AFTER THE FIRE: This week in solipsistic beer narcissism (2014).

AFTER THE FIRE: This week in solipsistic beer narcissism (2014).

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Originally published in 2014, and with a strange sort of resonance as the most insufferable political campaign in American history limps to the finish line.

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Way back in 2010, when 10 Barrel Brewing was but a gleam in Carlos Brito’s numbers-crunching testes, President Barack Obama returned to a theme often broached during his historic campaign for the White House. It happened during the 2010 State of the Union address.

“The best anti-poverty program around is a world class education.”

No, not the Indiana wholesaler.

Naturally, the precise components of a “world class education” are open to interpretation, discussion and debate between open-minded citizens, assuming you can find any of them in these idiotically polarized times, but the overall sentiment that education is a corrective to impoverishment has been proven to be truthful again and again.

I submit that the word “impoverishment” has more than one meaning as used in this context. We’d be correct in the assumption that there are clear and compelling correlations between education and the eradication of material impoverishment.

However, we might also consider impoverishment in creative, artistic and cultural contexts, and how one’s attitude toward the general topic of knowledge, pertaining to its veracity as an end onto itself as well as the tangible benefits gained from expansive education as opposed to a confining illiteracy, shapes what we know and the uses to which we put our knowledge.

According to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who drank wine: “With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it."

What I think he meant is that possessing something of supposed value for the sole purpose of the object’s ability to reflect its “value” back on the holder somewhat misses the point. The true value is derived from the object being used wisely, and a well-rounded education supplies the means to make this determination.

Given the perpetual linkages between education and personal advancement, why is it that people choose to devalue the notion of education, eschewing the why, how and wherefore, and substituting in their place a solipsistic, narcissism-driven, knee-jerk, me-first hedonism?

Perhaps it’s the logical outcome of our American strains of materialism and consumerism. When it comes to pulse-quickening snobbery, exclusionary avarice and frenzied hoarding, the very last thought surfacing in one’s fevered, acquisitive brain is the possibility that all is not what it seems.

Do you still desire the object once it is revealed that the profit chain leads straight into the Texas-sized mass of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, or to the owners of factory-farmed chickens wallowing in their own feces, or to that bastard Obama’s pocket … or, into the very coffers of ISIS (read: AB-InBev).

Except you really want it, don’t you? You want it right now – and by “it” I refer not to a mass-produced Trojan Goose barrel-aged ale, but to a blissfully unexamined version of capitalist doltishness, wherein there are no reasons whatever for diagnosing the nature of the itch, only interminable scratching.

The writer Aldous Huxley called this phenomenon soma. If you don’t know the source of this reference, perhaps it’s time to read a book.

But I’m nothing if not stubborn. Ideas matter, and yet at present, both the country at large and my own beer and brewing milieu are dismally stupid and mercilessly tacky places. These daily tsunamis of crass materialism and consumerist greed have come to define the American experience, and even when the topic is “craft” beer – perhaps modern America’s signature accomplishment – we have digressed just as quickly into 24-7, must-have shopping zombies, pausing occasionally to thank Jesus for the blessed privilege of possessing our baubles, and ignoring what’s happening in our own back yards because there’s not enough status in mere localism.

It’s the old Chinese proverb – yes, you guessed it, the one printed on plasticized card stock suitable for framing, and available not from the heirs to Billy Mays, but from Wal-Mart via Guangdong Province:

"It’s all about me."

Yes, it is.

And that’s also why YOU don’t interest ME any longer.

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What would happen if you combined classic sacred choral music with a thesaurus? You’d have a synonym for a seminal hymnal!

Hi, Roger Baylor here for the Sing ‘o’ Saurus. It’s no ordinary reference book.

Watch this!

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September 12: AFTER THE FIRE: England, or one man's heightened cholesterol panic is another man's nostalgic repast (2013).

September 5: AFTER THE FIRE: Beer stories and bedtime for gonzo (2013).

August 29: AFTER THE FIRE: In the Red Room, we’re all left – right?

August 22: AFTER THE FIRE: Drink, smoke and enjoy.

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AFTER THE FIRE: Drink, smoke and enjoy.

AFTER THE FIRE: Drink, smoke and enjoy.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

This column dates to October, 2012. It was originally published at LouisvilleBeer.com, and has not appeared in its entirety here at the blog.

I must note with sadness that Billow is no longer with us. However, The Office Cigar Shop and Lounge in Floyds Knobs and Riverside Cigar Shop/Match Cigar Bar in Jeffersonville have expanded local options exponentially.

It also should be said that a return to temperate weather would be much appreciated.

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Tolerable front porch weather resumed in September this year, and temperate temps lasted well into October. Suddenly, as though gripped by an obscure internalized auto-pilot, I found myself queuing at various local cigar purveyors, and layering my humidor.

New Albany is fortunate in this regard. There’s Kaiser Tobacco, which has operated on Pearl Street for more than 175 years, and also Billow, celebrating a year in business on Market Street.

Billow’s strategic location is especially pleasing to the senses when those days when the planets are aligned. Just next to it is the Quills coffee shop, and across the street Habana Blues, a Cuban restaurant. Aromas of cigars, coffees, teas and spicy roasted meats can be pervasive in that area, reminding us of how very important our retained impressions of smell can be, combining with sights and sounds to conjure wonderful memories.

And then there’s beer.

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In 1995, on a sunny fall afternoon in Antwerp, Belgium, we’d started drinking early at the Elfde Gebod (Eleventh Commandment) café, where religious statuary both sacred and profane lines the walls. The eccentric tableau is just creepy enough to be inspirational, so for those seeking a view of “Jesus with the head of a dog” while sipping Westmalle Tripel, the Elfde Gebod is just your kind of place.

Later that afternoon, my pot of North Sea mussels steamed in dry white wine was superb. Endless, graceful “bollekes” of locally brewed De Koninck amber ale were equally fabulous, and there remains a sneaking suspicion that we found Rodenbach on tap somewhere at a bar upstairs on the other side of the cathedral.

Belgium’s diamond capital is a city filled with food, drink and nightlife, and the specific reason why the memory of this particular day returned to me recently was a cigar, cradled in my hand, burning ever so slowly, emitting puffy smoke rings – the fruition of a long, patient process of growth, cultivation, harvesting, curing, hand rolling, packing and distribution.

It took me back to the conclusion of our Antwerp session so very long ago, because we ended the long day’s session at the famous beer bar called the Kulminator, where Dirk was featuring ten-year-old vintage dark ale called Breughel, brewed by a long defunct brewery (since then, it has been revived), as salvaged from a forgotten stash hidden in a friend’s garage.

Miraculously, the process of aging had been quite friendly to the Breughel. Oxidization offered a velvety patina of sherry-like nuttiness to concentrated fruitiness, on the order of plums, pecans and toffee. I drank one, ordered another, and lit an authentic Havana: The Romeo y Julieta Churchill, purchased a few days earlier at a tobacconist’s in Brussels.

At the time, I was quite sure it was the best cigar I’d ever smoked. Finely conditioned, properly humidified and boasting a clean draw and steady, stately, dead-even ash, it was full-bodied and unapologetic in flavor, and the sensory qualities of the tobacco were simply overwhelming. Not only that, I had a complex, nuanced beer to go along with the cigar. The match of power vs. power seemed ideal.

At the same time, as one who regularly enjoys good beer with good cigars, I must confess that at some level, doing so is counter-intuitive. Puffing on a cigar changes the way a beer tastes. Conversely, drinking a beer also changes the way a cigar tastes. Can partaking of beer and cigars together change the way both taste, but in a positive way, one modifying pleasurable aspects of each and yielding a harmonious, hedonistic whole?

I think so.

When given the chance to nip at a beer I haven’t previously tasted, my general inclination is to avoid cigar smoke; after all, the first Breughel in Antwerp went down before the cigar came out. This is a personal preference, and simple enough to keep straight. The point to me is that because quality beer and cigars both appeal to me, I’m likely to continue making simultaneous use of them, and with a wee bit of forethought, the experience can be enhanced.

