Thumbs up as we welcome the BJCP's long-anticipated bee style guideline revisions.

The BJCP's completely updated beer style guidelines are on the street, and Draft Magazine offers a few take-aways:

Every few years, the BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) issues its Bible: a collection of beer style guidelines that inform homebrew competitions. They’re also sometimes used to judge professional brewing competitions, and to generally set a framework for a style. Like the Bible, these guidelines are taken as honest truth by some, while others choose to interpret them as they see fit. Without wading too far into that debate, we can say that the issuing of revised guidelines always reflects the beer world at its current time. The last revision came in 2008; seven years later, the BJCP officers have released a guide with notable additions and changes.

It will take a while to absorb the contents of this truly major overhaul, although these three additions are eye-catching:

• 21B Specialty IPA, by color (black, red and white) and nationality (Belgian).
• 27 Historical Beer, ranging from Kentucky Common to Sahti.
• 28 American Wild Ale, in three verses.

In recent years, I've organized the Gravity Head program by style. My practiced routine probably has gone flying out the window with the introduction of these guidelines -- so it looks like I'll be hitting the books earlier than usual in preparation for Gravity Head 2016.

BEER JUDGE CERTIFICATION PROGRAM: 2015 STYLE GUIDELINES

Rants, bar fights and strip clubs. Maybe it's time to become a wine drinker.

Thanks to RC for the link to the piece in Thrillist, a site I seldom acknowledge, except that in this instance, a writer is agreeing with most of what I've been saying for five or more years.

Consequently, I'm perfectly happy to cop some major vindication. If I can't make any money in this job, the least I can do is establish a legacy for calling the occasional shot.

Earlier this week, Stan Hieronymus couldn't find many feel-good beer links, and at least part of the reason was another round of wonderment at "craft" beer's failure to appreciate why "craft" beer events at strip clubs bear the potential to alienate women. Stan already had considered the topic on April 20:

This is a discussion about awareness. There’s been an ongoing conversation about sexism in beer and it needs to continue. In the midst of all those tweets somebody suggested “someone will still find a reason to be upset” and that is true. But some things should be obvious. “I sell beer. I want more women to buy it. I’d like more women to feel comfortable working in my industry.” The next thought should not be “Benjamin Braddock got the girl in the end, so I’ll ask these women to join me at a strip club.”

For a while now, I've heard a variation of this: "Just relax, Rog. Get back to it being about the beer, and stop trying to fight all these other battles. People want to get away from those battles when they're having a beer."

Problem is, this is remarkably similar to what I used to hear before I ever campaigned for better beer. I'm a straight white male American, and as such privileged without just cause. Because of this, why don't I kick back and enjoy the national eclipse? Why be upset? What can I do? Why try to change things?

But you see, that just isn't me. I'm almost 55 years old, and this weird ethos of mine -- the zeal to educate, the contrarian tendencies, the frustration and exhilaration, the logic, passion and anger -- always defies explanation, although I tried to fathom at least part of it last week, and naturally only managed to skirt the edge.

Better beer held out the promise for a very long time that it might help me understand myself. Often it did, and now it's slipping away amid the predicted absorption into being just another business.

Really? Being a business person is the last reason I became involved in business. My point was to make a point, and it always seemed a necessary evil to me. These days it seems more evil, and less necessary. If someone in New Albany within stumbling distance of my house would brew a hand-pulled Ordinary Bitter of about 3.8%, and serve it every day alongside a decent plate of curry, I'd be there every day, and forego the craziness. A gently smoked lager would work, too. Maybe there'd be time to read that way.

And don't even ask, "But Rog, you own a brewery -- just brew one of those."

So what do I do?

Run for mayor.

Rage against the machine used to be a band. Now it's my daily existence. Here's the article: Bar Fight: Why craft brewing is about to go to war with itself, by Dave Infante (Thrillist)

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

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

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Third in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

Before leaving home, I had taken care to equip myself with an American Youth Hostel card.

Why not?

Youth is relative, and I was only 24 years old upon departure. The card cost a nominal fee, and promised to “open the doors” overseas at youth hostels affiliated with the international governing body. In fact, it probably paid for itself during my first three days on European soil, in Luxembourg City, Basel and Milano – and yes, this frenetic pace was part of the plan.

The objective all along was to fly into Luxembourg, but to begin the trip in earnest in Greece, which required making a very long journey south and east, first by train to Bari, Italy, then by overnight ferry to Patra, Greece. All of this transit was covered by the Eurailpass, although first it was necessary to learn how to use the rail pass – and validate tickets on the trams, ride the subways, interpret restaurant menus without a translator, navigate local customs, and so many other tasks for which I was utterly unprepared.

It didn’t take long to realize that while I’d been correct in imagining the first few days in Europe as a learning curve, or a spring training of sorts, it was wildly unrealistic to think mere days would suffice. Meeting Europe for the first time produced catharsis and panic, paralysis and ecstasy, all in equal measure. Consumed with self-doubt, I’d first kick myself for perceived inadequacies and stumbles, but then look through the train window, see the Alps, and feel a deeper satisfaction than I’d ever experienced.

It was stimulating and exhausting, both mentally and physically, and I slept a lot, at least when the stereophonic snoring in 16-bunk hostel dorm rooms didn’t interfere.

