"Kentuckiana breweries on track to double in 2015."

Some folks don't like "Kentuckiana," although it never has bothered me. The alternative, "Indiyucky", has its own issues.

There's lots of information here, so take a look.

I'm by no means "close" to any of these projects, apart from physical proximity to Floyd County Brewing, and drinking beers with Rick Stidham of Akasha now and then. However, it seems that they're all proceeding along a sustainable course, i.e., not positing sales to Alaska and Luxembourg just yet. I judge this to be a good omen, and wish them the best.

Kentuckiana breweries on track to double in 2015, by Bailey Loosemore (The Courier-Journal)

From the core of downtown Louisville, locally made craft beer is spreading.

No longer is the artisanal beverage restricted to a few select neighborhoods. With one new brewery already opened this year, one rebranded and six more on the way — in some areas traditionally lacking their own craft beer spot — the industry seems to be on a delicious mission to take over Kentuckiana.

For years, Louisville and Southern Indiana's local beer scenes stalled with only a handful of established breweries catering to the craft crowd. But between 2010 and 2014, six breweries opened to pick up the slack, and the total number of breweries is now on track to double in the area by the end of 2015 — mimicking a national trend.

According to the Brewers Association, nearly 3,500 craft breweries were operating nationally in 2014 — an about 125 percent increase over the 1,500 breweries operating in 2008.

SkippyFoot Peanut Butter WeeFoot Stout: Now on tap at the Pizzeria & Public House (only).

I keep trying to tell you that the leave of absence is serious, and I'm really running for mayor of New Albany, and I don't know what in the hell's going on at work.

Case in point: SkippyFoot (Peanut Butter WeeFoot Stout). I was only vaguely aware of this being in the pipeline, and now it's on tap at the Pizzeria & Public House only. I'm planning on going over there tomorrow to pick up some "pay packet" (pizza and growlers), and will have a taste then.

There will be a report.

NABC's FOOTED STOUT SERIES has been a staple for a while now. I believe these are the ones we've brewed to date, but I may have missed one.

ClovenFoot (seasonal)
Belgian Stout
ABV: 7.2% … IBU: 33
Color: Black.
Flavor: Medium- to full-bodied. Belgian yeast provides fruitiness to compete with the roast.
Compare to: Hercule; Buffalo Belgian Stout.

QuakerFoot (October - March)
Oatmeal Stout
ABV: 5.7%
IBU: 26
Color: Black.
Flavor: Medium-to full-bodied, with roasty Sweet Stout character made silky by the use of oatmeal.
Compare to: Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout.

ThunderFoot (seasonal)
Imperial Stout
ABV: 10% … IBU: 90
Color: Black.
Flavor: Full-bodied, malty but not overly sweet, with intensely malty, darkly fruity flavors (including a wee hint of cherry).
Compare to: Stone Russian Imperial Stout, Founders Imperial Stout, other more alcoholic Imperial Stouts.

WeeFoot (April - September)
American Stout
ABV: 5%
IBU: 48
Color: Just shy of black.
Flavor: Light- to medium-bodied. Roasty-dry in the mouth.
Compare to: Guinness and Irish-style Stouts, and also lower gravity American Stouts.

"Drinking a locally brewed craft beer is the best way to stick it to The Man and support your community."

AB-InBev cannot fit into this equation, can it?

Beer writer Jeff Baker ... (is) a fan of both punk rock and craft beer and says there are similarities between the two communities.

No, it cannot, so stop making feeble arguments to the contrary and read this.

Drinking local is rebellion, by Jeff Baker (BTV Foodie)

... Both communities at their cores are centered around a sense of rebellion. Rebellion against big business, against blandness, against cheap commodities in favor of something with heart and soul, with substance.

There was probably a day in the history of punk when drinking a craft beer would have been considered too bourgeois. But here in Vermont, where "local" is rebellion against Big Agriculture, drinking a locally brewed craft beer is the best way to stick it to The Man and support your community.

"How to Drink Like a Gentleman", or timeless wisdom about imbibing from H.L. Mencken.

Photo credit: Modern Drunkard

If you're unfamiliar with H.L. Mencken, more's the pity. All those who appreciate and cherish adult libations in their many, varied forms should be card-carrying Menckenites, if for no other reason than his polemics against the prohibitionist instinct in humankind.

Consider this quote.

Teetotalism does not make for human happiness; it makes for the dull, idiotic happiness of the barnyard. The men who do things in the world, the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity. Their ideal is not a safe life, but a full life; they do not try to follow the canary bird in a cage, but the eagle in the air. And in particular they do not flee from shadows and bugaboos. The alcohol myth is such a bugaboo. The sort of man it scares is the sort of man whose chief mark is that he is scared all the time.

H.L. Mencken, "Alcohol", Damn! A book of Calumny, 1918

Following is the link to an essay of Mencken's that I don't recall reading. First, the introduction and background information.

H.L. Mencken was a columnist for the Baltimore Evening Sun and editor of the American Mercury. This essay was originally published in Liberty Magazine on January 12, 1935.

From 1924 to 1950, Liberty Magazine published the work of such writers and public figures as Greta Garbo, Margaret Sanger, Babe Ruth, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Its weekly circulation reached 3 million. Today, the magazine is largely forgotten, but many of its pieces are being reissued in several collections available on Amazon. The above essay was republished with permission from the collection "Liberty on Drinking."

Enjoy the advice of a master.

How to Drink Like a Gentleman: The Things to Do and the Things Not To, as Learned in 30 Years' Extensive Research, by H.L. Mencken (Gawker)

... The physical and mental effects of alcohol, whether in large doses or small, are very simple. Physically, it slows down all the bodily processes, save maybe digestion, and produces a faint and pleasant drowsiness. And mentally it works in almost the same way. That is, it causes what the psychologists call a raising of the threshold of sensation. The external world retreats a bit, and its challenges become less insistent. The drinker is not so much disturbed as he was by what goes on around him, and so his reaction to it is more friendly and tolerant. And simultaneously he is not so much disturbed as he was by what goes on within his own head, and thus he gathers a sense of contentment and well-being.

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

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

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Tenth in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

There was a “wedding crasher” trick I’d learned in the company of a veteran Australian traveler, who between beers had undertaken a careful study of tour groups in Greece.

Note that when it came to ways of saving money, the Aussies were among the very best teachers. They didn’t bother departing from Down Under for a European tour unless they could manage to be away from home for a very long time – and every Greek drachma or Austrian shilling obviously counted.

Not only that, but Australians were invariably friendly and impossible to dislike, and were blessed with a cultural get-out-of-jail-free card.

As an example, for an American or Englishman to drunkenly urinate on a beloved civic monument surely (and rightly) would result in protests, denunciations and arrest. Let an Australian do the same, and he was just an exuberant lad on holiday, soon to be merrily sharing drinks with the very policeman who’d hauled away the American or Englishman.

At least this is the way it seemed at the time.

My savvy fellow traveler’s frugal strategy was borne of simple observation. He had noticed that at museums and historical sites, single visitors bought tickets and were controlled individually, while groups generally were ushered as a mass, straight past the checkpoint.

Therefore, by waiting patiently nearby for an aggregation of fellow Anglos to arrive, solo wanderers like us could artfully feign membership by blending amongst them, sidling over just as they entered the site.

Then, once safely inside, the objective was to detach, but hover close enough to hear the guide’s explanations in English, without being identified as spongers.