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On the cigar side, the logical place to assess the range of pairing choices is the wrapper, which contributes much to the flavor profile and offers visual clues. Wrappers range from lighter to darker shades, with subtle, spicy notes common in the light wrappers and cocoa or chocolate hints noticeable as the color nears black.

Albeit imperfectly, these wrapper shades correspond to beer colors as a preliminary basis for pairing.

The base malt of beer is golden, with hues added through the use of specialty malts, which also provide flavors ranging from roast to espresso to wood smoke. Color alone doesn’t always indicate the strength and character of a beer, and it should be obvious that the lightest styles of beer won’t always pair well with tobacco even if the cigar is innately mild.

For instance, a golden-colored beer might be light and delicately hopped (Kolsch), medium-bodied, estery and phenolic (German Hefeweizen) or strong and malty sweet (Maibock). With a yellowish-brown Claro wrapper, Kolsch’s subtlety would be missed, and the assertive Maibock might overwhelm it. Among these three beer styles, a reasonable starting point might be Hefeweizen; a touch of clove and fruit for complementing the Claro’s spiciness.

Aggressively hoppy beers, including American Pale Ales and English ESBs, excel in the middle of the wrapper color range, especially Colorado (brown). Hops also can complement a cedar-like flavor component in cigars (sometimes gleaned from their modes of storage), but hoppy beers lacking a firm malt component, like an everyday Pilsner, often lack the heft to compete.

The greater the coffee, cocoa and chocolate content of the wrapper (Maduro and Oscuro), the less utility of either hops or spices, and far better the match with beers offering similarly dark character: Stouts, Porters, Belgian Dubbels, and any number of unclassifiable stronger, dark and blacker specialty brews.

As suggested long ago by my old friend Paul Mick, the residual sugar found in many bigger, darker beers serves as a leveling agent in the struggle for balance with fuller-bodied cigars. In a primal and purely axiomatic sense, the pinnacle of full-on-full pairings could well be oily, black Maduro cigars alongside bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stouts.

Of course, these musings will be familiar to cigar smokers with a taste for Port, and those already enamored of the wider world of whiskies. Kentucky’s legendary bourbon whisky pairs well with cigars because both possess woody flavors. The alcohol in the bourbon cleanses the palate; and the corn mash sweetness of the whisky balances the absence of sweetness in the tobacco. Or so it seems to me.

Indeed, the utility of experimentation never diminishes. So, what is your own strategy for beer and cigars?

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August 15: AFTER THE FIRE: Listening to "Dixieland" jazz, and thinking about drinking a beer.

August 8: AFTER THE FIRE: A pre-digital Bohemian vignette, 1989.

August 1: AFTER THE FIRE: The devil made me drink it.

July 28 (at NA Confidential): ON THE AVENUES: An imaginary exercise tentatively called The Curmudgeon Free House.


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THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: I know I’m gonna change that tune.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: I know I’m gonna change that tune.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king
I've been up and down and over and out and I know one thing
Each time I find myself flat on my face
I pick myself up and get back in the race
-- Frank Sinatra, “That’s Life”

Growing up in the Hoosier heartland, I wanted nothing more than to like beer.

A girlfriend would have been nice, but you can’t go around asking for too much out of life.

In the beginning, I didn’t like beer because beer didn’t taste good. This didn’t stop me from drinking it. Although beer didn’t taste good, its effects were quite good. The effects kept me coming back for more until finally, the flavor made sense.

It is no exaggeration to state that in due course, beer became highly sensible. It was my life’s work. Beer served as governing principle for a variety of personal interests, ranging from history to geography, through politics, and including food, travel and recreation.

Beer connected them in a way iced tea simply couldn’t manage, and frankly, then as now, iced tea consistently annoys the hell out of me.

Beer was the way I scratched various itches – to write, to teach and to connect with other people. Beer taught me how to speak, so I could speak to others – about beer, and also about these other interests of mine. Beer was my hobby, and it became my profession.

I had a good run, and then it got complicated. Through it all, I drank enough beer to float a battleship around. Just the same, I never had the slightest physical difficulty stopping.

At the peak of consumption, my physician ordered tests requiring me to be dry for a month. It wasn’t a problem. The lab cruelly botched the test, and it had to be done a second time.

Thirty more days? Still not a problem. There were no spiders crawling up my wall, and the hours passed without delirium tremens.

(As an aside, note that I’ve no intention of arguing with those who can construct brilliant causal links to alcoholism from the scantest of sources. Do you drink alone? With others? Near your cat? Wearing a hat? DING DING DING – dude, you need treatment now … and we accept all major credit cards.)

That’s fine, and it may even be true, but you can count me out, so kindly bugger off, although the writer (and reformed alcoholic) Pete Hamill probably was right when he pointed to memory loss from drinking being unkind to writers.

Point taken ... Jim?

Physical effects are one thing, and psychology quite another. The hardest part about reduced alcohol intake always has been the damnable persistence of the real world.

Even during times when my beer consumption was relatively light, going without a dose for a few days would lead to a noticeable uptick in mental acuity. There’d be vastly enhanced clarity, followed by an existential query: Who really wants to see this miserable, pain-filled, stupid world in such excruciating detail?

I guess it depends on whether you have any interest in changing it. At any rate, I do remember when this whole thing began, when I adored beer’s effects and couldn’t get past the flavor. Forty years later, the ground is shifting, and I’m not sure what to make of it.

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Beer remains a physical entity. Beer exists in the material world, where it derives from natural ingredients and a predictable process, one guided by human intelligence toward an end.

So far, so good.

And yet, beer also is a deeply held symbol, for me as well as others. For us, beer is a real object that does double duty by representing abstract ideas – about the ideal economy, the primacy of localism, cultural norms, a universal brotherhood of beer lovers, and perhaps the meaning of life itself.

Thus, the crux of the problem, for while my beer symbolism used to be bright and rosy, it has become vexing and complex. It almost seems I’ve come full circle. Now I like the taste of beer, but not the effects.

Recently the missus announced her intention to go shopping in Louisville. Did I wish to be deposited at a local brewery to await her return in the company of one or two cool, pleasing pints?

Diana’s such a sweetheart. I duly accompanied her for shopping, but killed time with a stroll rather than a beer. Afterwards, she asked why. As I haltingly tried to explain, she shifted into social worker mode and helped me understand that my relationship with beer is going through a rough patch for both physical and psychological reasons.

It’s easier to explain the physical reason.

Two or three years ago, I began having adverse reactions to certain beers. To be sure, allergies are familiar to me, and just last month, I had pesky sinus infection, but these beer-related issues are different. My head will be reasonably clear, then the beer triggers a painful sinus shutdown.

The reaction doesn’t happen all the time. I’ve ruled out wheat, barley and grain, as I continue to eat bread and cereal without any problems. Wine and liquor don’t cause it, and neither does most lager. The only logical explanation is an allergy to certain types of hops, especially those more commonly used in ales with more alcohol and higher IBUs.

I still like the taste of hop bombs – but the physical effect can be a colossal buzzkill. What's more, drinking any alcohol late in the evening interferes with my sleep, and if the drinking starts too early, I can’t write worth a damn.

Whatever happened to those days of beer + repetition = blissfully passing out?

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By far, my biggest problem with beer is psychological. Simply stated, beer now symbolizes discomfort more often than it does pleasure. When I think about beer, the imagined flavor is appealing, but the dissonance is never very far away.

This needs to change.

My spoilages of symbolism have been widely documented. Most recently, NABC business affairs have stubbornly resisted being settled, and it’s frustrating to contemplate the time it will take to rectify it.

Concurrently, perhaps I underestimated what it would take to adjust to civilian life after 25 years in the food and drink business. Whether private or professional, divorce remains difficult.

Beer now reminds me of these facts. It’s like a bad flavor in my mouth, except that even before electing to jump from a moving train, my disillusionment was manifest.