The fourth night was spent napping on the deck of the ferry, and then, come morning, finally I was in Greece, debarking and checking into a cheap and nearly dilapidated hotel so very archaic that a reincarnated Henry Miller might recognize the room just as it looked the last time he visited. After all, it was Miller who bore much of the responsibility – the blame – for attracting me to Hellas.

So who was he, anyway?

---

Henry Miller was an iconic American writer who died in 1980 at the age of 88 in, and is remembered chiefly for his once-banned novel, Tropic of Cancer. Miller spent the last years of his long, active life portraying a theatrical version of himself, offering entertaining vignettes for an ever-eager media, and brazenly enjoying his late-blooming notoriety as only an ex-bowery urchin could.

Just before his death, wizened but with a twinkle of naughtiness still flashing in his ancient eyes, Miller appeared on camera as historical “witness” in Warren Beatty’s film “Reds” (probably my favorite movie), observing that while clueless moderns had trouble believing that old rascals like him ever had sex, they most certainly did, and a lot of it, too.

For someone as renowned for his bawdiness as Miller to pen an entire book with nary an explicit mention of the horizontal arts will come as a surprise to some, but The Colossus of Maroussi is just that volume.

Written and published as World War II made ready to welcome the United States as participating/liberating belligerent, it recounts Miller’s months-long holiday in Greece in 1939, a respite coming at the conclusion of his Depression-era tenure as a Parisian urban expatriate, and immediately prior to his relocation and reinvention as tree-hugging primitive in California’s Big Sur.

Ostensibly, Colossus is a travelogue about Greece as a country caught in transition during the middle of the 20th century, with one foot in the grubby present and the other very much rooted in an epic (and generally exaggerated) past. Much of Miller’s narrative focuses on a larger-than-life Greek poet and raconteur named George Katsimbalis, and therein hides a significant clue, because as readers have understood virtually since release, the book actually is all about Miller.

Miller describes Katsimbalis with a mirror’s eye view, and he imbues the entire Greek nation with his own quirky prejudices and eccentricities. Like so many Western tourists before and since, he experiences an exotic but impoverished country and rather smugly concludes that in poverty resides inner beauty and universal wisdom, when all the locals really want are dependable electricity, flush toilets and access to pre-sliced, mass-market white bread.

On the more positive side, Miller offers some of his best pure writing in Colossus, describing Greek pastoral scenes and the country’s colorful people joyfully and without guile, his trademark glee in sensuousness and eroticism deployed not to titillate readers with sex, but to provide them with the imagined means to smell the flowers, taste the moussaka and feel the ocean breeze. He thought it was his best book, and in the sense of descriptive imagery, he may have been right.

When it comes to politics, economics and mankind’s “larger” issues, Miller might safely be described as a non-participating Luddite libertarian. He has no time for society’s persistent and petty constraints on human expression, and little use whatever for “ – isms” of any sort, and yet he inhabits a time and place in which these considerations are the dominant daily theme. As such, Greece is his necessary escape, and he seems to find in it the perfect milieu to absorb his own point of view as reflected back at him.

Yet, perhaps even Miller recognizes his own exaggerations and glibness. He presciently decamps from his personalized Hellenic dream just before awakening, thus avoiding the multitudinous Greek nightmares to follow: Wartime horrors, post-war ideological battles, coups, squabbles and the wrenching upheavals and dislocations familiar to those world cultures eager to join the “modern” world he so detested.

Miller died a few years before Greece joined the European Union, its entry symbolizing the country’s belated arrival at the continent’s pageant. It’s a marriage now turned sour, with a highly uncertain future. Helena Smith of The Guardian writes:

On the rollercoaster ride that is the debt-stricken country’s epic battle to stay afloat, many had hoped that Syriza would also provide solace. But five years after Athens was forced to be bailed out by the European Union and International Monetary Fund (IMF) – accepting the biggest rescue package in global financial history – Greeks are not sure what to think. What they do know is that after five years of dancing to the tune of austerity – of making the sacrifices necessary to keep bankruptcy at bay – they are, like (Tasos) Nyfadopoulos’s dangling man, once again staring in to the abyss.

---

For all its flaws, "The Colossus of Maroussi" was essential and compelling reading, and I cannot underestimate its profound influence on me during the early 1980s. Upon request in 1984, the Greek tourist office in New York had mailed a huge package of brochures and maps, and as I read Miller’s account that winter, I plotted his progress with their assistance. At the time, Ernest Hemingway meant more to me as a writer, but he hadn’t written about Greece. Spain would come much later.

There I was, finally in Greece, well aware that the intervening decades would render dated Miller’s descriptions unlikely, and this much was true. Many things had changed, but happily there were moments of timelessness when the pre-war mood still jibed, and when, not unlike the writer, I stood at Mycenae, Epidaurus and Delphi, brushed off the dust from the journey by bus, and felt the weight of millennia … when I’d hear a tinkling bell and see a shepherd’s profile on a hillside, and later devour tomatoes, cucumber and feta doused with oil, kick back a cool beer or tumbler of Retsina … watch the grizzled old men nursing their cloudy drams of ouzo at breakfast … and then be reminded that back at the hotel, one was officiously instructed to keep toilet paper out of the commode lest the too-narrow sewage pipes became clogged.

After two nights in Patra, I boarded a train for Athens.

---

Previously:

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

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

Liver issues? Maybe you're eating too much.

