THE BEER BEAT: The revenge of analog in terms of drinking beer? I like the idea.

The single most memorable beer article I came across during the past week didn't so much as mention beer, not even once.

Instead, the article in question is a brief rumination on the message to be gleaned from a new book by David Sax called The Revenge Of Analog: Real Things And Why They Matter.

In consideration of this book, Oliver Burkeman conjures a killer paragraph.

Get real: why analogue refuses to die; In all sorts of industries, analogue products are making a comeback, by Oliver Burkeman (The Guardian)

 ... Analogue, in short, demands that you make a decision – to read this one book, write this sentence, take this photo – while digital keeps luring us on with the promise of perfection and infinite choice. So it’s not just that Apple hasn’t got fingerprint recognition (or whatever) right just yet; it’s that the trajectory it’s on – toward a device that does everything, perfectly – is unattainable, and thus doomed never to satisfy.

Here is an excerpt from the New York Times review of Sax's book.

In his captivating new book, “The Revenge of Analog,” the reporter David Sax provides an insightful and entertaining account of this phenomenon, creating a powerful counternarrative to the techno-utopian belief that we would live in an ever-improving, all-digital world. Mr. Sax argues that analog isn’t going anywhere, but is experiencing a bracing revival that is not just a case of nostalgia or hipster street cred, but something more complex.

You're no doubt saying to yourself:

"Wait. What does beer have to do with this? Hasn't beer always been analog? It comes in some sort of container. It is liquid. We drink it. By definition, beer isn't digital."

True, but the expansive forward march of beer's digital presence mirrors Burkeman's point about the false lure of "perfection and infinite choice." To me, the digital realm once seemed to offer a panacea of information and enhanced knowledge, but now it strikes me as having sucked the joy of discovery from the pursuit of the perfect pint.

And like Michael "Beer Hunter" Jackson, I intend this quest to last a lifetime. Maybe the perfect pint isn't the next best-seller. It might be a golden oldie.

To me, a disproportionate amount of time is spent photographing, rating and quantifying the act of drinking beer, with all of these tasks achieved digitally, such that we risk completely overshadowing the pure analog experience of appreciating beer by suffocating it beneath a digital veneration that borders on narcissism.

Let's put it this way: Not once can I recall allowing my opinion of a good beer bar to be influenced by the availability or absence of Wi-Fi. Rather, everything about drinking a good beer in a clean, well-lighted place (or for that matter, a dismal dive) is analog. It's tactile. It's about being out in public, interacting with humans. It's talking, smelling, laughing, tasting, breathing and pursuing timelessness.

Obviously, I'm not advocating the death of digital, as I'm fully cognizant of the potential irony attendant to explaining analog's revenge by means of an electronic blog post viewed by many readers via a smart phone. So be it. Document beer and drink it as you please, because I may not be addressing you, anyway, but if you're nodding your head in analog agreement ... well, maybe the inspiration is guiding me nearer that pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel.

My pub project in development was hinted at just last year:

ON THE AVENUES: An imaginary exercise tentatively called The Curmudgeon Free House.

I believe in fundamentals and essentials; as you may recall from the 2015 campaign, these strike me as vital every single day, as opposed to every now and then. Can better beer be repurposed this way, and taken back to the future?

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AFTER THE FIRE: Before the deluge, or knowing how this whole beer business started.

Rather, my contrarian instincts tell me that the beer climate is ripe for a modest, thoughtful return to basics, emblemized by a relatively small list of classics on draft, and in bottles and cans, to be accompanied by some good, old-fashioned beer education, which seems to have been tossed aside in the era of mile-wide, inch-deep “craft” fandom.

I wrote at the time that a key element to my project is opportunism, and this hasn't changed. You should know that I've never been very good about rushing into things without the operational rationale being clearly mapped in my brain -- not so much the details, which are mutable and forever capable of being negotiated, but the governing mission statement.

The Curmudgeon needs a cause, and this notion of analog's revenge as it pertains to the appreciation of better beer is another useful piece in the puzzle. My imagined project finally begins to seem possible in the real world.

I'll keep you posted.

ON THE AVENUES: Sixteen of one, thirty five of another.