“Craft” beer got big, wide and depressingly shallow. As a result, much of the plot was lost. We started by revolting against business as usual, but today, “craft” is a business like any other. I remain a reluctant capitalist – and the Bank Street Brewhouse experience proved my limitations in such a role.

Of course, I stand by each and every one of my tried-and-true rants about narcissism, co-opted concepts, sellouts, beer rating aggregators, white whale hunters and pestiferous multinationals.

Furthermore, I’m still enamored of beer’s rich back story – of the stories to be told, the fellow travelers to be revealed, and the educational opportunities waiting to be uncovered. I’m confident the pendulum will swing back in my direction, hence my diet of Sinatra classics.

I’ll be back in the race, but which race isn’t clear. For now, beer symbolizes uncertainty – and it won’t always be this way. As equilibrium is restored, the widening of my palate has been welcome, whatever the impetus. Drinking gin, wine, and even bourbon on occasion has been fun, though overall, I drink far less of them than beer in the rare old times.

Bizarrely, for the first time in decades, the clarity of relative sobriety is appealing. Perhaps this owes to being in unfamiliar surroundings, worried that missteps might be magnified into problems. It's the same way I felt long ago, in Europe for the first time. Caution can be good.

I may be too old to rock and roll, and too young to die.

I may be aging, though I’d hate to think I might be growing up.

Know that I’m optimistic. I’ll come to like beer again. There’ll be an opening, then it can start all over, building enthusiasm from the grassroots, the way that makes the most sense for me.

Right now, it’s time for a Lillet spritzer. No judging.

Consider it rehab.

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June 6: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A Mile Wide sidewalk superintendent.

May 30: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: “The Drinker” (A Book Review).

May 23: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part Two).

May 16: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part One).

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THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A Mile Wide sidewalk superintendent.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A Mile Wide sidewalk superintendent. 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

To be perfectly honest – but then again, why let the accumulated truth spill out, all at once? – demonstrable elements of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can be spotted amid otherwise encouraging signs of the Curmudgeon's ongoing recovery from the vicissitudes of small business ownership.

For instance, there is a recurring nightmare. I’m stuck in a roofless maze, trying to find my way out. Every time I spot a seemingly safe exit corridor, out pops a familiar impediment – some times a do-nothing gasbag from Heidelberg Distributing, at others a phalanx of Floyd County Health Department bureaucrats carrying clipboards.

Worst of all is the RateBeer luminary, waving his hop garland like a priest with bobbing censer, and screaming about my Doppelbock’s failure to taste like an IPA. When I glance up to the sky, the sun is blocked by the doughy faces of bankers, looking down at me and laughing.

Consequently, when I read previews like Kevin Gibson’s recent piece on Mile Wide Beer Co., it's like being at the harbor, watching as the Titanic sets sail, all the while expecting dreadful things to happen sooner rather than later ... then I fall asleep again.

Mile Wide Beer Co. announces it will open in late summer, by Kevin Gibson (Insider Louisville)

The mysterious Mile Wide Beer Co. announced this week it will open in late summer, also detailing what types of beers customers should expect.

Located at 636 Barret Ave., behind Diamond Pub & Billiards in a former live music space, Mile Wide is owned by four partners: Scott Shreffler, Kyle Tavares, Matt Landon and Patrick Smith, the latter of which also owns River City Drafthouse. Shreffler and Tavares are former representatives for Schlafly Beer, which is based in St. Louis, while Landon has worked in construction …

… The brewhouse will consist of a 15-barrel, three-vessel system with an initial annual capacity of about 1,700 barrels, thanks to two 15-barrel fermenters, three 30-barrel fermenters, and a pair of bright tanks.

Other amenities will include a circa-early 1990s jukebox, plus a retail space that will include a crowler station; at Mile Wide, 32-ounce crowlers, which are cans sealed on site, will be a specialty for taking beer off site and maintaining its freshness longer than growlers. In fact, Mile Wide will be the first brewery in Louisville to offer crowlers ...

... Shreffler says the space has room for growth if the need arises. Future plans, pending success of the brewery, include a canning line. In the meantime, there is plenty of build-out work left to do, and recipes to perfect.

Of course, my anxiety is just a mirror, reflecting a scalded publican shunning the fire, even if he continues to adore Rauchbier.

This feeling of impending terror has nothing whatever to do with the merits of the start-up brewery in question. Mile Wide’s principals have certifiable pedigrees, and assuming the brewery is sufficiently capitalized, there is no reason to believe they won’t do fine, although it won’t stop me from offering astute analysis in just a moment.

Meanwhile, professional therapy may eventually be necessary.

When the whistle blew for opening day at Bank Street Brewhouse in 2009, I thought we had a great business plan. By the time Day Two rolled around, this plan had all the value of Confederate banknotes, crisp and baled.

In the months and years to follow, things seldom worked as intended, and even when they did, critical mass stubbornly refused to occur. It was an amazing and educational ride, and so help me Jeeebus, never EVER again.

For six years at BSB, we performed too well to fail, and yet not well enough to succeed, and as the experience of World War I amply illustrates, there isn't much to be said for the daily stalemate of trench warfare.

On those rare occasions when the shelling stopped, I found myself questioning my worthiness to exist in an atmosphere of peace and quiet, fully expecting the blows to keep raining down.

For the past year, I’ve been convalescing, in part by immersing myself in local politics. Compared to today’s “craft” beer business, the snarling, backstabbing, soul-crushing viciousness of a small town mayoral campaign comes off as serene and hushed, like libraries used to be.

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Because you’re entitled to my opinion, here’s what I think about Mile Wide’s prospects, using Kevin's Insider Louisville survey as the sole basis for my armchair quarterbacking.

This means I’ll probably be wrong, but so are most weather forecasters.

There is no mention of a kitchen at Mile Wide, and that’s good. At Bank Street Brewhouse, we had enough money to either open a restaurant or a brewery, so naturally we tried to do both. Apart from the maddening fickleness of the food service business, there’s a reason for the wise old brewer’s adage.

“Wanna make a million in the brewing business? It’s easy – start with $5 million.”

Better to spend the additional $4 million supporting the beer your brew, which after all is a brewery’s primary reason for being, and conversely, if one is intent on being a restaurant owner, don’t bother brewing at all – or find another $5 million.

(As an alternative, one might serve the basic Belgian beer café menu of spaghetti with meat sauce, meat plate, cheese plate and a grilled ham and cheese sandwich (Croque) capable of being prepared by one employee with a kitchen stove, crockpot and panini press.)

It seems that the four partners in Mile Wide each possess an important primary skill set: Physical plant, front-of-house, brewing and sales. That's a good mix, and it echoes Against the Grain’s four-pronged ownership structure, which has proved viable.

Crowlers and retail swag? By all means. Big cans sealed on site is a novelty, albeit one with genuine utility for the consumer.

As for shirts, caps, jackets, thongs and signature condoms, it remains a matter of much regret to me that NABC wasn’t ever able to maximize sales for items like these, in spite of my wonderment at the well-stocked, high-volume souvenir shops at breweries like North Coast and Schlafly, among other travel destinations visited prior to the advent of BSB.

Those visions again. I kept snapping my fingers, and the damned genie never appeared.

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Obviously, the biggest question of all concerns Mile Wide’s inevitable move into off-premise distribution.

Granted, Kevin's preview doesn’t explicitly mention distribution, apart from a reference to the possibility of canning. However, because of the Schlafly connection – Kyle as trained production brewer and Scott as a brand rep and salesman – it seems likely that Mile Wide will eventually mount its bid to appear wherever finer beers are sold.

You know, right alongside 4,500 other brewing contestants, with new brewery openings coming at an exponential rate, while shelf space and taps remain static.

Hence, the conundrum. New breweries planning to operate as brewpubs, with business plans predicated to maximize on-premise sales, are probably better placed for stability amid the bizarre market madness facing production brewers. However, brewpubs must entice customers to come spend money on-premise, and often this implies food (see "millions" above).

Perhaps Louisvillians finally are coming around to the free-standing taproom with food trucks, delivery and brown-bagging. Apocalypse Brew Works does quite well with this most sustainable of approaches.

