THE BEER BEAT: Saying goodbye to 2017 with an assortment of links.

In the leadoff slot today, December 30, is this reminder to Hoosiers from Amy Haneline of the Indy Star:

Liquor stores will be closed on New Year's Eve, because Indiana.

You know what to do, and when to do it.

Looking ahead, the fifth anniversary presentation of Tailspin Ale Fest 2018 on February 17 draws ever nearer. We'll be in Portugal, crawling from one port lodge to the next in Vila Nova de Gaia (be still, my throbbing heart), but if you'll be around for Tailspin and want to attend, it's time to start planning.

I'm guessing that NABC's Gravity Head will follow on Friday, February 23, but as Liam Gallagher once sang, it's nothing to do with me.

It may surprise you to learn that as 2018 dawns, I remain a one-third shareholder in the NABC businesses, albeit excluded from participation them since 2015 (welcome to my daily existence of "all risk, no reward") -- none of this being my exact idea when I decided to divorce -- although recently my lawyer has been informed by their lawyer that the long-awaited financial settlement might be concluded by February.

If so, I might even drop by for Gravity Head this year and bask in the warmth of an institution I created.

Life goes on, and businesses come and go; goodbye, BBC St. Matthews. With the death of Steinert's a few years back, my guess is that Vic's Cafe is the oldest licensee in New Albany, even if the tavern isn't located in its original building.

Am I right?

Paul Revere drank here: A quest to find Boston’s oldest tavern, by Brian MacQuarrie (Boston Globe)

Boston has been a drinking town through nearly 400 years of Puritan brewers, ale-quaffing patriots, drunken sailors, and picky millennials in search of the latest craft beer infused with grapefruit.

But in a city meticulous about its past, finding the oldest tavern can be a Byzantine quest. Prepare to burrow past dubious marketing pitches bolstered by obligatory knockoffs of Paul Revere portraits hung under rough-hewn beams and low, dark ceilings.

It’s enough to make the curious reach for a pint, and then another, to bring order — or not — to the competing claims and counterclaims of three popular finalists for the bragging rights ...

Assuming Pints&Union opens this year (cross your fingers), the establishment will for a time be the newest pub in New Albany. Because each swing of the pendulum leaves a segment of the market undervalued, our plan is to turn back the clock to the notion of daily excellence, and maintain a small, largely fixed selection of very good draft beers.

There will be very good bottles and cans, as well; my original thought was to have a few of the quality imports in bottles, the American craft selection in cans, and for these to be from breweries I'd personally visited, whether here or abroad.

However, this article is so thought provoking that the plan might be modified.

NEW-LOOK IMPORTS: FROM GREEN BOTTLES TO PREMIUM CANS, by Daniel Hartis (All About Beer Magazine)

... Consumer perception aside, another reason cans have yet to catch on throughout Europe is that most countries there have strong returnable bottle markets, wherein consumers can return glass bottles for a deposit.

While slow to move in their native countries, breweries have begun exporting canned offerings to the States, where there’s no such stigma against putting a premium product in cans. And though cans are en vogue across America, breweries across Europe are not always going lightly into the package.

It's been so long since this article was written (in March) that a whole new trend probably has supplanted NEIPA -- perhaps sour IPA, which I was reading about recently.

However, for the record ...

The beer world's next big trend? Look out for NEIPAs, also known as hazy IPAs, by John Verive (LA Times)

IPA is the undisputed king of the craft beer world. The aromatic, often intensely bitter style stands in sharp relief to the bland brews that defined American beer for decades. And the ever-increasing demand for IPA drives the growing craft brewing industry. It’s a style that’s evolved along with beer drinkers’ tastes, and the latest evolution shows off the softer, less bitter side of IPA.

An East Coast import, and alternately dubbed the “North Eastern IPA” or “New England IPA” (NEIPA in either case) this new breed of IPA is all about showing off fruity hop flavors without the bitter hop bite. As brewers have developed new techniques for squeezing more hops into a beer, they’ve also discovered that many common brewing processes strip out some hop character. While not all craft beers are filtered, most are clarified to some degree to remove particles and increase the brew’s clarity. Not NEIPAs — they range from opaque to downright sludgy as a complex soup of proteins, suspended yeast and hop compounds form the haze that defines the style. Which, alongside the vibrant fruit flavors from modern hop varieties and a higher perceived sweetness led to another nickname: the juicy IPA.

You may have missed this essay from October, which briefly inspired much debate. The discussion might have been even more entertaining had the author actually talked about the elephant and named some names. He didn't, and while he has a valid point, I find the argumentation muddled.

No more free passes: Not every new craft brewery is good and we need to admit it, by Jonathan Wells (Charlotte Five)

We need to talk about an elephant in the room: newly-opened craft breweries putting out subpar beer.

