ON THE AVENUES: The pea outside the pod.

ON THE AVENUES: The pea outside the pod.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Consider this a trial balloon of sorts. I'll loft it here at NA Confidential, primarily because a fair number of folks regularly read this blog, even if they deny it afterward, and even as they're responding directly to what they never seem to be able to admit they’ve read.

It’s okay. I’m accustomed to it ... and it makes me laugh.

And no, this isn’t a trial balloon about running for office. I’ve already made the definitive statement on this matter, and look forward to the coming months organizing an insurgency. Or not.

This trial balloon is about beer, and a perennial itch to educate, pontificate and lance various boils pertaining to it.

Those among you with longer memories will recall the “Mug Shots” beer column I wrote for LEO a few years back, roughly from 2007 through 2010. It ended amid a slight disagreement with the editor at the time, who did not favor my habit of abusing one of the publication’s key advertisers (read: Anheuser-Busch, later AB-InBev) with facts related to its perpetual villainy.

During the same period, 2009 – 2011, I wrote weekly non-beer guest columns for the pre-merger New Albany Tribune. This portal closed when the New Albany and Jeffersonville newspapers were combined at the behest of semi-literate pensioners in Alabama, and my good faith proposal at the time to help the incoming editor economize his operation by swapping my civic guest column for a new beer column has met with dead air until the present day.

The key element for me both times, at LEO and the ‘Bune, was the fact that my work resulted in remuneration, albeit it scant. Writing isn’t easy, at least not the way I must go about doing it in order to get it done. We cannot all be Isaac Asimov.

In much the same way as "On the Avenues" replaced the Tribune column, I eventually used the Potable Curmudgeon blog to do a "Wednesday Weekly" beer column for a year or so (2010-2011), which then segued into a space called "Baylor on Beer" at LouisvilleBeer.com.

It was my good friend and former NABC salesman John Campbell who originally brought me into LouisvilleBeer.com when it began in 2011. He subsequently departed, but my column has been there ever since, as barter for a small NABC advertisement. At some juncture the name of the column was changed to "The Potable Curmudgeon," and then I transformed it into a weekly (on Monday mornings) instead of every other week. Given that writing is hard work, deadlines and regularity help boost the work ethic.

My quarterly beer writing gig at Food and Dining magazine has not changed, and has been a constant for ten years. I get a few farthings for that one, too.

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So, it is now 2014. At this point in time, in my chosen profession of all things beer, I'm in roughly the same position as Willie and Waylon were in 1973. I'm out of synch with the new normal, and as good as outlaw, if not an outright crank.

I find that it suits my inner Socrates somewhat gloriously.

What’s more, being invited to participate in the University of Kentucky craft beer writing symposium this past February, and having the opportunity to be openly contrarian and counter-cultural before a crowd of bona fide listeners, proved to be crazily stimulating (and frankly, vindicating) in ways that have taken a bit of time to register.

In short, I’ve spent more than two decades writing about beer in my own peculiar way, and it’s high time I recognized that my writing has value. To be sure, we are compelled to live in an age when the prevailing expectation is that “content” of variable quality will not be remunerated in the form of cash (content providers, you have nothing to lose but your chains, although it might help to be factual now and then), and as such, I’m prepared to accept self-aggrandizement in a venue like NA Confidential -- something indisputably me, and totally mine.

Therefore, in the case of my beer column, I've been thinking that maybe it needs to move to Potable Curmudgeon and stay there. Damn the torpedoes, and full speed ahead. My audience (all six of you) will find me, or it won't. Beer “geeks” don't do long-form these days, anyway -- and my selfies are abysmal.

Lest there be any misunderstandings, I've got no deep-seated beef with the guys at LouisvilleBeer.com, and will continue to support their efforts. Maybe an op-ed on occasion. In the end, John King was right: It's not about them; it’s about me, and my recent experiences have added up to a pressing need to be solo, and to go it alone. Perhaps there comes a time when it's time to move on, revisit the grassroots, and to try something different. Maybe I’ll become a wine snob, instead.

That was a joke.

It seems that I'm doomed to this compulsive writing affliction. It's about the only skill I possess, if scattershot and incompletely self-taught for the most part. It is glaringly obvious, and has been for quite some time, that when it comes to beer, I'm not in harmony with substantial elements of contemporary beer geekery, and when I try to be, analogies of pigs and dancing spring to mind ... in both directions. It's past the time to do it by myself and for myself, in the hope that it spurs greater insight.

