PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: It's my State of the Beer address for 2019.

Pints&union has passed the six-months-in-business hurdle, so here's a brief State of the Beer report.

Overview: the state of our beer is fairly excellent, and we're in range of sustainability over a long haul. As with sporting endeavors, it's about building a roster according to a system of thought (beer's greatest hits, and some that will be), putting a competitive product out on the field, then making adjustments. 

In terms of draft beer, what I'm hoping will be the final piece in the puzzle currently rests in the walk-in: the first keg of Fuller's London Porter, which will be tapped when the Edmund Fitzgerald depletes. The starting lineup will then be complete.

Bell’s Two Hearted Ale
Falls City Classic Pilsner
(Fuller's London Porter)
Fuller’s London Pride
Guinness Stout
Pilsner Urquell (new tapping system coming very soon)

+ seasonal rotating beer (lengthier engagements)
+ heritage rotating beer (often St. Bernardus or another Belgian ale)
+ serendipity rotating beer (usually high gravity)
+ cider (currently scrumpy from Thomas Family Winery)

We've added a number of bottles and cans to the list during the past few weeks, and there now are 50 daily selections embracing a broad range of styles. There'll be a couple of additions next week, then the tweaking begins. The following have been added since November:

Anchor Porter
Arrogant Bastard
Celebrator Doppelbock
Daredevil Lift Off IPA
Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron
Duchesse de Bourgogne
Firestone Walker Union Jack
Founders Breakfast Stout
Gulden Draak
Old Engine Oil
Paulaner Salvator
Rodenbach Alexander
Rogue Dead Guy

Also, there's a permanent space in the cooler to house rotating bottles and cans. There's an old favorite coming today, Carlsberg Elephant Beer, as well as the first in a series of Mile Wide cans on shuffle (Idlewild), to be followed by two of the brewery's seasonal can releases when they arrive.

Finally, if it ever gets cold, the 2017 and 2018 vintages of Thomas Hardy's Ale are available for sipping at room temperature. A few bottles of each will be cellared until next year, and so we'll roll.

Note that my job-related resolution for the coming year is to work harder toward enabling the beer information capability at Pints&union, which is to say that there is much information to disseminate about the beer program at the pub, and this information should originate with the pub itself, and not on this blog platform.

In short and for the most part, if it has to do with Pints&union, it needs to be coming from Pints&union. In my previous life at NABC, I seldom differentiated between the company's outreach and my own soap box. All my public and private roles were mixed up amid an ongoing determination that "you're entitled to my opinion."

This wasn't necessarily a mistake. I've always held that political and big business cults of personality are almost uniformly bad, not ones associated with small-time indie business figureheads like me. Still, this time around the effort needs to be delineated, because I'm no longer an owner. In the coming weeks this will be my aim.

Your patronage is appreciated in ways I can only vaguely reference with the written word.