ON THE AVENUES took a week off. Here's what I've been writing while on holiday.

There also was a house-painting project.

Having made it through six months of weekly ON THE AVENUES columns without a single rerun, I decided to celebrate by taking a week off and hopefully reloading for "the second half" of the year. The July 4 holiday weekend seemed perfectly placed for an intermission.

After all, July 4 is an extremely important date in human history; as of 2020, it's been 44 years since The Clash’s debut gig on the 4th of July, opening for Sex Pistols at a pub in Sheffield, England.

Regular readers already know that 2020 would see a curtailment of activity at NA Confidential, which has been rigorously pro bono and non-profit since its inception in 2004. My time has shifted to platforms where I'm writing for material reward. It's as simple as that.

I'll likely never be sufficiently organized to function as a true free-lancer; however, writing is my job as digital editor at Food & Dining Magazine, and it's a big part of what I'm doing at Pints&union, especially lately, with the pub largely dormant while awaiting the reopening (this week, maybe Friday), and a need to do something to help keep our clientele engaged during the down time.

Consequently, I'm delighted to have received so many positive comments about my series of "Staycation Stories," many of which have been reworked beer travel tales from the archive along with a few newly written vignettes. Most, if not all, have been illustrated with recently digitized photos.

Volga outing, 1999.

Following are the eleven most recent, with other available for perusing at my P&U Beer Blog.

Staycation Stories: My shoes are filled with Volga mud (1999), Part Two 

Staycation Stories: My shoes are filled with Volga mud (1999), Part One

Staycation Stories: The Birra Korça experience, and beer in Albania, 1994

Staycation Stories: of Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie, 1985

Staycation Stories: Under the volcano in Catania, Sicily (2016)

Staycation Stories: One fine evening at the Zlatý Dukát in Košice, 1991

My alternative “6 Bucket List Destinations for Beer Lovers

Staycation Stories: The late, once great Brauhaus Nussdorf in Vienna

Staycation Stories: The Dolphin, one of the great pubs in the world

Staycation Stories: Good times in the bike saddle at the Radler Tankstelle

Staycation Stories: A Bohemian countryside beer walk (1989)

On the Food & Dining Magazine side of the ledger, I'm responsible for two web posts each weekday (just one on weekends), with linkage to social media feeds. Some are short and functional, others longer and more detailed. We've started work on an autumn issue of the quarterly print publication (the summer issue was cancelled this year).

Here are a few F&D highlights from the past couple weeks

Hip Hops: How do craft breweries survive the pandemic? Any which way they can

Edibles & Potables: But what about the workers?

Celebrate July 4 at St. Benedict’s Brew Works in the shadow of The Dome (Ferdinand IN)

Board and You Bistro & Wine Bar prepares to broaden the charcuterie in New Albany

Hip Hops: Black Is Beautiful collabs are on, Fest of Ale is off (until 2021)

Edibles & Potables: Wet markets, food safety, food justice and Halal localism

Anthony Bourdain’s genius was not in the kitchen. His genius was in knowing which side he was on

I'm also charged with laying out weekly F&D columns contributed by others, including Marty Rosen, Susan Reigler and Ron Mikulak.

Marty's "Letter from the Editor" appears on Wednesday, and Susan's "Bourbon News & Notes" on Friday. Last week Ron began a weekly Tuesday column called "Comings & Goings." As an example, consider Marty's column last week, which deserves a wider audience:

Letter from the Editor: Face masks, yes. We have a collective responsibility to hold each other safe.

It would verge on redundant for me to point out that I'm by far the junior partner when it comes to the experience and skill of these writers. It makes me a better writer merely by arranging their pieces for publication.

The lesson we should be learning from the pandemic is that what we build may seem everlasting, when in fact it's ephemeral. Things change very slowly, then all at once. I'll be 60 very soon, but my new life and the next chapters actually began in May of 2014 when we closed the restaurant at Bank Street Brewhouse.

From that point, I understood something had come unmoored. There had been a conclusion in my life, and it would be followed by completely new developments. It all took some time, but the shift occurred. As oft times before, I came out the other side. Obviously, in order to come back, one must first go away, into the wilderness, for the required cleansing.

Consequently, I've no idea whether my currently productive era will last, and if it does, for how long. However, for the moment it is quite good, both personally and professionally, and I'm keenly aware of the irony inherent in making such a statement amid pandemic and social upheaval.

The very presence of irony points to the necessity of my staying involved, albeit minding my manners v.v. the local power structure, and advocating for change as it pertains to this dysfunctional shibboleth of a nation, fully half of it engaged in denial of a magnitude I can't recall witnessing.

Maybe I'll write about it for ON THE AVENUES this coming Thursday.

Today's COVID must read: Marty Rosen on facemasks and collective responsibility.

Marty Rosen's "Letter from the Editor" column appears on Wednesday at Food & Dining Magazine.

On Friday, Susan Reigler offers "Bourbon News & Notes," and Ron Mikulak is back in the saddle, currently on Tuesday, with his weekly updates about restaurant coming and goings. I'm still hoping we're able to engineer the return of Sara Havens and "The Bar Belle," but that's above my pay grade as digital editor. 

My "Hip Hops" beer column runs on Monday. It's a weekly reminder to me that being on a team as formidable as this one is both an honor and a daily inducement to up my game. We're a small family-run magazine, and I accept that we don't have quite the range of other regional publications.

However, we definitely have the writing. Marty proves it, here.

Letter from the Editor: Face masks, yes. We have a collective responsibility to hold each other safe, by Marty Rosen (Food & Dining Magazine)

Of all the human emotions, none has garnered less attention from scientists, poets, artists, and songwriters than the one known as Disgust.

Certainly it’s a subject that never arises here at Food & Dining headquarters, where we while away our days sipping and nibbling on only the finest beverages and foods in our beautifully appointed stately pleasure dome.