Up went the trial balloon, and back down it came again. Of course, I knew what I intended to do before the first paragraph was written. I’ll be transitioning my beer column to my own blog, and trying to use Potable Curmudgeon more systematically, as a platform for my out-of-touch, stubborn, contrarian tendencies.

Time to get liberated.

It’s always a refreshing and necessary act.

Beer Tuesday 2: “Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants."

As noted here previously, the realization some weeks ago that I'd be appearing in February at a craft beer writing symposium, and in the company of genuine industry heavyweights, finally got me off my duff and thinking again. There's nothing like desperately seeking to avoid embarrassment to get the wheels spinning.

The gist of my recent writing shtick is this: NABC borrowed a bunch of money and built a second brewery in 2009, and in the five years since then, it has become clear that numerous assumptions we made about craft beer and the craft beer marketplace were skewed. Sometimes they were plainly wrong -- just ask any banker.

Not that the Bank Street project has been unsuccessful, just that almost every gain recorded there in terms of beer distribution reflects an unexpected refutation of a blithe prior assumption. In my writing of late, I'm trying to determine whether our experience is unique to us, or if there are universals involved.

Of course, we've had our share of screw-ups, but I tend toward the latter, and consequently, it worries me. Any time everyone agrees on something ("craft beer is great and we're conquering the world!"), it gives me pause, because the interests of the dialectic are not being served. As I told the FOSSILS club on Sunday night, I'm not prepared to offer answers. What I'm trying to to is ask the right questions, although merely being a gadfly absent polemics simply doesn't suit me.

Confrontation? That's another story, and the shoe definitely fits.

My column at LouisvilleBeer.com is running weekly on Mondays. Just last week I had the chance to look at the numbers and see whether the column was being read. At first, it seemed depressing; typically, just a couple hundred hits each time, or roughly equal to what I get here for "On the Avenues" and popular features about health department tyranny. Then I realized that traffic was evenly distributed among the various columnists, confirming what I already knew: My only real skill is writing, and I live in an era (and write about a topic) in which there are too few readers.

However, no discouragement here. Writing is a compulsion, and I get to attend a symposium. That's edifying. This week's column is about one of my favorite books.

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Tastes of paradise can shatter mirrors

Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on January 13, 2014

I’m not in the habit of compulsively re-reading books, even those of the highly influential sort.

Of course, there are exceptions:

• The early beer writing of Michael Jackson
• “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History,” a sobering tome by John Barry
• Jim Bouton’s ribald baseball tell-all, “Ball Four”
• “A Confederacy of Dunces,” the classic New Orleans comic novel from John Kennedy Toole

Another is “Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants,” by the wonderfully named Wolfgang Schivelbusch. He is not a Groucho Marx character from Duck Soup, but a German-born cultural historian operating from a decidedly (Karl) Marxist perspective.

"The Potable Curmudgeon" -- now appearing weekly at LouisvilleBeer.com

A reminder: My columns at LouisvilleBeer.com are now running weekly, at least for so long as my muse stays happy and focused. There may be vacation weeks, but the aim is to do this 52 times in 2014. The columns will appear on Monday morning, until further notice. Here at NAC, On the Avenues continues as a weekly column, published on Thursday. After all, you're entitled to my opinions.

Most recently (and below): Beer stories and bedtime for gonzo (December 30, 2013)

All past columns are archived here.

Beer stories and bedtime for gonzo by Roger Baylor “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” --Leo Tolstoy It’s been a long, strange trip, hasn’t it? The first brewing insurgency of the modern American era began at New Albion Brewing Company, which began operations in Sonoma, California, in 1976. Auspiciously, a revolution in beer was spawned in the very same year as America’s Bicentennial celebrated the culmination of a previous uprising. As a casual student of history, I’m aware that almost inevitably, revolutions consolidate into their own systematized pecking orders, even as they mature and gravitate toward future appointments with reinvention (arguably the best case scenario) or, more often, messy counter-revolutions. Maybe we’re witnessing one or both of these outcomes just now in the world of beer.

What would the holidaze be without "beer and the pissoir"?

Our last visit to Bavaria was during Christmas, 2009, and in the purest of anthropological senses, it was a revelation to witness the holiday observed with a manner of dignity and traditional restraint, at least by prevailing and manic American consumer standards. A few of these memories surface in this week's Potable Curmudgeon essay at LouisvilleBeer.com, where I'm trying to return to writing about beer on a weekly basis.