After all, what was the worst that might happen? You’d be kicked out, and compelled to circle back later after the shift change, better to try it again – after spending a few minutes perfecting your mock Australian accent.

Just remember: There are no kangaroos in Austria.

---

This tactic worked perfectly in Vienna at the Kaisergruft, the imperial crypt, where ornate graves of the Habsburg dynasty rulers and their immediate families contain some, but not all, of their body parts.

In a macabre custom, hearts and entrails customarily were removed for interment in selected churches elsewhere, presumably to mark imperial and ecclesiastical territory, because when it came to obscure, arcane and obtuse rituals, no royal house in Europe could touch the Habsburgs.

Merging with a mass of New Zealanders, I followed them down the stairs, learning to my surprise that Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma, widow of Karl, the last Habsburg emperor, wasn’t even dead yet.

In fact, Empress Zita was 93 years of age that summer of 1985, with almost four years yet to live. She had witnessed the beginning of World War I, and passed away eight months prior to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

There was another significant omission that day in the Kaisergruft, one I’ll get around to explaining. Absent for eternal duty in the Habsburg crypt was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, whose assassination in Sarajevo came three years after Zita’s and Karl’s wedding, and proved to be the impetus for the wartime horrors to follow.

From the moment I saw Vienna for the first time, stepping off the train from Venice into Sudbahnhof station, changing money and buying a transit pass, a steadily evolving fascination with the history of the Habsburg dynasty kept percolating in the back of my mind.

It was colored with mustard yellow and dark green, in the fashion of the government buildings in the era preceding the Great War. The life and death of Franz Ferdinand struck me as important, although there were many other reasons why I was keen to spend time in the Austrian capital.

---

For one thing, I was ready for diligent instruction in classical Central European beer culture. The wine- and spirits-oriented Mediterranean had been quite grand, but an eager, youthful palate yearned for schnitzel, sausages, dumplings and the many Teutonic shades of lager I’d read about in the beer writer Michael Jackson’s books.

Naturally, there were cultural bucket list expectations derived from my immersion in written sources, as with absolutely essential texts like Frederic Morton’s “A Nervous Splendor”, which tells the story of Crown Prince Rudolf’s 1889 murder-suicide pact with his mistress in Mayerling.

Rudolf was Emperor Franz Joseph’s only son, passing the imperial succession to his nephew, Franz Ferdinand.

There was the testimony of previous visitors to Vienna, like my cousin Don, and a handful of PBS documentaries I’d watched. “The Third Man” with Orson Welles had been viewed in preparation, and Strauss waltz LPs duly queued.

Once I’d bought a brand of Austrian beer called Kaiser at Cut Rate Liquors, imagining that the old man with mutton chop whiskers, Franz Joseph himself, would approve of my choice.

Now it was available on draft, at my fingertips, and I couldn’t help pondering its namesake, whose chronology was lengthy and eventful. Like Zita, Franz Joseph’s life spanned disparate eras, from the Europe of old ruling houses to the post-modern destruction of the First World War.

Franz Joseph became emperor in 1848 at the age of 18 and sat on the throne for 68 years, until death belatedly claimed him at 86 in 1916. Many of the empire’s leading politicians and statesmen understood that the empire was not strong enough to survive a long, drawn-out war, and the savage continent-wide conflict relentlessly eroded the viability of Franz Joseph’s shaky domain.

He saw it as God’s will, signed the orders, and then died. As it turned out, he was the only force holding the system together.

In Austria-Hungary, obeisance to the emperor’s many-titled royal personage served as the only generally accepted bond between the empire’s many nationalities and their languages, customs, aspirations and diverse outlooks, with virtually every strain of the 19th and 20th century European experience eventually woven into the complex fabric of Vienna, the capital.

Ironically, as Franz Joseph presided over the empire’s inexorable decadence and decline, the world was rewarded with a blossoming intellectual and cultural life of which his own social class was barely cognizant.

Among those with connections to the imperial capital city were artists (Klimt, Schiele) and musicians (Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler); academics and scholars (Sigmund Freud and his retinue); writers like Stefan Zweig, who’ll be considered in a coming instalment of this travelogue; future world political figures (Adolf Hitler, Josip “Tito” Broz) radical Zionists and hyperbolic anti-Semites, the pioneering lager brewer Anton Dreher (namesake of the Italian lager we’d consumed in Pecetto), and even Leon Askin, the actor who played General Burkhalter on the television show Hogan’s Heroes, and who was born in Vienna nine years before Franz Joseph died.

Like Zita, Askin still was among the living in 1985 – he died in 2005 – but the rest were ghosts, and they crowded my thoughts during the four nights I slept at the Ruthensteiner, an unaffiliated youth hostel owned by a native of Vienna and the woman from Pittsburgh, whom he had married after attending college in the States.

The Ruthensteiner started operating in 1968, and remains open for business in 2015 – still not as long as Franz Joseph reigned. These days, the low season special for a bunk bed is a mere 10 Euros, or circa $13 U.S. The price was about $8 during my stay in 1985. That’s not bad.

Four days proved to be time for precious little save an overview of the city’s history; walking the Ringstrasse; taking a bus out into the Vienna Woods; listening to classical music in the imperial gardens: and one memorable splurge of an evening spent eating Serbian-style bean soup and drinking draft Gold Fassl at a dark, edgy Balkan tavern, then having a second meal of plate-sized Wiener Schnitzel (and more Gold Fassl), at an eatery nearby, dining alongside Americans students from Dayton University, and ultimately realizing that one of them had briefly been a roommate with one of my high school basketball teammates.

Compressed within the confines of a schnitzel restaurant in Vienna, generously plied with beer and conversation, the immensity of the planet seemed to keep shrinking until it was the smallest of interior worlds.

That’s another useful trick worth remembering, although coming to grips with the Habsburgs would require a little more time, as well as additional beers.

---

Previously:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diary: Trying to find a copy of the beer podcast, that time.

As my leave of absence for mayoral games plays out, I haven't been paying very close attention to the beer scene insofar as social media dictates its parameters according to the same usual outline.

And thankfully, at that.

Talk about liberating.

No more endless photos of people erotically fondling the bottles they scored through trades, or listening to labored sophistry in defense of Trojan Goose. It's been like parole. At present, I can enjoy the virtues of good beer without suffering shoe-gazing solipsism.

What I'm looking forward to more than anything else are local brews like Josh Hill's first beers with Floyd County Brewing Company.

But that is not the basis for this diary entry.

After contributing to Rick Redding's podcast last week, it occurred to me to go back and listen to the one I recorded at LouisvilleBeer.com back in late 2013. The date is hazy. I drove to Louisville, and there was snow on the ground.

December of 2013, maybe?

But I couldn't find it at the iTunes page, which begins only at Episode 26 in early 2014. There also wasn't any record of those first 20-odd episodes at the LouisvilleBeer.com web site.

If someone can tell me how I might score a copy of my sole appearance on the podcast, please let me know. I'm a historical record type of guy, even if it won't be played quite as often as the Who's seminal Quadrophenia.

Previously:

Beer, podcasts and Dick Cavett.

Get a colonoscopy, already -- and listen to me on the Rusty Satellite Show.

This post has two purposes. The first is to divulge that I was on the Rusty Satellite Show on Thursday.

