This weekend: Lupulin Land Harvest Hopcoming and New Albanian Art Show.

Hops and art this weekend at NABC:

Publicanista! Lupulin Land Harvest Hopcoming and New Albanian Art Show edition.

R.I.P.: Bistro New Albany.

The following is a composite of postings at NA Confidential and a bit of new material. I’ve had merrier times at funerals than Wednesday morning, when I dropped in on Dave Clancy at the now defunct Bistro New Albany for a chat about his life and times. Here's the story.

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Dave Clancy posted the news himself on the Louisville Hot Bytes restaurant forum:

It is with a heavy heart that I have chosen to shut the doors of my labor of love. Due to circumstances beyond my control (mostly financial), my restaurant is closed as of 10/16/07. This was not an easy choice for me as I was so close to success that it is going to break my heart to see it end like this. I have run this place alone for well over a year and it has truly ruined me in every sense and, given the choice, I would do it all over again (only next time, I'll have a little more cash!). Thank you all for your support over the course of the last few years and wish me luck as I try to sort out a dead business and find some new direction to travel. If anyone is looking for an old washed up Chef, let me know!

It's remarkably difficult for a genuine paradigm shift to occur. All of downtown New Albany currently is engaged in just such an effort, and it's a work in progress that unfortunately will have its ups and downs. Bistro New Albany's demise is a downer, but within it are seeds of positive developments.

What I know is this: Dave Clancy chose to stick it out as a pioneer in a place where the naysayers said it couldn't be done; what's more, he chose to stick it out when he wasn't ever supposed to be the sole owner of the business (recall that the original investor dropped out, and that former partner Dave Himmel moved on to his own business), and not once did he curse his bad fortune. Rather, he saw the potential and put his scant resources on the table.

He lost the bet. Dave might not be the best poker player, but he has considerable balls, and he'll always be a hero to me.

Meanwhile, don't expect the BNA space to be empty for long. Building owner John Dowell's name is on the three-way permit, and most of the physical assets of the restaurant remain untouched even though some are in need of modification; think "new carpet." Sources indicate that wheels are spinning as we mourn, one locally based, and another from Louisville. While a replacement for the undercapitalized Bistro New Albany probably won't be of exactly the same genre, ground indeed was broken, and there are too many good things about the BNA experience for savvy operators to ignore. Here's Dave again, from a later forum posting:

Rest assured that this space will not remain vacant and it is a golden opportunity for any saavy restaurateur. I STRONGLY suggest that anyone interested in this property contact Mike Kopp at Lopp real estate, and anyone who is interested is welcome to see my P/L for the last year and a half. The difference between making this place succeed or fail was the lack of a FOH manager or partner combined with my own lack of capital. New Albany is a great city with so much potential and I know that it will continue to grow and prosper in spite of my loss.

Perhaps another downtown eatery in need of a boost might be in need of a chef, and in today's Tribune article, Speakeasy owner Brad Tharp openly discusses the possibility of welcoming Dave into the fold. Let's hope Brad includes Dave's staff as part of the deal.

They both very much need it -- as does downtown.

Lupulin Land Harvest Hopcoming begins Friday, October 19.

I can tell you this: Finally, it's done. Now I'm working on the starting lineup.

Here's the final list for Lupulin Land Harvest Hopcoming, which begins this Friday (October 19) at Rich O's and Sportstime.

It's also the weekend for the latest incarnation of the New Albanian Art Show, which will be held in the Prost special events wing.

I'm already working on Saturnalia Winter Solstice (December 7), which leaves November as a somewhat calm month between storms. Maybe.

Those marked * are first-time drafts.

Louisville area cask-conditioned ales:
Bluegrass Brewing Company (Main & Clay) IPA
*Bluegrass Brewing Company (St. Matthews) Daisycutter Organic IPA
Browning's Brewery She-Devil India Pale Ale
Cumberland Brews Matt’s Red (opener on Oct. 19)

Imports:
*Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weisse
Coniston Bluebird Bitter
*Gaspar
*Geants Saison Voisin
Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted
Houblon Chouffe
Poperings Hommel
Urthel Hop-It
*Wintercoat Double Hop

Microbrews
*Boulder Cold Hop
Clipper City Loose Cannon Hop 3
Founders Reds Rye
Founders Centennial IPA
Great Divide Fresh Hop
Great Divide Hercules Double IPA
*Mad Anthony IPA
NABC Elsa von Horizon Imperial Pilsner (poured on Randall)
NABC Oaktimus
Rogue JLS Glen 2007
*Schlafly Dry-Hopped APA (firkin; Oct. 24: Schlafly reps in attendance)
*Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale
Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale (wet hop)
Stone 10th Anniversary Ale
Stone Ruination IPA
Two Brothers Cane & Ebel
Two Brothers Heavy Handed India Pale Ale (wet hop)
Two Brothers Hop Juice (two different batches)
Upland Dragonfly IPA (special dry-hopped version)

Everyday Hop Accents
Alpha King
Arrogant Bastard
Bell’s Two Hearted Ale
NABC Hoptimus
Pilsner Urquell
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

Previously released text:

For the sixth time, we’ll be exceeding OSHA’s legal mandated limits on permissible IBU’s per square foot of floor space when Lupulin Land Harvest Hopcoming 2007 begins on Friday, October 19.

As during previous celebrations of the “magic cone,” Lupulin Land 2007 will offer a fine opportunity for Kentuckiana’s hopheads to unite over a pint or two of America’s hoppiest beer.

As an added attraction, this year the latest incarnation of the New Albanian Art Show will be taking place in Prost at the same time as Lupulin Land (Oct. 18, 19 & 20). Pop Art, anyone?

By popular demand, Randall the Enamel Animal, the continuous dry-hopping machine invented by those twisted people at Dogfish Head, will be brought back for a third appearance at Lupulin Land.

Roughly 14-16 of the preceding following will be on tap when the fest opens, in addition to the everyday beers. Louisville area breweries will be represented by cask-conditioned ales on our hand pump, which will run continuously until depleted. Look for more information on these firkins as we get closer to the starting date.

Maybe Miller could post yellow stars on the door so that they could tell the difference.

I’m so old that I can remember a time when Pabst Blue Ribbon genuinely was a workingman’s beer, while at the same time, Miller “Champagne of Beer” High Life sought to convey a more upscale image, albeit at a price point only pennies higher than PBR.

Having long ago cannibalized High Life in order to seize the MGD demographic, the spin doctors tending to the shareholders atop the SABMiller multi-national penthouse have since busied themselves repositioning Miller High Life as an icon of numbed-down populism, and that’s ironic, since Pabst has become the hands-down favorite beer of people with money who should know better but choose today’s emasculated PBR for the very same reason that Che Guevara’s bearded visage stares out from their wristwatches.

If Miller’s latest television protagonist weren’t African-American, he might serve as body double for Ed Anger of the late and lamented Weekly World News, one eyebrow jauntily cocked as he rages at the villainy of snooty bistros and the corporate poseurs at Whole Foods, both of which are guilty of daring to vend the common man’s High Life alongside overpriced burgers, watermelon martinis and imitation tofu milkshakes.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s heartening in a way vaguely reminiscent of Erin Brockovich that humble beer truck drivers are trained by SABMiller to enforce an ideological purge of uppity establishments, but what baffles me is how the captive bottles of Miller High Life ever came to be languishing in such trendy, upscale wastelands in the first place.

Isn’t it true that the very same wholesalers now dispatching these blue-collar superheroes to rectify crucial stocking issues previously sent salespersons to the very same establishments to collect orders for the very same cases of beer?

If not, then how did these places procure their stocks? The black market?

When the truck driver reclaims the wayward cases of High Life, are refunds being issued? Isn’t he actually undoing the handiwork of a yet another poor schmuck who accepted the initial order? What of the commission, or in this case, the ransom? Couldn't the salesperson be issued with a list of characteristics to help judge the customer so as to ensure that Miller High Life reaches the proper segment of the marketplace?

Oops, ‘scuse me. I forgot that drinking, not thinking, is the final goal here.

Today’s discussion questions:

Why do mass-market breweries express open contempt for their target constituencies?

Worse yet, why do the target constituencies forever acquiesce in being insulted?

FOSSILS club update: The "Femur of Power" has been passed.

From Beth Howard, proud owner of the "Past President" pin.