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Naturally there are variables too numerous to explore, but what I’m most eager to see unfold at Mile Wide is Scott’s strategy for selling his own company’s local beer in the Louisville market, because when he sets about selling his own company’s local beer, he’ll no longer be the local guy selling some other city's non-local beer – read “Schlafly.”

And, in doing so, he’ll come face to face with the 800-lb “craft” beer gorilla in Louisville, which is the local beer snob’s raging antipathy to localism, which is predicated on the sheer impossibility of local beer bearing quality, apart from Against the Grain whenever Beer Advocate’s arbiters graciously allow it, because just as in the Middle Ages and spice shipments from the exotic east, style and status points absolutely must come from elsewhere, not here.

Except for bourbon, but that's not beer, apart from the rule that all beers, from Hefeweizen through Wee Heavy, must be aged in bourbon barrels.

I’m not saying Scott can’t or won’t do it. He knows his stuff, works hard and is much loved by a segment of the demographic. If anyone can succeed, he can. I respect him and his abilities. I'll be transfixed, having traversed the same learning curve when NABC went from beer bar to brewery.

Now it’s going to be different for Scott – beer sales without a net, minus the institutional support of a regional-sized brewery. Now it’s truly understanding what those principles of economic localization mean, because there’s nothing like becoming the owner of a local business to open one’s eyes to the economic reality of big boxes, chains and multi-nationals (yes, AB-InBev counts), and sadly, to the way that so many beer snobs throw locals under the bus with palpable glee if it means getting their hands on the one special beer that will make those masturbatory selfies sing with narcissistic delight.

A flagship Belgian Wit? Good idea. It worked for Upland. Now all Mile Wide must do is break through the shadiness of Blue Moon and Shock Top placement, find a bar manager in town capable of explaining the algorithm behind his or her constant tap rotation, and get a start-up’s flagship pouring at establishments dedicated to the chaos principle of specialty drafts.

Good luck, Scott. This isn’t at all facetious. I root for local indies, not against them, and I hope Mile Wide rocks it. If you ever need advice on how NOT to do it, I happily consult for beer and pretzels, and the occasional tin of kippers -- crackers, thanks, not bread.

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May 30: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: “The Drinker” (A Book Review).

May 23: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part Two).

May 16: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part One).

May 9: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Hip Hops ... A look at two new New Albany breweries.

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THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: “The Drinker” (A Book Review).

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: “The Drinker” (A Book Review).

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

A respectable 40-year-old businessman returns home from a normal workday to discover that the maid has neglected to replace the floor mat by the front door.

Annoyed at the omission, he tracks mud into the entryway, is mildly chided by his wife and becomes uncharacteristically angered.

A short time later, he suddenly recalls the existence of a long-forgotten, stale and vinegary bottle of red wine stashed in the cellar. Although a virtual teetotaler, a glass of this rancid wine helps to take the edge off his day, and he feels far better. The floor mat spat now forgotten, he gifts his wife with money to buy herself something special, and goes to bed.

Next thing we know, his permanent residence is an insane asylum.

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For Americans of a certain age, reading Hans Fallada’s novel The Drinker brings to mind the Simpsons episode, wherein a flashback depicts Barney’s very first drink of beer, as offered to him by Homer. With one swallow, the well-groomed and sober young dandy morphs immediately into a swollen, drunken slob, forever destined for dissolution, and hilariously so.

A similar downward trajectory awaits Fallada’s main character, Herr Sommer – and there is little humor to be found in this amazingly detailed and poetically rendered description of a descent into lunacy. However, the story of The Drinker doesn’t end with a gripping, frightening novel, because the circumstances surrounding Fallada’s fictional work hardly were imaginary at the time of its writing.

Hans Fallada’s real name was Rudolf Wilhelm Friedrich Ditzen. He was born in Greifswald, Germany in 1893, and died in Berlin in 1947. In 1944, with World War II still raging throughout the continent, Fallada managed to write The Drinker in two weeks flat while incarcerated … in an insane asylum.

It would have been an incredible feat of concentration anytime and anywhere, much less one undertaken secretively in an institution run by the Nazis, who obviously were unbound by considerations of the Hippocratic oath.

In fact, Fallada’s entire life was not easy. A severe injury to his head during adolescence seemed to have changed him, and it may have led directly to lifelong mental health issues, suicide attempts and drug addiction, and yet, in that strange way sometimes characterizing an artist’s process of creation, Fallada became an exceptionally gifted writer prone to frenetic periods of work activity followed by elongated spirals into madness.

During the 1920s, Fallada married and enjoyed an extended period of domestic harmony and commercial success, including a worldwide readership for his novel, Little Man, What Now? But a collision course with Hitler’s totalitarian regime was inevitable owing to its determination to channel all manifestations of art into approved delineations of support for the regime.

Storm clouds gathered, yet Fallada chose to remain in Germany and did not seek exile, spending the war years walking a tightrope -- neither an overt collaborator, nor seeking involvement with the resistance. From our vantage point these many years later, cohabitation with repression does not seem the ideal path for a writer possessing only a fragile grip on sanity, who already was peering into the abyss with clock-like frequency.

Fallada tried his best to wait it out. Perhaps these pressures hastened his demise, but maybe he was doomed, anyway -- just like the rest of us.

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Does Fallada’s wartime work as a writer represent acquiescence with the various Goebbels party lines, or was he endeavoring to write in the sparse available spaces between them? The debate persists to this day. Was The Drinker allegorical, suggesting the common man’s struggle to cope with oppression?

Or, was it an autobiographical work so meticulously researched from personal experience that larger themes aren’t really necessary? Of course, it’s up to the reader to decide.

Getting through The Drinker is like watching a cat torture a mouse before killing it. As the pages turn, Herr Sommer’s layers of dysfunction are unsparingly peeled away by the first-person narrative, and the deep-seated rot is unblinkingly exposed. It becomes clear that none of the character’s many difficulties originate with that first drink of spoiled wine; rather, the alcohol merely emboldens them.

It transpires that Sommer already has started losing grip of his business, and is growing apart from his wife, whom he resents for being efficient when he is anything but. The lies and self-deceptions merely require readily available fuel to explode into self-destructive behavior of epic proportions, and bottles of schnapps and cognac typically consumed with the speed that most of us reserve for ice water during a hot afternoon in the garden are ideal for ignition.

When describing the weeks-long binge embarked upon by Sommer, Fallada’s prose is hazy and replete with confusion, self-loathing and false bravado, but when he lands in jail and begins drying out, matters become quite clinical. Eventually transferred to the asylum to receive the “help” he quite clearly needs, the inmate offers a portrait of daily life therein that is detached, detailed and thoroughly horrendous.

By novel’s end, has anyone been saved?

It’s unlikely. There are no Hollywood-style happy endings to The Drinker, a novel that I recommend unreservedly, although not without certain caveats. If you’ve ever wondered whether your most recent drink was one too many, owing not to ordinary intoxication, but to extraordinary curiosity as to whether there might come a point when the altered state persists even after the alcohol’s gone away … well, Fallada’s tale will not be an easy read.

It wasn’t easy for me.

So, is it Happy Hour yet?

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May 23: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part Two).

May 16: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part One).

May 9: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Hip Hops ... A look at two new New Albany breweries.

May 2: SPRING BREAK

April 26: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part two.

April 25: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part one.

_

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part Two).

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part Two).

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Cancun?

Disney World?

Hawaii?

Always tempting for some, but they makes no sense to me. Our choice for Spring Break 2016 was Tallinn, the capital of Estonia and a historic Baltic port city on the Gulf of Finland.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part One).

The Finnish and Estonian languages are related, and the curious thing about them is that words like Nokia and Saku sound Korean or Japanese to American ears, although these are a Finnish communications company and an Estonian brewer, respectively.

My first cell phone was a Nokia, and I got it in 2002. This was only a few years after Saku Brewing Company’s beers became sporadically available stateside.