ON THE AVENUES: Sixteen of one, thirty five of another.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

When Gravity Head comes calling, familiar space and time continuums can be briefly altered. Normal routines are rendered Byzantine by comparison. Life’s infinite horizons narrow, and one reverts to existence by the hour, minute by minute. Passing through the looking glass bores by comparison.

I’m not speaking of the fest’s actual commencement, because once the opening bell sounds on Friday morning, we all collectively observe the Sidney Freedman dictum from television’s M*A*S*H: “Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice - pull down your pants and slide on the ice.”

No, it’s the preparation for Gravity Head that saps working days and requires so much attention to detail during the run-up to the bacchanalia. We might choose to do it differently, but when it comes to what has unexpectedly become a tradition, the array of minor points adds up to a greater sum. It’s just a beer fest, but it’s more, and different from the rest.

In my opinion, the fundamental difference has been that from the very start, when we decided to have a second Gravity Head, we had no idea what the “proper” organization of a beer festival was supposed to be. Conventional wisdom eluded us, for which I remain grateful. Our aim has been to provide our regular customers and locally-based friends with as many opportunities as possible to taste a few special beers over a period of time. That’s it.

The beers never have been served all at once. They unfold in waves over a period of weeks. We don’t do flights, because flights imply a “right” to taste them all. Rather, the desired end is for folks to taste a few, and then return another time and taste a few more. Not too many at once, because they’re strong.

Of course, Gravity Head’s opening day has become somewhat of a scrum, and a singular tradition all its own. I’m content with the interior logic occurring there, but it isn’t what I look forward to experiencing each year. Rather, there’ll inevitably be a quiet Tuesday night on the second or third week, with a handful of friends, and leisurely, contemplative sipping of one or two quality libations, spiced with conversation. These are the precious times that lead to feelings of timelessness.

And timelessness is why I like beer, among other reasons.

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The 16th edition of Gravity Head begins tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. at NABC’s Pizzeria & Public House. It reminds me that 2014 marks the 35th year of my professional beer drinking career.

The autumn of 1979 provided a familiar impetus for renouncing amateur status and turning pro. There was a messy breakup of a relationship, and one morning during the worst of it my car suddenly veered away from IU Southeast’s parking lot in the direction of a nearby package store. I wasn’t carded, and breakfast magically became two quart bottles of Colt ’45.

There was no looking back – except at those embryonic years of preparation, perpetually trapped in adolescence, but looking enviously at juicy adult privileges just around the corner.

Apart from wee nips taken during childhood from bottles of my father’s Oertels 92, my first real "cold one" was consumed at a junior high school party. Actually, four of us split a single can of Budweiser while hiding in the woods, safe from the prying eyes of the hostess’s parents, ostensibly attaining instant credibility by boasting of beer on our breaths and inexpertly mimicking the outward appearance of drunkenness.

Later, like so many generations of New Albanians, my gang ascended another rung around the time that our first driver’s licenses were issued. Wheels meant easy access to the bountiful paradise of Louisville’s west end liquor stores, just down Vincennes Street and across the claustrophobic steel lanes of the K & I toll bridge.

Raging acne and social ineptitude generally precluded my being chosen as the one to go inside Liken’s or the Corner Store. Consequently, I was at the mercy of my companions’ tastes in beer, and this was problematic, because at this early stage of my palatal development the "flavor" of a beer was the single biggest impediment to ingesting its desired alcohol. My friends liked Sterling and Pabst. I didn’t, but they were doing the heavy lifting of acquisition. Being in no position to argue, I learned to adapt by chilling.

The colder the beer, the less “flavor” it had, and the more I could drink of it. Accordingly, my mission in life became Styrofoam cooler maintenance – to nurture it, to protect it from harm, and most importantly, to keep it filled with ice.

But in high summer the cans got warm very quickly. Crammed into the back seat of a late model junker, and pulling the tab on an ice-cold can straight from the ice, I managed to down the first frozen gulps before being overwhelmed with the dismaying recognition that in spite of all reasonable precautions, the can still contained rapidly warming Sterling or Pabst.

Chugging made me gag. What to do?

