where Imperial Germany violated Luxembourg’s neutrality in route to their eventual standoff with the French. Everywhere I looked in Clervaux, there was history on a signpost.

Better yet, Clervaux proved just the place to indulge in a valedictory reverie. I went into a small grocery store, bought a crusty loaf, ham, cheese and two local Diekirch lager beers, and walked up to the castle. It houses a museum devoted to the Battle of the Bulge, and outside, a Sherman tank and artillery piece are on display.

I found a bench near these relics of violence and peacefully ate and drank my lunch. Dessert was in my shirt pocket, because I’d bought five small Cuban cigars at the Beriozka back in Leningrad. In terms of quality, they were purely average, but it’s the thought of three transformative months that really counts.

The hostel served supper. I showered, packed and slept. At last, it was time.

On Thursday morning, there was a bus to the airport. We passed a sign pointing the way to the American Cemetery and Memorial. General Patton, who died of injuries suffered in an automobile accident after war’s end, is buried there.

Back amid the jets, it was Icelandair again, to Chicago by way of Reykjavik. I retained my neophyte’s inchoate fear of flying, but oddly, there was a certain tranquility to the boarding process. As the plane began rolling toward liftoff and ascent, something absolutely strange happened.

I barely noticed it.

That’s because I was deep in thought. Not once in three months had I allowed myself the luxury of considering possible sequels. Now, with the wheels folding up into the plane’s belly, I knew for sure.

There was going to be a next time.

Next time: What did it all mean?

---

Previously:

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 31 … Leningrad in three vignettes.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 30 … Or, as it was called at the time, Leningrad.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 29 … Helsinki beneath my feet, but Leningrad on my mind.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 28 … A Finnish detour to Tampere for beer and sausages.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 27 … Stockholm's blonde ambition, with or without mead-balls.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 26 … The Hansa brewery tour, and a farewell to Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 25 … Frantic pickled Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 24 … An aspiring “beer hunter” amid Carlsberg’s considerable charms.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 23 … A fleeting first glimpse of Copenhagen.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 22 … It's how the tulips were relegated.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not "The Longest Day."

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.

_

After 15 years, Little Kings returns to Cincinnati.

Notice the shirt, circa 1981.

It's only been two months since Little Kings Cream Ale was last mentioned in this space.

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

The last time I drank a Little Kings Cream Ale, it tasted awful.

The exact year escapes me, but it was during the period when the ill-fated entity known as Snyder International owned and brewed Little Kings in Frederick, Maryland, having reduced it and other beer brands, both old and new, to lowly chattel, suitable only for manipulation by enriched computer geeks wearing mittens, posturing at chess with only half the pieces on their playing board.

Who did this temporary dot.com zillionaire think he was, Carlos Brito?

Happily, it turns out that Little Kings is back in Cincinnati. I look forward to tasting the new/old recipe.

Little Kings comes home to Cincinnati, by Shauna Steigerwald (Cincinnati Enquirer)

"How awesome is this?" Greg Hardman said as he watched little green bottles roll down the bottling line Thursday in Christian Moerlein Brewing Co.'s Over-the-Rhine brewery.

It was the brewery's first full run of Little Kings Cream Ale. The beer hadn't been produced locally in nearly 15 years.

"It's emotional," Hardman, who owns Christian Moerlein, said over the whir of the machines and the clanking of bottles. "So many people wanted this to happen."

People started asking him about bringing other Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewing Co. brands, including Little Kings, back to Cincinnati as soon as he bought Christian Moerlein in 2004, Hardman said. He got letters and emails. People came up to him in bars. It wasn't just fans of the old beers: Children and grandchildren of former brewery workers were also deeply interested in the historic brands' fate, he said.

And it wasn't like the idea had never crossed Hardman's mind. In fact, the seeds had been planted there years before.

__

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Thirty-second in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

---

In St. Petersburg, there is a building originally constructed by the Singer Sewing Machine Company, For more than a century it has stood on Nevsky Prospekt, opposite the stately Kazan Cathedral. An architectural landmark, it has survived revolution, bombardment and socialism.

During Soviet times the former Singer headquarters was known as Dom Knigi (House of Books), the USSR’s official state-run bookstore. For me and many others, the undisputed highlight of Dom Knigi was its poster shop.