And yet disgust, though it takes many forms, is fundamentally connected to food and dining. In its simplest, most literally visceral form, disgust manifests itself through symptoms like nausea and retching. We have all felt it when suddenly exposed to the odor of rotting garbage, for instance. And apparently it’s not a “learned” emotion ...

BOOKS OF MY LIFE: Elizabeth David's "An Omelette and a Glass of Wine."

My belated column this week was devoted to explaining why I dislike the term "foodie."

ON THE AVENUES: Food is my friend, but please, I'm no foodie.

In the increasingly remote days of my youth, certain of the elderly wits around town used to say “I don’t eat to live – I live to eat,” and while this statement encapsulates my own point of view, chronologically as well as measured by a current poundage in the neighborhood of 265, the word “foodie” has never seemed proper as a descriptor.

The column was late because there's a lot on my plate, pun intended.

In my capacity as Digital Editor at Food & Dining Magazine, I've inaugurated posts on Sunday morning, something we hadn't been doing previously.

Overall, with prospects for a Summer 2020 print edition fairly chancy owing to the COVID food and drink disruptions, we've shifted emphasis to the web site. It's ambitious, at least for us, and the jury's out. But I'm having fun.

Consequently, today's post over there is an example of writing I once would have done right here.

Edibles & Potables: Elizabeth David and the noble art of food writing

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine is a collection of articles and ephemera by the British food writer Elizabeth David (1913 – 1992). To tell the absolute truth, I hadn’t the first idea who she was. Now, after reading the book, I’m horribly chagrined at my ignorance and correspondingly eager to delve into her other works, like Italian Food and French Provincial Cooking.

If you have a few minutes, hop over to F&D, read the piece and tell me what you think.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Hip Hops and doing another evolution.

This fact will shock and amaze some readers, but from 1990 through 2001, or thereabouts, I edited a monthly FOSSILS homebrewing club newsletter called "Walking the Dog," so named from the purported English male custom of tending to his canine's critical exercise needs as a pretext for visiting the pub and having one pint of elixir, maybe two.

During this entire 12-year period coinciding with the advent and growth of the Public House, "Walking the Dog" was produced with a photocopier, paper, staples and STAMPS (pub regulars received theirs along with the daily tipple). When it became apparent that a majority of the members had e-mail, we went electronic, a move I've never regretted, not even once.

As with putting up hay the old fashioned-way, one bale at a time on the hottest day of the year just before a thunderstorm, it's something I vowed not to do, ever again.

The point is that "Walking the Dog" began as a simple single-sheet meeting reminder that ballooned into a six-page (or more) monthly collection of beer writing, much of it mine but with quite a few contributions from others over the years.

Looking back, the experience reminds me that in the beginning, I was only barely aware of what beer writing was. It likewise informs me that writing about beer, and having my beer writing perused by folks of like-minded interest, was important enough to me that I tolerated the drudgery of producing it. One writes to be read. Consequently, I kept doing it.

If memory serves, the digital version of "Walking the Dog" was called "The Not Dog," and it would seem to have kept me occupied during the period 2001 - 2005, although I can't recall when I finally gave it up. Perhaps my involvement ceased around 2003, when NABC had started brewing and available time was becoming an issue. 

From 2005 through 2016 was the effective life span of my beer blog, The Potable Curmudgeon, which more often than not dealt with New Albanian Brewing Company news because we were too disorganized to do it at a web site of our own. Concurrently from 2005 - 2008 came a weekly blog called Publicanista! It functioned as a newsletter for NABC, intended to separate the business from the opinionated writer.

I still love the title. However, distinguishing between business and publican never seemed effective in practice. Synonymity? It's a real word.

After my departure from NABC, an aggravating three-year-long negotiation that began in 2015, the beer chat shifted entirely to NA Confidential, where it went from "Potable Curmudgeon" to "After the Fire," back to "The PC" and eventually "Beer with a Socialist" (the title is a joke deriving from a hurried misreading one morning of AtG's "Beer with a Scientist" promotion).

In addition, for roughly a year (2009 - 2010) I wrote a column in LEO called "Mug Shots," until the publication's then-editor tired of me ritually bashing Budweiser -- which spent lots of money on advertisements. Life lessons are hard, especially when swill wins. There also was the relatively short-lived Louisville Beer Dot Com web site, where I did a column by the "Potable Curmudgeon" moniker circa 2011 - 2012, maybe 2013.

At least I think so. They all mix together after a while.

The preceding is a ludicrously lengthy prelude to an announcement that isn't to be described as earth-shattering, but matters to me. I've been contributing beer columns to Food & Dining Magazine since its second year of operation, somewhere around 2005. In the beginning the columns were not given a title. Eventually the magazine's founder and publisher John White chose "Hip Hops" to identify them. 

Given my throwback proclivities of late, "hip" strikes me as deliciously ironic in tone and I intend to keep it.

Last July came the opportunity to serve as F&D's digital editor, a glorified way of describing the task of writing, editing and organizing the web site's face to the world.

And now ... drum roll please ... yet another weekly format for my fermentable musings.

I hope you enjoy them. Henceforth I'll be signposting F&D, not reprinting the contents here. In fact, at this moment, I'm not sure what "here" even means, or "there," and it's not just pandemic uncertainties speaking.

Reinventions come and go, as they must, and the gist that remains is beer. I'll keep commenting about beer. Even better, I'll keep drinking it.

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Hip Hops: Introducing weekly scribblings about beer and brewing

For more than a decade, "Hip Hops" has been the title of my column for the quarterly print-edition of Food & Dining Magazine. Now it will be deployed on a weekly basis here at the web site to signal Monday afternoon posts about beer: news and notes, events, ruminations and probably a beer travelogue here and there.

Ironically, as the 40th anniversary of my involvement in various sectors of the beer business draws alarmingly closer (2022), "hip" in terms of the avant garde isn't exactly the way I always feel, especially as the word pertains to aching knees and a sagging jowl.

It remains that beer is my life's work. All of my interests collide while savoring a lovingly rendered pint: history, sociology, geography, pub architecture and just the sheer cultural depth of it. Is there a word for this obsession?