Our livers will be just as diseased as before, but at least we'll avoid the stigma of alcohol abuse: "Look at him with that bucket of chicken. His liver's shot, and he keeps throwing 'em back."

Most liver transplants 'linked to over-eating, not alcohol' (The Guardian)

Most liver transplants are expected to be linked to over-eating rather than alcohol abuse by 2020, an expert has said.

Dr Quentin Anstee, a consultant hepatologist at Newcastle University and the Freeman hospital, warned the UK faced a “major and growing challenge” as increasing numbers of Britons are diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

A third of Britons are thought to have the condition, according to researchers, which is caused by people eating more than their livers can cope with.

Why limit bottle opener implants to rugby players?

You'll just have to watch the video to find out how. What offends me isn't the stereotyping about rugby players and their missing teeth, but the fact that when you locate Cerveza Salta web site, there's an age verification function.

I really hate that, most recently here.

Beer Company Replaces Rugby Players’ Missing Teeth With Implants That Can Open Bottles at Digital Synopsis

Ogilvy Argentina has come up with a crazy campaign for Salta beer. Rugby players who lost their teeth on the field can now get implants for free. But Salta wanted to make it even more special for these brave athletes who gave everything for their team. They developed a unique dental implant, a specially designed tooth that can open beer bottles.

Top Five posts at Potable Curmudgeon for April, 2015.

The Top Five is determined by numbers of unique hits, as reported by Blogger. The list begins with No. 5, and ends with No. 1.

Thanks for reading.

100 (tie)

In observance of Session Beer Day, 2015.

100 (tie)

Love is blind: Finally, an IPA tasting that makes sense.

109

The PC: Who'll put the beer in Boomtown?

110

"This year, Three Floyds' Dark Lord Day will double as a craft beer-soaked protest rally."

146

The PC (Hip Hops): What “Craft Beer” Is, and What It Isn’t.

211

A wonderful BBC Louisville Lager, food and good times at the Crescent Hill Craft House.

"Kentucky Common beer to stand out at BrewFest."

This one's been on the docket for a while. It takes place tomorrow.

At LouisvilleBeer: "Derby City BrewFest: An 'Uncommon' Beer Festival on Derby Eve."

To summarize, tracking down facts about the historical presence in Louisville of a style referred to as "common" (or reflecting the German still being spoken locally then, "Komon") poses many challenges, but it existed, and appears to have varied widely. The term itself might have more to do with price point than anything else, in the form of a "session" or "table" beer, inexpensive, and suitable for daily consumption at a time when cultural mores would have embraced such a brew as a thirst quencher, as opposed to soda, water or iced tea.

Whether sourness was an intrinsic property of Kentucky Common remains the great debatable. It may have been a by-product of handling, as Leah Dienes of Apocalypse Brewery suggests in the article below. The idea the common might have been loosely connected with sour mash (see: bourbon) in some fashion may or may not be supported by available evidence, although it makes sense even if only in an isolated or accidental way, and undoubtedly bolsters the storytelling possibilities.

In Louisville, the Kentucky Derby is on Saturday, and the day before is the Oaks, a racing day generally claimed by locals as their own. Churchill Downs is a money-making conglomerate, which for several years has forged an alliance with the Stella Artois, making carbonated Belgian dishwater the "official" beer of the Kentucky Derby. Naturally, if you're interested in what's really brewing locally, Derby City BrewFest is a required destination tomorrow night. Here's another preview.

Kentucky Common beer to stand out at BrewFest, by Bailey Loosemore (Courier-Journal)

Also, don't forget to reject Stella Artois as faux Derby beer.

A few other seasonal Derby links:

The classic: Director’s Cut: ‘The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,’ by Hunter S. Thompson.

The outrage: Tradition, Americana, Churchill Downs and Stella Artois.

On horse pimps: "The Kentucky Derby Really Is Decadent and Depraved."

Just be patient: Derby Festival begins, bad beer flows, and so we learn to wait.

These requests from abroad, Vol. 13: Two collectors from Poland.

If you own or work for a brewery, you've probably fielded numerous e-mail inquiries from overseas asking for beer labels, crown caps and the like, as destined to become the cherished keepsakes of private collectors from just about anywhere -- although it seems that most of them live somewhere around eastern and central Europe.

To me, there is something compelling and yet haunting about these foreign requests, places of longtime personal interest to me both historically and geographically. I've been in or near many of them. They speak vividly to my inner melancholic. Lately, I've been pasting their addresses into Google Map and seeing what their places of residence look like.

After all, they can look at my business via the same technology, and it seems only fair for me to see where they live, so very far away. Especially coming from European locales, these are images that speak powerfully to me, conjuring memories of places I've been, people I've met ... and beers I've consumed.

Quite a few of these seems to come from Poland. 

I'm not sure why, but they do, and my latest obsession has been to follow the street views on Google Map from the city or town's train station to the address of the inquirer, with a traveler's presumed wanderings in mind: Where would I stop for a beer in route?

My admittedly small sampling reveals that there are too few pubs in Poland. Back during my backpacking days (although in fairness, I wasn't in Poland very much), it was axiomatic that to emerge from the train station in eastern and central Europe was to see a kiosk or restaurant close at hand, packed with locals enjoying their beers.

Now there are few. Maybe they drink at home these days. So do I.

Now, on to the most recent pair of requests.