Congratulations to winners of the 2007 FOSSILS officer elections, held by ballot on Saturday, October 13. Each race was very tight and required the expertise of the accounting firm of Frazier & Frazier to verify tabulations. No hanging chads reported.

President - Bob Capshew
Vice-President - Caleb Sunderman
Secretary - Ed Needham
Treasurer - Denny Stapp

Details regarding date and time of President Capshew's first Executive/Planning Meeting forthcoming.

Thanks to all candidates for your willingness to assume a leadership role --- I'm sure Bob and his team will be calling upon your energy and ideas.

Also --- a personal note of thanks to everyone contributing to the success and growth of FOSSILS this past year during my presidency. I especially appreciate your support as we navigated stormy waters and your patience as we adopted a new meeting schedule in 2007. A specific thanks to Tom, Melissa and Denny as my team of officers.

I also raise a pint to FOSSILS members for our club's commitment to sustaining and enhancing the homebrewing and beer appreciation culture in our community. That momentum is apparent through relationships being nurtured with our homebrewing comrades in clubs from Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee and beyond; through robust participation in more homebrew competitions than ever before; and the outstanding number of awards club members are receiving in brewing competitions.

Not to mention our bar tab after club meetings!

Harvest Homecoming's "swill walk" an emblem of clashing demographics.

I'll be cross-posting this essay later in the week at NA Confidential.

New Albany’s annual Harvest Homecoming festival started life quite small and inconspicuously four decades ago, and it has since grown into what its organizers claim is the second largest gathering of its type in the state of Indiana, trailing only the Indianapolis 500 celebration.

There are numerous themed events for two weeks preceding the yearly parade, then four “booth days” during which streets in the heart of New Albany’s historic business district are closed, yielding to want amounts to an enormous food court with games, information and music thrown in for good measure. At its best, the ideal of Harvest Homecoming is civic-minded and predominantly local in nature, with generations frequenting the same rolled oyster booth or chicken dinner emporium run by the same church or charity.

When Harvest Homecoming took its embryonic shape in the late 1960’s, and unbeknownst to most people living at the time, New Albany’s downtown was about to commence a long, painful and degrading descent into dormancy. As my ruminations today are not intended to constitute an essay about the familiar phenomenon of inner-city urban decay, I’ll leave it at that, and observe that Harvest Homecoming’s governing committee might plausibly say that for a long period of time, certainly by the 1990’s, the festival’s four-day, early October run was about the only game going downtown.

Consequently, Harvest Homecoming has been planned accordingly. Now, with stirrings of downtown revitalization far too strong to be ignored, the plan likely will have to be modified in coming years. Unfortunately, a case can be made that Harvest Homecoming’s demographic and the demographic spearheading downtown revitalization are heading in opposite directions, with potential difficulties that might as well be addressed now rather than later.

For those who have glimpsed a bit of the planet outside New Albany, and who have had the good fortune to be exposed to post-secondary education and its expansion of consciousness, there almost inevitably exists a measure of ambivalence about Harvest Homecoming as the institution has evolved – some would say “devolved – over the years. This ambivalence does not imply rejection of it, but simply a recognition that sometimes the closer one is to something, the harder it is to see how it really looks.

The festival’s stewards are “lifer” volunteers who work hard year-round, and while any fair critique of their performance might point to a deeply ingrained conservatism and a general reluctance to think outside the Bud, their fundamental aim of maintaining a family-oriented annual celebration is admirable.

Admirable, yes, but certainly not easy to ensure, and no single Harvest Homecoming “event” grandly compromises the committee’s goal of a family friendly festival like the Friday afternoon “beer walk,” which might be termed the “swill walk,” and so I think I will.

From the outset, make no mistake: The official Harvest Homecoming committee is no friend of the swill walk, and bristles when people contact the organizers for information about it. Although in the past, I merely shrugged and considered the committee’s attitude toward the swill walk to be an extension of its customary stodginess on other matters, this year I made it a point to observe the swill walk in progress.

The committee is right on target. It isn’t a pretty picture. In fact, the swill walk is a civic embarrassment, and as part and parcel of a litigious society, it’s probably only a matter of time before something ugly occurs and the torts begin flying. Speaking personally, at a time when many in my sector of the beer business are trying to raise the bar when it comes to responsible beer consumption, the swill walk sadly reminds us that neo-Prohibitionists occasionally have something approximating a valid point, and that the activities of the nation’s mass-market swill merchants are as much of a daily threat to our ability to offer the populace a changed paradigm as those who would eliminate alcohol entirely on grounds of its intrinsic “evil.”

Like many other aspects of life, there surely are evils intrinsic to the consumption of beer. Most of us are devoted to the ideal of lessening these, so why encourage their exaltation?

The way it works is this. Every year on the Friday afternoon of Harvest Homecoming, a style show is held at the riverfront “beer tent” (“swill tent” is more like it) during lunchtime, and the show’s conclusion is the unofficial signal for hundreds of people to begin, or in many cases to continue, drinking while traversing a jagged route through the blocked-off and humanity-packed downtown streets where food and activity booths hold sway.

The ubiquity of gratis Anheuser-Busch advertising paraphernalia, which is generated in-house at the local wholesaler at a scale that would humble the propagandistic Communist and Fascist regimes of old, provides ample evidence as to the underlying grease that lubricates the phenomenon of the swill walk, namely, that the local A-B wholesaler has agreed not to cash the checks written to pay for two-story stacks of Bud Light until the week following the festival’s conclusion, something that is of borderline legality in the state of Indiana.

Meanwhile, duly oiled, the denizens of the swill walk surge through the most congested harvest Homecoming area, participants stumbling from one bar to the next, slamming liquor shots and chugging beer from cans that are seldom recycled while screaming obscenities in proximity to children, then urinating in places that even someone like me – a veteran of Oktoberfest in Munich and Pamplona’s festival of San Fermin – is hard pressed to imagine.

Once I saw a port-a-can being nearly toppled by drunks. Around the corner, bikers clad in ominous black costumes queued a short block away from where this year’s “teen scene” stage was erected. How Pamplona manages to achieve a balance between its children and an invading wave of Euro trash is beyond me; perhaps we might ask, because the New Albany way doesn’t seem to be working.

The family-unfriendly effect of all this is hard to exaggerate in print, and when taken in the context of an overall festival that sadly has devolved over the decades into low, lower and lowest common denominators – a metaphor applicable to the city as a whole – it’s frustrating, indeed, to witness the chaos and know that I’m in the same business.

I’m neither naïve, nor out to bring the furies crashing down on the urine-stained drunks gracefully bellowing at each other during the swill walk. It is not my intention to frown on the profit motives of downtown bar owners, who probably reap several weeks of revenue in three days during Harvest Homecoming, and who are happy to accept largesse as offered by wholesalers eager to see the cash registers hum.

Of course, I well understand that my “good beer” segment of the marketplace is small, but I also maintain that this niche is upwardly mobile and in keeping with humanity’s constructive (as opposed to anarchic) instincts, and furthermore, that it is capable of sense and sensibility in addition to windfall weekend profits.

If NABC’s projected downtown brewing project comes to fruition, I hope to be able to illustrate that beer quality can be good, not bland, and that better beer can be consumed responsibly in a wholesome, entertaining and better atmosphere – which, after all, is the lesson any thinking human being takes away after sitting for a couple of hours drinking beer in a Bavarian beer garden, with playground equipment and young children generally in close proximity. Our future beer sales during Harvest Homecoming will be contained and controlled as far as humanly possible, and we’ll try to offer a higher common denominator. We may fail, but we’ll try.

Disclaimers aside, and in spite of my reluctance to tempt unfavorable karma by saying it aloud, the swill walk that takes place during Harvest Homecoming is aided and abetted by a blind eye to illegality, and while I can understand this coming from the local gendarmes, I find it curious that the state tolerates it.

You’re free to disagree.

Random beer-related Harvest Homecoming views.

The first three photos were taken at Connor's Place.

Congressman Baron Hill visited the Bistro New Albany patio Friday and was greeted by his fan club.

Charlestown Pizza Company in LEO.

There's good press for the Charlestown Pizza Company in this week's Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO). The last third of Robin Garr's piece pertains to CPC.