Some people call me a beer “expert,” although being painfully aware of how much I don’t know about the topic would seem to preclude it. “Geek” is too techno-adolescent and “snob” is a nasty pejorative. “Connoisseur” and “aficionado” both strike me as pretentious, and Jerry Seinfeld's “soup Nazi” didn’t improve a horrible and objectionable word that should not be used in any context, let alone one pertaining to a beer drinker.

Hence I'm left with simplicity: "I'm a professional beer drinker, and here are a few local beer news items of potential interest to you."

On May 1, three huge components of the Indianapolis beer scene departed all at once: Nuvo, the independent weekly newspaper where my friend Rita Kohn has written for many years about the confluence of beer and society; Brugge Brasserie, since 2005 a Belgian-themed brewery and eatery in Broad Ripple; and the Indiana Microbrewers Festival, which was postponed until a projected return in 2021.



Best future wishes to all the folks involved with these entities. These are tumultuous times for craft beer in America, as noted by the New York Times:

Demand for draft beer dried up, and Bauhaus (Brew Labs, Minneapolis) kegs and cans filled its distributor’s warehouse, with no need for new inventory. On April 21, in a scene reminiscent of Prohibition, the brewery decided to send more than 900 gallons of perfectly good beer down the drain. For Bauhaus and other craft breweries, kegging or canning beer that can’t be sold would be a wasted expense. And the beer is quickly approaching the dates set for peak freshness and quality, which then start to decline.

To my knowledge such a scene hasn't been witnessed in metropolitan Louisville, at least yet. In fact, there's an opening to report. Gallant Fox Brewing in Clifton is open for to-go beer sales.



"We will be open Thursday through Saturday each week from 12-6pm until things return to normal," according to the brewery's Facebook page. "We will post more permanent hours for our taproom at that time."

Louisville Business First has been chasing local stories about the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding, and reporter Haley Cawthon learned that Against the Grain Brewery, Goodwood Brewing, Gravely Brewing Co. and Monnik Beer Co. all were approved for PPP loans. The breweries are pursuing different strategies to make use of these loans.

"I do wish there was a little more leeway for businesses in the use of the funds, because it’s really hard to make a blanket statement and say, 'This applies to every business,'" Gravely's founder Nathan Gravely told Cawthon. "Obviously, every payroll and lease structure are all so different from business to business and it’s hard to say ‘Oh here’s this one thing — everybody do it.'"



Personalized improvisation is the watchword of Beer 2020. Mile Wide Beer Company announced its forthcoming Owensboro location back in February, then the pandemic put these best-laid plans on temporary hold, as with the new Monnik facility in New Albany. But Mile Wide's brain trust has found a way to keep their expectant Owensboro fans supplied in the interim.

Owing to COVID-19, it isn't entirely clear when Louisville City FC fans will be able to celebrate in person the advent of their new Lynn Family Stadium. However Falls City Beer has collaborated with the team and the playing field to produce a drinkable commemoration "in limited-edition cans that feature images of the 11,700-seat stadium."

It's a Kölsch-style beer in the fashion of straw-gold ale made famous by brewers in the German city of Köln (Cologne), coming in at 5% ABV and 18 IBU (or, squarely in the range of mass-produced American lagers).

“With the excitement of the stadium opening this year, we decided it was time for a new beer in our collaboration with Lou City FC,” said Falls City Brewing Co. General Manager Drew Johnson. “Our new Lou City Kolsch is a crisp, easy-drinking beer that will be perfect all season long.”

This week's cover photo is from the brewhouse of the Pivovar (brewery) Eggenberg in the lovely Bohemian town of Český Krumlov (Czech Republic), as snapped during a visit in 2004.

The Spring 2020 issue of Food & Dining Magazine has landed, so pick up a copy and read our words.

The new quarterly issue of Food & Dining Magazine is out, and for those just tuning in, a reminder that it has been a pleasure to assume the duties of Digital Editor at the publication.

Since last July, I've penned most of the daily web site posts. It's an ongoing learning experience for me and I appreciate the opportunity.

Now for the Spring 2020 (March/April/May) edition. Hard copies (they're advertising-driven and completely free to you, the reader) should be in their usual locations -- there's a big stack at Pints&union) -- and my colleague Jon Larmee has links to the on-line articles at issuu: online/">Our Spring 2020 issue of Food & Dining Magazine is now available on newsstands and online!

In the coming weeks these articles and columns will appear at the Food & Dining Magazine web site on Saturdays.

I'm actually glad to have been given only one assignment this time around, because it was a bear ... and perhaps the most rewarding process I've experienced since taking on longer-form features and profiles. SOU! is the real deal, and you owe it to yourself to give them a try.

PROFILE | SOU! Southern Kitchen & Bar

Over the course of his 25-year career, Chef James Moran has become known among insiders as a Chef’s Chef. Now, with business partner Ashley Sayler, his restaurant SOU! is wowing Louisville diners.

One other suggestion, as it would be remiss of me not to make note of Sara Havens' "comeback" column.

BAR BELLE | The Return of the Bar Belle

For over a decade, Sara Havens has been offering wise and witty commentary on the Louisville bar scene. Now she joins F&D — with a pub crawl primer.

Since Insider Louisville folded, Sara has been working in public relations for Mint Julep Experiences. It's great having her back again as the Bar Belle.

At Food & Dining Magazine: "Štruklji, Jota and Pelinkovac — or, what I ate and drank on winter break."

Here's a periodic reminder that I'm doing most of the daily posts at the Food & Dining Magazine web site.

Generally these are short "news and notes" articles, Monday through Friday. One of my goals is to expand postings to Saturday (which we sometimes do now) and Sunday. Ultimately I'd like to theme one or both of these days, but walking before running and all.

I went a bit longer-form on Saturday this week. Here's the link; you'll have to go to the site to read the full text.

Štruklji, Jota and Pelinkovac — or, what I ate and drank on winter break.