Posters in all shapes and sizes were printed by the tens of millions in the USSR, comprising a sprawling graphic arts genre all its own, even if subject to denigration by Westerners as mere propaganda.

Most were, but it’s ironic that those visiting capitalists observed to laugh loudest usually waited until no one was looking, then snatched up propaganda posters by the dozen for the bargain price of pennies apiece, to be transported home and flaunted as exotic, chic décor in their dens and rec rooms.

I was not at all immune to this urge. In fact, I was completely overwhelmed and later even obsessed by it.

One of the posters I bought in 1985 celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War’s victorious conclusion. Westerners know this bloody conflict as World War II, but whatever its name, the poster prompted a point constantly reinforced during our tour: The Soviet Union bore the brunt of human and material sacrifice in defeating Nazi Germany.

It is estimated that upwards of 20 million Soviet men, women and children lost their lives during the war. The city of Leningrad itself was a major battleground. For more than 900 days, it was besieged, starved and shelled by the Germans.

Down the street from Dom Knigi, a wartime inscription on a building’s wall had been preserved. It reminded citizens which side of the street was safer when the artillery rounds started falling. 1980s-era Leningrad was crowded with plaques and monuments to the war, as well as living reminders in the form of older men proudly wearing their service medals in public.

Leningrad never fell, but the cost was immense, as my tour group learned when were taken by bus to the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery.

About 420,000 civilians and 50,000 soldiers of the Leningrad Front were buried in 186 mass graves. Near the entrance an eternal flame is located. A marble plate affirms that from September 4, 1941 to January 22, 1944 107,158 air bombs were dropped on the city, 148,478 shells were fired, 16,744 men died, 33,782 were wounded and 641,803 died of starvation.

These improbably precise yet grim numbers are sufficiently eloquent, but while visiting the cemetery on a Saturday afternoon, we were fortunate to witness an instance of remembrance’s unfeigned dignity.

A wedding party arrived in a convoy of Lada passenger cars, and the bride and groom were photographed with seemingly endless rows of mass graves as a backdrop to their special day. The Soviet government didn’t require them to do it. They just did.

Are they still, now?

---

Looking back on it, Leningrad was a collage of surreal occurrences. I remember standing in the middle of the vast open space called Palace Square, with the huge green Winter Palace on one side and the even larger gold-painted Admiralty on the other, imagining the revolutionary crowds of 1917.

The Internationale was on heavy rotation in my head, along with scenes from Warren Beatty’s classic film Reds. These imaginings wore me out, and it was time for a break.

Near the closest wing of the Winter Palace were benches beneath shade trees, and what appeared to be a vending machine. Hesitantly, I walked toward the sooty gray box until I could make out a word stenciled in Cyrillic: Вода́.

Water … apparently drinking water.

There was a coin slot, and a posted price of one or two kopecks, at 100 kopecks to a ruble. Our tour escort Ari later explained that the two choices were still (uncarbonated) or sparkling water. Three public drinking glasses were available for use – merely select the cleanest, place it in the recess, deposit coins, push button, drink liquid and set the glass back on the ledge for the next user.

My water wasn’t fizzy. The glass was returned to its place. Now the remarkable absence of litter made sense.

---

On Sunday morning, luggage and hangovers in equal measure were hauled to the motor coach for the return trip to Finland. It was a sunny summer’s day, but the mood on the bus was somber. In the end, perhaps the visceral experience of a world so very different from ours was more exhausting than we imagined.

Border controls on both sides were perfunctory, and most group members debarked in Helsinki, including Mark the Australian. He’d been a great pal, and so we embraced and promised to stay in touch.

So it goes. I’ve never seen him since.

A half dozen of us rode the bus an hour further to the Finnish port of Turku, where the overnight ferry was sailing back to Sweden. The sands in my hourglass were becoming scarce, and the highway segment from Leningrad was only the beginning of an epic three-day, non-stop public transit journey waged across six European nations, all the way back to Luxembourg.

As it transpired, two fellow tour members were to be my shipmates to Stockholm. I’ve long forgotten their real names, so for the purpose of this narrative, they’ll be known as Jeff and Robert, who were 1985 high school graduates from Somewhereville, Mississippi, both 18 years of age and bound that autumn for some variety of collegiate military school to be trained as cannon fodder.

