From Honey Creme to Vietnam Kitchen on Thanksgiving, 2013.

Scrumptious and delicious -- not to mention the donuts.

Unfazed following yesterday's pecan pie purchase at Sweet Stuff, located a few blocks from our house toward the city center, me and the missus strolled ten minutes this morning in the opposite direction, down to another New Albany institution, so as to begin the holiday with style and sugar

Honey Creme is so delightfully old-school that you feel guilty washing down their goodies with espresso. But I didn't have Folger's around the house. Next comes the yearly ritual and family tradition.

We've been doing Vietnamese for Thanksgiving for as long as we've known each other, and I've no need for the elaborate Thanksgiving meal of childhood.

But let's be pragmatic for a change.

If you'll be coming by the Public House on Friday for Saturnalia MMXIII, and JUST BY SHEER UNFETTERED COINCIDENCE you happen to have leftover turkey for sandwiches on your person and are willing to allow me to MAKE OFF WITH JUST A LITTLE BIT of it, well, it is QUITE LIKELY that a nice beer may find its way into your hands. Just saying. Not that I really need turkey, or anything. You know.

Needless to say, both NABC locations are closed today; we'll be open on Friday, November 29 for usual business hours. Be careful out there, and enjoy your adult libations responsibly.

Psst ... your subjectivity is showing, and I note this fact purely objectively.

Earlier this week, I was involved in a beer discussion thread at Facebook, and it proved to be quite good. Agreement may have been elusive, but that’s what makes the game worth the flame. The worst aspect of it is that we’re having the conversation electronically, and not in a comfortable pub with good beer, snacks and a convivial atmosphere.

One thought emerging from the chat, at least in my saturated noggin, is that there isn’t any such thing as a “monolithic” craft beer culture. Once upon a time, perhaps there was. Now there are several craft beer cultures, and while they have components in common, the respective spheres don’t entirely overlap. It strikes me that these respective craft beer cultures boast differing root or principal values, contributing to elaborate belief systems undeniably pursuing better beer, but disagreeing on what the pursuit of better beer actually entails.

Some values are physiologically determined and are normally considered objective, such as a desire to avoid physical pain or to seek pleasure. Other values are considered subjective, vary across individuals and cultures, and are in many ways aligned with belief and belief systems.

The following cultures are not intended as exhaustive, but as a basis for further exploration.

A homebrewer/craft culture that principally values being able to analyze, recreate and “brew it yourself.”

A trader/swapper culture that principally values the mechanics of the chase and the joy of collecting.

A ratings/priestly culture that principally values the presumed exactitude and objectivity of language in quantifying pleasure, and wielding it subjectively like a tire iron.

A localist culture that principally values the personal, grassroots experience of places and people.

Specifically, at some point in the earlier thread, it was said that beer from the Louisville area isn’t of sufficient quality because it tends not to interest traders in other places, and consequently, if we brewers are interested in building a more valuable locally-brewed culture, we’d be wise to borrow whatever tricks are wielded by breweries elsewhere, because these methods obviously have higher value, seeing as they generate more interest among the network of traders.

I see this as the tail launching the dog into outer space.

To my knowledge, every local Louisville area brewery does a thriving trade at its own tap room or restaurant, and when I drink locally brewed beers in these venues, they generally taste perfectly good to me. I’m not a rube, and I’ve been doing this for three decades. So, what (and where) is the disconnection?

Is it that folks going to brewpubs and enjoying fresh local beer are incapable of proper value judgments – or else they wouldn’t be drinking beer of inferior quality? Or, is it because the attributes principally valued by trading and swapping reflect a different value system than the typical localist’s? Are their different belief systems at play?

Verily, fascination with the far-off is as old as humanity. In his book, Tastes of Paradise, the social historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch reminds us that when the spice trade commenced in Europe several hundred years ago, the “need” to obtain spices from the Orient was far less about their supposed usefulness in masking rancid food, as is often imagined nowadays, but because the spices themselves were quantifiable measures of status according to the prevailing values of the age.

In essence, back then, anyone who was anyone just had to have these spices – or, risk not being anyone, any longer. Possession of Oriental spices was a symbol of status, and key to their value was the basic fact that these spices were from somewhere else – exotic, expensive and hard to obtain, and therefore infinitely sexier than the local norm. It wasn’t necessary to explain it. It was understood, and the peasants knew full well that status was conferred on those in possession of the requisite symbolism.