Your correspondent and his lovely wife spent time before and after Thanksgiving across the pond: In Zagreb (Croatia), Ljubljana and Lake Bled (Slovenia) and Trieste (Italy). In addition to taking a break from the everyday and enjoying the many sights in this always fascinating corner of Europe, we sought as always to taste just a bit of these faraway locales.

The Winter 2019 issue of Food & Dining Magazine has hit the streets, so pick up a copy and read my words.

The new issue of Food & Dining Magazine has dropped.

First, allow me to repeat that it has been a pleasure to assume the duties of Digital Editor at Food & Dining, to which I've long been contributing beer columns, then more recently branching out with profiles and features for this fun and informative quarterly publication. It's entirely advertising-driven and totally free to you, the reader.

Thanks to publisher John Carlos White for the opportunity (since July) to pen weekday web site dispatches. It should suffice to say that I'm learning quite a lot by doing so.

Now for the Winter 2019 (Dec/Jan/Feb) edition of Food & Dining, which is out now. Hard copies should be in their usual locations, and my colleague Jon Larmee has links to the articles: HOT OFF THE PRESSES — The Winter 2019 Issue is on the Racks!

Following are my pieces in this issue; like the magazine as a whole, they can be read at issuu. Concurrently, hard copies should have arrived at their usual locations. There's a stack at Pints&union.

The Wallonian Farmhouse Ale Trail, an examination of the wide and varied world of farmhouse and saison ales, focusing on the legendary Saison Dupont.

Pick Three: Mexican Regional Cuisines, two of which I wrote, first New Albany's own Israel's Delicias de Mexico Gourmet, and also Mi Casita in downtown Louisville. Michael L. Jones profiled Chilakiles in the third essay.

Read my profile of Bourbons Bistro, as published in the current issue of Food & Dining Magazine.

In the past I've usually waited until the following quarterly issue of Food & Dining Magazine to publish the text of my most recent contribution, but these days our articles appear at the web site during the weeks following the magazine's release.

As such, here's the link to my profile of Bourbons Bistro, originally published in the Fall 2019 issue.

Profile — The Bourbons Bistro Legacy: Putting the Urban in Bourbon, by Roger Baylor (Food & Dining Magazine)

“Irish Hill is the Louisville neighborhood you find when you’re lost.”

It’s an old-time Louisville saying about a relatively small, richly historic patch of ground shoehorned between Baxter Avenue, Lexington Road and Beargrass Creek, and Eastern and Cave Hill Cemeteries.

On Irish Hill’s northeast side is Breslin Park, formerly the site of Louisville’s fortress-like City Workhouse, where minor offenders were incarcerated while they paid their debt to society through menial labor. Across Payne Street is a collection of imposing old brick warehouses known since the 1980s as Distillery Commons, used nowadays as offices, businesses and creative spaces.

Once this was National Distillers and Chemical Company’s Kentucky Distillery Warehouse & Bottling Plant. The mighty National Distillers owned some of the country’s most venerable bourbon brands, like Old Grand Dad, Old Crow, and Old Taylor, and by the 1940s it controlled 70% of the American market for bourbon and rye.

At its peak National Distillers had a work force of 1,400, most of whom lived within walking distance. Numerous families depended on these jobs, but consumer trends were unkind to the whiskey market and the plant closed in 1975.

“Headliners (a music venue) used to be the lunch hall for National Distillers, which was just down the street from us. I call it the UPS of the time; it was the economic engine for our neighborhood and others nearby, like Phoenix Hill and Clifton, even Butchertown.”

Meet Jason Brauner, who grew up in Irish Hill and was in knee pants when National Distillers was shuttered. Brauner’s great aunt and great uncle both worked there. So did business partner John Morrison’s father and grandmother.

Brauner and Morrison opened Bourbons Bistro in 2005. Call it cosmic, karmic or just a well-turned business plan, but their Frankfort Avenue refuge became an instant classic, primarily because Brauner and Morrison scanned the cluttered landscape of gimmicky bar and restaurant concepts, settling on a unifying principle so incredibly obvious as to be invisible: Bourbon.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Cumberland Brews is coming to a close after 19 years in operation.

As noted previously, it now is my (part-time) job at Food & Dining Magazine to take note of comings and goings in the local food and drink business, and admittedly most of these news items pertain to restaurants and bars with which I'm unfamiliar.

Cumberland Brews is an obvious exception in my cosmos, and I'm in a mournful mood since learning of the brewpub's upcoming closing after a final day Saturday, October 5.

The stumbling Athletics were well on their way to losing the wild card game when news of Cumberland's passing began spreading on social media Wednesday night, and to be honest, I completely forgot about baseball and began reliving some warm, good times in that cramped, wonderful space.

I wrote about it at F&D, and you can read the obituary here: Raise a parting glass to Cumberland Brews, bowing out Saturday after 19 years.

Let the tankards speak; bye, guys. It was fun.

LIVE TO EAT: Food & Dining (Vol. 65; Fall 2019) is on the street, so check out my profile of Bourbons Bistro.

I’ve been contributing quarterly beer columns to Food & Dining for most of the mag’s existence. The past few years publisher John Carlos White has guided me into longer-form pieces like the profile of Bourbons Bistro in the new issue, and as of July, I’ve had the title of digital editor, charged with creating short news items at the website.

Even better, Marty Rosen is now on board.

I’ve been writing for Food & Dining off and on since the first issue.

With this issue, I rejoin the magazine as editor.

From the beginning, publisher John Carlos White envisioned a magazine that would cover Louisville Metro’s vibrant culinary scene with outstanding literary and visual storytelling. F&D continues to do exactly that, and continues to thrive in an era that has not been easy for journalism.

In short, we have a fine team. Check out the latest and let me know what you think. Hard copies should be available in their usual locations (Pints&union will have a stack), and don't forget they're free.