Above is the town of Gniewkowo, where Kasia lives, somewhere on this street. Gniewkowo is located northwest of Warsaw near the city of Torun. The border with Germany is about 150 miles away. There's a rail station, but it's on the edge of town to the south, with little close to it save for a Communist era housing estate and a sports complex. On the main downtown street, there is a restaurant where it's reasonable to assume Polish lager is served. I'd eat there.

Meanwhile, Kasia is more creative than most.

We could also exchange if you wish so. I have a lot of interesting polish breweries stuff to exchange. I would be very grateful if you would be so kind to send me any of your coasters, bottle openers, labels or any other items.

I like the idea of her offering to swap items, and will set this email aside for future consideration, if I ever have time.

Ironically, Kamila doesn't live very far away from Kasia, in the larger settlement of Ciechocinek, which is noted as a spa and tourist city. It's another quiet residential street, a bit removed from the center.

Kamila is more ambitious.

My name is Kamila. I am a beer items collector. This is my passion for a few years. I have a quite big collection but I do not have any item from foreign breweries. My favourite interest is collecting openers. I would be very grateful if you would be so kind and send for my address any collector's item. I would be appreciative of any bottle-opener, cap, label, coaster or glass.

Ciechocinek appears decidedly more affluent than Gniewkowo. The Wikipedia entry praises the quality of Ciechocinek's thermal springs and its saline graduation towers, pictured at the beginning of this post.

Ciechocinek is a spa town in Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland, located on the Vistula River about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) east of Aleksandrów Kujawski and 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-east of the city of Toruń.

Ciechocinek is known for its unique 'saline graduation towers'. Experts have considered the local saline springs to be of extreme value and named the thermal spring no. 14 "a wonder of nature". The therapeutic qualities of these springs are directed toward curing cardiovascular, respiratory, orthopedic, traumatic, rheumatic, nervous system and women's diseases.

Poland. Maybe some day.

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

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

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Second in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

Thirty years on, two relatively odd twists stand out in my memory of my first European excursion in 1985.

First, given my usual compulsion to write, and considering the ample time I spent waiting on trains and then riding them, resting in hostel common areas after a long day’s touring or sitting on park benches watching life’s rich pageant – in short, with so much spare time to harness -- very little of that first trip was committed to paper.

Only snippets and random observations survive, along with a fairly accurate day-to-day record of my progress.

Why? Maybe it was laziness, although more likely the sheer sensory overload was too much for me to handle. I know what you’re probably thinking, but it certainly wasn’t because of the alcohol consumed.

To this day, people don’t believe me when I say that very little in the way of alcohol beverages was consumed abroad in 1985. In the beginning, there were stray beers here and there, but nothing approaching intoxication until I let loose for a night in Rome with a group of fellow travelers, having discovered cold, 2,000-lira (one dollar) 2/3 liter bottles of Carlsberg (and cold, too!) at a bar down the street from our pension.

Later in Turin, I drank with my cousin and his pal Scott, and after that at local place in Vienna and the Augustiner beer hall in Salzburg … of course, there was the Hofbrauhaus in Munich, and numerous pints of Guinness in Sligo, Ireland while watching Live Aid on the telly … and we can’t forget the vodka with the Australia during the Leningrad stay near the end … can we?

But seriously, fifteen drunken nights out of 90 is a fairly poor record for the allegedly professional drinker I fancied myself to be at the time, and it owed entirely to caution, to the fear of letting go in an unfamiliar environment, especially at night, walking long blocks back to bed following revelry. Also, there wasn’t much money, and I intended to hoard it carefully.

Parsimony proved wise. Stepping off the return flight in Chicago on August 8, 1985, I had exactly $100 in my pocket. The rest was gone, and for as good of a cause as could be imagined. Arthur Frommer, who helped start it all, ultimately was wrong in quoting a $25-a-day figure. The Euro was as yet a dream, the dollar was strong against national currencies, and the final calculation came out to about $19.50 a day, not counting the rail pass and flights.

---

May, 1985.

A 45-minute stopover at Keflavik for comprehensive Icelandic souvenir shopping may indeed have afforded my first official steps on something resembling European soil, but in truth, the inaugural stroll across the continent’s sacred ground must be said to have taken place at the Luxembourg City international arrivals terminal.

After passport control and customs, I spotted an “exchange” window. Exhausted from a sleepless night, I turned and asked a fellow passenger whether I should get French francs or the Luxembourg variety.

“Well, that would depend on where you are, wouldn’t it,” he replied, with a surliness borne either by his own sleepless transatlantic night, or perhaps an upbringing of pain and betrayal suggested by an unmistakable New York City accent.

Nonplussed, I waited silently in line and when my turn came, swiftly shoved the immaculately clean traveler’s check through a tiny aperture, waiting to see what sort of money would come spitting back, and hoping I wouldn’t have to answer questions in an unknown local dialect.

The teller motioned toward my passport and yawned. Luxembourg francs appeared … and a new ritual had been experienced.

Further ahead, the baggage conveyor disgorged my inexpensive Service Merchandise “athletic club” gym bag, which lacked backpack convertibility, but had a handy shoulder strap – and one of the strap’s connecting loops had been ripped away from the fabric by the baggage sorting claws, leaving it useless, and subsequently fating the bag to be carried like a suitcase for the remainder of the journey.

