Centerplate will allow Schlafly to be available at the Yum Center.

Today on Facebook, Schlafly's Scott Shreffler (try saying those three words more than twice in a row without falling off your bar stool) announced that Schlafly would have craft beer at the KFC Yum Center.

Here it is, folks. Starting Saturday, you'll be able to enjoy a pint of delicious Schlafly Beer at U of L basketball games or any YUM Center event. You're welcome.

Here's the bright new kiosk (Scott's photo):

Given the messy payola and congenital backroom conniving that lies at the very heart of most concessionaire dealings with publicly-supported sporting venues, I asked Scott to explain how this was accomplished.

Roger, we ...

Sighhhhhhh ... the preceding quote was pulled because Scott asked me to keep it to myself.  It goes without saying that I have no idea why it goes without saying. Maybe that's why I'm becoming an outcast in my own industry. Perhaps I need to stop introducing inconvenient topics, cease rattling cages, and start trading beers with people 2,000 miles away. Maybe then I'd be happy. Maybe then I'd be brain-dead.

That's certainly refreshing, isn't it? Evidently there was no small-print advertising requirement, multi-dollar handshakes or mandated discounting of product.

On a related note, Sam Cruz of Against the Grain told me a few weeks ago that AtG intends to seek an arrangement to get the brewery's beer past the turnstiles and inside Louisville Slugger Field for next season, which is a Centerplate territory, too.

Wonder if I'm still blacklisted?

Beer is back where it belongs: In church.

A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation. -- William Blake (1757-1827)

I can hear the anguished wailing of the prohibitionists; how dare alcohol be mixed with the only true religion -- except, of course, there is no true religion. As an atheist without an anthropology background, it's nonetheless plausible for me to suggest that combining religion with hallucinogens and intoxicants has the been the norm in human history far longer than bizarre notions of abstinence. Without them, does any of it even make sense?

To Stave Off Decline, Churches Attract New Members With Beer, by John Burnett (NPR)

With mainline religious congregations dwindling across America, a scattering of churches is trying to attract new members by creating a different sort of Christian community. They are gathering around craft beer.

Some church groups are brewing it themselves, while others are bring the Holy Mysteries to a taproom. The result is not sloshed congregants; rather, it's an exploratory approach to do church differently.

Louisville Zoo considers selling beer? Depends on what they mean by beer.

Rather than reprise various "Brew at the Zoo" lamentations appearing in this space for what seem like several decades, I'll merely repeat a link to non-accredited but entirely credible local source, River City Craft Wear:

Will Twerk For Transformers ...

... More than a few eyebrows raised when the title sponsorship of this year's 'Brew' went to Chicago's Goose Island Brewery. Famous for 312 Wheat Ale and Honkers Ale; Goose Island calls itself 'Chicago's Craft Beer.' Only, with minor harnessing of the power of Google, anyone can uncover the following:

1.) ABInBev purchased 58% of Goose Island (Fulton St. Brewery, LLC) in 2011.
2.) The remaining 42% of the company was then owned by the Craft Brewers Alliance (CBA). Phew, at least craft beer folks control SOME of Goose Island, right? Wrong. The CBA is a 'partner' of ABInBev, and sold their remaining stake in Goose Island to them. 'Chicago's Craft Beer' is anything but. It may as well be 'Budweiser Waterfowl Ale.' Or, as Roger Baylor (owner of New Albanian Brewing Co.) so perfectly put it, a 'Trojan Goose.'

Year in, year out, there comes a point during the discussion about Brew at the Zoo and the event's conceptual linkage with local craft beer when the civet cat comes tumbling from the bag, and the organizers concede that maximum fundraising revenue is the primary concern ... and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with this so long as it isn't labeled deceptively.

Don't sell it as "craft" if non-craft Goose Island (read: AB InBev) is greasing the wheels. Make it Goose at the Zoo, and watch as my objections evaporate.

Meanwhile, the zoo's everyday management now is floating a trial hippo with reference to beer sales. Readers are free to conjure their own backroom linkages between those conclusions borne of our Brew at the Zoo experiences, the fabulous propensity of concessionaires to fluff (and be fluffed by) corporate multi-national business, and the likely sources of future beer in your cup. I hope I'll be surprised, but breaths should not be held.

Louisville Zoo wants to start selling beer, by Sheldon S. Shafer (Courier-Journal)

Lions and tigers and beer, oh my!

The Louisville Zoo wants to allow beer sales as part of its effort to bring in more money and reduce its reliance on Metro government funding.

Many of the details — such as when beer sales would start — remain to be worked out between the zoo and its new concessionaire, said zoo spokeswoman Kyle Shepherd.

The PC: Aren't we leftists all?

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on November 1, 2013)

---

Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?

The sensation of which I speak isn’t an irrational state like paranoia. Rather, it’s the sneaking suspicion that you’re being toyed with, prompted and set up … suddenly confronted with a situation so weirdly surreal that a hidden camera surely must be aimed your way, primed to capture your dumbfounded, flailing reaction for speedy editing into a video for posting on YouTube, to be greeted virally with the guffaws of the uneducated, addled masses.

My former manager at Scoreboard Liquors must have felt this way on the infamous day thirty years ago when a complete stranger walked in, pointed at the door to the rear office, and asked, “Do you mind if I go back there and change my pants?”

YouTube obviously didn’t exist back then, but Candid Camera did, and the late Lloyd “Duck” Cunningham’s unprintable reply to the unknown man’s request would have played well in syndication, with Allen Funt joyfully suffering the brunt of bleeped-out epithets.

—

So it was earlier this year, when my inbox disgorged a question from an unhappy customer.

A little while ago I noticed there was a room that had pictures of several mass murdering, genocidal, tyrannical dictators on the walls. As a customer what meaning should I take from that? In my opinion it seems to show support from the owner of New Albania of these tyrants?

I enjoy the pizza at NABC but I don’t enjoy the thought of supporting someone that idolized people like the pictures and posters you seem to proudly display. Maybe I misunderstand their meaning.