Multi-modal Louisville journalist Rick Redding does the podcast, and ironically, though we're roughly the same age, share mutual friends and have "known" each other through social media and the internet for a very long time, our first actual face to face meeting came only Wednesday at the Public House when Rick came to record my segment.

Talking with 2X, Beers and Blogging with Roger Baylor

Roger Baylor was advocating craft beer before it was such a craze, and he was blogging about important local issues when most people in New Albany didn’t know what a blog was. But now he’s made a name for himself challenging the status quo and politics of the city, and he’s running for Mayor. And still trying to convince people to steer clear of Bud Light. I’m looking forward to watching the Mayor’s race over there.

Coincidence? I don’t know but the same week that I was writing a column about Colon Cancer Prevention Week for Insider Louisville, both 2X and Baylor told me about their recent experience getting a colonoscopy.

Another irony, and the second reason for writing: Both Rick and Christopher 2X recently enjoyed colon cancer screenings, a topic Rick wrote about at Insider Louisville a few days ago.

Colon cancer screenings can save lives – have you gotten yours yet?

And, I had my second colonoscopy on June 12.

Have you had a colonoscopy? If not, it may be time. Mine's tomorrow.

If you're reading this and are (a) 50 years old, and/or (b) have a family history of colorectal cancer, GET YOUR ASS TO A SPECIALIST FOR A COLONOSCOPY. 

Most insurance plans cover this procedure. It is the "only screening method that is both diagnostic and therapeutic," meaning that polyps can be removed before they turn bad.

Do it now, and spare me the excuses. Okay?

NABC's Kaiser 2nd Reising (Pre-Prohibition Pilsner) is on tap at both locations.

It's time again for the annual release of NABC's Kaiser 2nd Reising, which is a perennial favorite of mine. While probably biased, I think it's delicious.

Kaiser 2nd ReisingYour great, great granddaddy’s PilsnerBefore World War One, the Paul Reising Brewing Company was New Albany’s pre-eminent brewing concern, and it occupied a respected position in the pantheon of local business. In the contemporary age, NABC recognizes Paul Reising and the city’s other brewers of old with this Pre-Prohibition Pilsner.
40 IBU
5.9% ABV

Pre-Prohibition Pilsner has been renamed Pre-Prohibition Lager in the Beer Judge Certification Program's (BJCP) most recent style guidelines. No matter. In the Louisville context, these are the forerunners of the beers we knew in their bastardized dotage when we were young pups: Falls City, Fehr’s, Oertel’s, Sterling, Wiedemann and so on.

The BJCP's historical beer categories have my enthusiastic approval. Here's the relevant definition in its entirety.

--

Historical Beer: Pre-Prohibition Lager

Overall Impression: A clean, refreshing, but bitter pale lager, often showcasing a grainy-sweet corn flavor. All malt or rice-based versions have a crisper, more neutral character. The higher bitterness level is the largest differentiator between this style and most modern mass-market pale lagers, but the more robust flavor profile also sets it apart.

Aroma: Low to medium grainy, corn-like or sweet maltiness may be evident (although rice-based beers are more neutral). Medium to moderately high hop aroma, with a range of character from rustic to floral to herbal/spicy; a fruity or citrusy modern hop character is inappropriate. Clean lager character. Low DMS is acceptable. May show some yeast character, as with modern American lagers; allow for a range of subtle supporting yeast notes.

Appearance: Yellow to deep gold color. Substantial, long lasting white head. Bright clarity.

Flavor: Medium to medium-high maltiness with a grainy flavor, and optionally a corn-like roundness and impression of sweetness. Substantial hop bitterness stands up to the malt and lingers through the dry finish. All malt and rice-based versions are often crisper, drier, and generally lack corn-like flavors. Medium to high hop flavor, with a rustic, floral, or herbal/spicy character. Medium to high hop bitterness, which should neither be overly coarse nor have a harsh aftertaste. Allow for a
range of lager yeast character, as with modern American lagers, but generally fairly neutral.

Mouthfeel: Medium body with a moderately rich, creamy mouthfeel. Smooth and well-lagered. Medium to high carbonation levels.

Comments: The classic American Pilsner was brewed both pre-Prohibition and post-Prohibition with some differences. OGs of 1.050–1.060 would have been appropriate for pre-Prohibition beers while gravities dropped to 1.044–1.048 after Prohibition. Corresponding IBUs dropped from a pre-Prohibition level of 30–40 to 25–30 after Prohibition.

History: A version of Pilsner brewed in the USA by immigrant German brewers who brought the process and yeast with them, but who had to adapt their recipes to work with native hops and malt. This style died out after Prohibition but was resurrected by homebrewers in the 1990s. Few commercial versions are made, so the style still remains mostly a homebrew phenomenon.

Characteristic Ingredients: Six-row barley with 20% to 30% flaked maize (corn) or rice to dilute the excessive protein levels; modern versions may be all malt. Native American hops such as Clusters, traditional continental hops, or modern noble-type crosses are also appropriate. Modern American hops such as Cascade are inappropriate. Water with a high mineral content can lead to an unpleasant coarseness in flavor and harshness in aftertaste. A wide range of lager yeast character can be exhibited, although modern versions tend to be fairly clean.

Style Comparison: Similar balance and bitterness as modern Czech Premium Pale Lagers, but exhibiting native American grains and hops from the era before US Prohibition. More robust, bitter, and flavorful than modern American pale lagers, and often with higher alcohol.

Vital Statistics: 
OG: 1.044 – 1.060
FG: 1.010 – 1.015
IBUs: 25 – 40
SRM: 3 – 6 
ABV: 4.5 – 6.0%

Commercial Examples: Anchor California Lager, Coors Batch 19, Little Harpeth Chicken Scratch

Homebrewers, have you used yarrow?

A friend who is a homebrewer mentioned yarrow in beer. I hadn't thought about it for years, not since Paul Nevitt earned the title "Father of Herbal Brewing."

Welcome to gruitale.com

Dedicated to the revival of Gruit Ale, the beer which stimulates the mind, creates euphoria and enhances sexual drive.

In a not so distant past, beer was brewed with an extended and varied array of botanical ingredients. Herbs, roots and spices where used by our European ancestors in order to give their beers distinct tastes, flavours and properties. These botanicals where sometimes referred to as Gruit, hence Gruit Ale. Today however, beer is almost exclusively brewed with only one, single herb addition: Hops.

If any of you decide to brew with yarrow, please do me a favor and save a bottle for me.

Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium)

BREWING DETAILS

Parts used: The whole plant, preferably dried leaves and flowers.

Aroma & taste: A rather bitter, astringent taste with a mild aroma. Its taste is not overwhelming and is quite delicious in brewing, especially if the aromatics are brought into the ale.

Brewing method: Yarrow brings both a complementary bittering action and preservative action through its antimicrobial, antibacterial, and antiseptic properties. The tannins and astringent action being stronger in the leaves, these should be boiled as with hops. On the other hand, the flowering head of the plant contains delicate aromatics that would be lost in the boil, hence it is recommended to steep the flowers in the hot wort as it cools, or simply add them to the fermentation vessel in the same manner as dry hopping.

I agree: "Local lagers looming."

During the course of research for an upcoming Food & Dining Magazine column submission, in which I'll survey the Gordon Biersch branch in Louisville, this link turned up.

I'd bookmarked the article long ago, and as is my custom, forgotten all about it.

Watson points to three factors to support his contention that we're about to enter a new era of local lagers: Market Evidence, Capacity Equation and Beer Lover Preferences.

