THE BEER BEAT: One excellent afternoon spent pub crawling with beer on the periphery of the wine walk.

Not a single photo
was taken yesterday.

Like I was saying just the other day ...

It's entirely possible to begin a Saturday afternoon at Floyd County Brewing Company with a couple of locally brewed beers and a burger, then stroll over to Big Four Burgers + Beer for another local beer, before walking eastbound to Hull & High Water and having ... one more "craft" beer, prior to an end-of-pub-crawl night(afternoon)cap -- well, two -- at Gospel Bird, with the added bonus of a restorative dose of Fernet Angelico.

On the market for the last two years, Fernet Angelico is based on an old Italian recipe (purchased in 1930 from a defunct Italian distillery) that involves aloe, saffron, quinquina, gentian, anise, angelica, mint, and myrrh. This spicy, smokey, woodsy Fernet smells of citrus on the nose, and channels a unique savory flavor reminiscent of burning incense and wood. It's naturally-hued (some Fernets have added artificial color) and well-balanced between bitter and sweet.

Fernet is my new favorite beverage, at least until tomorrow. The uniformly excellent beers were Amber; Wit; Gose; Coffee Stout; Saison; and Lager. The participants were me, the missus, Scott and Joe.

What was my point?

It is this.

Nowadays there are so many options for dissipation in downtown New Albany that one can spend six hours roaming and visiting pubs, and still remain only barely cognizant of jingling walks, plasticized Christmas tree lightings and jolly elfesque visitations occurring a short distance away.

And, proceeding from this tableau of a glass half-full, such a state of affairs is a good thing indeed, leaving us with a dissonance-free path toward draining the receptacle's remaining drams. I was so enriched that heckling DNA's cadres didn't occur to me even once.

Big thanks to my co-drinkers, the hard-working folks who served us, and a suitable topography allowing differing points of view to co-exist without the necessity of building some sort of wall.

It will be even better in two years, when my city will revert from New Gahania to New Albania, but this is a story for another day -- right, Mr. Mugabe?