My initial reaction was annoyance: Who had gone in there, pulled down my Commie posters and replaced them with fascists – Franco, Mussolini, Idi Amin and Dick Cheney?

Then I realized he was referring to the usual Red Room stalwarts like Lenin, Castro and Gus Hall. Well, that’s fair enough, because it all depends on where you’re standing at the time.

Here’s what I told him in reply.

It isn’t necessarily a misunderstanding on your part, but what I can tell you with certainty is that there is no idolatry on mine.

I remain a leftist, broadly speaking, and I traveled in the East Bloc and USSR as a young man in the 1980s, but while I found these countries fascinating from a number of standpoints, they were not places where I ever wished to live.

Your question is asked every now and then, and my answer always has been the same: The Red Room means whatever the observer wishes for it to mean: Kitschy poster art emporium, spoils of Cold War victory or a shrine of reverence.

However, the primary intent for me is for it to serve as a talking point to help keep a piece of still-recent history living, in the sense that with each passing year, fewer (mostly younger) customers have any clue what the era even was about.

The verdict of history is fairly clear when it comes to the legacy of Stalin and Mao, and I have confidence that interested parties will reach that conclusion, as you and I surely have. But they must first be interested, and motivated to investigate. In my view, the Red Room periodically serves that purpose.

To the best of my rapidly declining base of pop culture knowledge, the preceding explanation is true.

As for what I might have been thinking twenty years ago with regard to the space now known as the Red Room, it’s also true that my prime motivation at the time was to have a place to display the many period propaganda pieces hauled home from travels abroad. One thing led to another, and there it was. It came together non-metaphorically.

I’m the first to admit there is as little to idolize on Stalin’s part as Hitler’s, but to repeat, the point lies elsewhere. Now that decades have passed and the older generations have departed, precious little discussion takes place about the “-isms” dominating the entirety of the 20th century … and sorry, yonder Teahadists, but loud ranting amid voluminous ricocheting spittle about Communism in the context of “Obamacare” does not suffice as earnestness.

Forgetting history begets repeating it, as either Santayana or Carlos Santana once said … or sang. It is my intention not to do so.

—

But my favorite example of work- and history-related consumer behavior occurred not at the Public House, but at Bank Street Brewhouse not long after we opened in 2009.

One of our servers was asked to explain Roger’s political beliefs in light of the red stars and leftist images on the shiny new brewing equipment visible just past the window.

Our man on the floor at the time, who’d studied some history and poli-sci, made a game effort to interpret these complex threads of geopolitics, economics and the art of brewing, and to phrase them in snappy sentences reproducible on bumper stickers for a Lexus, and yet the customer remained unimpressed, writing this on his charge card receipt:

“Tell your Commie boss to share the wealth.”

In order to accentuate his displeasure with my cheeky political proclivities, this rather boorish scion of an identifiably Falangist regional family left the gratuity column empty, thus stiffing the server while doing me no harm whatever.

Classy, eh? Not only that, but the customer was mistaken; in fact, I share the wealth of my knowledge every day, as teachers are wont to do, and in this vein, permit me to repeat my advice to the server, should such a question ever be asked again:

“We don’t care what sort of ‘ist’ Roger is, just as long as he keeps signing our paychecks.”

Houndmouth, band and ale, all around this November.

In the summer of 1985, I was in Ireland.

I was in search of an Irish stereotype, preferring it to be a regular provincial town and not a larger city, once with scenery nearby for rambling through. There needed to be pubs (as though one could locate a square inch of Ireland without three or more of them) and cheap eats. It needed to be accessible by train, because that way, tickets already were paid with my Eurailpass.

A place just like Sligo, in fact.

It was to the northwest of Dublin, on Ireland’s opposite side, and a place utterly alien to me that sounded estimably Irish. There wasn’t enough time to explore Donegal, to the north, where the original language still could be heard. Sligo was my choice, and it proved to be a good one.

Exiting the train station on a sunny day, I saw an orderly settlement of perhaps 10,000 inhabitants (a quarter-century later, it has doubled in size). There were pubs and a lively main street, a small river surrounded by decaying gray mills, and green fields on the periphery, rolling out to meet Knocknarea and Ben Bulben, two limestone hills looming nearby. Near the bus station I passed a normal row house with a hand-lettered sign in the window offering a room to let for travelers just like me. The husband and wife both were teachers, supplementing their incomes during tourist season. It was ideal.

Back in France, a British rock and roll magazine parked atop the breakfast table had trumpeted Live Aid, Bob Geldof’s benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief, scheduled for worldwide transmission by satellite on July 13, 1985. Early in the morning that exact day, Gerry was off to play golf at nearby Strandhill, and he dropped me off at the foot of Knocknarea. I hiked to the top for an examination of the ancient burial mound, then descended and hopped a weekend bus back to Sligo. Live Aid was underway at Wembley in London, and the pubs were more crowded than I'd imagined with people in the pre-big screen age, watching the concert.

At some point, I went back to my lodging, and found Gerry and Mary intently huddled around a tiny black and white television in the kitchen, upon which there were fuzzy images of U2 taking the stage. This was much to my delight. It was a band I knew well, just a few albums into its ascension, and as Irish as Irish could be. Sharing this viewpoint with my hosts, they nodded amiably and proceeded to inform me of their abysmal ignorance of pop music -- but U2, well, it was a different thing altogether, even if they didn't know a single song.

"They're Irish boys, one of us."

Fast forward too damned many years, and I feel the same sort of pride about Houndmouth. They're New Albanian lads, and a lass, although the difference between anecdote participants is that I know and like Houndmouth's music, which to the uninitiated is hard to describe. Accounts of the band often evoke comparisons to The Band, and I'll leave it at that. We all got together early in 2013 when Houndmouth suggested we brew a beer just for them, and while such pairings don't always work out, this one seemed worth trying, and so we did. It was a genuine collaboration. We sat around a table at Bank Street Brewhouse, tasted and chatted, and the final verdict was a hoppy American Wheat Ale. David Pierce and Ben Minton took it from there.