I think he's absolutely right, particularly in the second of these. Eventually, there'll be much excess capacity, and when there is ...

Click through for the details.

LOCAL LAGERS LOOMING, by Bart Watson (Brewers Association)

Although a big part of craft beer’s strength lies in its diversity of styles, there are certainly trends in beer lover preferences that make particular styles or groups of styles rise to the top. In recent years it’s been IPAs. IPAs are still growing 40-50% in scan data on a bigger base than ever.

But what might be the next big thing? Looking out at the beer landscape, I think we’re about to enter a new era of the local lager. Why?

Unhappy and happy hours, in Indiana and elsewhere.

I was in my early twenties when Indiana banned happy hours (discounts predicated on time of day) and favoritism in pricing (i.e., ladies night). Since then, it's been Happy Day or Bust in the Hoosier state. If someone is advertising dollar longnecks during the UFC bout, the same price must be charged two hours before.

When the law first took effect, I immediately lost interest in Indiana University basketball, because the Tumbleweed in New Albany had a game night promotion involving "dee-fense, dee-fense": If IU held the opposition to less than 60 points, there was an hour of 2-for-1 well drinks following the final whistle.

This was the era when Mothers Against Drunk Drivers actually had a strong case to make. In later years, MADD became a prohibitionist parody, but then ... yes. In an auto-centric milieu like ours in Southern Indiana, it's simply insane to stage specials like these.

In hindsight, it's regrettable that food-based happy hours never caught on. We used to go to the long defunct Chi Chi's in Clarksville for happy hour margaritas, and when the law changed, the restaurant had a cheap food buffet instead. The cost to the consumer worked out about the same, but evidently there was no traction.

Mapping the United States of Happy Hours, by Aarian Marshall (City Lab)

Some cities are straight-up bacchanalian. Others, not so much.

Imagine this: You trudge off the plane at O’Hare, cranky and disheveled—but luckily, it’s beer time.

Not so fast: Five o’clock brings no discount drinks in the Chicago. In fact, happy hours—time-specific discounts on alcohol—are forbidden in the entire state of Illinois. That is, unless the governor finally signs into law the bill passed earlier this month that would allow bars and restaurants to set reduced drink prices for a portion of the day.

 ... Why are the laws so different in different cities? Many bans were implemented in the 1980s when citizen groups led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving presented state legislatures with some scary statistics.

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

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

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Ninth in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

At the conclusion of a recuperative week in bucolic Pecetto, my belly was fuller than it had been at any point during the trip, and my clothes finally were clean -- even if at times, they seemed to be almost hanging on me.

A month’s steady weight loss had been temporarily arrested during my stay in Savoy by pasta courses, table wine, pastries, couscous and frequent infusions of Dreher beer.

Still, by the time I returned stateside in August, the net poundage drop was 25, all the way down to 200.

(Speaking from the current vantage point of 2015, I haven’t seen 200 pounds since 1987, two years after the story being relayed here. As a senior playing high school basketball in 1978, my weight was 175 lbs. These days, at 54 years of age, I’m managing to hold at around 240 lbs.)

Eating had been a feast or famine proposition during the opening weeks of the journey. Sit-down meals were the pricier option, even in inexpensive Greece and Turkey, so bakery breakfasts and street food offered affordable subsistence. There were fewer supermarkets and more small family groceries, the latter requiring the suppression of my innate shyness so as to successfully navigate prices and portions.

As the weather became hotter, I finally noticed the ubiquitous plastic liter bottles of mineral water. In fact, one day in the Peloponnese, I noticed several hundred of them washed up on a beach, which probably is why they now comprise a Texas-sized island in the Pacific. Soon I was carrying one at all times and refilling them from reliable water taps.

In this era prior to standardization, one couldn’t always expect translations on product labels. Truncated vocabularies in indigenous tongues became an acquired skill. Was the water still or carbonated? For many travelers, water “with gas” was a deal-breaker. I grew to prefer it.

The real difference when it came to shedding bulk was regular exercise. If it was a mile to the hostel and it wasn’t clear how to buy tickets for the streetcar, I walked. My bag didn’t have wheels, so I carried it. Few of the places I stayed had elevators, so there was no alternative to climbing stairs.

The same went for cathedrals and towers in virtually every city, where the best view came after a few hundred vertical steps, which tended to be carved of stone and intended for tiny medieval human feet, not my size 16 sneakers.

And so while Pecetto had been a blast, it was time to head east. I thanked Scott profusely for the nightly use of his floor and spare mattress, and consulted with Don about our projected meeting in Munich two weeks hence. Then it was back to the train station, and the heavily traveled route from Turin to Milan.

---

I’d passed through Milan previously in route to Greece, with no opportunity to explore, save for the neighborhood around the youth hostel. The second time became a literal charm, and I had most of a whole day to poke around, investigate the city, peek into La Scala, and climb the steps to the roof of the Duomo (main cathedral).

I even managed a bus going in the direction of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, home of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper,” but the refectory was closed amid a lengthy restoration that lasted from 1978 to 1999. Pausing only for a sandwich, I boarded a night train and pressed on to Venice, arriving there at 5:30 a.m. the next morning.

A pattern was beginning to emerge. Fixed periods of relative calm, as in Pecetto, and Rome before it, would leave me restless and eager to be put into motion. Every day was a mysterious, bewildering and rewarding adventure. There’d be time later for sleep.

Exhaustion would come after a few days, when there’d be time to recoup with a lengthier stay somewhere. Perhaps more importantly, these lodgings allowed bathing.

And summer was starting to be felt.

---

The train to Venice made a mainland stop, then crossed the causeway to its final stop. A steady, cool rain was falling on the darkened plaza outside the station. Beyond it, the lapping of canal water could be heard. I joined an inexplicably huge, strange-tongued throng huddled inside the main hall.

With genial politeness, they ignored the half-hearted entreaties of local policemen to disperse. The cops shrugged and melted away. Eventually an English speaker among them revealed that yet again, the paths of the Hoosier Hick and Pope John Paul II had crossed.

You’ll recall that while in Rome, the Holy Father had appeared at the very same Sunday Mass that this inveterate pagan chose to attend at St. Peters, inciting amok adulation among nuns and priests, who seemed ready to resort to physical violence to secure the best camera-ready access to the Pontiff.

Now he’d just concluded a visit to Venice, and although Pope, his Popemobile and a mobile cadre of professional souvenir hawkers were long gone, thousands of pilgrims – many from the countryside of the mountainous Alto Adige and exotic neighboring Slovenia – had not yet melted away, hence the mass of humanity choking the corridors of the rail station.

The practical implications of the Pope’s tour schedule were about to be revealed to me. Placing my bag in safekeeping at the left luggage office, I rushed out into the strange labyrinth of pavement and water, determined as usual to secure inexpensive lodgings as early as possible in a city where cheap rooms were scant in the leanest of seasons.

I hadn’t reckoned with the many pilgrims who weren’t ready to relinquish their spots. By ten a.m., it was clear that budget beds were not to be.

Then, as now, confusing times call for studied reflection, preferably on a quiet street-side bench, with a slice of pizza and a bottle of beer for company. One option was to check back throughout the day to see if beds were available, a task complicated by my timidity over the token-operated public phone, and the difficulties of finding ones that worked.