Finally I emerged into a covered plaza, followed the signs for an airport bus bound for the central train station, and paid the driver with a crisp Luxembourg franc C-note. A short suburban ride later, the bus glided into its lane at the stylish old Gare, and I bounded out, finally, into a stereotypically busy, sunlit European street with sidewalks, bicycles and cafes.

All well and good. Now what?

Somewhere in Luxembourg City there was an officially sanctioned international youth hostel with a reservation (facilitated by “snail” mail, no less) waiting just for me. How to get there? Should I buy a city map, or risk humiliation by asking directions of a possibly non-English speaking passer-by?

An Internet kiosk was out of the question, as the information superhighway had yet to be invented by Al Gore.

Looming before me was a large sign that turned out to be a map of the city, providentially erected as a public service for ignorant foreigners exiting the train station for the very first time. Walking toward it, I abruptly stumbled and looked down to see the arm of a street person in a decently clean suit passed out drunk in the shade of a fountain.

Fragrant and snoring, he was no help at all, but the map showed exactly where I was, and precisely where I needed to go, which looked to be about two kilometers in a straight line.

Easy enough on the face of it, except the street names in French defied easy memorization, and most importantly, the map failed to show the irregular topography of Luxembourg City, which lies on ridges and hills and is contoured not unlike corners of West Virginia.

My 2-km scenic hike took almost two hours, mercifully ending when it finally did only because I finally chanced by a pole sporting various directional signs, one of which was the familiar hut-and-tree logo pointing the way to the youth hostel.

It had taken so long to perform these simple arrival tasks that the hostel already was open for afternoon hours. I checked in without difficulty, located my assigned bunk in what would become a completely filled 12-person dorm room, declined both a shower and an institutional dinner of noodles and mystery meat, never once considered drinking a beer, and proceeded to sleep 15 hours straight through ‘til morning, a continental breakfast, and the trek back to station to board my first train.

How do you get to Greece from Luxembourg on a rail pass? I was about to find out.

---

Previously:

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

Visits to West Sixth and Blue Stallion while philosophizing in Lexington, Kentucky.

Multiple kudos to Peter Fosl, Professor of Philosophy at Transylvania University, who came up with a first-rate idea for me to come to Lexington on a brilliant spring Thursday and speak with philosophy majors over lunch at the school cafeteria. That's because I'm a Bachelor of Arts degree holder with a major in philosophy (IU Southeast, 1982).

The missus joined me for the road trip, and a great time was had by all.

When the cafeteria shut down, Diana and I had two hours to ourselves, and so we took a 15-minute walk to West Sixth Brewing, where we enjoyed a plethora of beers (Berliner Weisse, Smoked Porter, Hefeweizen and Dunkel, all deadly accurate) and snacks from Smithtown Seafood, located in the same building.

Then it was off to a humanities faculty reception (thanks, Mr. and Mrs Furlong) where I conducted an impromptu beer sampling for those in attendance, with NABC bombers and local Lexington brews from West Sixth, Alltech and Country Boy.

Peter dropped us off at Blue Stallion, where first a Rauchbier and then a Marzen completed the day, in the company of numerous students playing trivia, and a superlative food truck: Rolling Oven, making wood-fired pizza and Italian sandwiches.

Blue Stallion inspired reflections of a modern oddity: Having locally-brewed lagers at a brewpub filled with kids half my age, who are listening to the same music we were hearing at Knobs field keg parties back in 1976. Strange. Do we really need the James Gang any longer?

Stuffed to the point of tick-like, we walked back to our room at the classy Gratz Park Inn and collapsed. Earlier in the day, we'd chatted about the late Christopher Hitchens, who visited Transylvania University in 2004, and stayed at the same hotel. Now, finally, I have something in common with Hitchens, who is one of my favorite writers.

Obviously, we missed a few worthy beer places, but after all, it was a "working" trip, and there'll be other times. Thanks to everyone at Transylvania for a fine day and a nice break from the routine.

"This year, Three Floyds' Dark Lord Day will double as a craft beer-soaked protest rally."

Speaking as a beer fan of longstanding, and in no official capacity whatever, please permit me to say just this one thing.

Thank you, Nick Floyd.

Nick is speaking much needed truth to power with regard to Indiana's disastrous RFRA legislation, as engineered by Indiana's GOP "super majority." Some might say that those in Nick's position should be more circumspect, and refrain from taking a position, especially given that many of these same legislators have favored Indiana's brewing business.

Not me. I believe they need to be called out, early and often.

RFRA, even as hurriedly revised when the backlash ka ka hit the fan, is a monstrous act of stupidity. It did harm to Indiana's brewing industry, and modifications aside, it will continue to do so. We must speak out whenever and wherever we can. As our customers are injured, so are we.

Thanks again, Nick.

Three Floyds Makes Dark Lord Day Pro-Gay With Big Freedia Show, by Mark Konkol (DNAinfo - Chicago)

This year, Three Floyds' Dark Lord Day will double as a craft beer-soaked protest rally.

The target: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and his state’s controversial Freedom of Religion Restoration Act — the so-called “anti-gay” law that prompted national outrage from politicians, liberal activists and rock bands alike.

“We’re fighting the power of the governor of Indiana over the freedom of religion act, or whatever it’s called, that basically makes it legal to discriminate against anyone,” Three Floyds brewer-owner Nick Floyd said.