It seems that in the beginning of the post-communist era, all sorts of formerly remote beer brands were shipped to places like Chicago, which historically was home to many Eastern European immigrants.

Occasionally these beers would dip into Northern Indiana and trickle south, and this pleased me to no end. Subject to ever-shifting availability, I stocked many of them at the Public House, including 16.9 oz bottles of Saku Porter.

Today Saku Brewing Company is owned by Carlsberg, and is brewed near Tallinn. The brewery traces its lineage to 1820 and a modest baronial estate’s brewhouse.

Saku Originaal, the brewery’s modern flagship golden lager, has been brewed only since 1993, and perhaps this owes to the brewery’s trials and travails during Estonia’s half-century within the Soviet Union, where quality wasn’t always prioritized.

Saku Originaal is perfectly adequate, though I personally prefer the Premium from A. Le Coq, Saku’s domestic competitor. Better still is Saku Tume, a dark lager somewhat in the Dunkel range. It was lip-smacking delicious with an appetizer of herring that was fried, then marinated.

Saku Tume with herring.

Admittedly, I wasn’t looking very hard for Saku Porter, which appears on the beer list at Põrgu Brasserie (below). Saku’s website refers to Porter as a “traditional Christmas beer,” and by doing so, it annoys me with the implication that “heavier” beer is suitable only in the coldest times.

Not necessarily true. On a very brief previous visit to Tallinn in 1999 with my friend Barrie, we easily found Saku Porter on draft at an eatery in the Old Town and drank several pints on the patio – in warm June weather, no less.

Of course, this was 17 years ago, and comparing Estonia then and now probably isn’t a particularly valid exercise.

Baltic Porter is a nebulous style that touches on several brewing traditions. It sometimes can be considered as an appellation of origin, but not always. In Michael “Beer Hunter” Jackson’s World Guide to Beer, he mentions a “Porter” still being brewed in the 1970s in what is now Slovakia, quite far away from the Baltic Sea.

And, the New Albanian Brewing Company’s first batch of Solidarity was brewed in 2005 within walking distance of water, albeit the Ohio River.

The Beer Judge Certification Program description for Baltic Porter indicates that top-fermented English-style Porters and strong Stouts may well have been the original impetus for dark beers brewed in places like Estonia, but German lager brewing techniques supplanted ale-making long ago, with results that eventually came to vary from place to place.

In my world, a style that is Foreign Extra Stout one time and Doppelbock the next suggests considerable tasting adventure. Accordingly, for a brief time in 2006 the Public House’s Baltic Porter list was nonpareil.

• Alderis Porteris (Latvia)
• Baltika 6 (Russia)
• Utenos Porter (Lithuania)
• Obolon Porter (Ukraine)
• Okocim Porter (Poland)
• Sinebrychoff Porter (Finland – an ale)

At the time, three beers we’d carried previously were unavailable.

• Saku Porter (Estonia)
• Dojlidy Porter (Poland)
• Zwiec Porter (Poland)

Since I drank most of these Baltic Porters myself, they were early examples of what came to be known as “pay packets,” as were the pizzas consumed alongside them. Small wonder the scales tipped at 275 lbs. back then.

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Prior to our stay in Estonia, sparse Internet research revealed that the country is in the midst of a craft beer revolution.

Ten years ago, this knowledge would have compelled me to construct byzantine plots -- trips to other locales, special tastings, or one of those “all 10 must-visit Tallinn breweries and beer bars in one day, on foot” bacchanals that have combined over the years to erode my short term memory.

Now, my attitude has changed, and consequently, the beer hunting strategy for Tallinn was no strategy at all. There’d be enough good beers in the city to fill portions of six days, as well as a few nice places to drink them without relying on a crowd-sourced ratings aggregator to shape the itinerary.

And so it was, although in one glaring instance, it might have helped to check the crowd-sourced ratings aggregator first.

During our second night at Põrgu Brasserie, I spotted these hybrid words on the beer list and decided to try one: Saaremäe Pihtla Ölu (Koduõlu Farm Ale).

Out came a Belgian-style glass filled with under-carbonated, golden-orange liquid, circa 7.6% abv, with an rustic, earthy flavor and slightly phenolic overtones. Juniper? It was decidedly different, and as my mouth kept telling me it bore a resemblance to the Sahti we once enjoyed in Finland, my brain said no, “farm” always means Belgian Farmhouse Saison.

Not in this instance, it doesn’t. Had I known what Koduõlu means, all of this would have made more sense, so take it away, crowd-sourced ratings aggregator (specifically, Rate Beer).

Sahti/Gotlandsdricke/Koduõlu

A traditional ale style unique to three areas: Finland, the Swedish island of Gotland and the Estonian island of Saaremäe. There are subtle differences between them and also between sahti from different regions in Finland. In general however these are strong ales made with a combination of rye and barley malt. They have minimal hop character and instead receive most of their flavor by virtue of being filtered through juniper twigs. Most examples will exhibit a strong yeast character and many homebrewed traditional examples are made with baking yeast. Such yeast often generates a highly phenolic character as well. Some examples will also have a smoky character and this is particularly evident in gotlandsdricke.

Imagine that; not only farms, but farms on a single island. Estonia’s larger breweries already imitate Koduõlu, so there it is.

At 1,000 square miles, Saaremäe Island is the largest in what is called the West Estonian Archipelago, which is comprised of 500 islands located to the southwest of Tallinn, north of the city of Riga in neighboring Latvia.

During much of the Soviet period, access to Saaremäe was restricted for military reasons, and in terms of traditional brewing, isolation can be the perfect condition for retaining artisanal attitudes.

Sadly, in 2016 it would not have helped to know that a farm brewing culture exists on the island of Saaremäe, as we had no plans to leave Tallinn apart from a day trip via ferry to Helsinki. It will be a much different story next time, assuming there is a next time.

---

My prized, obscure white whale of a Koduõlu was consumed at Põrgu Brasserie, a first-rate cellar beer bar with a name (“hell” or “hades”) that lends itself to wicked analogies. There’s an outstanding beer list (15 taps and 100+ bottles) heavy on Estonian craft, but with international selections, too.

Perusing the bottle list, with Koduõlu.

A la carte snacks and entrees are reasonably priced, making Põrgu an excellent choice for a beer lover’s dinner. Menu items range from anchovy sandwiches, steak tartare and herring salad to filet mignon, duck and pork chops. Diana especially enjoyed the appetizer-sized portions of pork ribs.

Põrgu is conveniently located in the Old Town at the foot of Toompea hill, and for me it was love at first sight, reminiscent of other classic beer bars I’ve visited, such as ‘t Brugs Beertje, Estaminet Het Kasteelhof and ‘t Arendsnest.

For the record, my beers at Põrgu were Öllenaut Suitsu (Smoked) Porter, Põhjala Pime Öӧ (Barrel Aged Imperial Stout), Saaremäe Pihtla Ölu (Koduõlu Farm Ale),and Sori Winter Gorilla Baltic Porter.

It adds up to four different styles, four breweries, four excellent choices, a compact introduction to Estonian craft brewing, and the finest barrel-aged Imperial Stout I’ve had in a while.

Kudos to the emerging Estonian movement. May your revolution remain in your own hands.

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Another establishment we richly enjoyed was Hell Hunt, meaning “gentle wolf.” At 23 years of age, this pub is a veritable old-timer in Estonian terms; recall that at its inception, while Estonia had successfully regained its independence, not all the Soviet troops stationed there had yet to depart.

Hell Hunt is situated in the Old Town, just a few blocks north of the tourist epicenter. We entered on Saturday afternoon and found a festive atmosphere, with the NBA playoffs (and soccer) on the big screen, and friendly service.

House beers at Hell Hunt are brewed (or relabeled) by Viru Brewing Company, Estonia’s third “big” brewery. Viru was founded in 1975 in Haljala, to the east of Tallinn, and since 1992 has been owned by Harboe of Denmark. The brewery’s standard golden lager flagship is called Puls, while the beer called Viru is brewed by A. Le Coq.