Eat 'n' Blog: Launch your gondola in a river of red

Indeed, these folks are very serious about their beer, and the selection is exceptional, featuring about 18 bottled beers, all extremely interesting artisan brews with a strong focus on Southern Indiana and the Louisville area.

Where to find good beer during Harvest Homecoming.

Speaking personally, it has been a cherished goal to live long enough that I might be able to enjoy a craft beer downtown during New Albany’s annual Harvest Homecoming celebration, and by doing so, to strike a small blow against the hegemony of the swill merchants.

In 2005, the old House of Bread put two kegs of NABC beer on tap during Harvest Homecoming, and last year, its successor, Bistro New Albany expanded the NABC selection while adding craft beers from Upland (a Bloomington, Indiana microbrewery) and others from America and around the world.

BNA will do it again this year, and there’ll be NABC and Upland beers on tap once again. Unlike last year, BNA will conduct food and drink business during booth days both outside on the patio and inside in the dining room, which means that one need not be restricted to elephant ears and rolled oysters (the latter remaining a favorite of mine) from the street side vendors.

Another marvelous option is added for 2007: Connor’s Place, run by former BNA partner Dave Himmel, and located on Main Street adjacent to the Parthenon. CP will feature NABC drafts during Harvest Homecoming: Community Dark, Elector, Flat Tyre, Hoptimus (limited quantities) and Mt. Lee (also limited quantities).

Flat Tyre will be available in cask-conditioned form from the hand pump, which has been borrowed from NABC for the occasion, giving Connor’s the distinction of being the first New Albany establishment during the modern era to offer hand-pumped “real” ale. When the cask version is depleted, there’ll be a regular keg as back-up. Connor’s Place will also have Oktoberfest beers from Upland, Browning’s (Louisville micro) and Spaten (Germany).

I believe that Elector will be on tap at Speakeasy Jazz, NABC’s remaining downtown account.

Yes, swill reigns supreme at Harvest Homecoming, and it probably always will. However, all we ever wanted was a choice. Now more than ever, we have it. If you like good beer and you’re downtown the next three days, visit one of these fine establishments and buy one. In NABC isn’t your taste, my feelings aren’t hurt; have another microbrew or an import instead, and let them know that you appreciate having options. Rest assured that if it were up to Anheuser-Busch, you wouldn’t have any.

Culinary Costume of American Artisan Ales: A Beer & Food Pairing.

As a precursor to what follows, make no mistake that Andy and Josh have done virtually all the heavy lifting for this first-ever beer dinner in Prost. This is their baby, and I'm just pleased to be a part of it. Thanks also to Reva and her helpers.

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Culinary Costume of American Artisan Ales: A Beer & Food Pairing

Rich O’s Public House (New Albany, Indiana) ... to be held in Prost, the banquet and special events area at Rich O’s, with beer commentary by Roger A. Baylor.

Monday, October 29th ~ 6:45 p.m.

$70 per person ~ all service and taxes inclusive

Tickets are being sold in advance at Rich O’s Public House; call (812) 949-2804 and ask for Reva Hagedorn, NABC’s special event coordinator

Chef: Joshua Lehman ... Sous Chef at Le Relais Restaurant

Chef: Andrew McCabe ... Pastry Chef at Le Relais Restaurant

MENU

Seared Diver Scallops
Orange Ginger Broth
*Jolly Pumpkin Calabaza Blanca*

Heirloom Pumpkin Soup
Applewood Smoked Bacon & Granny Smith Apple
*Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale*

Muscovy Duck Breast
Carrot Mousse, Caramelized Onion Duck Confit Bread Pudding, Duck Stock Reduction
*NABC Thunderfoot*

Intermezzo
*New Glarus Unplugged Enigma*

Local Artisan Cheese
-Capriole Juliana
Porcini Mushroom Honey
*Ommegang Ommegeddon*

-Capriole Mont St. Francis
Rosted Yellow Beet, Red Beet Compote
*NABC Hoptimus*

Pear Streusel Cake
Vanilla Ice Cream, Caramel
*Allagash Curieux*

Parting Glass
Cask conditioned *NABC Malcolm's Old Setters Ale*

There's an explanation for that ...

A reader asks:

"What happened to your NABC beers on tap at the Speakeasy in New Albany?"

It would appear that the Speakeasy's front keg box, in which they'd placed three NABC 1/6 (5-gallon) kegs, died roughly six weeks ago and has yet to be repaired or replaced. In the interest of patience and diplomacy, neither of which have been personal hallmarks previously, I'll say only that you're free to draw your own conclusions from the long absence of keg dispensing space at the establishment.

On the other hand, I've not been by to check since last week, and I'll try to do so today. With Harvest Homecoming prime time coming, it is reported that Speakeasy is stockpiling huge quantities of Anheuser-Busch products, and the less I say about that, the better. Let's merely suggest that not all wholesalers in the state of Indiana observe the rules with respect to extending credit to accounts.

I really enjoy helping people, but as you grow older, sometimes it occurs to you that people must want to be helped.

Does that answer your question?

Can you hear the grinding of my teeth?

"If Your Mother Says She Loves You, Check It Out."

Last Friday afternoon, as I labored outside in the infuriating, unseasonable heat and humidity (90+ degrees F. in October) to prepare our house for the annual harvest Homecoming parade party on Saturday, my cell phone rang.

It was the friendly newspaper reporter for the New Albany Tribune, and seeing as he was providing the opportunity to take a break … could I tell him a bit about NABC’s proposed brewery expansion?

Well, honestly, the idea was just coming to the stage of transferring thoughts from pencil and scraps of paper to word processor, but if he wouldn’t mind it being exceedingly vague, I’d be happy to oblige.

Fine, he said; after all, it’s just for the paper’s “business wrap,” which usually takes up two paragraphs at the most, and on page three by the lingerie ads.

I told him what could be revealed at this very early stage of the game, cautioning that the whole thing was as prematurely nebulous as could be imagined, and then I went off to scrub toilets and forgot all about it.

That is, until Saturday morning, when the following appeared on page one:

Baylor planning brewery for downtown New Albany

New Albanian Brewing Co. proprietor Roger Baylor confirmed Friday he intends to renovate a downtown building with room to triple the brewing capacity of his uptown headquarters.

Geez.

It’s all good, and any publicity is good publicity – heaven knows I milk the system as often as possible – but I really must object to the headline. It’s the New Albanian Brewing Company that (I hope) will be coming to downtown, not just me. For the record, my partners are named Amy Baylor and Kate Lewison; either I give their names to people who don't repeat them, or I'm not asked at all, and it isn't fair.

At any rate, the basic information is there, and if it makes very little sense, that’s because (a) it’s hard to reduce 15 minutes of conversation into a few hundred words, and (b) I we’re at a very early and prematurely nebulous stage of the game.

First, we need to get through the remainder of the year, but yes, an expansion plan is on the drawing board. If you are a banker, please let me know. Otherwise, stay tuned.

A phone call from Biscuit.

I failed to mention that we received a call recently from Phil "Biscuit" Timperman, who has been in Oregon longer than many of us care to remember. I wasn't on duty at the bar when he rang, so here are the basics for those who know him.

The Horse Brass gig ended last December prior to a journey to Europe, and Biscotti's alive, well, and employed now by Rogue Ales in Portland.

I won't make it to Portland this year, but May 2008 draws ever closer. Something tells me we'll see him then.

Jared Williamson to perform Saturday evening, October 6 at Connor's Place.

NABC's hard working associate brewer, Jared Williamson, will be doing a solo gig at Connor's Place tomorrow night (Saturday, October 6; 8:00 p.m.)

His day job is brewing, but he's been playing music for longer than he's been making beer.

Jared's performance will take place in the lovely confines of the pub's outdoor patio. There usually are two NABC beers on tap at Connor's Place, as well as another three import or craft beers.

I'll be at the homestead all day for our annual NA Confidential Harvest Homecoming Parade party, to which readers are invited, stop by for a beer before heading down to Connor's Place to catch Jared's music.

Irish music at the Public House, first Thursday of each month.

The first "Irish jam" was held earlier this evening in the front romm at Rich O's.

These are planned for the first Thursday of each month. The one tonight went quite well, and the acoustic sounds were loud enough to hear and enjoy, but not too loud to make conversation difficult.

New Tacos La Rosita open on Grant Line Road near NABC.