Entire Issue

Comings & Goings

Bourbons Bistro

Pizza Lupo

The Manhattan Project

Stupid Food Trends

Renaissance on Whiskey Row

Easy Entertaining - Tailgating

Cooking With Ron - Apples

A tale of two binders: Bourbons Bistro and Rich O's Public House.

During the course of chatting with owners and crew at Bourbons Bistro for a forthcoming profile at Food & Dining Magazine, I asked to see the legendary bourbon binder. It dates back to the establishment's founding in 2005 and is filled with tasting notes compiled at the time (and perhaps since) by Michael Veach.

Of course this reminded me of the then-Rich O's Public House binders from the long-lost period of 1997-1998. 

Jason Brauner mentioned that few customers ask to view the binder these days, and speaking for myself, twenty years ago at the Public House publications like this proved impossible to keep updated, so I quit trying.

Perhaps the modern world has made these relics obsolete. If so, something has been lost.

Read my food and dining (and drinking) news items at Food & Dining Magazine.

It has been something like 15 years since I started writing beer columns for Food & Dining Magazine, and since 2016 I've been branching out to the occasional profile and feature.

Effective right about now, I'm contributing two or three weekly news items to the website. A few of them have been published already; the list is here. Subject matter is all over the map, and that helps make the job fun. It's similar to what I've been doing here at the blog, with a different framework.

You are invited to tune into Food & Dining Magazine's web site or Facebook page and read all about it.

The summer 2019 issue of Food & Dining Magazine has arrived.

The new issue of Food & Dining Magazine is available for viewing online and currently is being delivered to hotels and racks. The quarterly magazine is entirely supported by advertising and arrives completely free to readers. Links are provided below.

My contribution is a survey of craft beer in 2019.

Craft Beer Nation wins because people like craft beer, but when we swipe our debit card for a case of Founders Solid Gold it’s just the final transaction of many required to take beer from origins in water, malt, hops and yeast to our waiting lips.

Another article of great interest to me is Susan Reigler's profile of Chad and Lauren Coulter, originators of the LouVino wine bar. Amid the never ending uncertainty surrounding New Albany's River City Winery, I look at the space and its adjoining former Preston Arts building and see LouVino (or something similar) written all over it.

Happy reading. When you patronize one of the magazine's advertisers, tell them you saw their advertisement in Food & Dining.

SUMMER 2019 ISSUE

FEATURES

PROFILE | Fernando Martinez

Fernando Martinez is one of the most prolific restaurateurs this city has ever known. With 15 restaurants to his credit, he and his team at Ole’ Restaurant Group are set to launch another volley. 

PROFILE | Jared Matthews

Over the last decade, Jared Matthews has blossomed into a rising star as the managing partner in four restaurants and bars. Hold the press! Make that five.

PROFILE | Chad Coulter

Chad and Lauren Coulter’s LouVino has grown to five locations in three states, and they’ve opened the first of their newest concept, Biscuit Belly.

COLUMNS

COMINGS &  GOINGS |

A summary of changes in the local restaurant scene — with openings, closings, moves and more.

HUMOR | Disruptive Restaurant Tech 

Resident food humorist Jay Forman imagines a line of technology that might disrupt the food industry in the future.

RECIPES

COOKING WITH RON | A Vegan Paradise

Ron creates vegan dishes from the summer bounty of excellent fresh vegetables and fruit by local farmers.

EASY ENTERTAINING | Toast to Toast

Tired of avocado toast? Tim and Lori Laird offer a variety of other creative toast treat recipes that are sure to please.

LIQUIDS

HIP HOPS | Craft Beer All Grown Up

Craft Beer has gone from mom n’ pop shop to button-down boardroom, and Roger Baylor learns firsthand that the business of craft beer is business.

BOURBON | The Neeley Family Distillery

Maybe you’ve never heard of the Neeleys, but they’ve been making whiskey for 11 generations and legally for one. Steve Akley recounts their bloody family history.

DINING GUIDE
Our comprehensive listing of over 1,400 area restaurants, complete with reviews.

Rick Stidham and Akasha Brewing Company for New Albany Beer Week at Pints&union on Tuesday, May 28.

The first of two Pints&union gatherings for New Albany Beer Week comes on Tuesday, May 28 when owner/brewer Rick Stidham joins us along with a keg of Otterburn English Brown (for sale by the pint and half-pint) and a few other beer samples.

I've known Rick for a very long time and can't even remember when we first met. He brews wonderful beer and Akasha glides along under the radar. I think it's a criminally underrated brewery. Thanks both to Rick and his Indiana wholesaler, Starlight Distribution.

My profile of Akasha was published in Food & Dining Magazine in November of 2017, and the text appeared here in March of 2018.

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THE BEER BEAT: "Akasha Brewing Company: Karma and craftsmanship, cruising under the radar" -- from Food & Dining Magazine.

When the latest issue of Food & Dining Magazine comes out ...

LIVE TO EAT: Read my stories about Chef Space and Tito's Handmade Vodka, and grab the latest issue of Food & Dining Magazine, out now.

... I go back to the previous edition and reprise my contributions. In this instance, it's Winter 2017 (Vol. 58; Nov-Dec-Jan), and profiles of Akasha Brewing Company and Waylon's Feed & Firewater; the latter will appear elsewhere.

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HIP HOPS | Akasha Brewing Company: Karma and craftsmanship, cruising under the radar.

As today’s beers are being poured, let’s learn a word in Sanskrit.

AKASHA … a·ka·sha (Hinduism)(Noun) A supposed universal etheric field in which a record of past events is imprinted.

While Indian cosmology might make a fine category on Jeopardy!, the story of Akasha Brewing Company (909 East Market Street) in Louisville’s ever-evolving NuLu neighborhood is decidedly more prosaic.

Especially since Akasha wasn’t even the first choice of names.

Brewery co-owners Rick Stidham and Gerald Nawrocki originally selected the working title of Muse Brewing Company. In Greek and Roman mythology, Zeus’s nine daughters are called the Muses, each representing an artistic or scientific endeavor. A muse can be the personification of artistic inspiration, and when used as a verb, “to muse” is to engage in thoughtful contemplation.