Conversely, it was still early in the day. The rain was clearing, and the sun threatening to shine. There’d be ample time to ride the boats, view the art, contemplate the Doge’s maritime empire, recall Ernest Hemingway’s “Across the River and Into the Trees” and feel a chill at the memory of Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice.”

With a modicum of parsimony, there’d be enough Lira left over to avoid a Venice sleepover entirely, by booking space in a relatively cheap six-berth couchette compartment for the overnight rail journey to Vienna, capital of Austria, which was the next stop on the tour, anyway.

So it went. There was time to find a copy of USA Today and sneak a peek at the baseball standings, and to board a vaporetto for a sightseeing ride through the canals of a strange city erected on wooden pilings driven through sandbars dotting an ocean lagoon.

In its heyday, Venice was one of the most tolerant, multicultural and egalitarian of cities destined to be folded into the Kingdom of Italy. The reason might have been the hardships of its locale, tenuously hugging land – and this was before climate change and rising ocean levels.

The budget travel impresario Arthur Frommer had a budget restaurant recommendation, and so I closed my Venetian chapter with an actual meal. I was seated at a table adjacent to an elderly British lady, who struck up a conversation. Well-informed and witty, she was traveling alone at the age of 75, her husband having died only recently.

She was delightful company, and I can recall wondering how many 75-year-olds I knew back home in Indiana would dare embark on a journey to Italy, on the cheap, with no language skills. Three decades later, I’m closer to her age than to mine on that night in Venice when we dined together.

Exhausted, but at ease, I boarded the train and permitted my thoughts to drift to the Blue Danube.

---

Previously:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some déjà vu on the unfortunate closing of My Old Kentucky Homebrew and its brew-on-premise facility.

Photo credit: Kelly.

My Old Kentucky Homebrew was in business for six years before owner Paul Young pulled the plug earlier this week, and I hate to see it go. I don't brew at home, but of course know many who do.

Interestingly, Young believes MOKH's rarely seen brew-on-premise (BOP) was at least partially the blame.

Young partially attributes the closure to a surprising lack of interest in the brew-on-premise operation he added about nine months ago. He knew at the time of launch he needed to brew about 15 batches a month to break even, but in that time, fewer than 20 people have used the system. In April and May, he says, it was “barely used.”

In short, a big investment with little return.

If memory serves, the last time someone attempted a BOP in Kentucky was at the ill-fated (or just ahead of its time?) Brew Works at the Party Source in Covington. I'm not sure that one ever got off the ground owing to unsympathetic state laws and the short life span of the business.

Refresh your memory about Brew Works here. A video from the fall of 2014 shows how the Brew On Premise at MOKH was supposed to work, and Gibson also explained the idea at the inception in detail, right here.

My two cents: Homebrewing thrives in selected atmospheric conditions. It will pick up when the economy is bad, and wherever the do-it-yourself among us become hooked on the obsessive hobbyist aspect of the exercise. The sheer abundance of good beer these days, representing numerous styles at different price points in different packages, is a new variable in the equation.

Unfortunately, MOKH may have experienced this sort of fallout. All the best to whatever Paul does in the future, and thanks for your efforts.

My Old Kentucky Homebrew to close by end of June, by Kevin Gibson (Insider Louisville)

Paul Young sits staring at nothing at all. He says it still doesn’t seem real, but he has nevertheless decided he must close My Old Kentucky Homebrew, the business he launched six-and-a-half years ago to serve local brewers.

Sales have waned in 2015 to the point that a tough decision had to be made, he says.

“This is not a decision I want to make,” he says.

The homebrew shop, located at 361 Baxter Ave., will be open mostly only on weekends through Father’s Day, he says. Young informed the owner of the rented space he will be out by the end of June.

Thumbs up: Anderson Brewfest "was about supporting local businesses."

Much earlier in the year, Anderson Brewfest organizer Shanna Henry spoke to me about her local festival back home, and asked whether NABC would participate.

Then I took a leave of absence to run for mayor of New Albany, and Shanna lost her job at Flat12 in Jeffersonville -- not the only person to go in a company-wide shakeup that remains curiously undocumented by the state's beer press.

NABC did not participate, and I didn't go.

But ...

The description here confirms a commitment to localism, and that's very good to know. Congratulations to Shanna for doing something that's becoming increasingly difficult: Offering a beer fest with a twist.

ANDERSON BREWFEST HIGHLIGHTS LOCAL BUSINESSES ALONGSIDE EXCELLENT BEERS, by Tyler McCord (Indiana on Tap)

 ... You see, they went above and beyond for this fest. As great as having a fest with hundreds of brewers can be, it was great to see one that featured around 20 local Indiana breweries but also gave local artist, crafters, and businesses space to set up booths. Sure you’ll find a few of these booths at the bigger fests, but not like this. There were just as many local vendors as there were breweries. There was live music, there were educational showcases about brewing your own beer, food trucks, and so much more. This gave you the opportunity to take a small break from the beer and enjoy some of the finer things from around the state. Overall, this fest wasn’t just about the beer; it was about supporting local businesses.

These requests from abroad, Vol. 14: "With best wishes from Russia, Alexander."

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.

Alexander lives in Tyumen, Russia. 

Tyumen is another of those big Russian cities that none of us in America is aware exists. The city lies roughly 250 miles north of Kazakhstan, occupies 90 square miles, and has a population of more than 600,000 people.

Tyumen was the first Russian settlement in Siberia. Founded in 1586 to support Russia's eastward expansion, the city has remained one of the most important industrial and economic centers east of the Ural Mountains. Located at the junction of several important trade routes and with easy access to navigable waterways, Tyumen rapidly developed from a small military settlement to a large commercial and industrial city. The central part of Old Tyumen retains many historic buildings from throughout the city's history.

Judging from the Google Map views, Alexander's area of residence is fairly typical of the newer Tyumen suburbs. He is admirably polite in making his request.

My name is Alexander, I have long been interested in the history of brewing and I have a very fascinating hobby, I collect beer coasters and beer caps. I would be very grateful if you could help me supplement my collection. I hope this is possible, and that my request will not bring you inconvenience.

There's a chain brewery restaurant in Tyumen.

Maximilian's Brauerei's slogan is "Happiness Is Where We Are,"

Each Maximilian’s Restaurant is actually a little brew house, that’s why the name – Maximilian’s Brauerei where German ‘brauerei’ means ‘brew house’ rather than ‘restaurant’. This is what makes Maximilian’s different from other beer restaurants: beer is brewed right in front of you while you’re sitting comfortably at the bar.

The other Russian branches of Maximilian's are Naberezhnye Chelny, Kazan, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk.

Alexander lives in Tyumen, and Tyumen is very far away. That's all I have for now.

Urban Chestnut is brewing in Bavaria where Bürgerbräu Wolnzach used to be.

The beers I've had from Urban Chestnut have been very good, and I have nothing bad to say about the turnabout, wherein an American craft brewer rescues an otherwise dead European brewery space and starts its own operations on the continent.

At the same time, I can't help feeling a sense of profound sadness at the departure of a Bavarian brewery -- any of them.

Perhaps I'm thinking back to my Franconian treks during a time when so many icons were passing away. It's a sense of melancholy borne of inevitable change, and a measure of my own consciousness at present that I'm seeing the glass half empty.

Give me time. For now: Requiescat in pace, Bürgerbräu Wolnzach.

Urban Chestnut begins brewing in Bavaria, by Ian Froeb (St. Louis Post Dispatch)

Urban Chestnut Brewing Co. has begun brewing beer at the facility in the German state of Bavaria that it acquired in January.