I apologize for the scattershot postings and brevity. There has simply been no time this week to write, and I remain unable to re-establish a "compositional" routine in the ongoing absence of my office computer, which is being repaired following a mother board flame-out.

Permit me to pass these good tidings to readers: The much anticipated rebirth of Tacos La Rosita, the taqueria arm of Israel Landin's sit-down Mexican eatery on Market Street in New Albany, has been launched in the new location across Grant Line Road from the New Albanian Brewing Company. It's now adjacent to the liquor store in what we've always called Grant Line Center -- across from the school, and on the same side of the street as K-Mart. We can see the banner from NABC's parking lot.

I haven't been over to check it out, but I'm told that Israel has a beer permit. Hell, we could take a keg over there on a two-wheeler, so it might yet be possible to have Israel's delicious authentic Mexican food with a Progressive Pint of Mt. Lee or Elector.

Cilantro and hops? Who needs Miller Chill?

Tony's Lupulin Land Harvest Hopcoming 2007 graphics.

Weekend musing.

My first trip to Europe came in 1985, and for 15 years afterward, the bicycle was conspicuously absent as a preferred mode of transportation while visiting the continent.

This changed in 2000, and since then, it’s hard to imagine being in Europe and not riding a bike for at least some portion of the time. The notions of biking across the countryside and drinking great beer while doing it have become almost inseparable, and it becomes increasingly difficult to consider one without the other.

It’s been a year since the last trip, and it will be a year until the next one. In the interim, much of the beercycling I do will have to be local, and that’s a better prospect than ever before given the proximity of downtown New Albany establishments offering good beer.

The problem with beercycling in this fashion is that I must be forced to take the long ride first, instead of cycling less than a mile from my house and commencing happy hour without the rationale of it being a restorative.

The other problems in 2007 have been the necessity of rotator cuff repair surgery, a very good business year that has required more work hours than expected, a steadily escalating ambition to expand the business, and my continued involvement in civic affairs. My wife Diana has been working and attending graduate school simultaneously, and in some ways, it feels like I’ve been doing the same.

Biking time has lagged accordingly, although I’m still trying to use the bike as a means of commuting whenever possible. But, there’s plenty of time to prepare for the anticipated fall adventure in 2008, when we’ll be attending the triennial hop festival in Poperinge. Belgium. We hope this will be convergence in two columns, by bike and vehicle, and it has already become the most challenging logistical puzzle that I’ve attempted to solve during the course of my travels.

Getting from Budapest to Moscow in 1987 as an independent rail traveler seeking a student-priced ducat was a piece of cake compared to this, but when it comes right down to it, I’m stubborn that way, and it’ll work out in the end.

Once the journey is underway, it will become transformed as it always does, into a time to be remembered and cherished. I’ve been exceedingly fortunate, and tremendous travel memories abound. We need to make some more. I’ll keep you posted.

A toast to the late Michael Jackson nationwide, tomorrow.

Trouble is, we're closed on Sunday.
On the 30th, we're having a company meeting, so we'll offer our toast during the server beer tasting/training segment, and make a donation to the National Parkinson Foundation.

The ad hoc life with computers and beer.

It is a source of great joy that we’ve finally had rain, and that the lunacy of 90+ degrees of temperature and humidity to match (in late September) have passed in the wake of the storms, but there is annoyance to match, because the home computer has ceased functioning, forcing me to come to work to do work.

I’ve gotten into the habit of working at home from roughly 8:00 a.m. to Noon during the week. Seeing as I’ve always been a morning person, it’s the best time for me to write and be creative, and the comfort of the home office – with ready access to the handy Saeco home espresso maker and a stash of cigars for porch reading – is something I look forward to each day.

At work, I must insulate myself from distractions, usually in my office, door shut, and a wall of musical sounds separating me from the bar area, the ringing telephone, and the many other things that intrude on concentration.

Also, there's a fair amount of beer at work ... and it calls my name constantly. You wouldn't believe how much willpower it takes to be in this business.

At any rate, until there is a home-based restoration, forgive a few breaks in posting.

Keg Liquors "Fall Festival Beer Tasting" is tomorrow: Thursday, September 27.

Straight from the Keg Liquors public relations department (T. Antz, proprietor):

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Join us September 27th from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. as we hold our Fall Festival Beer Tasting, featuring beers that mark the start of fall. The cold weather will be coming soon (it really will!), and these brews make it a little easier to bear. Here is the lineup:

Left Hand Oktoberfest
Lakefront Oktoberfest
Brooklyn Oktoberfest
Paulaner Oktoberfest
Sprecher Oktoberfest
Harpoon Oktoberfest
Upland Oktoberfest
Spaten Oktoberfest
Flying Dog Dogtoberfest
Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale
Schlafly Pumpkin Ale
Lakefront Pumpkin Lager
New Holland Ichabod
Dogfish Head Punkin Ale
Weihenstephaner Festbier
New Holland Oktoberfest
Hofbrau Oktoberfest
BBC Oktoberfest
Browning's Oktoberfest (Growler donated by the brewery)

As usual, we will have a few surprise beers on the tasting as well.

All beers will be $1 off the regular price the day of the tasting. This event is free and open to the public (21 and older of course).

Looking ahead: November 20th is the 3rd Annual Huber Wine Tasting from 5:00 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Featuring wines from nearby Starlight, Indiana, we proudly welcome the Huber Winery back for our 3rd Annual tasting with them. This event will be held on a Tuesday, instead of our regular Thursday, due to Thanksgiving. Pop's Reserve will be sampled at this tasting (it gets released on November 15th). More details on this event are forthcoming.

A very busy October lies ahead.

Silly me. I keep thinking that there’ll be a “quiet” time this year, but the calendar just keeps filling up. There are more than a few beer events, beer and food pairings and all-purpose merriment planned for coming weeks, and here’s the schedule as it appears now.

First up on Monday, October 1, is the Ayinger Oktober-Fest Beer Dinner at Bistro New Albany. Chef Clancy and the Publican will be combining Bavarian cuisine with some of the finest exported examples of Bavarian beer.

After that appropriate autumn kick-off, New Albany’s annual Harvest Homecoming festival will be dominating downtown from the October 6 parade day through October 13. NABC beers will be available downtown at our three primary accounts during booth days (October 11, 12 and 13), and we’re planning on releasing a few bits of NABC’s reserve stock for special promotions at Bistro New Albany, Connor’s Place and Speakeasy Jazz during these three days. Stay tuned for information on what, when and where.

During the same weekend, several Louisville area brewers and brewery owners will be in Denver, Colorado, for the Great American Beer Festival. Bring back some medals, guys.

Lupulin Land Harvest Hopcoming and the next New Albanian Art Show converge on Friday, October 19 (the art show begins a day earlier), and on the 20th, there’s a possibility that I may be working with Tommie Mudd at Caffe Classico on a “stouts of fall” appetizer and ale pairing. That same day, Mike Stephens at Youngstown Cigar Shop & Island Café (Jeffersonville) is holding a “Stogies and Stouts” party from noon to 5:00 p.m. Mike's shop is located behind Mai's Thai in the Youngstown Shopping Center on 10th Street.

Tired yet?

Finally, to close the month with a jolt before Halloween, there’ll be our first ever beer dinner at Prost, NABC’s banquet and special events wing: Culinary Costume of American Artisan Ales, to be held on Monday, October 29. It’s a cooperative venture between NABC and two aspiring young culinary artists, Andy and Josh, although it should be noted that they’re doing most of the heavy lifting. Pricing and details have yet to be determined.

Write ‘em down. My liver’s on full alert.

Calendar check: Culinary Costume of American Artisan Ales at NABC on Monday, October 29.

To close October with pre-Halloween festivities, there’ll be our first ever beer dinner at Prost, NABC’s banquet and special events wing.

It is the Culinary Costume of American Artisan Ales, to be held on Monday, October 29. The dinner and beer pairing is a cooperative venture between NABC and two aspiring young culinary artists, Andy and Josh, although it should be noted that they’re doing most of the heavy lifting. Pricing and details have yet to be determined.

Andy provides this preview, with a disclaimer: “Cheese and the dessert aren’t quite finished, but we should have this done during the next week.”