Why ask why? I drank neither of them. My draft choices were Hell Hunt’s house Ale and Tume (Dunkel), with fried Russian dumplings for munching. Diana had a Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen. The Miami Heat won the game.

We missed some of the other recommended beer bars around Tallinn, and it’s all right. What we had was enough. Estonia was a revelation, and I hope we return.

Back home, I find myself ruminating about past experiences in the former USSR and East Bloc. It leads me to wonder: Where were Tallinn’s “local” pubs in the 1980s? There’d have been the usual cafeterias and hotel bars, but what were the equivalents of the Czech pivnice or piwiarni in Poland? Do any remain?

It no longer matters, and yet I’m curious.

More Estonian time may be required to come to an answer.

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May 16: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part One).

May 9: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Hip Hops ... A look at two new New Albany breweries.

May 2: SPRING BREAK

April 26: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part two.

April 25: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part one.

April 18: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 33 … All good things must come to a beginning.

_

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part One).

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: A few beers on Estonian time (Part One).

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.


I hope one day when I say I'm from Estonia, people don't say: 'What? Where's that?'
-- Carmen Kass, model and famous Estonian

For spring break, we decided to spend a week in Tallinn, Estonia. The Lonely Planet travel guide provides an introduction.

Estonia doesn’t have to struggle to find a point of difference: it’s completely unique. It shares a similar geography and history with Latvia and Lithuania, but culturally it’s distinct. Its closest ethnic and linguistic buddy is Finland, and although they may love to get naked together in the sauna, 50 years of Soviet rule in Estonia have separated the two. For the last 300 years Estonia’s been linked to Russia, but the two states have as much in common as a barn swallow and a bear (their respective national symbols).

With a newfound confidence, singular Estonia has crept from under the Soviet blanket and leapt into the arms of Europe. The love affair is mutual. Europe has fallen head-over-heels for the charms of Tallinn and its Unesco-protected Old Town. Put simply, Tallinn is now one of the continent’s most captivating cities. And in overcrowded Europe, Estonia’s sparsely populated countryside and extensive swathes of forest provide spiritual sustenance for nature-lovers.

Much to Carmen Kass’s disappointment, the Louisville metro area is not a bastion of Estonian name recognition, and while I’ve long since become accustomed to puzzled looks when announcing holiday destinations, mentions of Estonia have furrowed more than the usual brows.

Yet Estonia is everything I crave in a European nation. It is obscure and mysterious, with an impenetrable language and an inspiring back story. It’s wonderfully Baltic, with an adjacent ocean and plenty of delectable herrings. There is blood sausage, bear meat dumplings, head cheese and dense, nutty pumpernickel bread.

Granted, we didn’t venture past Tallinn, a former Hanseatic League port known for centuries as Reval, but there is plenty of interest there to occupy six days of wandering between drinks and snacks.

(Elsewhere, I’ve recorded the travelogue)

For 5,000 years, Estonians have lived in these lands by the sea, although as a nation, Estonia has been independent only a scant 45 of them (1920-1940, then 1991 to the present).

Regional overlords have included Swedes, Danes, Teutonic Knights, Germans and Russians. The Alexander Nevsky cathedral's prominent position on the Toompea ridge in Tallinn’s Old Town is a constant reminder that Russians were a part of Estonia's history even before Communism. In the present time, almost 40% of Tallinn's population is Russian, many of them relocated during the postwar Soviet era.

Interestingly, Reval historically was regarded as a German city owing to the mercantile and commercial dominance of ethnic Germans, even when the Russian Tsar ruled the realm and native Estonians were little better than downtrodden laborers in their own country.

Truly, Tallinn’s golden era is right now, and that’s why I’m happy we went. There is beer in Estonia from both old and new schools, and I tried dipping my beak into several.

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The server at Kuldse Notsu Kõrts (The Golden Piglet Inn) cautioned me about the Saku Mõdu I’d just ordered.

“It is very sweet,” she said in perfect English.

I reassured her: I’m a trained professional who knows what mõdu (mead) is.

In this case, it was a tasty honey-flavored malt beverage of moderate carbonation and alcoholic strength, similar to what I’ve had before in Scandinavia. Braggot, perhaps? While mead may have originated in China, India and/or the Middle East, it will remain a beverage that sounds Nordic to me, and drinks better the closer you are to salt water.

We dined at The Golden Piglet Inn on our last night in Tallinn. It isn’t the type of restaurant most amenable to those in the habit of counting calories.

Using recipes that have been passed down from our grandmothers and our grandmothers’ grandmothers, this authentic restaurant is popular with locals as well as tourists. All meals are prepared with fresh products from local farms, accompanied by a variety of Estonian drinks.

Consequently, I was delighted to see both mead and kvass on the drinks menu, even if they’re commercially produced and not rigorously farmhouse-sourced. They paired nicely with my meal of sauerkraut soup and salted herring.

Kvass is a lightly fermented, traditionally homebrewed “soft” drink made from dark bread and yeast, with a myriad of other additional ingredients varying from kitchen to kitchen. We tend to think of kvass as Russian, though many Baltic and Eastern European countries have their own versions. In the Estonian language, it's called kali.

To create that tangy fermented flavor, kvas makers start with Russian brown bread. You soak it in water, and then add some yeast (other additions — raisins, honey, mint — vary from recipe to recipe). The whole mixture ferments for a few days, a process that creates a natural carbonation, as well as a distinctive sour flavor.

According to Russian writer Alexander Genis, that sourness is beloved in the region. "The sour is the taste of Russia — everything is supposed to be sour for Russian taste. Like sour cream, for example, or pickled cucumber. Cabbage, mushroom."

Given that one of the glories of Estonian cuisine is its dense, moist black bread, kvass/kali is a natural product line extension. It tastes like its principle ingredients, bread and water.

The commercial version of kvass available at the Golden Piglet Inn actually lacked the tang of what I remembered at a street stand in Moscow, circa 1999. It was sweeter but no less delicious, and would be an apt thirst quencher in summertime, so keep the lemonade and iced tea. Let’s cook some kvass instead.

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For beer hunters of my generation, Estonia is primarily associated with two larger commercial breweries and two relatively familiar beers: A. Le Coq Imperial Extra Double Stout, and Saku (Baltic) Porter.

The writer Michael “Beer Hunter” Jackson told the story of A. Le Coq in his classic introductory text from the 1970s, World Guide to Beer. In the early 19th-century, the brewery’s founder and namesake Albert Le Coq began brewing Imperial Stout in England to Tsarist expectations, shipping it to Russia via the Baltic.

St. Petersburg, then the Russian capital, lies at the Gulf of Finland’s furthest reach, 230 miles to the east of Tallinn. In the early 1900s, the A. Le Coq finally elected to establish production nearer its market, and the company purchased a brewery in Tartu – now Estonia, then Russia. Accordingly, there was a side benefit of avoiding increasingly onerous import duties.

Sadly, World War I and the Russian Revolution quickly ensued, combining to put A. Le Coq out of business, though the brewery eventually was resuscitated under new management during the first period of Estonian independence before (again) being nationalized during the Soviet occupation, ending in 1991.

Today, A. Le Coq remains in Tartu and is a subsidiary of the Finnish company Olvi. While in Tallinn, I drank several pints of A. Le Coq Premium, the flagship golden lager. It’s smooth and balanced; heftier than mass market American brands but falling shy of what I’d expect in Germany.

Baieri Kelder, the Bavarian-style restaurant in the basement of the Hotell St. Barbara (both recommended, by the way) stocked bottles of A. Le Coq’s Porter (6.5% abv) and Imperial Marzen (since when does 5% abv justify the “imperial” modifier?), and both were solid, if unspectacular. Unfortunately, when the draft lineup includes fresh Paulaner Hefeweizen, Märzen and Salvator, there isn’t very much incentive to improvise.

Once in the Old Town, I spotted bottles of A. Le Coq IPA, made with Chinook, Amarillo, Cascade and Citra hops. There was a time when I’d have jumped. This time, I merely shrugged, because drinking American-style IPAs simply isn’t why I came to Estonia.