Houndmouth was on tap for Houndmouth's season-opening outdoor show at the Iroquois Amphitheater back in April, and it will be pouring again on November 29 and 30, when the group plays indoors at Headliners. NABC's web site has the details, along with news of the St. Matthews Mellow Mushroom's month long Houndmouth beer promo.

Mellow Mushroom in St. Matthews is putting on the Houndmouth all November long

The lucky number is 74: BIGnews from the Brewers of Indiana Guild.

With a bit of snipping, here's a snapshot of craft beer in Indiana, courtesy of BIG executive director Lee Smith. Pay special attention to the 2014 dates and the 74 active breweries.

---

BIGnews

Brewers of Indiana Guild 

October 29, 2013

2014 Important Dates

Winterfest: February 1
Bloomington Craft Beer Week: April 5-12
Bloomington Craft Beer Festival: April 12
Annual Meeting in Indianapolis: April 19
Circle City Beer Week: July 12-19
Indiana Microbrewers Festival: July 19

BIG on the road
November 13 NORTH Region, Iechyd Da
November 14 NORTH WEST Region, Three Floyds
More on the way!

Here we GROW again…
As of today there are 74 active breweries (including permitted second-location breweries) in Indiana, with 16 "in-planning"

ATC: Big Brother?
Just noticed this on the ATC website. Has it always been there? The Alcohol & Tobacco Commission Mission Statement includes the following:
“To protect the economic welfare, health, peace, and morals of the people of this state.” Good to know — Thank you, ATC, for keeping us moral!

Beer at the State Fair
Executive Director Lee Smith and Guild counsel Mark Webb appeared before the State Fair Commission last week regarding our proposal to have Indiana Craft beer sold during the Fair. Our discussion and PowerPoint were very well received. The Commission voted to endorse the proposal, and urged the General Assembly to pass legislation making it legal to serve/sell beer during the Fair. One commissioner abstained from voting, but all others voted in favor--a great sign! If our bill is adopted in the upcoming session, it could take effect in time for the 2014 Fair. Indiana is in a very small minority of states whose Fairs do not include beer.

BIG in the news...

BIG celebration in Lafayette last month! Lafayette Brewing, Indiana's second-oldest brewery, celebrated its 20th anniversary. Congratulations to Greg and the entire LBC team!

BIG Treasurer Chris Stanek, Crown Brewing, is featured in the "20 Under 40" series in this great article from the NW Times.

 "Aliens" Invade... Does their arrival complement our own great craft beer industry, or eat into your business? Oskar Blues comes to Indiana this month, as does Destihl. 

Two pieces on how the Government Shutdown affected our breweries, featuring People’s and Triton.

Clay Robinson & Barnaby Struve on Inside Indiana Business with Gerry Dick.

Halloween beers--cool concept!

New craft beer bar at Lawrenceburg casino.

Are you reading Beer Buzz every week? You should be! Rita Kohn covers Indiana craft beer from around the state in her weekly blog and in NUVO, Indy's alt-weekly. Make Rita happy by feeding her info about new beers, special events and honors, and she'll do her best to get the word out.

Chris Sikich continues his great series on Indiana's breweries in the Indianapolis Star.

Interesting Inside Indiana Business re: Hamilton County firm developer ready to launch iKeg, a tech product for brewery and distributor inventory management system.

“5 Things We Adore Right Now” features Bier Brewery’s Pumpkin Ale and Thr3e Wise Men’s Farmivore Pizza

And finally… if you enjoy frat-house humor, you may like this short video from Conan O’Brien, who sent “Triumph the Comic Insult Dog” to GABF this month. The aging frat-boy your Executive Director lives with thought this was hilarious. Check it out yourself.

There's one fewer prohibitionist in the legislature today. Amen.

The Brewers of Indiana Guild has been informed that Representative Bill Davis, Chairman of the House Public Policy committee, has resigned his seat to become Executive Director of Indiana's Office of Community and Rural Affairs.

Why is this of significance? First, BIG's Lee Smith explains the legislative procedure:

All alcoholic beverage bills are automatically assigned to the House or Senate Public Policy committees, and must make it out of committee "alive" to continue through the legislative process. If a bill dies in committee, it is indeed dead and cannot not be debated or amended.

As chairman of the Public Policy Committee, Davis was in a position to squelch legislation to advance craft beer, and as a teetotaling prohibitionist of the old school, this is precisely what he did -- not always, but often enough. Given that Indiana's Republican legislators in the main have been rational about the craft beer business from the pragmatic standpoint of statewide "homegrown" economic development, Davis stood out like a sore Baptist with his self-professed hostility toward beverage alcohol as a valued component of a truly civilized society.

It's hard for me to imagine a successor s hostile, so fingers are crossed. It's morning, but somewhere, it's beer-thirty.

Bill Davis Resigns House Seat To Take Position With Gov. Administration

Gravity Head 2014: The Bullet Train to Blackout Town leaves the station on Friday, February 28.

Yes, already.

Gravity Head 2014 (the 16th such bacchanalia in a whacked-out series that began in 1999) commences at 7:00 a.m. on Friday, February 28. What is Gravity Head? If you gotta ask, you’re never gonna know.

For the preliminary list of festival-eligible kegs, go to the permanent link at the NABC web site:

http://newalbanian.com/gravity-head-2014-the-bullet-train-to-blackout-town-leaves-the-station-on-friday-february-28/

Panic attack: "Craft Writing" symposium coming in February, with me as a speaker.

I was asked some months ago to participate in a symposium called "Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture," to be held at the University of Kentucky (my mom's alma mater) on February 15, 2014.

Now it's dawning on me that among a group of stellar and high-powered craft beer luminaries, including personal heroes like Stan Hieronymus, Mitch Steele and -- gasp -- Garrett Oliver, I might well be the most recent call-up from Double-A ball.