Seared Diver Scallop, Orange Ginger Broth
-Jolly Pumpkin Calabaza Blanca

Heirloom Pumpkin Soup, Applewood Smoked Bacon, Apple
-Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale

Muscovy Duck Breast, Carrot Mousse, Carmelized Onion Duck Confit Bread Pudding, Duck Stock Reduction
-NABC Thunderfoot

Intermezzo
(The Publican says: “We’re shopping for microbrewed Flanders Red/Brown/Sour as a palate refreshing beer choice.”)

Capriole Juliana (?)
-Ommegang Ommegeddon

Capriole Mont St. Francis (?)
-NABC Hoptimus

Carmelized Pear, Vanilla Ice Cream
-Allagash Curieux

(Parting glass)
-NABC Malcolm's Old Setters Ale

Andy again: “We are going to add a small garnish to each cheese and the dessert ... we know the flavors we want to use we just don't know exactly how we are presenting it yet (tart, pie, etc).”

Mark your calendars. This one is going to be special.

Lupulin Land 2007 preview: We're less than a month away.

(Work has been wreaking havoc with my normal writing schedule. I'm thrwing this out now, and will come back to correct the various bad links later when there's time. Your patience is appreciated; sometimes, one must take care of salaried business first ... RAB)

For the sixth time, we’ll be exceeding OSHA’s legal mandated limits on permissible IBU’s per square foot of floor space when Lupulin Land Harvest Hopcoming 2007 begins on Friday, October 19.

As during previous celebrations of the “magic cone,” Lupulin Land 2007 will offer a fine opportunity for Kentuckiana’s hopheads to unite over a pint or two of America’s hoppiest beer.

As an added attraction, this year the latest incarnation of the New Albanian Art Show will be taking place in Prost at the same time as Lupulin Land (Oct. 18, 19 & 20). op Art, anyone?

Furthermore, Lupulin Land begins a week later than usual in 2007 so as not to interfere with “Booth Days” at New Albany’s annual downtown festival, Harvest Homecoming (October 11 through 14). Originally, it was the express aim to run the harvest hopcoming alongside the civic homecoming as an hopternative to the lack of beer choice downtown, but the presence of three NABC draft accounts within the historic business district has changed the variable.

By popular demand, Randall the Enamel Animal, the continuous dry-hopping machine invented by those twisted people at Dogfish Head, will be brought back for a third appearance at Lupulin Land. We haven’t decided what beers Randall will be modifying.

Roughly 14-16 of the following will be on tap when the fest opens, in addition to the everyday beers. Louisville area breweries will be represented by cask-conditioned ales on our hand pump, which will run continuously until depleted. Look for more information on these firkins as we get closer to the starting date.

Those marked * are first-time drafts.

Louisville area cask-conditioned ales:
Bluegrass Brewing Company (Main & Clay) TBA
Browning's Brewery She-Devil India Pale Ale
Cumberland Brews (TBA)
New Albanian Brewing Company TBA

Imports:
*Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weisse
Coniston Bluebird Bitter
*Gaspar
*Geants Saison Voisin
Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted
Houblon Chouffe
Poperings Hommel
Urthel Hop-It
*Wintercoat Double Hop

Microbrews
*Boulder Cold Hop
Clipper City Loose Cannon Hop 3
Founders Reds Rye
Founders Centennial IPA
Great Divide Hercules Double IPA
*Mad Anthony IPA
NABC Elsa von Horizon Imperial Pilsner
Rogue JLS Hop Heaven 2007
Rogue JLS Glen 2007
Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale
Stone 10th Anniversary Ale
Stone Ruination IPA
Two Brothers Cane & Ebel
Two Brothers Hop Juice

Everyday Hops
Alpha King
Arrogant Bastard
Bell’s Two Hearted Ale
NABC Croupier IPA
NABC Elector
NABC Hoptimus
Pilsner Urquell
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

Update: Ayinger Oktoberfest beer dinner at Bistro New Albany on Monday, October 1.

A visit to the Bavarian village of Aying, a 40-minute suburban rail trip south of Munich, is delightful any time of the year, but never more so than in autumn.

With the harvest winding down, there is ample leisure time to kick at Aying’s cobblestones amid rustling leaves and a slightly chilly breeze presaging the arrival of winter, before pausing to admire the charming silhouette of the onion-domed church in the square.

From that spot, it’s only a few yards to the Ayinger brewery’s prominent hostelry and blessed brewery tap for a half-liter of Oktoberfest lager ... and if you’re as lucky as I was the last time we occupied a table there, you may find yourself devouring an elk steak from the presiding Inselkammer family’s private hunting preserve.

In fact, when I escorted a group to Aying in September of 2004, the Inselkammers personally greeted us upon our return from the late afternoon brewery tour and stayed close by until we were seated and enjoying the amazing dinner.

The brewery that occupies such an important place in this bucolic setting is thoroughly modern in terms of production technique and marketing savvy, and yet scrupulously traditional when it comes to the makeup of the beer in your glass. It’s a graceful balancing act that seems almost effortless in its efficiency.

However, make no mistake about it: It’s hard work, and the Inselkammers’ business model is just as impressive as its beer. The family has invested upward of 13 million Euros since the mid 1980’s, first constructing a new distribution and packaging center, then adding a state-of-the-art, extremely green, fully computerized brewery, and finally completely renovating their hotel and restaurant.

Ayinger’s beers, which still taste as though they were crafted by lederhosen-clad villagers in the Alps foothills, are aggressively exported around the world, and are routinely rated in the upper reaches whenever the Bavarian brewing art is quantified.

As such, they’re a perfect accompaniment to our forthcoming Ayinger Oktoberfest beer dinner at Bistro New Albany, which will commence at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, October 1.

My affection for Ayinger’s excellent line of Bavarian beers has prompted me to pair them with another stellar menu concocted by Chef Dave Clancy, owner of Bistro New Albany. There’ll be fewer beers than offered during previous beer dinners, but larger portions, as befits generally lower alcohol contents and the expansiveness of traditional German drinking and dining.

Pray to your particular Gods for crisp fall weather and a chance to dine outdoors.

Here is the menu and the pairings. Chef Clancy has hinted at an additional “surprise” appetizer, and the price per person (excluding gratuity) will be $45.

-Opening toast: Here’s to us …
Ayinger’s Oktober-Fest Marzen, a tawny golden/amber autumn seasonal lager, will be on tap throughout the evening, and we’ll begin the meal with an Oktoberfest toast in a complimentary Ayinger signature glass.

-Gurkensalat (cucumber salad)
-Brau-Weisse … traditional unfiltered golden wheat ale

-Gulaschsuppe (goulash soup)
-Jahrhundert-Bier … golden “export” style lager

-Sauerbraten with Kartoffelpuffer (brined and roasted beef with potato cakes)
-Altbairisch Dunkel … “Old Bavarian” dark lager

-Schwarzwalderkirschtorte (black forest cake)
-Celebrator Doppelbock … rich, dark Double Bock

Contact Bistro New Albany at 812-949-5227 for reservations and further details.

Photo credit: Ayinger's web site

Hoosier beer tasting tonight at Charlestown Pizza Company.

For readers in the Louisville metro area ...

Starting at 6:00 p.m. this evening, there'll be a tasting of Hoosier beers at the Charlestown Pizza Company.

CPC is owned and operated by Shawn and Tajana Vest, longtime NABC associates, who now are spreading the gospel 25 minutes up the road in Charlestown. Tonight there'll be a couple of NABC beers on tap, asnd (I believe) other Hoosier brews provided by World Class Beverages.

I'll be there circa 7:00 p.m., and hope to see a few old friends and meet a few new ones.

"US barley acreage has declined to record low levels."

The information that follows has been copied from the Brewers Association Forum Vol. 13-0912, and should be of interest to all readers.

Yesterday we took a glance at sobering news for the hopheads among us.

Today I’m posting a second excerpt from the Forum, this one on the topic of barley malt pricing and availability.

As noted yesterday, none of this is designed to inspire panic or perpetuate doomsday scenarios. Rather, it's useful to nurse the occasional dose of realism about where the beer in the glass comes from, and what it takes to make it.

Chase it with a good beer, and keep your fingers crossed. The planet’s reliance on water is well documented, but so far, I can find no alarming prognostications about yeast shortages.