But seriously: Jeff and Robert looked, spoke and acted the part of future soldiers, personality traits fully evident in the USSR, where we’d aired opposing points of view on more than one occasion. Mark had been openly disdainful amid their frequent references to the glories of the Bible and Reaganism. I tended to agree with the Aussie.

Periodic prayers testified to Jeff’s and Robert’s fundamentalist upbringing, and any mention of Soviet history produced a rote response, as though Pavlov himself had trained these two super-patriots to salivate and squawk “dirty stinking Commie” upon activation of the electrodes. Even the provocative Swiss schoolteacher Phil had quickly grown weary of their ideological edge.

“It’s hard enough fighting the Communist disinformation without having to fight the anti-Communist disinformation, too.”

But it hadn’t stopped these youthful Falangists from buying armloads of posters at Dom Knigi, and no matter how heated the discussion, Jeff and Robert kept coming back for more. I’ve never understood this. Maybe they wanted to “save” me.

As we waited by the docks in Turku for the gangplank chain to fall, they plied me with questions. Having flown directly into Helsinki for the Leningrad tour, this would be their first ever ferry ride.

It was a teaching opportunity, so I sketched the boating routine, which immediately sent Jeff and Robert running to the nearby train station. They hadn’t bothered activating their Eurail passes, and the cardinal rule of passage is that one must have a ticket.

I told them that unless there was a deck passengers’ padded lounge on this vessel (it turns out there wasn’t), we’d all be looking for a place on the floor to nap during the nighttime hours.

As for food, I noted the existence of a duty-free shop, a less expensive cafeteria-style eatery, and the Silja Line’s wonderful, reasonably priced seafood buffet in the ship’s ritzier restaurant. I explained my methodology of bringing a plastic “doggie” bag for the next day’s breakfast.

Jeff and Robert were intrigued by the seafood, but hesitant. Would it be too much for their burger and fries upbringing? Would they feel out of place in a nice space? Would Jesus have approved?

Would I go to dinner with them, just to make sure – their treat?

Yes, it would be my pleasure. I can tolerate almost anything for a free meal, even teenaged militaristic evangelicals from the Deep South. That night, at the seafood buffet, we were nearing the end of the meal when Jeff and Robert each produced huge plastic bags of the sort used to wrap booze at the duty-free, and began animatedly filling them with food.

Before I had the chance to helpfully suggest that discretion is an integral part of any pilferage equation, they had been spotted, and shortly a restaurant worker appeared. As the dressing-down commenced. I shrugged. After all, everyone knows that carry-outs aren't allowed at a buffet.

Soon Jeff and Robert were marched off to the cash register to settle their tabs and pay a fine for intemperance. I’d been entirely forgotten, and the whole dining room’s attention was centered on them, so I shrugged again and filled my own freezer bag with selected morsels for morning, secreted it in my coat, and left the scene.

On the way out, I thanked Jeff and Robert for their generosity. They were very unhappy, but I felt pretty good. It may have taken three months, but at least I’d learned some of the many budget travel ropes.

The last time I ever saw Jeff and Robert was on Monday morning in the subway station near the Silja mooring in Stockholm. They were standing forlornly by the turnstiles, crumpled dollars in hand, unable to determine how they’d be able to get the Swedish kroner necessary to buy tickets to the central station.

Having passed through Sweden a week earlier, I’d reserved a handful of coins for just such a contingency. There was enough for the three of us. It was the least I could do for a morning’s delicious smoked salmon.

---

Previously:

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 31 … Leningrad in three vignettes.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 30 … Or, as it was called at the time, Leningrad.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 29 … Helsinki beneath my feet, but Leningrad on my mind.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 28 … A Finnish detour to Tampere for beer and sausages.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 27 … Stockholm's blonde ambition, with or without mead-balls.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 26 … The Hansa brewery tour, and a farewell to Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 25 … Frantic pickled Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 24 … An aspiring “beer hunter” amid Carlsberg’s considerable charms.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 23 … A fleeting first glimpse of Copenhagen.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 22 … It's how the tulips were relegated.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not "The Longest Day."

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.

_

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.

---

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.

---

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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