In fact, some of us have been musing over beers for years.

Unfortunately, nowadays the denizens of Mount Olympus are guarded by a cordon of lawyers. Stidham and Nawrocki quickly learned Muse had been trademarked for beer use. Calmly, they chose to switch identities.

“It wasn’t worth fighting,” Stidham recalls. “So, we went down to Against the Grain Brewery, ordered a couple beers and started going through our list of backup names.” They agreed on Akasha: “I’d seen it in an article about quantum physics, signifying ‘everything from nothing.’ That sounded about right to us.”

Duly recast, Akasha Brewing Company opened for business in September, 2015. Eight months later, new equipment began arriving, and output reached 600 barrels in 2016.

Currently assisted in the brewhouse by Kacy Machir, who doubles as Akasha’s graphics generator, Stidham is the company’s wryly good-humored public face. He’s thoughtful and on the quiet side, but possessing ample beer savvy and a resolute confidence in his abilities.

“The beer we put out there is consistently good,” Stidham says, and this is no idle boast coming from a man whose commitment to craftsmanship was nurtured as a methodical homebrewer, one so devoted to self-improvement that he’d repeatedly brew styles he didn’t even care to drink, all the better to hone his technique.

Now two years old, Akasha’s lineup of regular beers continues to evolve. Recurring favorites include Always Sunny in Amarillo (dry-hopped American Pale Ale) and Piper Cherrywood Smoked Porter, although two other very different styles recently have risen to pre-eminence.

One of them is Gose (go-zah), an obscure German ale that delightfully exemplifies craft beer’s prevailing eclecticism, given that it’s about as unconventional as Germans allow their beers to get.

The grist is half barley, half wheat. It is only lightly hopped, low in alcohol content, purposefully tart, and spiced with coriander and salt. The style reached its zenith in Leipzig in the early twentieth century, then gradually lapsed into near extinction. By the late 1990s, revivals began popping up.

For Akasha’s version, Stidham achieves a slight tanginess by means of kettle souring, a technique recently developed as a comparatively simple way of imparting desired tartness to beer.

After mashing, the wort is flash boiled in the kettle, then recirculated through the heat exchanger to cool down. When the liquid returns to the kettle, lactobacillus bacteria is added for the requisite souring.

A bit later, the hops, salt -- Pink Himalayan, as “it gives a different, better taste,” according to Stidham -- and coriander are added, and when the boil is finished, regular ale yeast is pitched.

The other current best-seller at Akasha is Fehr’s XS, the rebirth of a lager formerly brewed in Louisville by the Frank Fehr Brewing Company (1872-1964). It’s the polar opposite of Gose.

In order to bring Fehr’s XS back from obscurity, Stidham worked closely with Jeff Faith, a Louisvillian who acquired the rights to the brand’s copyright. Faith researched its pre-Prohibition recipe, and he found in Stidham a kindred spirit with a shared zeal for authenticity.

Faith’s determination was such that he purchased a fermenter specifically for Stidham’s use at Akasha in brewing Fehr’s XS, so that a beer requiring slow, cool aging wouldn’t interrupt the brewery’s normal production schedule.

Fehr’s XS is formulated according to the pre-Prohibition custom of using six-row barley, rice, Cluster hops (for bittering) and aromatic German finishing hops. It is straw golden and light-bodied; crisp and firmly-hopped; and in the mold of a Pilsner, though uniquely flavored.

“We have plans to continue to bring Fehr's back to wider availability in Louisville and the rest of Kentucky,” notes Stidham. “We drink a good bit of it at the brewery, and I get a kick out of seeing it on tap at so many places.”

Akasha is designed to be a production brewery. While there are no cans or bottles at present, kegs travel to outside accounts via Dauntless Distributing in Kentucky and Starlight Distribution in Indiana.

However, beer lovers are invited to stop by Akasha’s dog-friendly taproom for pints and samplers, carry-out growlers and the occasional game of Monopoly. Apart from packaged snacks, no food is served at the taproom; however, this being NuLu, sustenance is always quite near.

Grind Burger Kitchen lies just across Campbell Street, and the Louisville location of Feast BBQ is roughly 20 paces from Akasha’s front door.

“We’re Feast’s de facto overflow dining room,” Stidham says, and Feast’s owner Ryan Rogers not only agrees, but adds an inspiring primer on localism.

“Rick’s right, and it speaks volumes to the symbiotic relationship we have with Akasha,” explains Rogers.

“We sell their beer on draft, which is a privilege for us because their product is so good that we want it despite their brewery selling it a dollar or so cheaper a few steps away – and they actively encourage their patrons bringing in food from the local restaurants.”

The neighborly affinity is real. Earlier this year, Stidham collaborated with Feast BBQ and Royals Hot Chicken (also owned by Rogers) to brew a beer called Royal Feast in Helles, a wonderful Bavarian-style golden lager.

When asked to chart Akasha’s future growth, Stidham is cheerfully imprecise.

“When we sell enough beer in 2018 to continue selling beer in 2019,” he laughs, “that's enough for me to be happy.”

ON THE AVENUES: "Pints&union, where the classic beer hits keep right on pouring."

I began writing a column about beer for Food & Dining Magazine in 2005, give or take a year. Occasionally the magazine's main man John White finds a slot for a non-beer-centric restaurant profile, and those are fun to write, too. I'll always remain appreciative to John for giving me this opportunity to write and be read.

Food & Dining Magazine is a quarterly, and when a new issue arrives it has become my habit to glance back at the previous one and reprise my contribution in full for NA Confidential readers.

The summer issue for 2019 is due in a week or two, with my next column to address the way that the business of craft beer has become business; it always was, but now more than ever there's little margin for error for mom and pop brewing shops.

For the spring issue John kindly allowed me to do something rare for me at Food & Dining Magazine, this being to write about myself and the idea for the beer program at Pints&union. It turned out really well, and Andy Hyslop's photos are especially memorable.