----

From: Mike Davis
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: 2007: Revenge of the Commodities

Paul Gatza called me recently and I reviewed the many factors that are impacting the supply of malting barley. The world markets are interconnected, so what happens in any major supply area, such as the US, impacts the entire chain. The American Malting Barley Association (AMBA), which is comprised of US malting & brewing companies, works with and knows the US situation, so I will primarily comment on that.

US barley acreage has declined to record low levels, and one reason, as pointed out by Jeremy, is likely the high demand/return for corn for ethanol, which encourages growers to plant corn instead of malting barley. With the barley breeding programs in the US that we collaborate with and support, we stress the need to develop the highest yielding malting varieties so that they will be grown for both feed, fuel, and malting. However, it is difficult to combine all the quality characters our industry demands with high yield, and our industry is slow to change over to new, higher yielding varieties.

Developing high yielding varieties for feed/fuel is easier and quicker and this is the competition we must strive to overcome.

Currently, all malting varieties in the US are spring varieties, but we have winter malting lines in development and testing that can out yield spring varieties up to 25 percent and require one less watering, a big advantage in the West where water is scarce. These winter malting barley varieties, if successful, may be able to pick up acreage that is currently planted to winter wheat in the West.

Another major factor is that federal support to growers, as determined by the Farm Bill, has favored the planting of other crops, such as soybeans, over barley, by providing higher support levels to growers. We are working hard in collaboration with the National Barley Growers Association (NBGA) for more favorable provisions in the 2007 Farm Bill, which will be effective for five years, starting with the 2008 crop. We are pleased that the BA signed on to the joint letter to Congress spearheaded by the Beer Institute, at our urging, encouraging Congress to support the joint AMBA/NBGA Farm Bill positions. The House has passed a version of the Farm Bill that is more favorable to barley and we're now working on the Senate.

Once that is passed, we'll need grass roots support (contacting your members of Congress) to help ensure that the most favorable provisions are retained in House/Senate Conference when the final bill is developed.

Working with the Institute of Barley and Malt Sciences at North Dakota State University, growers in the 3 major US barley producing states were surveyed recently as to why they grow or no longer grow malting barley. Of course, economic return is the most important factor - they will plant crops that give them the highest return, and we must face reality, that there is a lot of competition. Other factors come into play, and we are trying to address those (e.g. developing best management practices to growers to increase their chances of success).

Mike Davis, President
American Malting Barley Association, Inc.
www.AMBAinc.org

"The hop world is upside down. In the future we see the possibility of brewers shutting down for lack of hops."

The information that follows has been copied from the Brewers Association Forum Vol. 13-0911, and should be of interest to all readers, but especially the hopheads among us.

Tomorrow I’ll post another excerpt from the Forum, this one on the topic of barley malt pricing and availability.

Need I remind anyone about rising fuel prices?

None of this is designed to inspire panic or perpetuate doomsday scenarios. There are plenty of those to be found on the front page of today's newspaper. Rather, it's useful to nurse the occasional dose of realism about where the beer in the glass comes from, and what it takes to make it.

Chase it with a good beer, and keep your fingers crossed.

----

From: David Edgar
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - 3:12 PM
Subject: Re: Dramatic Price Increases in Ingredients

Hop Supply and Early 2007 Crop Update

Here are some comments from Ralph Olson's talk two weeks ago during Hopunion's annual Hops & Brew School seminars in Yakima (also used as the basis for a Hop Update presentation I gave last Saturday to the MBAA District New England in Portland, ME). Ralph is very busy at the moment between receiving hops, buying hops and quoting different brewers for contracts, so he asked me to send this post.

"The hop world is upside down. In the future we see the possibility of brewers shutting down for lack of hops."

For US hops 2007 is looking like an average crop, but not a bumper crop.

Slovenia (grower of Styrians) lost at least 1/3 and possibly as much as 1/2 of their crop to a hailstorm.

The Czech crop is down 25% this year. Estimated alphas on Czech Saaz from the 2007 crop are 2.7 - 2.9.

The German crop is average at best with earlier aroma hops coming in below normal (such as Hallertau Mittelfruh).

New Zealand and Australia crops this year (which arrived in the US in June and July) were normal.

England is almost out of the hop business. Their acreage of 2,400 in 2006 (down from 17,000 in 1976) represents 2 percent of the worldwide acreage.

World acreage:
1986: 215,600
1992: 236,000
2006: 123,000

Ralph's best guess is that in 1992 the acreage should have been between 160,000 - 170,000 if it was to match world demand/usage at that time. The 1990s' excess hop crop ended up being processed into pellets and extracts, building up substantial excess inventory. Excess production that was 2, 3 and 5 years old was selling on the open market and as a result brought prices down. Hop prices had dropped so low in recent years that in many cases they were lower than what it costs to grow them. For example: prices got as low as $1.70/lb. for pellets of Cascade.

That is way below what it takes for a hop grower to cover his costs.

High-alpha hops and some aroma hops are going overseas - the high rate of the Euro is a factor.

In the spot market for high-alpha hops, growers are not putting a price on them yet. They're waiting to see how high the prices may go.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s the prices were depressed and growers were starting to throw in the towel, to either switch to other crops, or sell out to real estate developers. The ones who stayed in it and managed to survive without going under are pleased to be in this situation now, which is 180 degrees opposite from where it was about 10 years ago.

The demand for Cascades is up 30% this year alone. We are 300-400 acres short on Cascade compared to where we need to be. Cascade acreage was 1,003 in 2001, jumped up to 2,120 in 2003 (because one major brewer announced plans to use it, but then reversed course) and total Cascade acreage is now back near the same 2001-year-level, at 1,116 in 2006.

Prices are the highest they've ever been - and it's beyond comprehension. Cascades were priced at $7/lb. three weeks ago and are currently being quoted at or near $10.00/lb.

Willamettes went from $5.50 to $7.00/lb. and may also get to $10/lb.

It takes three years to get to full production on a new hop field, however, we don't have the number of growers needed to put new acres in (the total of US growers is about 45, down from more than 2000 in 1978. About new 2,000 acres are going in this year; almost all of those are high alpha. The Cascade increase in acreage is 0.

"We are, in my opinion, in trouble."

What's the bottom line? Certain varieties are getting a lot more expensive. A few varieties will run out faster than ever. Brewers have to be willing to try other varieties. Brewmasters, brewery owners, and marketing and sales managers must prepare for the potential need to substitute different hops, to replace varieties that currently give your beers their "signature" flavor. That's what we'll have to get used to, the fact that there may be slight flavor variations over the next several years, as the hop industry works to correct this situation. It's not going to get better soon, but will be likely just as bad, or worse, for the crops from 2008 and 2009, in other words, for beers brewed from now through 2010.

Wish we had better news to report!

David Edgar
Mountain West Brewery Supply, Inc., representing:
* Chrisdec www.chrisdec.com & Rastal www.rastal.com
* Hopunion www.hopunion.com
* White Labs www.whitelabs.com
* Chrislan Ceramics www.chrislanceramics.com

Calendar check: Ayinger Oktoberfest beer dinner at Bistro New Albany will be Monday, October 1.

More details will be coming this week, but for now please take note that I’ll be collaborating with Bistro New Albany owner/chef Dave Clancy on a German-themed beer dinner on Monday, October 1 at 6:00 p.m. at BNA.

My beer plan is somewhat different from previous beer dinners at the Bistro. This time around, we hope to be featuring the fine line of beers made by the Ayinger brewery south of Munich.

These include pale and dark wheat ales, Celebrator Doppelbock, Jahrhundert (export lager) and Altbairisch Dunkel (all in bottles), and what I hope will be Oktoberfest Marzen on draft (cross your fingers). We’ll offer larger portions of fewer beers this time around, as befits the hearty Bavarian drinking and dining tradition.

Pray to your particular Gods for crisp fall weather and a chance to dine outdoors.

Here is Chef Clancy’s preliminary menu. An additional appetizer may be added, and we’re hoping to keep the price near the $45 range per person.

-Gurkensalat (cucumber salad)

-Gulaschsuppe (goulash soup)

-Sauerbraten with Kartoffelpuffer (brined and roasted beef with potato cakes)

-Schwarzwalderkirschtorte (black forrest cake)

Upcoming NABC events: Harvest Homecoming and Lupulin Land.

New Albany’s 40th Harvest Homecoming Festival will be held in October of 2007, beginning with a parade on October 6, and traditional food and activity booths filling the city’s reviving downtown streets from the 11th through the 14th.