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It’s been at least 15 years, and probably more, since the B. United beer importing company commissioned the revival of A. Le Coq Imperial Extra Double Stout.

The internet informs me that these days, Imperial Extra Double Stout is being brewed in the United Kingdom by Harvey & Son. Back in the day, this ale was a staple of the Public House’s bottle list, very expensive and entirely worth it. A reviewer at Beer Advocate captures it perfectly.

Dark fruits, licorice, saddle soap, leathery funk, figs, and cherries. A whole lot going on. Raspberries, and maybe a bit of barnyard. Burnt fruitcake and some bubblegum. Some industrial asphalt kind of aroma as well. This is crazy complex.

Had there been the opportunity to drink an A. Le Coq Imperial Extra Double Stout while in Tallinn, I’d have liked to pair it with the herrings, blood sausage, bear meat dumplings, head cheese and dense, nutty pumpernickel bread.

In Part Two, I’ll have a few words about Saku, a newer generation of Estonian “craft” beers, and places I enjoyed them.

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May 9: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Hip Hops ... A look at two new New Albany breweries.

April 26: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part two.

April 25: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part one.

April 18: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 33 … All good things must come to a beginning.

April 11: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

_

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Hip Hops ... A look at two new New Albany breweries.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Hip Hops ... A look at two new New Albany breweries.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

I'm always an issue behind when it comes to reprinting my columns from Food & Dining Magazine. This one is from Spring 2016; Vol. 51 (February/March/April). 

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HIP HOPS: A LOOK AT TWO NEW NEW ALBANY BREWERIES

In 1906, thirsty residents of New Albany had the choice of three local breweries to visit when it came time to refill pails gone dry.

Paul Reising’s plant was the granddaddy of them all, taking up a whole West End city block, where Bavarian-style beers had been brewed on-site since just after the Civil War.

A half-mile away, Virt Nirmaier crafted a well-regarded “common” beer at his brewery on State Street, the western route out of New Albany, up Buffalo Trace and through the Knobs. Nirmaier’s Common sold to taverns for $1.25 a keg or $5.00 a barrel. His charge for smaller quantities is unknown.

Near the present-day high school on Vincennes Street, the Nadorffs brewed beer and cut ice in winter from a pond on their property. In 1907, the family stopped brewing and opened a wholesale beer distributorship, which survives to the present day.

Soon the scourge of Prohibition descended, ending the first great era of American brewing, but in truth, our failed national temperance experiment merely hastened the passage from independent local brewing to larger economies of scale regionally and nationally.

Pendulums have a fortunate way of swinging back, and brewing returned to New Albany in 2002, when the New Albanian Brewing Company first mashed in.

Then, in 2015, there was an abrupt tripling of numbers: Donum Dei Brewery and Floyd County Brewing Company (FCBC) both opened, and while it may seem novel for such a small city to have so many breweries, this pattern is being repeated all across the country.

Late last year, the Brewers Association reported the existence of 4,000 breweries in America — more than in 1906, and in fact, the most ever at any point in the nation’s history.

New Albany’s two newest breweries typify this upward arc. They’re independent, small and family owned. You can have a pint, grab a bite and take beer to go. Donum Dei is on the north side, down the road from Indiana University Southeast, and FCBC lies a short caber toss from the downtown YMCA.

Let’s take a look at these two local brewing start-ups.

A “Gift of God”

Rick Otey is a 50-something electronics engineer who didn’t like the taste of beer until work took him to Seattle during the 1990s. There Otey enjoyed a transformative encounter with Red Hook Extra Special Bitter (ESB), inspiring him to brew at home and seek craft beers on his own turf.

Facing a career juncture in 2014, Otey and wife Kimberly decided to redirect a portion of their retirement portfolio toward greater liquidity, and Donum Dei Brewery is the fruit of their investment.

By personal disposition and designer, the brewpub’s ethos is thoughtful and unhurried. “It’s not so much what we do, as what we don’t do,” Otey explains. “There’s no rush. Beer is a living thing, and we wait until it’s ready.”

This mantra extends to the compact, café-style food menu, with appetizers, soup and paninis: “It’s as simple and local as possible, at a decent price,” Otey says.

The décor and lighting are almost Scandinavian, with clean and modern wooden accents. There is neither television nor Wi-Fi. Otey would prefer your phone remain sheathed, because he seeks to encourage conversation and reflection.

Donum Dei is Latin for “gift of God,” and although Otey offers it in a broader metaphysical context, the history of beer and brewing is intertwined with the pursuit of higher truth, as with Trappist brewers fashioning their ales for sale, barter and communal consumption.

Otey’s delicious Enkel (single) Belgian Gold is the ideal example. As brewed at 4.4% abv in a classic Abbey mold, it is gently fruity, as befits a monastic table beer intended to accompany meals.

Donum Dei’s beer range reflects Otey’s principled eclecticism. There has been a Saison, Brown Porter, India Pale Ale and Red Ale. During the first quarter of 2016, expect to see a big, malty Wee Heavy in the Scottish stylistic vernacular.

He’ll serve it when it’s ready.

Quest for the Ale

Floyd County Brewing Company (FCBC) anchors a corner of Main and W. First St. in rapidly changing downtown New Albany. In addition to the bustling YMCA, neighbors include The Exchange Pub + Kitchen, Feast BBQ, and Seeds & Greens Natural Market and Deli.

The new brewpub bears owner Brian Hampton’s strategic imprint. “The beer names, graphics and décor all come from me,” he says. “I did most of the woodwork, too. Right now the kitchen learning curve is taking up most of my time.”

Like his counterpart Otey, Hampton is a home brewer and beer-seeking engineer, and he views the ideal pub as a place of refuge and escape, outfitted to provide a comfortable setting to get away from it all.

Hampton sought to refit an older building, creating modern comfort with Old World ambiance. The result looks something like a medieval banquet hall, but scaled down to a Yorkshire public house, then filtered through Monty Python outtakes from “The Holy Grail.” A hundred-year-old house was connected to a new annex built to house brewery and bar areas, and it feels far more venerable than it is.

All that’s missing is the mead bench, but give Hampton time. He’ll build one.

Brewer Jeff Coe is charged with alchem-izing Hampton’s ideas into fermented form. He is concentrating on a bedrock repertoire, including Braun Jovi (Brown Ale), Hefe’ns Gate Hefeweizen and Vlad’s India Pale Ale.

FCBC’s best-selling menu item is fish and chips, but oversized turkey legs often are spotted being gnawed. Both pair wonderfully with Arrow Smith Amber, marrying a malty ale of medium strength to orange peel and coriander flavorings otherwise expected in a Belgian-style Wit. It’s reminiscent of Blue Moon with caramel malt, only better, and it serves to remind us of the medieval tradition of “gruit,” an ale flavored and balanced with spices rather than hops.

For my best advice to Donum Dei and FCBC as they move forward, I propose these highly appropriate words from Richard Atkinson to Leonard, titular sixth Lord Dacre, in 1570, as quoted by Martyn Cornell:

“See that ye keep a noble house for beef and beer, that thereof may be praise given to God and to your honour.” 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Donum Dei Brewery

3211 Grant Line Road,

New Albany, IN 47150

(502) 541-2950

www.donumdeibrewery.com

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Floyd County Brewing Company

129 West Main Street,

New Albany, IN 47150

(470) 588-2337

www.floydcountybrewing.com

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April 26: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part two.

April 25: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part one.

April 18: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 33 … All good things must come to a beginning.

April 11: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

April 4: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Birracibo’s local/regional “craft” beer percentage rides the bench.

_

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 33 … All good things must come to a beginning.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 33 … All good things must come to a beginning.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Thirty-third in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

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The Travela agency’s chartered motor coach departed Leningrad just after breakfast on Sunday, August 4. By mid-afternoon, I was situated in Turku along with the antebellum Mississippians, their fingernails on my metaphorical blackboard, Northerner and Southerners waiting together to catch the ferry boat from Finland to Sweden.