"It's always exciting to get something to the final stage of the process --especially when there's beer at the end," Urban Chestnut co-founder and brewmaster Florian Kuplent, a Bavarian native, said.

Urban Chestnut purchased the Bürgerbräu Wolnzach brewery, which is located in Wolnzach, a town north of Munich, and rechristened it Urban Chestnut Hallertauer Brauerei.

From NA Confidential: "The life and death of Charles Kennedy."

This posting from my other blog isn't about beer at all. It's about a disease that far too few of us in the beer business take as seriously as we should. Moreover, it's about my fascination with a tiny factoid: Charles Kennedy spent a brief period in Bloomington at Indiana University, which at the time was legendary for partying.

The links make for sobering reading, even without political context.

---

Kennedy in 1987 (photo credit to the Washington Post)

In 1988, I was fortunate to land my first and only "real" corporate job abstracting periodicals at the now long-defunct UMI Data-Courier in Louisville. I lived off my evening package store pay and bankrolled as much as I could to make what became a six-month stay in Europe in 1989.

During my tenure at UMI Data Courier, it transpired that our British and other English language publications from abroad (The Economist, The Spectator, New Statesman, even Punch) were increasingly shunted onto my stack of work by fellow staffers after it became known that the new guy rather enjoyed reading them, and more importantly, wasn’t troubled by the English essayist’s general habit of hiding the topic sentence somewhere other than the opening paragraph. We had quotas, you know.

Charles Kennedy, who recently died and has been eulogized as a somewhat tragic, Shakespearean political personage, would have been a mere stripling during the period of my abstracting career. We were just about the same age, after all, but he was already a Member of Parliament, destined for greater things -- some of which Kennedy achieved, as with his iconic speech in opposition to the UK joining George W. Bush's war against Iraq.

In the end, Kennedy was felled by drink, and I don't make the citation flippantly. Following are three links that tell Kennedy's story.

The Charles Kennedy Story, by Alex Hunt & Brian Wheeler (BBC News)

Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy led his party to their best ever election result in 2005 but, battling a drink problem, had to resign a few months later. After his death at the age of 55, here's a look back at the life and career of one of the most influential politicians of his generation.

Kennedy's alcohol problems can be seen in a larger context.

Charles Kennedy’s alcohol problem was also Britain’s alcohol problem, by Hadley Freeman (The Guardian)

For the past decade, Charles Kennedy was treated by too many people as little more than a joke. This is, and was, in no way a reflection on the reportedly delightful man himself or his excellent abilities as a politician. It might not be so comfortable for some to remember now, seeing as the coverage of his very sad and all too early death has been focusing on Kennedy’s many strengths, with much emphasis being placed on his stand against the Iraq war.

Yet until yesterday, I hadn’t heard much mention of this for 10 years. Instead, whenever Kennedy’s name has been invoked on topical news shows – by half-assed comedians, by too many members of the public – it has been followed by a joking reference to his drinking problem.

Note the title of this 1999 profile of Kennedy, written as he was about to assume leadership of the Liberal Democrats. His brief period living in Bloomington, Indiana during a time when Indiana University enjoyed a nationwide reputation as a "party" school makes me wonder whether any friends ever crossed paths with him.

Profile: Charles Kennedy - The liberal party animal, by Donald MacIntyre (The Independent)

(Kennedy) was president of the university union before winning a Fulbright scholarship to Indiana University where he went to do to a PhD - and teach - political rhetoric after a spell working as a seasonal radio reporter in the BBC Highland office in Inverness. He was at Indiana University when the Liberal/SDP Alliance candidacy for the seat of Ross, Cromarty and Skye came up. Among several people he consulted was his former colleague - and later the BBC's hugely respected Scottish political editor - the late Kenny Macintyre, who had been something of a mentor and had urged him to have a crack at it. His father Ian toured the constituency, the largest in Britain - "two million acres of mountain glen and moors" as Kennedy junior described it - with his son, playing the fiddle to attract the more apolitical to meetings. At one, in Skye, a wag urged him not to prolong his speech shouting: "Aye, we know who you are, now come on Ian give us another tune."

Kennedy won the election at the tender age of 23. He was only 55 when he died.

Perhaps sometimes, being precocious isn't the best design for life.

Floyd County Brewing Company (in New Albany) is getting closer to opening.

Floyd County Brewing Company continues to progress toward a summer opening.

The brewer is former NABC brewery bad-ass Josh Hill (pictured), and I'm still experiencing mixed emotions in his absence from NABC. I'm simultaneously delighted for him, and wishing he still was on board at my place.

But they all leave the nest eventually, don't they?

FCBC is located in the heart of downtown New Albany on the southwest corner of Main and W. 1st Streets. It's already a busy intersection, and it can only get more highly populated. The YMCA is adjacent, and across the street there's The Exchange pub + kitchen (which currently is building new patio space) and Seeds & Greens Natural Market & Deli.

Previously I've devoted space at my civic affairs blog to noting just how busy this area will be, and the for pressing need to get the intersection equipped with crosswalks or whatever other traffic slowing mechanisms might make it friendlier for people, as opposed to their cars. Customers are going to walk across the street in all directions, and right now, this isn't always safe.

Must we wait for a traffic study to slow traffic and put crosswalks at the corner of Main and W. 1st?

I've served notice to Josh that there needs to be a good Ordinary Bitter on tap for his former employer.

CHECK OUT THOSE HOPS: Floyd County Brewing bringing fun, food and craft beer to New Albany, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — The recent revitalization of downtown has often been referred to as New Albany’s renaissance; however, one brewery and restaurant is taking the medieval theme to heart.

From the giant turkey legs on the menu, to the clever “Floyd” character who serves as a sort of mascot for the establishment, Floyd County Brewing Co. seeks to offer a light-hearted alternative to the craft beer invasion that has swept through Indiana and the nation in recent years.

Sure, owners Brian and Julie Hampton, and Master Brewer Josh Hill believe their beer and food will be taken quite seriously, but they want to have some fun along the way.

“I hope it almost feels like you’re walking onto the set of 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail,'” Brian Hampton said.

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

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

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Eighth in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

It was June, 1985, and with a fair degree of self-inflicted ineptitude, somehow I’d reached the village of Pecetto, outside the city of Turin, in the northern Italian hills.

The ensuing six-day sojourn with my cousin Don and his friend (and our host) Scott provided an ideal chance to stop, relax and enjoy a slice of easygoing, rural Europe in temperate summer weather. It was delightful.

The first month of my trip was close to passing, with eight weeks still ahead. What had I learned, and what was to come?

A lot, although the Pecetto stopover provided a mundane amenity far more welcome than philosophical introspection -- namely, the opportunity to use a real washing machine for the first time since my departure.

Following the advice of books and budget travelers, I’d packed a bottle of Woolite and a universal rubber sink stopper, and discovered that sure enough, laundry done by hand in the hostel washroom usually would dry overnight even without a clothesline.

At times it didn’t, and the inevitable chafing taught me to begin the wash cycle earlier in the day, and to trust in the magic of baby powder. A routine was established: Housekeeping tasks first, sightseeing and beers later. It has stuck with me during all my subsequent trips.

Scott’s washer and the Italian sun conspired to successfully restore my sole pair of jeans to foldable status. I felt clean again, and after all, who wants to spend precious beer money at a laundromat? Not often, that’s for sure.