For the second year, the New Albanian Brewing Company is delighted to have its most popular beers within ready access of the thousands of visitors who’ll be visiting Harvest Homecoming. NABC now has three downtown accounts: Bistro New Albany, Connor’s Place and the Speakeasy.

Both the Bistro and Connor’s have beautiful patios at which to enjoy Elector, Community Dark, Croupier and other NABC favorites during crisp (we hope) autumnal weather. The Speakeasy is New Albany’s first jazz-themed restaurant and bar. All three establishments are housed in restored historic buildings.

To promote our three downtown partners, NABC personnel will be on hand for special tappings throughout Harvest Homecoming. Look for details in the coming weeks.

On October 19, Lupulin Land Harvest Hop Festival kicks off at NABC, Rich O’s Public House and Sportstime Pizza. Lupulin Land is an annual homage to the magic cone, featuring 15-20 hoppy ales and lagers from around the world, all on draft, including NABC’s own Hoptimus, winner of numerous accolades during the recently concluded summer festival season. Lupulin Land continues until the last bitter drop is consumed.

Looking forward to the holiday season, NABC’s annual Saturnalia winter solstice draft beer festival begins on Friday, December 7.

It's time for planning the next three draft festivals.

As Publican and ranking beer chieftain at NABC, my beer acquisitions calendar generally proceeds according to serendipitous whim. I’ll now explain what this implies, but first, here’s a glance at the physical plant and the weekly operating scheme.

At NABC, Rich O’s Public House and Sportstime Pizza, we have 35 draft spouts on site. One of these is a swan neck attached to the firkin cabinet and is used only sporadically (mostly) in cooler weather, as there is not cooling system within. Another pours Sprecher Root Beer throughout the year. Eight more are dedicated to New Albanian house beers, and nine (sometimes ten) are permanent guest taps that customarily do not rotate.

15 or 16 draft slots are given over to rotating guest beers. These are the seasonal beers, the specialty beers, the crazy one-off limited engagement beers that provide much of the cachet when it comes to the experience we seek offer.

Much of the time, my only guiding principles in selecting the beers that will be pouring from these taps combine equal parts opportunism and personal mood, with a dollop of contrarianism (me?) thrown in for good measure. Yes, during warmer weather I’ll have lighter, fruitier, wheatier beers on tap, but there’ll always be an Imperial Stout or Barley Wine even when the temperature is 103 degrees, and there’ll always be two or three choices that were unplanned but sounded like fun when the time comes to choose from the array offered by our wholesalers.

Some weeks it sounds promising to have multiple offerings of the same style to facilitate comparison, and other times I prefer each tap to be dispensing something different. I don't eat the same food each day, either. The object is choice.

The topic of creative foraging is better left for another time, but suffice to say that there are boldly delineated times each year when the calendar comes out and more forethought is required of me, and we now are approaching the next such period. The dates for the next three draft beer celebrations have been set, and I don’t expect them to change:

October 19: Lupulin Land Harvest Hop Festival 2007
December 7: Saturnalia Winter Solstice Festival MMVII
February 29: Gravity Head 2008 (A Leap Year Volume 10!)

At the present time, preorders for all three are being calculated, and I hope to keep readers updated with the ordering process as it unfolds. In today’s first installment, I’ll share with you an e-mail reply to David Frost, the regional sales guru for the B. United International importing company. It is typical of where things stand each autumn when the selection and stockpiling begin in earnest.

----

David,

Greetings. Here’s the “key” to what follows:

LL – Lupulin Land hop fest, begins October 19, 2007
SA – Saturnalia Winter Solstice fest, begins December 7, 2007
GH – Gravity Head, begins February 29, 2008

Here’s what we already confirmed, I think:

LL Gaspar 30L
GH Podge Belgian Imperial Stout 30L
GH Dulle Teve 30L (two)
SA Jan de Lichte 30L
LL Wintercoat Double Hop 30L

Here’s what we need more information about (is it on the web site at all? I can’t find any Internet information not written in Italian):

GH (?) Beba Birra Integrale Birra di Natale

Then, from the remaining list:

SA Wintercoat Yule Ale
GH Wintercoat Cockney Imperial Stout

GH Harviestoun Old Engine Oil Special Reserve in Highland Park 30-year casks.

GH De Glazen Toren Angelique 30L (early November)
GH De Glazen Toren Canaster 30L (early December)

SA La Rulles Cuvee Meilleurs Voeux 20L (winter)

SA Brouwerij Strubbe Ichtegem Grand Cru 30L

GH Ettaler Curator Doppelbock 30L

SA Einbecker Urbock Dunkel 30L

GH JWLees Harvest Ale 2006 50L

LL Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted 50L

I suppose now you can tell me what can be here and when; if not in time for the various fests, and then we’ll scratch them if necessary.

Have fun on your various journeys and such.

Roger

The return of Cicero, and the demotion of "beer sommelier" in favor of something more quantifiable.

For the current youthful generation of beer drinkers who, unlike my contemporaries, have the luxury of taking the availability of craft beer for granted, "ancient history" is a phenomenon describing the decades following hard on the heels of World War II, when the number of breweries in America atrophied to fewer than a hundred, and was the concept of “choice” for a beer drinker was being held hostage, seemingly without hope of release, in Mr. Busch’s closet of insipid horrors.

Ideally, ancient history extends considerably further back into the mists of time, with the millennia being peeled back like the layers of an onion (itself used as liniment for the Colosseum’s gladiators) to the classics and one-time staples of the educational curriculum.

Alas, Latin isn’t studied much these days, and the Roman Empire, too, lies largely off the contemporary radar screen except when periodically resurrected as a backdrop to cinematic costume dramas, but once upon a time there was a Roman philosopher and statesman much admired for his abilities to write and speak.

His name was Marcus Tullius Cicero, and along the pathway from Latin to modern Italian, such was the respect accorded Cicero’s depth of learned comprehension and his flights of erudition that a word was created from his name: Cicerone (sis-uh-rohn, as English speakers pronounce it), which might be described simply as a guide for sightseers.

However, there is more to it than that, for not every sightseeing guide can be said to possess the knowledge and fluency of Cicero. Those that do are special, recognized both for their knowledge and their ability to convey it.

I’m delighted to report that the term “cicerone” has been chosen to describe those who currently are rather inelegantly referred to as “beer sommeliers,” a sommelier being a certified and formally trained guide – a cicerone, after a fashion – to wine.

There is now a website that fully describes an effort underway to provide structured accreditation: Cicerone Certification Program. Ray Daniels is spearheading the program, and deserves thanks for commencing the quantification of standards and the creation of a job description where none existed. Until now, we may not have known exactly what a cicerone was, but we knew that it was needed. Here is brief outline, as copied from the website:

The Cicerone Certification Program seeks to ensure that consumers receive the best possible beer and enjoy its flavors to the greatest extent possible. To facilitate this, those who sell and serve beer need to acquire knowledge in five areas:

Beer Storage, Sales and Service
Beer Styles and Culture
Beer Tasting and Flavors
Brewing Ingredients and Processes
Pairing Beer with Food

To encourage participation by those with various interests and ambitions, the program offers three levels of certification beginning with the simplest and building to the most complex and demanding:

1. Certified Beer Server
2. Certified Cicerone
3. Master Cicerone

Readers, please take time to visit the CCP web site and take the tour. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, sent them to me or pass them along to Ray.

Previously at the Potable Curmudgeon:

What is the beer equivalent of a sommelier?

Grassroots Festival at Stratto’s is tonight. Hint: There’ll be plenty of microbrews …

There’s a special outdoor beer event taking place tonight, and seeing as the forecast calls for a brilliant autumn evening (is it possible?), readers in the Louisville area should consider coming out.

From 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., the Grassroots Festival will fill tree-canopied patio of Clarksville’s Stratto’s Restaurant, which is housed in the historic, renovated McCullough House on the quiet end of Lewis and Clark Parkway.

Featured will be gourmet brick oven pizza, craft beer and what is being described as rockin’ bluegrass music. For the Curmudgeon, two out of three ain’t bad.

Hope to see you there.

Stratto’s Restaurant, 318 W. Lewis & Clark Parkway, Clarksville, IN 47129 (Ph: 812-945-3496). Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door, and include pizza and unlimited beer samples ($3 pints also will be sold).