So, at Saturday’s annual celebration of Three Floyds Brewery’s Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout — the only day you can buy what many craft brew geeks consider the world’s best brew — Floyd added a gender-bending performer to co-headline its hard rock lineup of bands with the reunited original lineup of heavy metal rockers Corrosion of Conformity.

Floyd, who lives in Ukrainian Village, said his Munster, Ind.-based brewery also got calls from people asking him to protest the law by canceling Dark Lord Day — the one day of the year you can buy Three Floyds' Russian Imperial Stout — in protest of the controversial law.

“I tell them, ‘Look, Dark Lord Day is the biggest f--- y--- to that law,” Floyd said. “One lady even wanted to sell her ticket because she wants us to boycott [the law.] I had to tell her we’re on your side. We’re fighting back, and the best thing to do is come here and support us.”

I'm for it: CAMRA debates and passes progressive motions.

I'm aware of all the reasons why an American is supposed to frown on such an organization, with its conferences, motions and cardigans. I love it just the same, and it remains a yardstick to me, 25 years after I first began paying dues and getting monthly newspapers. Eventually I stopped getting the paper copies, and started following CAMRA electronically.

Let’s get behind the beer industry: CAMRA members vote for a more inclusive campaign

Members of CAMRA, Europe's largest beer consumer group, have reinforced the organisation's positive approach to campaigning for beer and pubs by passing a series of progressive motions at its annual conference.

More than 1,200 CAMRA members attended the conference in Nottingham between 18-19 April and debated and voted on 20 motions about issues affecting the beer and pub industry, as well as CAMRA's future campaigning. Decisions were taken to support the practice of serving real ale from ‘key-kegs' and to recognise cider with whole fruit and spices as ‘real' were passed, whereas motions that advocated CAMRA distancing itself from wider beer industry initiatives were rejected.

Members clearly voted in support of an inclusive approach to the beer industry, reaffirming that the Campaign is about the promotion and championing of real ale, and providing a choice for drinkers, rather than outright opposition to other types of beer. The Conference expressed the strong opinion that denigrating other types of beer should not form part of the Campaign's active advocacy of real ale ...

An inspiring Rauchbier at Gordon Biersch in downtown Louisville.

On the topic of the Gordon Biersch restaurant/brewery outlet in downtown Louisville, I'll have more to say a bit later in the year, as my column in Food & Dining Magazine (3rd quarter, circa August) will profile it.

First, having been called upon to represent NABC in a "throwdown" evening at Biersch, with our Helles and theirs flowing at the same time, I had a wonderful time on Tuesday with beers, pizza and Nicholas Landers, who brews at Biersch.

Given my habit of antagonizing the peanut gallery with rote chants of "Death to Chains," there'll be an inevitable rejoinder alleging hypocrisy, or worse. But life isn't black and white, and localism is about principled shift -- and at Louisville's branch of Biersch, all the beers are brewed on site, and a greater degree of site-specific latitude than ever before is offered to Landers. I think his core portfolio of German-style lagers (and the occasional Teutonic ale) is delicious; meanwhile, he's doing an American-style Pale Ale and IPA.

In particular, if you like Rauchbier of the Spezial model, get over there now. Nick's made a fine version using Weyermann malt. There's a growler in the fridge as we speak, and it isn't expected to last very long.

These requests from abroad, Vol. 12: From Munich, a young man seeking to break the bottle cap record.

If you own or work for a brewery, you've probably fielded numerous e-mail inquiries from overseas asking for beer labels, crown caps and the like, as destined to become the cherished keepsakes of private collectors from just about anywhere -- although it seems that most of them live somewhere around eastern and central Europe.

To me, there is something compelling and yet haunting about these foreign requests, places of longtime personal interest to me both historically and geographically. I've been in or near many of them. They speak vividly to my inner melancholic. Lately, I've been pasting their addresses into Google Map and seeing what their places of residence look like.

After all, they can look at my business via the same technology, and it seems only fair for me to see where they live, so very far away. Especially coming from European locales, these are images that speak powerfully to me, conjuring memories of places I've been, people I've met ... and beers I've consumed.

Say hello to Moritz, who is a resident of Munich, Germany.

It has been a decade since my last visit to Munich. Once upon a time, this would have been cause for concern, but I've been to Bamberg a few times since then, and it just goes to show how priorities change.

Moritz's residence appears to be the smudgy building in the center, which is located around eight miles from the center of town, to the northwest, just before the countryside begins. Quoted verbatim, you'll note something perhaps unusual about this request.

Dear Sir,

I am 15 years old and I am collecting bottle caps (crown caps) since four years.

Now my greatest wish is that my collection will be listed in the Guinness Book of Records. The world record is 175171 caps and therefore I am always looking for new caps to catch up and to break this record.

Therefore I would like to ask you to send me one of your bottle caps for my collection.

It would make me very happy if I could add a bottle cap of your company to my collection.

My address is: Moritz Bester, Lidelstrasse 3, D – 81245 München Germany

Thank you very much and kind regards

Moritz Bester

I returned Moritz's e-mail, informing him that alas, I could be of no help; NABC's bottle caps bear no logo or insignia. However, if anyone can give him a hand in his quest, please feel free.

Meanwhile, I'm not being flippant when I say: If I were to send him caps, would it constitute statutory breweriana?