In 2009, the genuine wintry weather in Bamberg provided ample opportunity to drink beer and eat pork indoors, in proximity to grandly tiled stoves fairly pumping heat, with an inevitable chilly contrast when it came time to use the restrooms. While not about Christmas in any specific sense, these observations now invariably strike me as seasonal. 

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Of beer and the pissoir.

Any farm boy can tell you what happens in winter, when hot liquid hits frozen ground and steam rises, and so my youthful reveries tending our livestock came back to me after I made my way from the toasty upholstered interior of the beer café, through the entry door, across a corridor, through a second door, and outside to where the restrooms were located just off the snowy, arched passageway leading from the street.

They were unheated, with a predictable temperature differential. I was in and out in a flash, returning to cool smoked lager in a far warmer room.

At least there was plumbing, albeit frigid fixtures.

In 1999, while drinking draft Baltika in Moscow at a tiny bar located in the concrete bowels of a towering modern concrete housing block, my fumbling water closet query in wholly deficient Russian was met with a shrug. The bar man gestured in the direction of what proved to be a slippery collection of muddy shrubs around the darkened corner.

It may have been Archie Bunker who observed, “You don’t buy beer, you rent it,” and your humble columnist has gleaned a fair amount of experience in such matters in his career as professional beer drinker, especially when imbibing in Europe. Many aspects of the continent’s beer and brewing cultures have changed since 1985, but none more so than a steady escalation in cleanliness and comfort of the facilities at a typical watering hole.

Good, bad or indifferent, my personal theory is that such improvements owe more to the course of the women’s liberation movement than the interest of most males in facets of basic hygiene. In all likelihood, publicans continued pointing to the bushes out back until modernity brought changes in migratory patterns, in the form of female patronage. Only then were modern plumbing solutions contemplated.

Beer and Bamberg (Germany) are gloriously intertwined, which is why I became a regular visitor so long ago. During the 2009 Christmas trip, it suddenly dawned on me that the pleasant modern urinals in the men’s room of Brauerei Spezial (founded in 1536) weren’t there until the late 1990’s. Before that, men urinated into tiled trenches running along the floor. These trenches presumably emptied into the sewer system, although sometimes it’s best to take nothing for granted.

While I hardly can attest to how it was done during the Middle Ages, or even as recently as the 1970’s, my impression is that the process of waste disposal always has differed little from my experience in Moscow, or this one in Albania, circa 1994: A lovely, contemporary wood-lined room with a spotless, modern stainless steel urinal … connected to PVC pipe, which led outside to termination just shy of the town’s riverbank.

Unscientifically speaking, you can look at the many centuries-old brewery taps and public houses in places like Bamberg and see that restrooms weren’t included in the original architectural designs. They were added later, away from the seating areas, often tacked onto the interior courtyards that are a familiar feature of these older buildings.

Modernity has deprived us of the European waste disposal mechanism I miss the least: The fearsome female restroom attendant. Sometimes she was ensconced behind sliding glass windows, but more often she remained seated at a rickety wooden table in front of the battery of stained tiles, guarding her ceramic plate, which was intended for loudly smacking coins into, indicating you’d paid the required tariff and qualified for a square of toilet paper (if really necessary).

In theory, the women were there to keep the area clean, and surprisingly, they often did just that, sometimes while you were otherwise engaged in your business. It made for initial embarrassment, but after all, they were skilled and highly professionals, only doing their jobs.

Male toilet attendants were permitted, but invariably they were less reliable than the elderly ladies, especially as the geography passed eastward from capitalism to communism. When I was teaching English in Slovakia, I was a frequent customer of a venerable drinking establishment where the restrooms were in the basement (not uncommon).

My preferred brand of beer also was the nightly preferred beverage of the subterranean lavatory commandant. Whenever his plate contained the requisite number of coins, he would climb the stairs for another pint of pay package, and by closing time, he could be found unconscious at his post, snoring in the sour, fetid air.

Now THAT’S motion-activated, folks.

At LouisvilleBeer.com: "Bourbon, bone marrow, Greg Fischer … and Stella Artois?"

Beginning now, my twice-monthly column at LouisvilleBeer.com will become a weekly, assuming a level of relative sobriety sufficient to churn out the words. It appears that I've been dubbed Craft Beer's Sweetheart, and upon closer examination, I resemble that remark.