Tickets are available at these locations:

Stratto’s Restaurant

Bluegrass Brewing Company/BBC Taproom (Clay and Main, downtown Louisville)

Keg Liquors (Lewis & Clark Parkway, Clarksville)

Cumberland Brews (Bardstown Road, Louisville)

New Albanian Brewing Company (Plaza Drive, New Albany)

Tickets may be purchased by phone only from Stratto’s Restaurant: 812-945-3496

Beer

Bluegrass Brewing Company (Clay & Main)

Barley Island Brewing Company

Browning's Restaurant & Brewery

Cumberland Brewery

New Albanian Brewing Company

Music

Kentucky Fried Pickin’

Whistlin’ Rufus

Special thanks to World Class Beverages

Real planning now underway for PacNW beer and brewery tour, 2008.

My method of trip planning follows a sloppy but reasonably consistent logic.

It begins with hours of informal discussion with friends and cohorts, followed by a vague announcement, and then much fevered activity to actually pull the strands together.

The discussion period has largely passed, although there remains much time to refine the concept, and now we're somewhere just past the vague announcement and entering the active phase of planning for the May (or thereabouts) brewery and incidental culture motor coach tour of the Pacific Northwest in 2008.

Negotiations are ongoing with the travel company that I believe will be the choice to organize this trip with me. I’m also receiving itinerary advice from the Portland tourism bureau, so there’s no shortage of good information.

It is my aim to cap this one at 25 (approximately) people, although it may be possible to squeeze a few more into the group.

Currently the itinerary would include time in Portland and Seattle; a Rogue brewery visit (Newport); touring of the Columbia River gorge; Astoria and perhaps Bend (both in Oregon); a smattering of historical sites, a vineyard; and hopefully a baseball game in Seattle. Naturally, all possible breweries in and near these places will be investigated and many of them toured and visited.

Duration is slated for 10 days, flying from Louisville to Portland and back. Precise air arrangements will come a bit later, after I’ve had the chance to converse with Bliss Travel for ideas. The exact dates may well have to wait until later this fall owing to the contingencies of the baseball schedule for 2008.

I realize that price is a crucial factor, but so far, it isn’t something that can yet be predicted with confidence.

Readers, for now, know that the show is likely to go on. Please let me know immediately if you are interested; you’ll be added to the mailing list, and I’ll continue with the scheming. Use the e-mail address listed at my Blogger profile page.

Brewery and beer suggesions are welcomed, and they'll certainly make me thirsty.

Calendar change: Saturnalia will begin on Friday, December 7.

Just for the record, I'm providing advance notice that Saturnalia, NABC's annual winter solstice draft festival of Christmas and seasonal beers, will begin a week earlier than previously announced. The first wave will be tapped on Friday, December 7, and pouring will continue through December into the first days of January.

More information will follow, but for now, please correct your calendars.

Bourbon-barrel stout for the world: Small scale brewing and beer exports.

It’s a cliché by now to cite the interwoven world economy as rationale for various unprecedented occurrences, and yet consider my reaction two nights ago when I visited the web site of the Birrificio Montegioco in Italy and noted the brewery’s extremely small size.

I’ve not bothered to decipher the production from hectoliters to gallons, but no matter; the point is that in Europe at present, impossibly small breweries are mining a lucrative export trade with other European nations, with places like Japan and with the United States, the latter coming in spite of the strength of the Euro and concurrent imbalances in value.

As for the situation in reverse, my peripatetic Danish friend Big Kim wrote last week to report his presence at a good beer bar (in Stockholm, I believe) where several American microbrews from the West Coast were being somewhat joyously sampled. Most were IPAs, which of course casts an interesting twist on the style’s British imperial origins and the unique (at the time) solution of letting the beer grow to maturity during the long period of travel to its destination.

Would it be possible for an American brewery as small as (for instance) Indiana’s Upland Brewing Company to do two-thirds of its business away from its home country (the norm for several small craft brewers in Belgium), as opposed to what I’m guessing would be a current percentage of 95% sales within Indiana?

It depends. The export beer would have to be specifically oriented to tastes of overseas markets. It probably would have to be big in terms of flavor and alcohol content, and specially packaged.

Something like BBC’s Jefferson Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout, shipped in something resembling a whisky bottle, with the word “Kentucky” and the name of the distiller providing the barrels highlighted early and often, and shipped to Japan and an Asian market that is willing to pay top dollar for luxury items.

Even better, the transit time would not affect the quality of the beer. It would enhance it.

If you don’t believe me about the potential of the Japanese market, ring your favorite Commonwealth distiller of bourbon and ask how much of its top-shelf whisky goes to Japan – and don’t be surprised at the answer.

To be sure, continental markets in Europe typically offer much greater resistance to such innovation, and grow more parochial about beer as one proceeds inland, so such an export strategy as that outlined above might work along the coastal periphery: Netherlands, the U.K., Scandinavia and Finland. In those areas, cosmopolitanism in beer is more pronounced.

It’s something worth considering, isn't it?

Sandkerwa NA taps (except for two).

Is the planet ready for blueberry barley wine?

From Italy, no less?

Tonight’s exercise in culture shock achieves its sly but soothing surprise by means of offbeat locality and unexpected components. Birra Artigianale Draco comes to us from the prolific importing firm of B. United International via Montegioco, the Italian town where Birrificio Montegioco was founded in 2005.

For those like me who are as yet unaccustomed to seeing Italy as a rising player in good beer, Montegioco is located between Milan (to the north) and Genoa (to the south) in easternmost Piedmont, just on the border with Lombardy. A morning’s drive to the west brings you to the shroud of Turin, while Venetian gondolas ply murky waters a few hours toward Slovenia.

I visited Italy three times during the 1980’s, and never since. My memories are of improbably marvelous red wine plunked from store shelves for a dollar a bottle, and 2/3 liter bottles of low-key golden lager consumed with salami sandwiches on park benches offering the best view of dusky local gals eating ice cream in the shadow of destination cathedrals.

That B. United International is aggressively pioneering the distribution of today's new generation of Italian craft beers can be seen in a portfolio that includes 18 beers brewed by five different breweries: Baladin, Como, Italiano, Montegioco and Troll.

To be sure, Shelton Brothers retains the variable Flanders-style sour red Panil Barriquee, which was one of my favorite new imports two years ago but unfortunately shipped stateside as flat as the Belgian seaside landscape in 2006.

Perhaps the sourish tide will turn with the next batch.

What’s more, these upstart Italian brewers are pushing the stylistic envelope, producing traditional European types like Saison, Pilsner and Bock, but also using cherries, peaches, chestnuts and spices. Alcohol contents range from the middle threes to the 11% listed for Draco, which bears a label depicting a dragon breathing fire into a chalice – or perhaps absorbing flames from it?

Long ago, the world of beer became so unpredictable that locating a mean between low and high expectations is virtually impossible, but in the case of Draco, I’m very pleased with the results.

The nose titillates with rum-like plum, raisin and candy sugar, and to these flavors is added a fruitiness that I’m trusting derives at least in part from he added blueberries, which reminds me of the vague fruitiness of He’Brew Origin Pomegranate Ale. Draco’s overall effect is quintessentially Belgian, and not unlike the fruit juicy punch of Gulden Draak, a perennial best seller at the Public House.

Thinking back to Italy in my twenties, surely I can do without the dreary lagers of youth, but right about now I’d kill for classically aged salami.

Sandkerwa NA at Indiana Beer.

Thanks to Bob Ostrander for his coverage of Sandkerwa NA, currently atop the marquee at Indiana Beer.

We're closed today for the holiday. So far, none of the listed Sandkerwa beers are gone, and I expect most and maybe all to last through the week.

Gotta get back to Bamberg. Soon.

Tony Beard's NABC Happy Helmut label art.

Tony Beard's label art for the newest NABC beer, Happy Helmut, is named for a merry trinket salesman with whom I once drank numerous half-liters of Spezial in Bamberg. There is 25% smoked malt from Bamberg's Weyermann malting house, and 15% rye in the grist. California Common yeast is used. Happy Helmut is happily soft and suitably Franconian, with the smokiness and rye qualities both present though muted, and a noble hop firmness. At 4.5% abv, it's a fine quaffer.