Finally, in 2017 there were 124 posts at NAC tagged with THE BEER BEAT, and the two with the most page views were "The Bechdel Test, and what 1980s lesbians can teach us about beer" (with 636) and "It's a cornucopia of ephemera, from Quaff On to Lazlo Toth" (1,021).

I have only one beer resolution for 2018: End the self-imposed exile, and get back in the saddle.

Wish me luck, and thanks for reading.

"How do we solve all those issues if we have a rural mentality where things are static?"

Search this page at City Lab for the word "parks," and you won't find it. Yes, Charlotte is a much larger city than ours, but its mayor obviously has more important things to talk about.

Just try to imagine Jeff Gahan in a discussion with Charlotte's mayor. You simply can't. As proof, just one question and answer is enough.

'Just Let Charlotte Be Charlotte', Ronald Brownstein

Mayor Jennifer Roberts on urban growth, tolerance, poverty, and why rural areas and cities need different rules: America isn’t “one-size-fits-all.”

BROWNSTEIN: Research we’ve done at The Atlantic has looked at big cities across the country: We find an enormous gap in the share of white versus African American versus Hispanic kids who are in schools where most of their classes qualify as poor or low-income. The concentration of economic poverty here in Charlotte is: 23 percent of white kids are in schools where a majority of the students qualify as poor or low-income, 77 percent of African American kids are in such schools, and 80 percent of Hispanic kids are. Can changes inside the four walls of a school overcome that? Or if you have that level of concentrated poverty, are you unlikely to get the results that you want?

ROBERTS: It has to “both and.” And in Charlotte, we have this can-do attitude: We know the odds can be stacked against you, but we believe that if you get the right number of organizations and groups together and focus on a problem and put some real collaborative effort into it, then we can improve it. Statistics are challenging when you have high concentrations of poverty, so what are we doing? We’re looking at our housing policy. We’re constrained by our state in many ways, but we have some tools—for instance, inclusionary housing, trying to get more workforce and subsidized housing in some areas of town. So we want to work with the private sector to help that happen. We’re looking to rewrite our zoning ordinance, which is one tool we have for trying to get that mixed-use development. How do we work incrementally to bring about some of those changes so that we get more of our students in diverse settings?

The South does it again -- wait, Indiana did it first. No matter: "The NBA Needs to Move the 2017 All-Star Game From Charlotte."

C'mon -- you know Grooms would have voted in favor if he lived in North Carolina.

The real world, from the only sportswriter who matters.

The NBA Needs to Move the 2017 All-Star Game From Charlotte. Now. (By Dave Zirin, The Nation)

... The 2017 NBA All-Star Game is due to be held in Charlotte, North Carolina. Silver should announce as soon as possible that this game needs to be moved unless the state legislature overturns its new law set to go in effect April 1 “blocking local governments from passing anti-discrimination rules to grant protections to gay and transgender people.”

The law was passed as a direct response to the City of Charlotte for passing an ordinance to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people from being discriminated against by businesses. Outrageously, the North Carolina legislature scheduled an extraordinary special session—the first time they have done so in 35 years—to annul the Charlotte ordinance before it went into effect. It’s remarkable how quickly lawmakers leap to actually do their jobs when the work involves stripping people of their rights. It is also stunning how all of the Dixie paeans to local control and states’ rights go out the window when it comes to issues such as these.

The law also bans students from using restrooms that correlate with their gender identity if it is not what is listed on their birth certificate. “Legislators have gone out of their way to stigmatize and marginalize transgender North Carolinians by pushing ugly and fundamentally untrue stereotypes that are based on fear and ignorance and not supported by the experiences of more than 200 cities with these protections,” Sarah Preston, acting executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, said in a statement.

This law empowers businesses across the state to put signs in their windows saying that they reserve the right to deny service to anyone whom they perceive to be part of the LGBT community. Think about that for a second: The law empowers right-wing small-business owners to legally discriminate based on their own “gaydar.”

Under the shadow of this legislation, the NBA really only has one recourse: It needs to move the 2017 All-Star Game and show the world that it is not going to “fall behind” on what is a very elemental issue of human rights and dignity. The NBA Players Association, led by the estimable Michele Roberts, should also call for Adam Silver to take this step.

A little comparative park shopping in North Carolina.

Below is 230 N. Tryon Street in Charlotte, North Carolina-- a decrepit, city-owned parking lot next to a long defunct 85-year-old theater. Look familiar? It's only slightly smaller than the corner of Spring and Pearl.

Its neighbor, the Foundation for the Carolinas, has been negotiating with city government to purchase and renovate the theater for some time. In preparation for the then upcoming Democratic National Convention in September, the City decided in mid-July to allow the foundation to turn the lot into a pocket park while it decides on the possible sale. The whole real estate and rehabilitation deal will take several years anyway. The work was completed in less than two months with $150,000 in foundation funds and community donations.

(photos from Charlotte Magazine and the Charlotte Observer)