Also up at the site is Pint/Counterpint, in which I joust periodically with Against the Grain's Adam Watson. The topic is "Beer Cellaring: Is This What the Brewers Want You to Do?", and since the two of us agree on the issue, it's left to me to be irreverent -- fortunately, something I quite enjoy.

Bourbon, bone marrow, Greg Fischer … and Stella Artois?

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEONDecember 8, 2013

My New Year’s resolution was going to be writing this column weekly, rather than twice monthly, in 2014. Might as well get started.   

Whether working as brewers, taco slingers, distillers, baristas, vintners or sous chefs, we customarily inhabit an insular space within the hospitality industry zone. Of course, the trick is […]

Written by Roger Baylor

Here's the LouisvilleBeer.com podcast link at LouisvilleAM.

The podcast has been posted -- not on the LouisvilleBeer site, which is having technical issues unrelated to this, but at LouisvilleAM.

Episode 12 – Roger Baylor of NABC

Louisvillebeer.com held a long overdue conversation with the Podcastable Curmudgeon, Roger Baylor, of New Albanian Brewing Company. Roger talks in depth on the subjects of beer geeks; his passion for localism; distributor issues; how the craft beer phenomenon has changed over the year; and the most important thing, being an “old” curmudgeon. Scott discusses BBC’s upcoming Toys for Tots campaign and Highlands Beer Festival at ValuMarket. John Wurth works for laughs while John King is questioned whether he works at all.

In which (finally) I make the Louisville Beer podcast.

John Wurth

John King (front) and Scott Lykins

Last night I was the guest of the LouisvilleBeer.com crew for a podcast, to be aired later this week; hit the web site on Tuesday evening, and check it out.

The Potable Curmudgeon at LouisvilleBeer.com: "I’m not kidding. Downtown New Albany is a craft beer destination."

Even during Harvest Homecoming ... talk about clashing paradigms.

I’m not kidding. Downtown New Albany is a craft beer destination

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEONOctober 15, 2013

I place little stock in seemingly ubiquitous on-line reader polls, and I don’t personally encourage anyone to vote. In like fashion, the New Albanian Brewing Company refrains from asking its customers and fans to cast dozens of ballots for the sake of the cause. Some of the time we are mentioned in such polls, at […]

Peter places the spotlight on LCBW, one last time.

It may interest readers to learn that I'm not the only writing member of the NABC team. Peter Fingerson, who we hired to work in the brewery a few months back, also has column space at LouisvilleBeer.com, and here's his most recent submission.

LCBW – Beginnings and Endings

Now that Louisville Craft Beer Week has come to a close, and before its memories have slipped out of our collective consciousness for a while, I feel it necessary to bring it into the spotlight one last time before that happens. By this time, it should be common knowledge that it was a success. This was the biggest, baddest (the cool sense of the word), and most well-attended LCBW to date, which is truly an amazing thing. Now we just need a way to tally how many pints were consumed throughout the week. Is there an app for that?

Roger's column at LouisvilleBeer.com: "Can we really have it all?"

Maybe we can, maybe we cannot.

Can we really have it all?

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEONOctober 1, 2013

Just the other day, I heard the news that executive chef Reed Johnson had parted ways with Against the Grain. Actually, I read the news at the Eater Louisville web site, and this merits a brief digression about changing times. It strikes me as noteworthy that a full week later, the transition at AtG still […]

At LouisvilleBeer.com: Tears of joy.

On the occasion of Louisville Craft Beer Week and IndieFest, my bimonthly column at LouisvilleBeer.com is devoted to drinking locally ... in Salzburg. The column has been published previously elsewhere, but not at LouisvilleBeer.com, and I trust my occasional recycling in hectic times does not offend.

Tears of joy at the Augustiner, 1985

Coming of age in the Ohio Valley in the 1960’s and ‘70’s meant witnessing on a depressing, first-hand basis the very nadir of beer culture in America.

In Colonial times, our beer making and drinking customs reflected English origins. Later, when Germans began coming to the United States in large numbers, their traditions traveled with them and remained intact. All big American cities and most of the smaller ones had breweries that took procedural, technical and atmospheric cues from the time-tested Central European playbook. It was a lovely thing, while it lasted.