All this is well and good, but what I’m prepared to argue is that nothing about any of this can be termed objective, as insisted oft times during the thread. In fact, what I'm coming to question is whether there is any such objective reality in these considerations, and how truly objective it might possibly be, when from the very start the trader/collector (and often, the beer “geek”) offers as "objectivity" a set of prerequisites clearly influenced by rampant subjectivity.

In short, once the cultural subdivision or label (as above) has been imbued with a value system and embraced, don’t the adherents begin playing to their respective and subjective value systems? After all, once one becomes part of a club, one starts obeying the club's directives. If one can merely flash an image of a sought-after beer and induce salivating on the part of the audience, without once being obliged to explain or provide greater depth of insight as to why the viewer should be salivating, haven’t we passed joltingly from the realm of better beer into the laboratory of Pavlov’s canine?

I don’t have all the answers. But the questions are quite entertaining, and the entertainment value is immeasurably enhanced by vitriol … and squirming.

NABC believes in Naughty Claus. We don't believe in Black Friday.

NABC will be very busy on Thanksgiving weekend, 2013, though not on the holiday itself. Thanksgiving Day is on Thursday, November 28, and both NABC locations will be closed. On Friday, the beer schedule explodes.

Plaid Friday is on Friday, November 29. At NABC's Pizzeria & Public House, this is the day when Saturnalia Winter Solstice draft fest begins ... and it's the 10th anniversary edition.

Jingle Walk and HolidayFest (Downtown New Albany) takes place during the afternoon on Saturday, November 30. We'll be dispensing samples of Naughty Claus, Tunnel Vision and other NABC favorites on the premises of Keg Liquors.

Later on Saturday evening,  The Nifty $50 Art Show is happening at the Art Store in downtown New Albany. There'll be art, musical entertainment and NABC's Elector and Houndmouth on draft.

Meanwhile, New Albany's favorite band Houndmouth plays Headliners Music Hall in Louisville on the 29th and the 30th (both shows are sold out as of this writing), and by special arrangement, NABC Houndmouth will be available on tap at the venue, which customarily doesn't serve draft beer.

This brings us to 10:00 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, December 1, as Bank Street Brewhouse begins its Sunday Brewhouse Brunch, with our ever-popular build-your-own Bloody Mary Bar, food, and carry-out growlers all day long. Not exactly a nightcap ... although perhaps a brunch-cap after a prolific weekend.

The PC: From Bier Brewery to Cumberland Brews, but not neglecting Plaid Friday.

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

---

The PC: From Bier Brewery to Cumberland Brews, but not neglecting Plaid Friday.

My eyes couldn’t believe what they were seeing, right there on the Twitter feed.

Could it really be?

Up in Indianapolis at the Mass Avenue Pub – a fine, craft-friendly downtown bar in an emerging food, drink and cultural corridor – there was going to be a tap takeover, and the beers projected to flood the pub’s draft lines were coming from Bier Brewery.

Surely this was a misprint.

After all, Bier Brewery is not located in San Diego, Boulder, Kalamazoo, Atlanta or Bend (Oregon). How could they get away with THAT? If beer appreciation these days is all about location/further location/furthest location, then it stands to reason that Bier Brewery’s home in Indianapolis, just a few miles away from Mass Avenue Pub, would preclude it from being embraced by an Indy pub. The narcissists wouldn’t stand for it. Where was the chic, the aura … the sheer distance?

There had to be a catch.

Pondering the enigma as I cuddled up to a Sun King Sunlight Cream Ale, daringly decanted straight from the can into my favorite dimpled mug, I imagined a conversation with Mass Avenue Pub’s management.

Roger: Really? You’re emphasizing local Indianapolis-brewed beers … in Indianapolis? The end times must be upon us.

Mass Avenue Pub: What’s so unusual about that? We have lots of great breweries here in Indianapolis.

R: I dunno. They’re only great when you’re somewhere else, right? Does Bier Brewery have good enough scores on RateAdvocate?

MAP: Beats me. I never look at RateAdvocate. Bier Brewery is top quality and caring folks, and we’re just trying to support local beer.

R: Okay, but how can a joint be local if the beers aren’t sourced from a gypsy brewer utilizing multiple locations in the European Union, and then sending them to America by means of an equation pegging IBUs to an inverse carbon footprint?