Roger, Joe and Calvin.

Pints&union, where the classic beer hits keep right on pouring.

Food & Dining Magazine, Spring 2019 (Volume 63)

Did you hear the one about two buddies walking into a coffee shop to talk about building a brand new “old” bar?

One of them was Joe Phillips, and the other was me. We began philosophizing about life, adult beverages, curry and third spaces. This chat was the impetus for Pints&union, a pub in downtown New Albany that opened in August of 2018.

On that fateful morning at Quills, we drained a few bracing espressos and got wired – then excited. We’d both been planning an honest, traditional, no-gimmicks public house where everybody knows your name, and it seemed like a good idea to work together toward this shared goal.

Now Joe is the owner of Pints&union, and I work for him as manager of a purposefully archaic beer program, which I’ll get to in a moment. First, meet Joe Phillips and his dream pub.

Joe is a food and drink industry lifer who began washing dishes at a pizzeria in California while still attending high school. He’s since compiled a resume that touches just about every base in the local food and drink business: Copper & Kings, Capriole Farms Goat Cheese, Butchertown Social and New Albanian Brewing Company’s Bank Street Brewhouse among others.

Pints&union is about “getting back to what really matters,” as Joe often puts it. The pub’s name has an ampersand but no spacing, representing an inclusive, sharing ethos; historically pubs have functioned as more than just watering holes. They’re living rooms, libraries, meeting halls and community centers.

Housed in a two-story wood-frame structure from the 1880s, Pints&union was rebuilt to its original 19th-century dimensions by Resch Construction. As many surviving materials as possible were reused during the course of the modernization.

The eclectic interior suggests a cross between an Irish pub and an American saloon, and this is fitting given the long record of taverns and eateries occupying the space. In 1890 when Nicholas Sauer’s saloon was the tenant, there were 80 drinking emporiums in New Albany (then populated by 21,000) — most located downtown within walking distance of each other.

The full-service bar at Pints&union features spirits overseen by bar manager Calvin Philley, whose philosophy is simple: a core of classic cocktails tweaked with repurposed ingredients and modified techniques designed to complement Pints&union’s distinctive sense of place amid New Albany’s emerging downtown scene.

Meanwhile, Joe and Chef Dalton Gahafer have designed a short but varied menu of international street food suitable for preparation in limited galley kitchen space: Scotch eggs, Chicken Tikka Masala and Currywurst alongside American diner-standard cheeseburgers and fries.

Early results have been encouraging for Joe’s new-meets-old mix of stylistic influences at Pints&union, and -- speaking personally as a burned-out former brewery owner who was unsure he even had a place in today’s beer world -- I’m grateful to Joe for the chance to offer a slate of beers that largely eschews the avant-garde. To explain this, we must steal a quick glance through the rearview mirror.

I began working part-time in a downtown New Albany liquor store in 1983 with a copy of Michael Jackson’s seminal “World Guide to Beer” in my hands and a dawning recognition that all my interests coincided in the brewhouse: history, geography and intoxication among them.

Few dining and drinking establishments in metropolitan Louisville offered beer lists. To ask for a beer list was to be surveyed with dumbfounded amazement as though you were speaking in Estonian or wearing a conehead prosthesis. Bartenders bothering to reply at all would shrug.

“We have both kinds of beer, pal: Miller High Life and Miller Lite.”

In 1992, a poster called "Brewpubs and Craft Breweries" showed a map of breweries operating in the United States – all 300 or so of them. There existed precisely one brewery each in Kentucky (Oldenberg in Ft. Mitchell), Indiana (Broad Ripple Brewpub, Indianapolis) and Tennessee (Nashville’s Bohannon's/Market Street).

As of early 2018, the brewery counts for these states were 52, 137 and 82, respectively. Combined, that’s almost as many as were brewing in the entire country in 1992, and the paradigm shift over 35 years is stunning.

Today, we’re approaching 7,000 craft breweries in America. If each one brewed six different beers yearly (a ridiculously conservative estimate), that’d be 42,000 beers available for sampling, and this doesn’t account for imported beers, which now comprise time-honored flagships from Affligem through Zwiec, as well as a recent flock of American-influenced craft beers (Brew Dog, Mikkeller, Struis and many more).

There’s naturally a looming catch to this dazzling cornucopia of choice, because establishments selling beer still have finite space and budgetary limitations. Even the most voluminous warehouse-sized package store or cavernous walk-in cooler at the multi-tap must make hard decisions about which beers to keep in stock.

Many on-premise restaurants, bars and pubs elect to constantly rotate their draft beer offerings. A customer making weekly visits to a bar with 15 tap handles might be exposed to 200 different draft beers during a single year.

Consequently, a beer enthusiast’s “What’s new?” culture has evolved, placing a premium on the next new release while ignoring the historical knowledge base that brought us to the present juncture of sheer proliferation.

My stand is clear, and the time for a “back to basics” movement is now.

I believe there exists a silent majority among American beer drinkers who find the kaleidoscopic tilt-whirl of short attention spans – this frenetic hamster wheel approach to beer appreciation – utterly bewildering.

These are beer lovers who genuinely seek to drink better beer but are overwhelmed by ever-changing blackboards at their chosen pubs. They’re hesitant to ask questions for fear of geeks on both sides of the bar laughing at them. They don’t use the Untappd app, but they know exactly where your selfie stick belongs.

My solution at Pints&union is to go back to school -- the old school. We emphasize comfort beers, teach neglected styles, and offer the greatest beer hits of the 1300s through the 1900s placed alongside a few contemporary selections destined to become classics.

The Pints&union beer list is largely fixed and unchanging. You’ll always be able to enjoy draft pints of Fuller’s London Pride, Fuller’s London Porter, Pilsner Urquell, Guinness, Falls City Classic Pilsner and Bell’s Two Hearted Ale plus choose from a bottled and canned variety of European essentials and American craft beers -- from La Chouffe to WarPigs Salmon Pants -- with Celebrator Doppelbock sharing the cooler with Central State Garden.