Xenophobic sentiments in World War I did not help matters, and the idiocy of Prohibition sealed the deal, obliterating American beer culture for decades after. Following WWII, the imperial-era American preference for bland, manufactured uniformity wrenched beer from its fresh, local foundation, rendering it into watery oblivion, and subjecting beer to the multitudinous regulatory irrationalities of Bible Belt superstition.

At LouisvilleBeer.com: "No worth without principle."

My first of two September columns is up at LouisvilleBeer.com, and it's an explanation of festival strategy in a context of principle. Not a single Beer Advocate review was harmed in writing this piece. My columns at LouisvilleBeer.com appear monthly, on the 1st and 15th.

No worth without principle

Louisville’s annual Brew at the Zoo (BATZ) has come and gone, and while by most accounts it was bigger than ever in 2013, fair-minded observers can (and will) differ as to whether it was “better” this time around. So it goes, and I can’t offer a valid opinion, seeing as my weekend was spent in Lafayette, Indiana. NABC participated in the 2nd annual, Indiana-craft-only Beers Across the Wabash festival, and a wonderful time was had by all.

At this juncture some might ask, and plausibly: But Roger, you always claim to be a localist, and Lafayette is three hours away – so exactly how is that local?

There are different answers for that sort of question, some serious and others more light-hearted, as in “local is anywhere I happen to be drinking.”

At LouisvilleBeer.com: "Returning to the wisdom of the ancients."

Burnout is the perfect platform for rejuvenation. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Baby come back.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEONAugust 15, 2013

There was a time when I’d make beer lists whenever I traveled, and it dates me considerably to confide that these were compiled using a pen and paper, and perhaps transcribed and typewritten later, long after I was back home. Untappd didn’t even exist then. How on earth did we drink? The list habit started [continued]

Tuneless zombie bureaucrats? These and more pesky facts at Louisville Beer Dot Com.

What have I been doing on my summer "vacation"?

Taking swings at zombie craft beer, Forecastle and the Floyd County Health Department, that's what. By the time the fall term begins, I should have arms the size of Paul Bunyan's.

Shift to LouisvilleBeer.com to read all about it.

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Tiresome thirst-inducing critters, those pesky facts.

T

A conscientious craft beer zealot needs to stay informed about world affairs of the sort not commonly discussed at RateBeer. After all, yeast isn’t the only culture that matters, and a multi-disciplinary approach can be educational. For instance, consider the nation of Turkey, which straddles the fault line between Europe and Asia. 

Read the rest of the story

"Just about every activity the Brewers of Indiana Guild undertakes is Indiana-centric."

My columns at LouisvilleBeer.com appear on the 1st and 15th of each month. Recently I've written a two-part essay on the what might seem to some as a narrow, limited "shop talk" topic of what it means to be a brewer in Indiana, and how Indiana brewers might choose to organize their three annual signature festivals.

Indiana Statecraft, Part One

 ... As American craft brewing in the contemporary era has expanded, it has become common for craft breweries to align in professional trade groupings precisely like BIG, as delineated by state boundaries. The reason is simple: In the United States, individual states retain the bulk of the responsibility for regulating beer, brewing and breweries. While the entity known as the Brewers Association exists to coordinate the interests of craft breweries nationwide, in the state of Indiana it’s all about BIG, as described at the guild’s website.

And:

Indiana Statecraft, Part Two

 ... My solution has the merit of gently nudging Indiana wholesalers sponsoring an Indiana guild-administered festival to better support those Indiana brewers already on their sales rosters. It also provides a compelling reason for other state Guilds to become better organized, and to refine their message.

The Potable Curmudgeon: One lump or two?

At LouisvilleBeer.com, I find it easier than Fonzie to a-a-a-apologize. It's the curious case of Houndmouth at Houndmouth, and you can read the whole story at the beer site.

The Potable Curmudgeon: One lump or two?

As the venerated journalist David Brinkley once put it, “Everyone is entitled to my opinion.”

Well, that suits me.

I’m highly opinionated, and much of the verbiage comes barreling out of my subconscious via the written word. For me, writing is a compulsion of sorts, and it comes with a sincere hope that my words will be read.

What I write, I always sign. Anonymity is tantamount to cowardice. I win some and I lose some, and there also is an inescapable element of living and dying by the rhetorical sword, but at least it’s always me.

Give and take in the debate is common, but every now and then, there’ll be a complaint to the effect that someone, somewhere, has taken offense at my words.