A sufficient interval would pass, enough to encourage a carload’s presumption that the warm and thoroughly vile can in my hand had been emptied, and then the time would arrive for throwing it out the window. This called for consummate skill. In the fetid humidity of a hot summer evening, misjudging the distance from the open window of a moving car to the muffled cushion of a grassy rural roadside meant disgrace if a loud "thump" echoed through the valley as the half-full can struck unrelenting pavement.

The verbal abuse to follow was not at all good-natured. After all, hadn’t we driven all the way to Louisville to spend every last dime on beer?

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And so it came to pass that in this manner, slumped shamefully in the back seat trying desperately to choke down a warm Sterling, I resolved to become a better beer drinker than all of them.

Granted, the precise meaning of “better” remained unclear, but as the others began to plan their careers in physics, cosmetology, and insurance sales, I worked at developing a feel for the generic concept of beer, which I came to understand as light-bodied and usually bastardized when compared to the golden continental lager that inspired it, and a taste for its flavor, or at least those discernable qualities differentiating it from cola and orange juice.

After turning pro, these youthful stumbles were brushed aside in favor of broader experiences. It was hard work to progress from the degradation of Schaefer "Weekender" 30-packs to the sublime pinnacle of Belgian Trappists and American Barley Wines, but at least those swill-soaked years of my youth were not wasted. Unless they were. I’m glad I’m older now.

Happy Gravity Head!

ON THE AVENUES: Drink real beer or die ... of boredom.

ON THE AVENUES: Drink real beer or die ... of boredom.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

This is quite strange.

I’ve always viewed the information superhighway as a convoluted maze of sorts, with plenty of mud paths and dead end alleys branching out in all directions from the modern clover leaf interchanges and shiny new stop ‘n’ robs, including more than a few decaying ghost towns in the style of western American states – broken glass, tumbleweeds rolling, coyotes wailing and tourist shutters snapping.

At work, we used to have a domain called richos.com, which passed from our control at some misty juncture when a renewal payment wasn’t made. It didn’t matter so much by then, because newalbanian.com was fully active, but the previous skeletal remains have continued to be visible, appended with links to cheap Viagra and Nigerian moneylenders, in keeping with ownership somewhere in the steppes of the former USSR – where the ghost towns come Chernobyl-sized.

Last night I inadvertently discovered that while presumably, the domain itself is as misplaced as ever, a complete snapshot of it can be accessed via some sort of Internet archive. There it is, vintage 2002, and while eleven years may not seem so long to you, it’s like an entirely different business was being operated back then.

Most days I can’t remember which beer I had for breakfast, so it should come as no surprise that the old website’s contents had long since become synonymous with lengthy gaps in Richard Nixon’s office recordings. Imagine my surprise and pleasure when the following polemic was revealed to have been among the centerpieces of my ideological thrust at the website. It would have been written well before 2002, and probably dates to around 1997.

Today at 53, I spend quite a lot of time contemplating the balance between the allowable percentage of narcissism in beer appreciation, and the wider interests of beer as community in a context of localism. Turns out I was on the scent at 37. As 2013 draws to a close, the major difference between then and now is my mellow imperturbability in the present age.

Right.

Let’s rewind to the Clinton administration.

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Extremism in defense of good beer is no vice, says the Publican

Drink real beer or die ... of boredom.

Among many unique talents, Americans are adept at maintaining the fiction of their individuality by means of rationalizing that a boastful allegiance to one or another mass-produced idea or commodity denotes independent thinking. Such self-delusion is infinitely less taxing than the all too arduous task of introspection that prefaces genuinely free thought.

In no other aspect of life is this more alarmingly true than when an American sets out to select a beer.

Nine out of ten Americans, most of whom are eager to pound their fists on the bar top in an impassioned defense of their uniqueness and individuality, nevertheless persist in lubricating their argumentative frenzy by buying the major national brands of beer to the exclusion of all others. In large measure, numbingly and with blind repetition, they drink the same beer each and every day.

It is a strange ritual, but it isn't entirely the fault of the consumer. What passes in America for "choice" is shaped not by rational thought or informed free will, but by pervasive forces of marketing and advertising. These abysmal disciplines enforce and maintain the status quo for products that are little more than the tasteless residue of a cynical industrial process performed with antiseptic exactitude by bloated multinational corporate entities like Anheuser-Busch, Coors and Miller.