Will I be hazed?

A Twitter friend suggested mild intoxication as a coping strategy, but why depart from the tried and gonzo habit of "full" intake? Perhaps breakfast at West 6th would do the trick.

But seriously: My usual last-minute improv routine may need some polishing for this one. If I remain the localist and embrace the radicalism inherent in being an unknown, it should be okay.

Practice, practice, practice.

Do they still make Mr. Microphones?

The PC: I’m not kidding. Downtown New Albany is a craft beer destination.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on September 15, 2013)

---

I place little stock in seemingly ubiquitous on-line reader polls, and I don’t personally encourage anyone to vote.

In like fashion, the New Albanian Brewing Company refrains from asking its customers and fans to cast dozens of ballots for the sake of the cause. Some of the time we are mentioned in such polls, at other times not, but as a perennial underdog from unappreciated New Albany, to win, place or show in the absence of chest thumping and similar varieties of narcissistic campaigning always provides sweet vindication, especially if the voting is being conducted by a Louisville-oriented publication.

That’s why this year’s LEO Weekly Readers’ Choice poll results are pleasing to me. After finishing first in 2012, Bank Street Brewhouse placed second in the Best Restaurant (Southern Indiana) balloting, trailing Feast BBQ, and finishing just ahead of The Exchange. What the three of us have in common is a location in New Albany, where such a trifecta would have been unthinkable a few short years ago.

As Metro Louisville slowly awakens to the notion of downtown New Albany as a varied, quality “food court” worthy of attention, what may not be as obvious is the pervasive extent to which craft beer reigns supreme in these newer dining establishments.

Take it from me; it didn’t happen overnight.

—

The late, lamented Bistro New Albany opened in 2006, and closed roughly a year and a half later. It occupied downstairs space in an otherwise shuttered former hotel on the corner of Bank and Market, where the bar and restaurant used to be.

In rooms once filled with Sunday lunchtime churchgoers, local grandees and hotel patrons, most of them sipping sweet tea and nibbling at Salisbury steak with standard-order mashed potatoes, the BNA’s David Clancy conjured a contemporary bistro menu. Perhaps it wasn’t as daring as similar spots in Louisville, but the concept was revolutionary for a downtown largely moribund, and the effect was electric.

Better yet, Chef Clancy kept ten good beers on tap, all of the time. Some were imports, and others regional. Usually there were a couple of drafts from NABC, at a time when our outside distribution was quite limited. When BNA started, “craft” beer was about as unknown in downtown New Albany as nylons in Leonid Brezhnev’s USSR, but in the bistro’s wake, modernity gradually began creeping into the vacuum. Some of the establishments have since gone (Connor’s Place, The Speakeasy), but the food and drink generation to follow has made my city’s historic business district a place to go for craft drafts.

—

These thoughts first occurred to me one day in September, when I decided to have a beer for lunch, which I do quite often, occasionally varying the routine by including an edible morsel or two. Granted, the beer’s (somewhat) free for me at Bank Street Brewhouse, but it’s nice to maintain a schedule of visitations in the neighborhood to greet fellow operators and sample their wares.

On that day, my choice of venues for a purely liquid lunch revealed a masochistic streak, because it is almost impossible to sit for any length of time at Feast BBQ’s bar and resist ordering food.

To walk into this historic, lovingly restored tavern is to be wrestled to the ground by the visceral aroma of smoky meat; to pick oneself up and proceed to the bar provides a pleasing vista of one hundred or more bourbons, as well as a dozen taps devoted exclusively to beers brewed in Indiana and Kentucky. My choice was a Workingman’s Pilsner by Fountain Square Brewing Company in Indianapolis, and it was cool, crisp and tasty.

Before Prohibition, Feast’s space was designed for watering people. Their horses were cared for in the adjoining building, known as Shrader Stables, where The Exchange restaurant quickly has become downtown New Albany’s crown jewel, both architecturally and in terms of delicious gastropub cuisine. The cocktail program is extensive, and the draft beer selection tilted toward nationally distributed American craft brands.

On my first visit to the stables some years back, it was a grim picture of roof cave-ins, mildew and all-purpose decay, but on a more recent occasion, I enjoyed a hoppy Daredevil IPA (Shelbyville, Indiana) and admired workhorse local developer Steve Resch’s stellar building renovation, which is an attraction in itself, and arguably second only to Patrick O’Shea’s on Whiskey Row in downtown Louisville. The sleek modern lines of the YMCA’s building across Main Street reflects the refashioned stables in its windows, and the juxtaposition of urbanism is striking.

A few blocks west of Exchange and Feast is JR’s Pub, housed in a comfy, utilitarian building astride Main Street (i.e., the route to Horseshoe Casino), with outdoor volleyball courts in back, plenty of sports on television, and a half-dozen NABC beers on tap – making it the brewery’s largest draft lineup outside our own two pubs. JR’s fried fish sandwich is second to none, and the blue plate specials provide solid midday value. The vibe is purely egalitarian, and it’s a clean, well-lighted place with Bud Light bottle babies and Beak’s Best pint lovers mingling together.

Perhaps the most pleasing outgrowth of downtown New Albany’s transformation is an expansion of international flair. Dragon King’s Daughter (corner of Bank and Elm) offers sushi and Japanese-Mexican fusion cuisine, and follows in the noble tradition of the late, lamented Maido by pouring a half-dozen American craft beers at all times.

Habana Blues (Cuban), La Bocca (Italian) and Louis le Francais (French) are clustered on one short block of Market, which also boasts Toast on Market for breakfast, house-roasted Quills Coffee, a cigar shop and smoking lounge called Billow, and DP Updogs, a corner hot dog stand. Both Habana Blues and La Bocca have short draft lists with multiple NABC taps and other crafts and imports, although opting for a Mojito at Habana Blues can be forgiven.