MAP: Gypsy? That’s funny. We have a bunch of tattooed brewers in town, but no gypsies I’m aware of. We support other beers from all over, too, but Bier Brewery brews right here – and local breweries are what makes Indy such a wonderful beer town.

R: Sounds risky to me. Did you get express written permission from World Class Beer to do this? Are any of Bier Brewery’s beers triple-soured during a sea journey across the equator? Maybe Dry-Chrysanthemummed? Better yet: Aged in caskets formerly used to bury Scottish road kill, but only if constructed with Islay-tempered wood?

MAP: (Laughing) Maybe, maybe not. Why not come up and see?

R: I might, thanks.

—

Still somewhat confused, I proceeded to the kitchen to begin work on an especially important pot of Hungarian Szekely Goulash, for which I’d reserved a bottle of Neyron Red from New Albany’s River City Winery.

As the aromas of pork, onions, paprika and sauerkraut filled the house, it seemed the perfect time to switch off the Arctic Monkeys’ newest and tune into the recently released Episode 9 of the LouisvilleBeer.com podcast, the one where Scott Shreffler of Schlafly gave us a solid Gravity Head preview, but didn’t reveal how Schlafly managed to outbid Alltech for Yum Center craft access.

Only the shadow knows … and Centerplate, of course.

There were ten very interesting minutes jam-packed into the podcast’s hour-long running time, among them a good discussion (paraphrased) about beer brewed in Louisville, to wit:

How come we never talk about Cumberland Brewery/Brews?

Indeed. Why? It’s a relevant query, and the podcast’s participants were suitably thoughtful in briefly identifying a seeming “disconnect”: The 13-year-old brewpub’s relative anonymity when it comes to participation in events and discourse.

Someone noted that Cumberland Brews seems perfectly content to fly beneath the radar, to refrain from hedonistic chest-thumping, to please its customer base, and to thrive on its own little chunk of Louisville localism. Or, to be more succinct, Cumberland Brews might well be the only Louisville Metro brewery to recall and apply the founding principles and localist ethos of the craft beer revolution.

Who’s up for a Cumberland Brews tap takeover?

(pins drop, crickets chirp)

That’s what I thought. Perhaps in Taos, New Mexico. Is that far enough away?

—

NABC is a founding member of New Albany First, which is our city’s independent business association (IBA). It’s like the Louisville Independent Business Alliance (LIBA), which encourages you to Keep Louisville Weird, and is dedicated to encouraging the public to support independently owned, small local businesses. IBAs accomplish this through three primary focus areas:

1. Public education about the greater overall value local independents often can provide (even when they are not the cheapest) as well as the vital economic, social and cultural role independent businesses play in the community.

2. Facilitating cooperative promotion, advertising, purchasing, sharing of skills and resources and other activities to help local businesses gain economies of scale and compete more effectively.

3. Creating a strong and uncompromised voice to speak for local independents in the local government and media while engaging citizens in guiding the future of their community through democratic action.

NABC and our craft brewing brethren sink or swim as locally oriented independents, and many of us have pledged support via New Albany First and LIBA. Happily, the approaching holiday season provides a perfect opportunity to put worthwhile principles into real-world action.

We all know that “Black Friday” (November 29) is the biggest sales day of the year for big boxes and multinational chain stores — the ones where the money promptly flees town for corporate headquarters worldwide. In response to media hype and saturation advertising, which steer so much trade to the country’s biggest, richest and largest companies on “Black Friday,” the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA), of which New Albany First is a member, promotes Shift Your Shopping, of which Plaid (as opposed to Black) Friday is a component.

Instead of Black Friday it’s PLAID FRIDAY! Shift Your Shopping and wear plaid as you shop on Friday to remind yourself and others to make the 10% Shift. The 10% Shift encourages you to shift 10% of your holiday purchases from non-local businesses to Local Independents (also called indies or locally owned and independent businesses). Making the shift to local independents is one way we can build sustainable economies and create jobs in our local community.

It’s simple. You’re not being asked to go cold turkey — just allocate a percentage to independent local businesses, and learn what they can do for you. New Albany First and LIBA can help locate independent businesses, and we thank you for your support.

Now more than ever: Think globally, drink locally.

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)

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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?