Of course, it doesn't have to be this way. Some of us openly, loudly and proudly dissent from the norms of American beer "culture”, and we have no intention of going away quietly. Confronted with a seemingly insurmountable ocean of swill, we have ignored this expression of the tyranny of the majority and have chosen the path less traveled - - the true, revolutionary path that leads to beer that does more than provide lowest common denominator satisfaction for the American desire to quaff small, easily digestible doses of alcohol diluted in generic golden liquid, which is the product of brewing as the mass production of a commodity, one utterly lacking artistic merit, and something that is peddled to the masses in a way that would make the famous totalitarian propagandists of old blush with envy.

We'll have none of that. We demand flavor and integrity from our beer and we refuse to settle for less, because beer is important to us, and it is an important part of the story of humanity in a number of ways. The saga of beer is a long and fascinating one, with chapters that deal with all aspects of the human experience. Beer is about science and art, farms and cities, social history, local culture and geography. It's about the places you've gone, and the ones you'd like to go. It's about different textures and flavors to match your mood, the time of day, the season, and the task at hand.

Beer is all about pleasure, and it is my unshakeable belief that the pleasure of beer is enhanced by bolstering one's knowledge of its diversity, and applying this knowledge to everyday life. We all recognize that life is short, and there are so many things to do and to learn, and so very little time, but there's always time for a good beer - - so why not make that beer the best one possible?

If we are to define ourselves in even a small way by the beer we drink, we should do it ourselves, actively, with our minds and our palates in concert, and not because a bikini-clad model, an animated reptile or any other manifestation of corporate America has told us to do it.

The daily experience of our pub flows naturally from these revolutionary principles. We espouse the values of good beer, good food and a good life. We encourage the art of conversation and the marvelous times that follow from it. We enjoy the life of the pub, and the integrity to be discovered therein, and we want our guests to enjoy it, too.

Or, you can make it a Bud Light.

Case closed.

The sordid annals of beer snobbery, volume 431.

Ray Daniels and his Cicerone certification program get some cyber ink in Slate. In the spirit of evangelical outreach, I offer this link to the little people of New Albany: It's never too late to change your "piss water" ways, and have yourself a real beer.

Beer Me, Sommelier ... Why beer deserves the same kind of expertise as wine, by Mark Garrison (Slate)

 ... Engert is a character one rarely finds in the wine landscape. One of the joys of good beer is that it’s far more accessible than the sometimes elitist and expensive wine world. Before I explored the new movement in beer service, I was a bit worried that it might be taking the beverage in the direction of wine’s worst excesses. But I don’t worry about that any longer. The people who are working on upgrading service knowledge do want beer to be as respected as fine wine and spirits are. But they are also deeply committed to preserving the affordability and unpretentiousness that set beer apart and to celebrating the breathtaking range of flavors and styles that make it special.

Your continuing beer education: "Here's to Beer" non-credit IUS course returns this Fall, 2011.

My "Here's to Beer" Indiana University Southeast non-credit course returns on Wednesdays this fall, with sections starting in September and November. Enrollment is underway now. Both sections are identical, designed for "beginners" just coming to the sunny side of beer enthusiasm, so don't fear the dark, and consider picking one of them and attending.

September 21, 28; October 5, 12

November 2, 9, 16 & 30

Yes, you must be 21, and classes take place at the NABC Pizzeria & Public House at 3312 Plaza Drive (just off Grant Line Road) in New Albany. For $69, you get four class sessions, generous beer samples, and a mode of presentation that hasn't yet devolved to power point. It's oral history, sometimes incisive, other times rambling.

Official Course Description: Here's to Beer! (101).

Is beer the new wine? It's definitely no longer your grandfather's fizzy lager, and you'll learn why with the help of NABC's longtime brew guru, Roger A. Baylor, who will guide you through the brewing process, discuss beer's history in society and culture, and survey beer's many styles from Dark Mild to India Pale - all with appropriate samples.

Note: After successfully completing 101, students become eligible to register for Even More to Beer (202), an advanced beer education class that will be offered in Spring, 2012.

Get on board by visiting Indiana University Southeast’s web site via the links above, and for more, read this IUS Horizon newspaper article from spring, 2010: "Non-credit course educates students on history of beer."