After all, at this late date we're still plagued with many instance of Internet idiocy, wherein there must be an age verification process to read a web site about beer. I remember an episode many years ago when I was trying to access the Samuel Adams web site. Being slightly lubricated and butter-fingered, I managed to enter bad information and was blocked. Being me, I complained. Being them, a cyber-reply was forthcoming.

We understand that the age verification process may seem cumbersome. However, it is very important to us that we take every reasonable precaution to ensure that the only visitors to our site are those who can legally enjoy the great taste of a Samuel Adams beer. We take this responsibility very seriously, even to the extent that it may cause someone like you to become frustrated.

Not for the first time, I couldn’t resist the impulse to cast a line and see if there were humans somewhere on the other side.

Thanks for the template. Does this mean that we shouldn't allow children to study automobiles until they're old enough to drive? 

When it came, the reply was bureaucratic and humorless, so three cheers to censorship, to “reasonable precaution” in studying the history of fermentation science, and to those deep bows to the dictates of Puritanism that we feel like me must make.

Up the revolution ... and send Moritz some caps if you have some.

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

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

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

“The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”
― Milan Kundera, Ignorance

One May morning in 1985, a middle-class American youth from bucolic Floyd County, Indiana, stumbled greasy and sleepless into the arrivals hall of a foreign airport. Following the requisite passport, customs formalities and currency exchange, he endured a thoroughly confusing and memorable first day in Europe.

Thirty years have passed since that bewildering and exhilarating Luxembourg inaugural, and the nostalgia is palpable. My inaugural European sojourn was conceived and executed with a single-minded determination unknown to me at the time. It taught me to believe in myself, and it led to many, many more pilgrimages. There have been no regrets whatever.

During my first European summer, I commenced an overdue transition from populist local yokel to genuine “citizen of the world,” as the athlete Edwin Moses so eloquently phrased it during the otherwise jingoistic and embarrassing David Wolper Memorial Olympiad in Los Angeles in 1984.

---

Europe in 1985 was a life-altering epiphany, but in truth, even the most minor of ephemeral insights would have seemed huge given my indecisiveness and youthful lack of focus.

A university degree in philosophy made for witty repartee, but little else, and it seemed to me that career choices were for fools who never saw the sun rise after an evening spent closing every bar in town. Ten placid green acres with a split-level dream home, a riding lawnmower, little leaguers and a fridge filled with Old Milwaukee Light? That was philistinism, right?

At the age of 24, two part-time jobs were sufficient to pay my bills. They also provided a semblance of scheduling flexibility in the event of hangovers – as there always was enough beer money. Why else would a person work at a package store in the first place? But in truth, I wasn’t going anywhere.

Even worse, I knew it.

In 1983, I was asked by an area high school teacher to accompany him as a second chaperone on a student trip to Europe the following year. The price seemed reasonable at $1,600 for nine days, with airfare, hotels, bus and most meals included. I responded affirmatively.

A few months later, I was strolling past the travel section in the library when a title caught my eye: “Europe on $25 a Day,” by Arthur Frommer. As ever mathematically challenged, I shook my head with disbelief. Was it a misprint? Could it really be true? Skeptical, I checked out the book, took it home, poured a beer, and started reading. Eventually a pocket calculator was produced.

The earth fairly shook.

---

My fellow twenty-something males would have required the woman (or women) of their dreams running bikini-clad across a Florida beach during a sultry rainstorm to elicit anywhere near my response to Frommer’s book, in which clear and reasonable tips plainly illustrated how to do Europe right, and for far longer duration than a mere week.

My new writing hero insisted that travel could be educational, and offer a rare glimpse into different worlds. His advice on the nuts and bolts of budget travel technique was relentlessly informative, effortlessly evocative and consistently pragmatic.

Always think like a European traveler, not an American, and like a local, not a visitor.

Don’t expect things in a foreign country to be the same as home, and expect to pay more when they are.

Think, plan, and accept the available bargains.

Don’t eat every meal in a restaurant. Pack a salami, buy a loaf of cheap crusty bread, and picnic.

Walk, ride the bus, rent a bike.

My brain was hard-wired for the humanities and history, and yet the comparative sums quickly became persuasive. At $25 per day, my $1,600 properly budgeted the Frommer way came out to 36 days, not nine. If I were to postpone the epic voyage for another year, leaving even more time to save money, the trip might last three months, not nine days.

For the next year and a half, my European travel obsession escalated, fed by a steady diet of travel books, magazine articles and PBS documentaries. Thomas Cook rail schedules were studied, and European history devoured with renewed zeal. Plans were jotted, expanded, revised, discarded, and brought back from the waste paper basket. I acquired a Pentax K-1000 camera and learned to use it, just barely.

By the spring of 1985, with departure nearing, a rough outline had settled into place.

---

There would be a round-trip flight on the then-cheapest Icelandair from Chicago to Luxembourg, returning 88 days after departure. Ground transport would be a three-month Eurailpass. Convinced that it would be my sole and only trip to Europe, a kamikaze itinerary was planned, incorporating nights on trains sleeping in seats, and crashed on the decks of boats. I studied every available trick to skim cash and expand the duration of my experience.

Then suddenly, the curtain finally rose.

There was a sleepless night on an eastbound flight, and before I knew it, a strange Luxembourg airport. Subsequently, theory yielded to practice. My well-ordered plan did not take into account greenness, timidity and stubbornness. The real work was just beginning.