On the other hand, while stocking very little beer, Chef Louis’s little slice of France specializes mostly in good wine, pointing to the availability of quality vino in downtown New Albany. River City Winery is located on Pearl Street, makes excellent pizza, and sells only its own house wines, as produced by the owner in the basement when he’s not on duty as a city policeman. JR’s, mentioned earlier, shares common ownership with the Old 502 Winery in Louisville, and of course those wines are featured at JR’s.

But there’s even more good beer downtown: On draft at the New Albany location of Wick’s Pizza (State Street across from Schmitt Furniture), in bottles at Café 27 on Main, and both ways at Irish Exit, a few blocks east in the direction of Mansion Row. Lastly, permit me a tout for my own business: Bank Street Brewhouse obviously features NABC’s beers of proven merit, a dozen on draft at a time, with another (or sometimes two) on hand pull, as well as the full range of 22-ounce bomber bottles. We arrived in 2009, and it’s been one hell of a ride so far.

For many years, downtown New Albany was a food and drink wasteland. Now, surveying the preceding list, I’m guessing that within easy walking distance of each other, there are 75 or more “good beer” taps from breweries ranging from Hoosier stalwarts NABC, Flat12, Sun King and Three Floyds to national brands like Boulevard, Stone, Bell’s and Shipyard – and don’t forget Keg Liquors on Pearl, only a few doors down from perhaps the one business downtown that really has seen it all: Kaiser Tobacco, operating since before the American Civil War.

Since 1832, in fact.

There’s a turn of local phrase: We’re all here because we’re not all there. But there’s much more here than before. Come over and check it out. Catch me on a liquid lunch day, and I may even be offering tours.

The PC: Can we really have it all?

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on October 1, 2013)

---

Just the other day, I heard the news that executive chef Reed Johnson had parted ways with Against the Grain. Actually, I read the news at the Eater Louisville web site, and this merits a brief digression about changing times.

It strikes me as noteworthy that a full week later, the transition at AtG still hasn’t been mentioned at the Louisville Restaurants Forum, for some years the city’s go-to place for such a story.

NABC’s well-documented tussle with the Floyd County Health Department, which began in mid-June and was given ample coverage at Eater Louisville and elsewhere on-line, hasn’t hit the forum yet, either. Granted, I never thought to flog it, although you’d think someone would have. In a larger sense, a generational shift probably is under way, and discussion boards like the forum have become somewhat outmoded in the age of knee-jerk social media, yielding to any number of purely dismal Yelp-like ratings aggregators.

But this isn’t my topic today. Rather, it is my personal reaction to comments appended to the Eater notice of Reed’s leaving.

First, the departure. We all like to believe “it’s only business” and “there’s nothing personal,” and yet emotions naturally run high when change comes around. There are no right and wrong answers, only the inevitability of flux. Ironically, it turns out that I stopped by Against the Grain on what quite likely was Reed’s last day of work, scoring a growler of delicious Spezial-like smoked beer, and regretting not having enough time on the day in question to have a leisurely pint with one of his excellent barbecue sandwiches.

What’s funny is this: At the time, grasping my sweating growler and trying not to think like the businessman I’m ostensibly supposed to be – albeit it with supreme reluctance – it occurred to me that with baseball season over, cooler weather on the way, and AtG (the brewery) working so hard on its designer export beer model … well, how was the restaurant coming along, anyway?

It’s what owners do, after all. We think way too much, compare and contrast, and seldom are able to just go out and enjoy a beer and a bite. Even worse, as much as the leftist in me would like to avoid them, numbers generally end up dominating the conversation – and they have dollar signs attached to them. It is profoundly bothersome.

—

Now, I’ve no way of knowing the answers to questions like these. Furthermore, it’s none of my business. I consider myself to be friends with the quartet of AtG owners. What’s more, Reed worked for Bank Street Brewhouse for a bit, pre-AtG, when Josh Lehman was in our kitchen. I know and like everyone involved, so case closed. Better if we could all drink happily ever after, because beer cauterizes all wounds.

At the risk of pondering aloud, what I do know from personal experience – after almost five years of trying to achieve it at BSB – is that while a first-rate, chef-driven kitchen with a marvelous brewpub in back is a wonderful idea in theory, and even has been known to succeed (Swiss bank account style) in practice, it isn’t very easy to make money with higher level food when you’re trying to grow an export-driven, quality brewery at the same time.

It’s an echo of the time-honored refrain: You say you want to make a million dollars in brewing? Just start with $10 million … and that’s just the brewery, not the food.

There is much validity to that. If you don’t have a considerable pot of money from which to draw, it’s quite possible to learn that capitalizing both an evolving brewery and a top-flight kitchen is fiendishly difficult, here on the ground, out in the real world.

RateBeer never told you anything about this, did it?

This might explain my irritation at two of the (typically) anonymous comments beneath the Eater article announcing AtG’s kitchen change. One of the comments decried the absence of freedom for chefs, who always are at the mercy of brutal, bottom-line-driven owners, and lamented the overall lack of chef-driven kitchens in Louisville, encouraging culinary stars to own their own restaurants. The other predicted the imminent arrival of the Sysco truck at AtG, now that the brewery’s first chef was gone.

Pfui.

Does the world really need more such surreptitious advisors, these expert sidewalk superintendents who evidently have no clue about the food and labor costs involved with providing them with the best of ever-changing menu items at a price point they’re willing to pay, given microscopic consumer attention spans and vicious competition from the chains that typically receive the big-time government subsidies … and must I mention the monolithic agribusiness entities putting gasoline in those accursed Sysco trucks?

Dudes, you simply have no idea, do you?

Consider other infuriating stressors: Garden-variety wine snobs refusing to believe mere beer can accompany such elevated cuisine, demanding the highest-rated Chilean, Californian or (gasp) French vino, and refusing to even sample regional examples of the vintner’s art … customers who can’t pay $65 for a meal without multiple refills of Diet Coke … and don’t forget those who expect chicken fingers and periodic floor vacuuming for their free-range children.

If it was so damned easy, don’t you think all of us would be in clover? What was that? We’re already in clover? It isn’t clover at all. Think of a later stage of the digestive process, and you’d be closer to the mark.