The morning after my arrival, Don and I conducted an inspection trip of the mom ‘n’ pop merchants clustered along the main street in tiny downtown Pecetto. We found a small family grocer’s cluttered shop, amassing a considerable supply of bottled, half-liter, Italian-brewed Birra Dreher, surely enough golden lager to last the entire week, and of course just as surely depleted in less than three days.

There was a return visit, eliciting the patron’s wry smile as he accepted another thick wad of Italian Lira, and surely began plotting his daughter’s burgeoning dowry.

Three times in six days we trundled halfway down the hill to the quiet town’s primary restaurant of note, a jam-packed traditional nerve center presided over by a jovial, mustachioed, Italian mirror image of Lech Walesa, the then-prominent leader of Solidarity, the Polish trade union.

The indefatigable maestro of the house offered a fixed price, all-you-can-eat “pasta carousel”, a much anticipated culinary event that involved a bottle of cheap house red wine, crunchy baked bread sticks, and portions of a dozen different pastas awash in cream sauces, garlic oil, marinara and pesto, each ladled into the waiting bowl of the expanding diner until exhaustion set in, more wine arrived, the kitchen closed, and Don began licking his plate.

One afternoon we happened upon a small distillery of some sort, and later asked our new restaurateur friend what type of spirits it produced. He pulled a bottle from behind the counter and poured samples. It was my first taste of grappa – Italian moonshine, fashioned from the pomace (skin, pulp, seeds and skins left over from winemaking).

The grappa was hot, fragrant and intriguing. I was becoming positively enchanted.

---

Meanwhile, cousin Don was reveling in the chance to provide information and share advice to me. At 40 years of age in 1985, he was a veteran traveler, whereas I was a painfully inexperienced novice. We’d talked enough about it over beers back home, and now, together for the first time abroad, our chats extended far into the night as we sat outside the villa and smoked cigars.

In 1985, Don was an adjunct faculty member at Florida State University, teaching European history. He’ll be retiring in 2016. His academic specialization was France, his cultural milieu French, and the place he liked to be, above all others, was Paris.

Having previously lamented that there’d be no way for us to coordinate schedules and meet in Paris later in the summer, Don began plotting one Pecetto evening over pasta. Scott had train schedules. We took a look, and possibilities came into focus.

Don’s idea was for us to take a Eurailpass railroad trip from Turin to Paris and back. We’d depart Pecetto on the earliest bus to Turin’s rail station (with Scott’s help, local transit payment options now made sense), then to Lyon in France, where the TGV high-speed train would bring us to Paris.

It was noted that Turin is not particularly close to Paris. At the time, it was more than four hours from Turin to Lyon, and another two and a half hours to Paris. We’d arrive in mid-afternoon, and have roughly six hours to roam the streets before boarding an overnight train back to Turin, on which we’d save money by napping in our seats.

The overnight train home was direct, without changes, but slower. If fortunate, we’d be feeling little pain by then. Given Don’s fundamentally bibulous proclivities, the odds seemed solidly in our favor, so off we went.

---

From the Gare Lyon, using tickets Don hoarded from a previous trip, we hopped the Metro to Notre Dame, the epicenter of Paris. The first couple hours were spent walking the usual tourist haunts, with care taken to have a draft beer at a sidewalk café. It was an invaluable orientation for my return visit in July.

But in truth, we’d actually taken the trouble to spend seven hours on trains for a far too brief stop in Paris, and then to cut short our sightseeing in the city, for only one reason: To eat and drink. Specifically, we were to find a North African joint and eat couscous – strictly speaking, tagine (stew) with couscous, although I didn’t really learn the difference for many years.

Couscous, tagine, merguez … these were not staples of the diet in Georgetown, Indiana. A cultural sonic boom was about to occur.

Don knew where to look for sustenance, and so had Arthur Frommer of $25-a-Day guidebook fame. Both recommended the Rue Xavier Privas, a tiny, narrow street on the Left Bank named for an early 20th-century French poet and songwriter.

In 1985, several North African eateries were located on Rue Xavier Privas. Googling the area these many years later, I am encouraged to see that at least one of them still operates.

The exact couscouserie we chose, and whether it was Moroccan, Tunisian or Algerian, is lost to me now. However, I recall the décor being simple, the patrons atmospheric, and Don’s suggested choice of communal meal absolutely outstanding. We ordered the least expensive menu option, which yielded a mound granule-sized couscous pasta accompanied by an urn of tagine, and chose a liter bottle of house red wine to go with it.

When the couscous ran out, it was replenished as part of the dish’s asking price. The tagine seemed destined for an early exit, but proved richer than it first appeared, and every last drop was absorbed with the help of crusty bread.

The first bottle of wine was depleted and repeated, too, although we happily paid for a second, because after all, while constituting a splurge, I still spent less than $15 dollars for the meal. I was lucky, as the dollar was strong against European currencies in 1985.

Next morning, there was a groggy awakening in Turin, the correct bus back to Pecetto, and afternoon naps before evening Drehers and stogies.

Couldn’t I do this the rest of my life?

---

Previously:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dry-hopped Clausthaler, or Hopster from Shelton Brothers?

I wasn't expecting this Clausthaler tasting to be a success.

HAS DRY-HOPPING SAVED NON-ALCOHOLIC BEER? AN EXPERT WEIGHS IN, by Mike Pomranz (Food and Wine)

Over the past couple decades, craft beer has undergone a creative renaissance. But its ugly cousin, non-alcoholic beer, refused to keep pace. Even though NA beer is actually growing in popularity—its sales are up 80 percent from five years ago—it's rare that anyone tries to revolutionize brewing techniques or flavors. Occasionally, though, someone will come along and say they have achieved the impossible: a NA beer that actually resembles beer. The latest group to make that claim is Radeberger, claiming most people can’t distinguish its Clausthaler Amber Dry Hopped from regular beer at blind tastings. I wanted to put that claim to the test.

Just moments after reading the preceding, I received the periodic Shelton Brothers e-newsletter, and was intrigued to see this thing called Hopster.

Here's the promo from Belchertown.

Lastly, we have a truly momentous announcement -- our first non-alcoholic offering!

We never planned to go into the soda business, but Hopster was just too good to pass up. This concoction -- is it a sparkling water? a tonic? a soda? -- is produced in Bavaria at the Kondrauer Mineral-und Heilbrunnen, which blends its award-winning mineral water with tea and lemon essence and a distillation of essential Hallertauer Traditional, Taurus, Perle, and Cascade hop oils. Its strikingly spritzy, fruity, and gently bitter aroma is followed by a dry, clean, lemony palate. Refreshing by itself, it's also the perfect mixer, and an excellent non-sugary, non-alcoholic option for the hop-loving teetotaler or designated driver! Our first shipment of 865 cases sold out in two days.You'll want this.

Hopster is available in 250mL bottles.

It makes sense. I may be compelled to mix some with gin and see what happens.

Bring a broom and become a Baylor for Mayor volunteer.

Between now and November, the Baylor for Mayor campaign will be relying heavily on volunteers to spread the word.

The two major political parties will have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on their accustomed local campaign methodologies, which will be long on yard signs and short on actual content.

We’ll do our best to raise operational funds of our own, but aren’t we all sadly aware of the destructive effects on the American political process of vast expenditures like those projected by local Democrats and Republicans?