The island-strewn Baltic was crossed during the night, and Stockholm’s efficient subway connected the city’s docklands to its central train station for the next leg to Copenhagen, Denmark.

It seemed that nothing could stop this relentless momentum, and as the rails steadily clicked past, I made leisurely work of the previous evening’s Silja Lines buffet doggie-bag, all the while plotting a final “Sleep-In” hostel evening in the Danish capital, followed by an early morning train in the direction of the Duchy of Luxembourg.

Way back in May, I’d taken the precaution of reserving a dorm bed at the Luxembourg City Hostel for my last two European nights, but first, there’d be time in Copenhagen for another heaping platter of fried potatoes and eggs at the Vista Self Service Restaurant, a couple bottles of Tuborg, and a decent night’s sleep in something roughly approximating a bed.

Alas, it was not to be.

Somewhere between Stockholm and Copenhagen, surrounded by leafy rural copses, amber waves of grain and cloudless blue skies, the train shuddered to a halt. It remained motionless for a full three and a half hours.

The stoppage had something to do with engine failure, and better a train than a plane in such cases, but the delay necessitated an itinerary rethink. By the time we made Copenhagen, there was little sense paying for a bunk when another train soon would be queueing for the overnight run to Germany. I might as well keep moving.

Scraping together the haggard remnants of my Danish kroner stash, I found fruitful foraging near the station: Three bottles of Carlsberg from a shop across the street, a handful of rødpølser (hot dogs) from the pølsevogn out front, and an International Herald-Tribune. It was enough.

Providentially, there was ample room in the trains’ 1st class car to stretch out across the seats. It wasn’t a bed, though it was an improvement on the ferry’s unyielding floor the long night before.

Morning found me in Kӧln, Koblenz, or maybe Aachen? I can’t tell you exactly where I debarked on Tuesday morning. The most likely explanation is Kӧln, with a change to Koblenz for the final approach to Luxembourg City, via Trier. Wherever it was, two memories have survived reasonably intact.

Most importantly, the train station in question was “old school” and still had a for-pay locker room with hot showers, where filth-encrusted budget travelers could pay a few Deutschmarks to be clean and fresh again. These facilities seemed entirely obsolete even then, and I sensed they were doomed, but it was blissful to have a scrub.

Then, feeling human again, I visited the train station bistro and pointed at a dish that appeared to be chopped steak on a roll, ready to be cooked to order -- and it was, in a manner of speaking, except that the beef was supposed to be served raw, with the added bonus of an uncooked egg on top.

Such was my introduction to Steak Tartare. Had I not already paid for it, rejection likely would have ensued, but funds were running low. Silly American squeamishness had no choice except to be surmounted, and so I ate it. It wasn’t bad, and I did not die.

So it goes.

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This is truly a remarkable story for such a small country (Luxembourg) that originated from an old Roman fort sold to a Prince by some monks.
-- Andre Sanchez

In early afternoon on Tuesday, August 6, my three-month European adventure finally came full circle. Once again, I stood on the plaza in front of the Luxembourg City train station, and this time it was without the incapacitated drunkard.

Roughly 54 hours and 1,750 miles had passed since the bus left Leningrad. My emotions were jumbled and conflicting. Exhaustion vied with exhilaration, and a reluctance to return to America was balanced by the inevitability of the air ticket.

In May, it had taken me almost two hours to find the hostel on Rue du Fort Olisy. In August, a quick stop at the handy tourism kiosk in the station produced a free city map and concise directions in English. I found the hostel after a pleasant 20-minute walk.

In May, confused and probably delirious, I’d noticed very little about my surroundings. Now, in August, Luxembourg City was revealed as a place worthy of exploration in its own right.

The hostel itself reposed in the shadow of a huge stone bridge spanning a quiet valley, north of the promontory where the centerpiece of the city’s fortifications formerly straddled. Two rivers snaked through the historic downtown area, a place seemingly devoid of flat ground.

Luxembourg’s blend of German and French cultural influences was newly evident, especially as reflected by the local language, Luxembourgish. It seemed a hybridized and impenetrable German dialect with French loan words.

Billeted and unburdened of baggage, there remained ample time late on Tuesday afternoon for a visit to the Bock casemates, accessible by climbing the hill behind the hostel.

The Bock casemates are underground passages remaining from Luxembourg City’s castle, formerly placed astride a rocky ridgeline surrounded on three sides by the looping River Alzette. Famed for its impregnability, the castle’s construction began in the year 963, and for 900 years, it was augmented with formidable walls and ramparts.

The Treaty of London in 1867 established a neutral Luxembourg and called for the demolition of the castle and adjacent defenses. The casemates remained. Originally, these radiated from the castle’s cellar. A long, central passageway leads to what were storage areas, workrooms and kitchen capable of being used when the castle was attacked or under siege.

Smaller tunnels radiate from this passageway, leading to artillery emplacements in the walls of the cliffs. After demilitarization, with most exterior structures removed, the casemates still had their uses, most memorably as bomb shelters during WWII.

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Wednesday was my final opportunity to wander European byways with dreamy, aimless intent. It dawned a flawless summer’s day in the Duchy, warm and sunny, but without the oppressive and muggy humidity of the Ohio Valley.

I walked to the train station and exercised the magical powers of the Eurailpass for the very last time. The idea was to ride the slow locals northward to Clervaux and back, perhaps stopping to examine other small towns along the way, and getting a feel for the Ardennes.

As I was to learn the hard way from the saddle of a bicycle 19 years later, the Ardennes may not be lofty mountains by world standards, but they’re far more mountains than hills. They’re also beautiful and filled with history.

Clervaux was the scene of fierce fighting during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. In one of the war’s great military feats, George S. Patton’s 3rd Army broke off combat in Germany, reversed course in impossibly rapid fashion, and relieved American forces trapped 20 miles to the west of Clervaux in Bastogne, Belgium.

In the Great War, nearby Troisverges marks the spot in 1914 where Imperial Germany violated Luxembourg’s neutrality in route to their eventual standoff with the French. Everywhere I looked in Clervaux, there was history on a signpost.

Better yet, Clervaux proved just the place to indulge in a valedictory reverie. I went into a small grocery store, bought a crusty loaf, ham, cheese and two local Diekirch lager beers, and walked up to the castle. It houses a museum devoted to the Battle of the Bulge, and outside, a Sherman tank and artillery piece are on display.

I found a bench near these relics of violence and peacefully ate and drank my lunch. Dessert was in my shirt pocket, because I’d bought five small Cuban cigars at the Beriozka back in Leningrad. In terms of quality, they were purely average, but it’s the thought of three transformative months that really counts.

The hostel served supper. I showered, packed and slept. At last, it was time.

On Thursday morning, there was a bus to the airport. We passed a sign pointing the way to the American Cemetery and Memorial. General Patton, who died of injuries suffered in an automobile accident after war’s end, is buried there.

Back amid the jets, it was Icelandair again, to Chicago by way of Reykjavik. I retained my neophyte’s inchoate fear of flying, but oddly, there was a certain tranquility to the boarding process. As the plane began rolling toward liftoff and ascent, something absolutely strange happened.

I barely noticed it.

That’s because I was deep in thought. Not once in three months had I allowed myself the luxury of considering possible sequels. Now, with the wheels folding up into the plane’s belly, I knew for sure.

There was going to be a next time.

Next time: What did it all mean?

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Previously:

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 31 … Leningrad in three vignettes.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 30 … Or, as it was called at the time, Leningrad.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 29 … Helsinki beneath my feet, but Leningrad on my mind.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 28 … A Finnish detour to Tampere for beer and sausages.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 27 … Stockholm's blonde ambition, with or without mead-balls.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 26 … The Hansa brewery tour, and a farewell to Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 25 … Frantic pickled Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 24 … An aspiring “beer hunter” amid Carlsberg’s considerable charms.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 23 … A fleeting first glimpse of Copenhagen.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 22 … It's how the tulips were relegated.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not "The Longest Day."

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

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

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.

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