This rant may or may not have anything to do with Against the Grain, or for that matter, to Bank Street Brewhouse. It’s just my story, and I’m sticking to it. However, this much is axiomatic, at least to me: Unless AtG, BSB or any other brewery in their relative positions comes independently stuffed with cash, there comes a point when traditional sources of investment glare first at the restaurant side, and then at the brewery, curl their lips like bankers so enjoy doing, and say something along the lines of this:

“Can you please decide which one you’d like to be, restaurant or production brewery, and once you’ve done so, we’ll consider possibly maybe helping you – unless, of course, we do not care a solitary jot. And we don’t. See that door over there … ”

Yes, those of us in the food and drink business have been known to creatively embellish the truth, and for good reason. To blink publicly or otherwise show any sign of weakness is to invite self-perpetuating calamity of the rumor-mongering variety – on the Internet, spread by word of mouth, or scratched onto the restroom wall (and guess who pays to fix that?)

Besides, no one on the planet wants to hear about our problems. We chose the lives we lead, and understandably, customers merely want to be reassured that their favorite joint is still going to be there, slinging hash and filling pints, the next time they go out. It’s only something to think about, and probe a bit more deeply than the time it takes to make ludicrous comments at a restaurant news web site.

I wish Reed Johnson the best in whatever career path he pursues. He’s a great and entirely authentic guy, with oodles of talent.

And, I also remain an unrepentant fan of AtG, even if it’s sometimes far too enjoyable for this curmudgeonly elder to refrain from giving them a hard time. I hope they can have it all, and the smoked beer — wonderful.

So, folks, give everyone some space. Try to remember that marketplaces can be unforgiving. Support independent local business whenever you can.

And: Death to chains!

It’s my traditional ending, eh?

The PC: Tears of joy at the Augustiner, 1985.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on September 15, 2013)

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Coming of age in the Ohio Valley in the 1960’s and ‘70’s meant witnessing on a depressing, first-hand basis the very nadir of beer culture in America.

In Colonial times, our beer making and drinking customs reflected English origins. Later, when Germans began coming to the United States in large numbers, their traditions traveled with them and remained intact. All big American cities and most of the smaller ones had breweries that took procedural, technical and atmospheric cues from the time-tested Central European playbook. It was a lovely thing, while it lasted.

Xenophobic sentiments in World War I did not help matters, and the idiocy of Prohibition sealed the deal, obliterating American beer culture for decades after. Following WWII, the imperial-era American preference for bland, manufactured uniformity wrenched beer from its fresh, local foundation, rendering it into watery oblivion, and subjecting beer to the multitudinous regulatory irrationalities of Bible Belt superstition.

Nonetheless, during my youth, there remained a dusty patina of vaguely recognizable German character to local legacies and customs of beer and beer drinking. After all, Oertel’s, Fehr’s and Wiedemann were not names traceable to Guatemala or Japan. Family trees connected them to Bavaria, the southern region of Germany where lager brewing and its social vocabulary were first developed.

In 1985, these faint Bavarian murmurs were as good as it got in Louisville. I knew nothing of the English ale-making tradition, which survived in shrinking pockets in New England, and was being surreptitiously revived by a nascent “micro” movement out West. Belgium was a place for waffles, not Trappists, which were virtually unknown outside their monasteries of origin.

Fortunately, I worked in a package store, stocked a few imports, and read the early words of the late Michael “The Beer Hunter” Jackson. These and other educational nuances were supplemented by frequent samplings, accumulating steadily over the years until beer became my life’s work. However, in 1985, all this was yet to come. Rather, there was a train from Vienna to Salzburg, in Austria’s mountainous Alpine region, located just over the frontier from Mecca (Munich).

Salzburg has fully earned its reputation as a clean, efficient and scenic center of art and culture, especially music. Mozart was born there, and the composer’s image is synonymous with marzipan sold all over town. The “Sound of Music” was filmed in the region. There’s a thousand-year-old castle overlooking the fairy tale facades of the Old Town, and ancient salt mines nearby (“salz” is salt in German).

I was oblivious to most of it, having set my sights on the history of just one attraction, the Augustiner Bräustübel, a venerable tavern and beer garden where beer now called Müllner Bräu has been brewed and served for four centuries – or, well before the United States was founded.

Safely ensconced in a friendly Salzburg youth hotel, I embarked by foot upon the search for my chosen beer garden. My course was plotted on an English-language map, because I was still learning to make sense of street signs and other navigational clues in German, even if it was as comprehensible as any language I’d yet experienced. Eventually the Augustiner acreage came into view. The religious complex inched up onto gently sloping terrain at the foot of a ridge, with the brewery and beer garden … where?

In a state of excitement and youthful muddle, my first choice of entry doors was utterly mistaken. I stepped across a threshold, and through a partly ajar door, a choir could be seen and heard practicing. Finally one of them saw me, and gestured: Out, to the left.

The adjacent entrance took me inside, down a wide flight of stairs to a long corridor that contained various kiosks vending foodstuffs. Indoor drinking rooms were located off to the side, sumptuously appointed in wood, with tile stoves and stained glass windows.

But it was out in the leafy beer garden that I fell in love with a way of life, one experienced for the very first time. At midday, hundreds of beer lovers were seated at tables, shaded by towering chestnut trees, surrounded by stone walls and stucco, virtually all of them drinking malty Marzen-style lager brewed and aged only yards away.

It was entirely self-service, or so I remember. You went back inside for sausages, salads and loaves of crusty bread, and then joined the line for beer. A cashier took Austrian schillings, as plastic was not negotiable and Euros didn’t exist, and handed back a receipt. Upon choosing a liter (33.8 ounces) ceramic mug from the freshly washed public stack, you ritualistically rinsed it in a fountain of cold water, handed it and the receipt over to aproned men who were pouring the deep golden beer from a tap embedded in a wooden barrel, and prepared for nirvana.