Conversely, although they'll have lots of money, I personally have the great pleasure of knowing all sorts of talented, creative people who are accustomed to finding ways of getting things done, from the grassroots up, by whatever means are available to them.

Accordingly, we’ll be running an unconventional, guerrilla-style political campaign, and I’d like for you to help us with it.

Let this be my first of many callouts to you, some of the smartest people I know, to begin the resistance, unleash the hounds, and start flying the Jolly Roger. Do you have ideas? Let me know what they are, and if you need my corpus to do it, I'll be there.

And, of course, we have more pedestrian tasks that need doing. What else would you expect from New Albany’s “Walkable City” candidate if not pedestrian tasks?

We’re aiming for an organizational meeting next week on Tuesday evening, and there are tasks for tending right now. Let me know if you’re interested: mayorbaylor@gmail.com, or 502-468-9710, or message me via Facebook and social media.

Thanks for your support.

RAB

(This message is being cross-posted many places today)

Horseshoe Cincy has local craft beer. That's nice. Were it so elsewhere.

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Granted, the Cincinnati area might be different.

We at NABC tried hard at Horseshoe Southern Indiana, which is about seven miles from New Albany, just over the Harrison County line. It took forever to get corporate approval for draft beer there in spite of a spirited effort by several employees, and once it had been approved, another lapse when we turned over our wholesaling to Cavalier, then ... well, it's embarrassing to concede that at one point I was at the casino for a concert, got Community Dark, and used it on my fish and chips instead.

I'm guardedly optimistic that more of the gaming emporiums are featuring better beer. Years ago, when our Horseshoe casino began as Caesar's and I made my first visit, one look at the crowds told me this couldn't be a "craft" success story. They were there to gawk at the glitz and gamble, not explore the nuances of beer. Maybe things have changed. I have enough bad habits without blackjack being one of them.

Top Five posts at Potable Curmudgeon for May, 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.


78

Liver issues? Maybe you're eating too much.

111

I profile the Crescent Hill Craft House in the new issue of Food & Dining Magazine.

123

NABC's lineup for the RiverRoots Music & Folk Arts Festival in Madison, May 15 & 16.

148

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

167

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

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

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

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Seventh in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

The conductor was obtrusively perfumed, immaculately groomed, and possessed an epochal five o’clock shadow. His bureaucratic spit and polish providing suitable embellishment for escalating anguish: Chest heaving, arms unfurled and palms outstretched, he dramatically glared at the wad of Italian Lira notes crumpled in my hand, and then looked skyward, enunciating his indignation in Italian.

I could only imagine his thoughts.

Why me? Why must I be the one to correct the ignorant American? And on this perfectly gorgeous summer’s day, when I might be tending my garden plot or enjoying a lovely wine on the terrace?

Fellow passengers remained resolutely still, their faces buried in newspapers, avoiding the dispute -- a silly, inconsequential matter of my failure to possess a valid bus ticket for passage into the Piedmont countryside.

It wasn’t even my fault. Well, maybe not.

---

Six strenuous days in Rome had been enough. Accompanied by a shopping bag filled with sandwiches and bottles of Italian-brewed Carslberg, and encumbered with luggage – grown now to two pieces, with a cheap and exceedingly ugly black and white checkered gym bag having been purchased during market day somewhere in Greece -- I boarded the northbound train at Termini Station, with a final destination of Turin, home to the fabled burial shroud and Euro-crooner Paulo Conte.

A young, helpful, raven-haired beauty at the tourist information office examined the postal address I offered her, and announced solemnly that Pecetto was not a street in the city, as I’d mistakenly assumed.

Rather, it was a village in the countryside. This was an unanticipated complication. Wherever Pecetto was, I had to find it.

My cousin and travel mentor Donald Barry was visiting there with his friend Scott Bennett, a teacher at Turin’s international school. The young lady gestured across the square to a row of regional buses, assuring me that transit to Pecetto would be very easy. Buses departed regularly.

“You may buy the ticket on board,” she smiled.

Or, perhaps not? Setting off, all was peaceful until the conductor began breathing vituperation, his incomprehensibly operatic rebukes increasingly florid, to the point where bodily removal seemed a likely fate, and then … nothing.

He belched, shrugged, straightened his tie, and made for the front of the bus, muttering to himself all the while. An elderly man seated in front of me, who’d kept quiet throughout the performance, turned around and whispered, “You may ride, but please, you are on the wrong bus.”

At that precise moment, I glimpsed two road signs, one pointing to Pecetto, seven kilometers away, and the second heralding our imminent arrival in Chieri – obviously not where I wanted to be. The bus stopped in Chieri’s main square, and it seemed a cutting of losses was in order. Still blushing, I brushed hurriedly past my tormentor and hustled to the sidewalk.

Focused on me were suspicious eyes attached to dozens of youthful, sullen and unshaven men, presumably unemployed, some napping, others smoking, all of them combining to induce stifling paranoia. Immediately, I began retracing the bus route back to the previous fork in the road.

New plan: It was time for a bracing walk.

---

Two hours later, the narrow lane crested atop a gentle rise, with vineyards all around, and Pecetto coming into sight. A dense jumble of tile-roofed houses was arranged atop small hills, the town’s church steeple dominant. Somewhere in the village, Don was staying. Finding him would prove my fledgling ability to follow a plan to fruition, if inelegantly.

He’d provided me with his travel itinerary, which was amazing. You mean tourists have plans? I didn’t, but guessed that Italy would be the best place for us to meet, and Don asked me to telephone Scott from Rome and let them know my arrival time.

It was a seemingly simple task that I first neglected, and then botched. The unfamiliar pay phones kept spitting out my Lira coins, until someone told me that only tokens could be used. Supposedly they were available at newsstands, and yet I failed to locate any. Consequently, my Pecetto hosts were entirely unaware of my presence.

But the walk from Chieri to Pecetto had been a rejuvenating joy: Rolling landscapes; greens, blues and browns; barking dogs, lazy cows and proud horses, with fresh air and tall grass and grape vines, and tiny cars racing past me way too fast. At the very first café to be encountered in town, I ordered a cola and unfolded my battered note paper.

My halting query was answered in perfect English by a middle-aged woman who’d lived in California during the first five years of her previous marriage. She pointed across the street and up the hill: “At the top, go right, and watch the street numbers. Good luck!”

Soon I found the small stucco apartment house, set back off the street and surrounded by a fence in the typical European fashion, with numbered buzzers to ring and alert the inhabitants to unlatch the gate.

I buzzed Scott’s number. Nothing happened. The gate was ajar, so I walked to the entryway and knocked.

Nothing happened.

The drill was repeated, with the same results. It was early evening by now, shadows dancing and the brilliant sun steadily lessening in intensity. I began exploring some of the side streets, uncertain what to do next.

Around seven, seated atop the stone wall across the street, I saw an unfamiliar male emerge from the house, followed by a worldly Hoosier-born educator with a prominent proboscis and a soon-to-be-famous blue jacket.

It was Scott and Don. I met them at the gate.

“Doc Barry, I presume?”

Don just may have been as stunned by the twenty pounds I’d lost as he was by my very presence, emerging from the gloaming to stand before him just as he and Scott were about to walk to a cocktail reception nearby. Either way, it was as close to speechlessness for him as we’re ever likely to witness.

“Goddamn,” Don said.

He looked at Scott before adding, this time for posterity’s sake:

“Goddamn!”

---

Previously:

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

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

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

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

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

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