The profusion of languages, local customs and currencies overwhelmed the senses. ATM barely existed, and the failure to note esoteric regional holidays and erratic hours kept by mom and pop shops led to foodless nights. There were missed connections, panicked fumbling and myriad disappointments.

There were times of panic, but I managed to keep moving. Despite the red-faced embarrassments, cheap hostels already booked, standing-room-only overnight train trips, pain in my arms from lugging a silly gym bag, fear of squat-only “toilets” in Turkey, forgetting a towel and using my only long-sleeved shirt to dry off, all of it managed to work out in the end. 88 days later, back again in Luxembourg for the westbound flight home, I could think of only one thing.

When’s next?

In the coming weeks during this 30th anniversary year, I’ll be describing the summer of 1985. At selected intervals, beer will factor into the narrative, although in retrospect, it must be conceded that I knew next to nothing about beer and brewing.

In all probability, that’s what made learning so much fun.

Say hello to Bologna Beer. Kinda sorta.

Most readers will quickly guess that smokiness is the "meat" in the bologna beer, but the overarching point here is the tying together of localist threads.

Locals react to "bologna beer" in Lebanon: Snitz Creek Brewery serves-up Seltzer's Bologna in a new way, by Meg Frankowski (WGAL)

LEBANON, Pa. —Would you drink your favorite deli variety in the form of beer? Snitz Creek Brewery is now serving-up Lebanon, Pa.'s, famous Seltzer's Bologna in liquid form.

While Seltzer's Bologna is a secret recipe, we do know that it's placed in wood smokehouses for three days to cure. Still, there's no actual meat in the beer mix. Adam Szajda, co-owner of Snitz Creek, says the secret is in the grains.

"We use grains that were smoked in the Seltzer's smoke house in Palmyra, Pa.," said Szajda.

Al Smith, Prohibition and the "greatest political button of all time."

Coincidentally, this may be the greatest Mental Floss posting of all time. Prohibition wasn't so much about alcohol as bigotry, religion, prejudice and politics.

And yes, the pirate votes wet.

The Greatest Political Button of All Time (Mental Floss)

 ... Many of the Protestants (particularly Methodists, Southern Baptists and German Lutherans) who so feared the nefarious influence of Smith's Catholicism were also in favor of Prohibition. Al Smith was not.

The Pour Fool on Dick Cantwell's principled resignation from Elysian.

It's been a few months, and The Pour Fool follows up.

The Pour Fool on Elysian and AB InBev's "malignant tentacles."

Folks, a "craft" brewery absorbed by AB-InBev is just as dead as if a nuclear bomb were dropped on it. Huzzahs to Dick Cantwell:

"In his resignation, Cantwell affirms what everyone already knew about him; his integrity and standards and the unwavering dedication that he’s always shown to the craft brewing culture that he helped create."

The Pour Fool rocks it.

Dick Cantwell: Corporate Brewing STILL Sucks, by stevefoolbody (The Pour Fool)

Dick Cantwell has resigned from his position as partner and brewmaster at Elysian Brewing in Seattle, in the wake of the company’s tragic sale to AB/InBev, the Belgian/Brazilian mega-brewer which acquired the brewery as part of a broader plan to insinuate itself into the craft beer community and win back younger drinkers who have abandoned the company’s flagship beers, Bud, Bud Light, and the foundering Michelob.

Following are a few relevant postings from earlier in the year.

Pop open a Trojan Goose and enjoy this explanation of why you shouldn't.

Trojan Cigar?

The PC: Budweiser explains the Doctrine of Trojan Geese Transubstantiation.

Elysian and Sub Pop: "Corporate Beer Still Sucks."

Heinz, Miller, ketchup and wretched light beer.

Read the first full paragraph below like this:

Amerian low-calorie "light" lager is one of those beers that science, technology and mass production have truly mastered. We as a society no longer need to make our own light beer in the same way that we no longer need to hand-crank our cars. We figured out a better way. Or, rather, Miller, Bud and Coors figured it out.

I'm serene in the knowledge that as times change, my fundamental hatred of light beer remains intact.

But there's more to ketchup than this homage to Heinz, as was verified by the time-wasting wonders of Wikipedia. The actual word "ketchup" can be traced to a local dialect of the Chinese language in reference to a condiment, and so perhaps it isn't so unusual after all for barbecued spareribs from the Chinese carry-outs using ketchup in the sauce.

Meanwhile, ketchup in England used to be made from mushrooms, not tomatoes. This makes sense, because Europeans didn't have tomatoes until they were brought back by New World explorers. In turn, this means that your favorite Italian spaghetti sauce recipes were not available to ancient Romans.

Neither was light beer. Lucky Romans.

Stop Making Your Ketchup In-House. It's Terrible, by Farley Elliott (Eater forums)

You know it's true.

Ketchup is one of those foodstuffs that science, technology and mass production have truly mastered. We as a society no longer need to make our own ketchup in the same way that we no longer need to hand-crank our cars. We figured out a better way. Or, rather, Heinz figured it out.

The Keg Fest of Ale 2015.

Todd Antz does such a good job of selling his annual event that I'm sure he doesn't need the Curmudgeon's help, but just the same, a yearly approving nod in the direction of a top-quality beer event never hurts.

Read the press release at LouisvilleBeer.com: The Keg Fest of Ale 2015.