Teens drank alongside elderly men. There were playing cards, songs for singing, chicken bones and carts filled with emptied mugs. Strangers shared tables and bought rounds. Worldwide languages were spoken. I ate, drank, used the WC, drank some more, and returned the following two nights to do it again, each time walking 25 minutes back to my lodging, feeling perfectly safe and wishing we could do the same back home.

In the decades since, I’ve visited dozens of similar beer gardens in Central Europe. Some proved superior to the Augustiner, but it’s the first time you always remember, isn’t it?

The PC: No worth without principle.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on September 1, 2013)

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My career has been riddled with controversy, which I never fully understand.
– Liz Phair

Louisville’s annual Brew at the Zoo (BATZ) has come and gone, and while by most accounts it was bigger than ever in 2013, fair-minded observers can (and will) differ as to whether it was “better” this time around. So it goes, and I can’t offer a valid opinion, seeing as my weekend was spent in Lafayette, Indiana. NABC participated in the 2nd annual, Indiana-craft-only Beers Across the Wabash festival, and a wonderful time was had by all.

At this juncture some might ask, and plausibly: But Roger, you always claim to be a localist, and Lafayette is three hours away – so exactly how is that local?

There are different answers for that sort of question, some serious and others more light-hearted, as in “local is anywhere I happen to be drinking.”

It remains that we’re a brewery seeking business in Metro Louisville as well as the entire state of Indiana, and hopefully again in Greater Kentucky once we’ve shed the slothful Soviet-era albatross otherwise known as Heidelberg Distributing.

As a director on the board of the Brewers of Indiana Guild, I’ve become accustomed to thinking and planning in terms of incremental progress, overlapping circles and the overall notion of shift. Consequently, one spends much time engaged in a progress approximating triage, making decisions and prioritizing according to resources, time and guiding principle.

It seems to me that these latter considerations sometimes are misunderstood. In a nutshell, the first two are somewhat negotiable, but the principle … not so much.

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Louisville Craft Beer Week (LCBW) is almost upon us, and it will conclude on September 21 with the annual Louisville Independent Business Alliance (LIBA) Brewfest, as moved from a former date earlier in the summer to provide an exclamation point for an ever-expanding LCBW. Apart from the obvious fact that LIBA’s very essence is intimately linked in a conceptual sense to independent, small-scale brewing, its beer festival operates within a firm local and regional craft beer context, and as such, it’s probably the closest thing we have to a signature beer festival in Metro Louisville.

I suppose the question (if there is one, but you know me) is whether Louisville needs such an event, and if so, how it would be organized … not to mention the best destination coffer for its proceeds.

For quite some time now, I’ve been annoying readers with subversive ruminations on various contradictions inherent to contemporary craft beer culture. Narcissism tops the list. Another centers on the institution of the beer festival as we have come to know it: You pay a price (don’t get me started about VIP tiers), get a souvenir cup, and navigate ever larger crowds in order to ingest as many 2-ounce portions as possible before the equestrian police clear the grounds with truncheons left over from the last World Cup football qualifier.

Okay, okay; it isn’t always that bad. Still, even if all beer festivals are created equal, some are more equal than others. The fundamental truth is that there is a tipping point somewhere on a techno-weenie’s i-Pad graph, illustrating that x number of people occupying y square footage, and given z as a price point, leads almost inevitably to the craft beer equivalent of a cattleman’s feed lot, as opposed to a proper venue for growing and nurturing craft beer.

Brewers caring to speak honestly almost always will offer the same response when asked which sort of gatherings they prefer. We tend to think that smaller is better, especially when organized by fellow brewers, because at an event like Lafayette’s, 27 Indiana breweries and a crowd of 1,100 afforded greater face time and the reasonable chance to educate beer lovers. These conditions are far less achievable at an event on the scale of BATZ, the prime motivation of which (and I’m only repeating what its backers concede both publicly and privately) is making as much money as possible for the chosen cause.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, either, as the same can be said of past LIBA Brewfests (not to mention my own guild’s annual BIG Microfest). It’s just that speaking only for myself, and not denying the efficacy of the institution of a metro zoo in any way, shape or form, monies generated by independent small brewing businesses at the LIBA Brewfest subsequently are reinvested to promote the notion of local independent small businesses overall.

In other words, localism begets localism, the game is worth the flame, and I like those odds.

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Just know that in a typical calendar year, craft breweries like mine are offered dozens of opportunities to donate beer, money and time to perfectly worthy non-profit causes. Solicitations have grown exponentially over the past few years as interest in craft beer has spiked, and we do the best we can to support as many of them as possible.

Accordingly, we’ve come over time to view our potential levels of support in two basic ways: First, when it comes to the beer itself, we’d like to be paid; various laws often require this, and wholesaler discounting schemes also are subject to state control. We think wholesale price isn’t too much to ask, seeing as fundraising event organizers still reap the value added to a keg of beer, whether disbursed as sample size or via full-cup sales.

Moreover, we almost always donate gift certificates, silent auction items and the like to help raise even more money. For many years, I’ve donated personally guided group tasting NABC certificates, and these generally attract good bids. Everyone wins.

Other fest factors sometimes matter on a case by case basis. If the event requires a commute, perks can help (discounted hotel rooms or meals for brewery staff, for instance). They’re not always necessary, although they help with the decision-making triage.

Bear in mind that I’m referring here to an informal policy of NABC’s, and obviously, I cannot authoritatively speak for all breweries. Our working lives in such cases are more complicated than ever before, and much of what we can and cannot do increasingly is subject to control by state authorities. There always will be exceptions, but the number of exceptions cannot be more frequent than the rule itself. After all, we must remain in business, too.

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Is there a need for a signature beer festival in Metro Louisville?

Perhaps we already have one, i.e., the nine delightfully cumulative days of LCBW. Taken as a whole, it’s the best time to be a craft beer fan in these parts, and there’s something for everyone.