Pints&union reserves the right to reinvent today’s beer by boarding the way-back machine and starting all over. Find a beer you like, and have another. For me, proving this point is sweet, but savoring a warming Old Engine Oil on a cool evening is always better.

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End note: The preceding was edited to update the identity of our chef. Dalton Gahafer replaced Aaron Tuttle in early May. 

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Recent columns:

May 14: ON THE AVENUES: Where do we go from here?

May 6: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Ghosts within these stones, defiance in these bones (2018).

May 5: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Our great and noble leader soon will be going away, so let's break out the țuică and make a joyful noise.

May 3: horse-race-rehash-sadly.html">ON THE AVENUES HORSE RACE REHASH: Sadly, the Kentucky Derby no longer is decadent and depraved. It’s just another vacuous capitalist bait ‘n’ switch.

LIVE TO EAT: Opening day in Cincinnati, a Skyline Chili Cheese Coney giveaway and my recipe for Vegetarian Cincinnati Chili.

Baseball is back, and finally life makes sense again.

I wrote a brief post over at Food & Dining Magazine's web site about chili and baseball: Score a Free Skyline Chili Cheese Coney.

My mantra often is misunderstood. It's "Death to Chains, Except for Skyline," and that's because we all have our exceptions in life. I've never been a Reds fan as such, but a ballgame in Cincinnati with Skyline (or other local options discussed below) and Hudepohl (okay, maybe Little Kings Cream Ale) touches all the traditional bases for me in some inexplicable but fulfilling way.

And: It's a style of chili, so spare me your outraged blather. While traveling in Central Europe I've had dishes called goulash served in a variety of ways, united only by the use of paprika. So it goes with chili powder. The article link is followed by my recipe for Vegetarian Cincinnati Chili, which is a year-round mainstay of the 1117 East Spring Street Neighborhood Association.

Play ball, damn it.

Is Cincinnati chili actually chili? A dive into the city's most famous dish, by Nick Kindelsperger (Chicago Tribune)

You can order Cincinnati chili with just spaghetti (chili spaghetti or a 2 way), but most people go with at least a 3 way, which adds shredded cheddar cheese. Go with a 4 way, and you can add either diced onion or beans. A 5 way includes both. Nick Kindelsperger toured Cincinnati's chili houses, coming up with these five recommended versions. You'll find they look all alike, but the differences are clear when you plunge in your fork.

By any reasonable definition, Cincinnati chili is not chili. It's served on a plate. You eat it with a fork. It's ladled on spaghetti and topped with an avalanche of shredded cheddar that blankets the entire top, concealing almost all the chili underneath. Most damning, there are hardly any chiles in the mix. And isn’t that why it’s called chili in the first place?

If this all sounds like the beginning of an epic slam against a beloved regional Midwest dish, the kind we've been exploring all month, set down your freshly sharpened pitchforks. I've been a fan since my first bite in college. When I lived in London for six months, my mom regularly mailed me cans of the stuff to tide me over. I am a convert.

But until I swung by Cincinnati recently for a madcap, 24-hour chili tour, I'd never really considered just how little the dish had to do with what most people consider chili ...

And now, the recipe.

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Vegetarian Cincinnati Chili

4 – 6 “medium” servings, which translates to 4 for us

This recipe is from my late mother’s file, via the Mulloys, her next-door-neighbors. I've revised it to use kidney beans in place of the ground beef, so if you take your Cincinnati-style chili with meat or without beans, this recipe may not be for you.

Chili fixings

Olive oil or other cooking oil

2 medium yellow onions, peeled and chopped

4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

Approx 24 to 26 ounces of liquid. My mother's recipe called for water, but this isn't the way I cook. After many years of experimentation, I've settled on 12 ounces of beer and a 14-oz can of veggie broth. American Pale Ale works well, as does just about any malty beer. Feel free to be creative.

1 & ½ teaspoons apple vinegar
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons cumin
1 & ½ teaspoons allspice
1 & ½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 can Rotel (habanero; 10-oz)
1 can Rotel (green chili; 10-oz)

3 cans (16 oz) of dark or light kidney beans, rinsed

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Saute chopped garlic and onions in oil until tender; a few minutes.

Add the remainder of the ingredients except kidney beans. Bring to a boil, then lower the temperature and simmer for two hours.

After two hours, add beans, again bringing chili to a boil before reducing temperature to simmer. Cook for another 45 minutes.

To serve

Boil and drain a box of spaghetti
Grate some cheddar cheese
Chop a couple of onions
Have on hand some hot sauce on the Skyline model, or Tabasco, or something in that vein. Be sure you use oyster crackers

Serve the chili atop the spaghetti and dress it out.

The Spring 2019 issue of Food & Dining Magazine is now available at newsstands and online.

The Spring 2019 issue of Food & Dining Magazine is now available at newsstands and online. You also can read the current issue at issuu, and while you're there, do some catching up on past releases.

My "Hip Hops" column this time around is devoted to the beer at my own current place of employment. At first it seemed a tad awkward writing about myself, but given the origin of the beer program at Pints&union and the obvious personal fingerprints all over it, for once I could rationalize a wee bit of self-aggrandizement.

Cult of beer personality?

Did you hear the one about two buddies walking into a coffee shop to talk about building a brand new “old” bar?

One of them was Joe Phillips, and the other was me. We began philosophizing about life, adult beverages, curry and third spaces. This chat was the impetus for Pints&union, a pub in downtown New Albany that opened in August of 2018.

On that fateful morning at Quills, we drained a few bracing espressos and got wired – then excited. We’d both been planning an honest, traditional, no-gimmicks public house where everybody knows your name, and it seemed like a good idea to work together toward this shared goal.

Now Joe is the owner of Pints&union, and I work for him as manager of a purposefully archaic beer program, which I’ll get to in a moment. First, meet Joe Phillips and his dream pub ...