I’m delighted with feedback, since it means someone actually was reading, and so I’m quite willing to discuss particulars, as long as we’re reasonably clear about parameters: All I ask is that the wrong words not be placed in my mouth, because I’m wholly capable of uttering foolishness without anyone else’s help.

My column at LouisvilleBeer.com is about Indiana craft brewing.

A quick note: Those tracking progress of this year's "artisan distilling" legislation in Indiana will be pleased to know that it passed and has been signed by the governor. I'm told there are a few stray wording clean-ups to occur in 2014, but the main hurdle has been cleared. Rep. Ed Clere was the prime mover of this legislation, and deserves credit accordingly.

Tomorrow I'll be attending a meeting in West Lafayette aimed at coordinating the Brewers of Indiana Guild, Purdue University and state government toward the aim of establishing agricultural research in areas pertaining to beer and brewing (it's been done for a long time with grapes and winemaking).

Maybe some hops and barley growing, and a micro-malting business in Indiana? It might happen if we can manage row in the same direction.

Indiana Statecraft (Part One)

What was that?

How many breweries are located in the state of Indiana?

Only your friendly statewide trade organization knows for sure, although with the situation changing so quickly from week to week, the Brewers of Indiana Guild (BIG) probably isn’t capable of a completely accurate count, either.

The best guesstimate bandied about during BIG’s annual meeting in April was about 63 operating breweries, with as many as a dozen more in the planning stages.

At LouisvilleBeer.com: "The Sahara of Slugger Field."

In the days since I filed this column, Against the Grain's Sam Cruz was asked by Eater Louisville to elaborate on the tweets I mention herein. Here's the link. Sam's also been discussing the same topic at the Louisville Restaurants Forum. Nothing has been heard from the team or concessionaire; no surprise there.

Coincidentally, Against the Grain's also about to garner some great publicity in Europe: Against the Grain road trip: "The Euro market is no stranger to Against the Grain beers."

Back to baseball: I've also recently taken a cursory look at the scene in Toledo and Columbus, Ohio cities where Triple-A ballparks seem to have a tighter grip on the modern world. As time permits, I'll continue to review choices in other places when the Bats travel elsewhere.

The Sahara of Slugger Field by Roger Baylor

It's not even the best of AB-InBev

The Triple-A Louisville Bats began play earlier this month amid the usual hot stove and cold fridge speculation as to whether Louisville Slugger Field finally would join the craft (beer) (food) (bourbon) (dining) (localism) (choose one) revolution currently underway in Louisville, as well as in most other baseball outposts scattered through the remainder of the United States.

If you’ve lived in these parts for any amount of time and possess the patience to read this far, you’ve already guessed the answer.

Roger's column at LouisvilleBeer.com: "Quality Patrol."

My columns appear twice monthly at LouisvilleBeer.com, where it's still possible to ... yeah, you know the rest of the spiel.

Quality Patrol

The 2013 Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) took place in the nation’s capital last week, and my record remains unblemished, because I’ve never attended a single one of them.

I’ve nothing whatever against it, and some day, I’ll manage to make the trip. It’s just that ever since it first dawned on me to pay attention to the CBC, there hasn’t been time to take off work to go. That’s because this particular beer guy, whom I’m told never works, somehow always finds himself busy … working, which is curious when one considers that no one else seems to be.

In fact, the past two weeks would have been better spent on a lizard schnapps bender at a Molotov cocktail bar in Pyongyang, as opposed to trying (in vain) to accomplish anything around these parts.

"Killa Stella" -- read the whole column at LouisvilleBeer.com

There'll be more to say about horse pimps and foreign beer as Derby approaches. Until then, remember that Stella is Belgian for beer just like Foster's is Australian for beer, which is to say, it isn't at all.

Killa Stella

In his autobiographical book, “The Factory of Facts,” the Belgian-American writer Luc Sante recalls the drab post-WW II industrial reality of his childhood home of Verviers, a city in the Wallonian rustbelt. Reading Sante’s reflections on a society stratified by factory life and traumatized by its wartime experiences, my thoughts turned to lager beer, which originated in and around the German lands, to the east of Belgium.

We know that lager developed in lockstep with the industrial revolution throughout Europe, gradually departing from its original, artisanal methods to fatally embrace pure science utterly devoid of a guiding aesthetic, eventually supplanting traditional ale styles – many of which survived only in the countryside in cantankerous places like Sante’s Belgium.