Ultimately, comparisons between LIBA Brewfest and BATZ probably are unfair, and yet I sense there is lingering discomfort from the summer’s social media controversies, so allow me to add that while both organizations surely need money to survive, my own personal principles as a small, local, independent businessman bot constitute and are mirrored by LIBA’s everyday mission, and these principles are what guide me when deciding how NABC will make choices among a plethora of admirable non-profit causes.

Contrary to what you may think, I have nothing against BATZ. The point I’ve been trying to make this year is that BATZ is one of many scheduling options, and one of many deserving non-profits. When weighing contingencies, ideological harmony must be considered. Beers Across the Wabash has it, and so does LIBA Brewfest. Given BATZ’s decision to accept AB InBev sponsorship cash in 2013, its bar got lowered, and that is sad.

You’re free to deny reality until the end of time, but Goose Island is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the beer world’s largest extortionate conglomerate, and it contradicts virtually every tenet of my daily business existence. Granted, we’re all free to take whatever money is offered, wherever we find it, and when BATZ accepted AB InBev’s big bucks handshake this year, the result wasn’t just Trojan Goose at the event. It was Stella, too.

Fortunately, the realm of principle operates according to a different unit of currency than the expedient of “for sale to all comers,” and one’s conscience needn’t ever be up for grabs. NABC is delighted to espouse the gospel according to LIBA, and in the future, we’ll be just as happy to actively return to the wonders of the zoological garden – that is, once craft (as opposed to crafty) principle is restored.

Is principle really controversial? I’ve never fully understood why. It’s actually lifeblood, or at least it should be. Enjoy LCBW in 2013, and don’t be afraid to think.

The PC: Baby come back.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on August 15, 2013)

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There was a time when I’d make beer lists whenever I traveled, and it dates me considerably to confide that these were compiled using a pen and paper, and perhaps transcribed and typewritten later, long after I was back home.

Untappd didn’t even exist then. How on earth did we drink?

The list habit started before beer became a business. When overseas, the idea would be to drink a different beer for every day I was away. As you might expect, this wasn’t much of a challenge for sojourns into Bavaria or Belgium, although places like Italy or Bulgaria during the 1980s were far less fruitful.

Occasionally I’d be compelled to downgrade to wine – the horror.

I didn’t know much about beer back then, and the beers on my lists mostly were grouped by country, not style. As time went on, the ground shifted. For starters, I began learning about beer, and could tell a Doppelbock from a Bitter. Then, an American craft beer revolution started breaking out. At some point, I found myself smack in the middle of it, and right about the time it began making sense, it no longer did.

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It is possible to trace back my encroaching disillusionment to a single instance of judging, around ten years ago. I took my new and only barely acquired BJCP status (those science questions were far too heavy for this humanities major) to Indianapolis to judge entries to the state fair, and was assigned Hefe-Weizen. Entries were numerous, and there were four of us: Two beer business guys, and two homebrewers.

It soon became apparent that the two pros had no chance to offer substantive input. Our two fellow judges had concluded that flavors and aromas roughly approximating liquid clove cigarettes were necessary for beers to pass through to the next round, and our counter arguments with regard to niggling details like malt and balance were dismissed. Theological compliance was demanded. We shrugged and cooperated, and I’ve only judged a handful of times since.

I’ve nothing against it, but just don’t feel like participating. To me, there is a point being missed – and life is too short for missed points. I’d rather drink a few full pints, and watch a decent foreign film, or read a book. Better yet, I’d rather have those beers with friends, on a beautiful fall day, in a clean and well anointed place.

The same phenomenon goes for keeping lists, which once was my passion. I’ve consumed a few thousand different beers in the past decade or so, and the point of counting and enumerating them now largely eludes me – much less undertaking the laborious task of rating, grading and grouping them.

What matters far more to me is where I consume them, and with whom. As one who doesn’t necessarily believe in out-of-body experiences, it is my belief that there are times when the place, weather, atmosphere and prevailing spirit can, in fact, provide a respite from the mundane, and be transformative. These times are to be sought, and cherished.

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As I’ve said before – and naturally, there are exceptions – oodles of good beers are available in this day and age, but the glibness currently passing for knowledge about beer can exhibit an alarming lack of genuine content. It is 48 miles wide, and roughly two inches deep.

Recently an Indiana blog writer made what was intended as a self-deprecating comment, pondering whether beer enthusiasts have ever had a worthwhile conversation about anything other than beer. I appreciate the humor, and find myself annoyed that he might well be right – and if so, it’s not where I want to be.

In this era of gilt and flash, what interests me about beer is whether or not it is honest. In a time of one-upmanship, what interests me is consistency. With end zone celebrations and chest-thumping all around, what interests me is the fundamental integrity to hand the ball back to the referee and play the damn game the way it was meant to be played. 

Accordingly, I find myself returning to the wisdom of the ancients. In the case of beer during our prevailing millennium, this means remembering the words of the late, great Michael Jackson.

The search for the perfect pint should last a lifetime.

That’s one mantra. My others include:

Whenever it seems like the world is beginning to agree with me, it is utterly terrifying.

If you’re not growing, you’re dying.

If you believe the target is fixed, then you haven’t been paying attention.

If it’s about being seen drinking a certain beer, then get out of my sight.

There are others. These comments may strike some as cynical, and I resemble that remark. Beer’s my life, and I’m still living it, but the beer world has changed – and so have I. To rekindle that wonderment, and to get those list-making juices flowing again, it’s back to first principles, like the public places where we drink beer; pubs may not be entirely capable of suspending life’s other rules, but they should be places where life’s rules are subject to examination and reflection.

The beers we drink there?

Honest, sustaining, and preferably local when in the locale. Sensual, not clinical. Magical, not always quantifiable.

I’m resolving to tune out the posturing, the pretense and the noise, and get back to the straight and narrow. In pursuit of that perfectly elusive pint, there’ll be a quality lifetime with the object of my fascination. It can only be accomplished one sip at a time.

And this is going to take a while. Thank heavens for that.