BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Better to support Tailspin Ale Fest, your LOCAL beer festival, than fluff those carpetbaggers from afar.

Okay, listen up. Personal point of view, and nothing to do with the people who pay me.

The last time I wrote anything in this space about Tailspin Ale Fest was in 2017.

THE BEER BEAT: Tailspin Ale Fest returns to Bowman Field on Saturday, February 18.

In my view, Tailspin Ale Fest has become Louisville's premier beer festival, and it's the brainchild of New Albany's own Tisha Gainey.

There are two primary reasons for this period of evident neglect. First, in complete candor, I'm not such a beer festival goer these days. Moreover, Tailspin has been a spectacular success, and who needs to hear me tout it, anyway? After all, it's been a while since I had a Top 10 beer hit.

Tisha assures me that ticket sales for 2020 are on track, and the reason I know this is because I messaged her to ask -- and the reason for that was the advent of something called Louisville Beerfest this weekend. It's a festival presented by out-of-towners, and it's taking place on what seems to me the weekend previously used by Tailspin.

I wrote them to ask about it.

What I haven’t seen addressed in recent media accounts about your new beer festival is the timing for early February, a time slot most of us from Louisville have come to associate with the Tailspin festival, which is run by a woman who has lived and worked in Louisville for a long time. I notice that Tailspin attributes its new March slot as resulting from the scheduling conflict with your festival.

Was all this the result of cooperation between the two entities? That’s not the way it sounds, but I’m hesitant to make assumptions without asking. I’d like to think it was discussed up front.

This was two weeks ago. The schmucks haven't answered. The company behind this venture seems to have been dumping tickets, and while it's just my opinion and mine alone, the whole thing leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.

You know, the way drinking Coors Light does. 

Here's the latest notice from Tailspin. Lots of events act as lead-ins for this local festival, and this Against the Grain/Tailspin Tapping at Crescent Hill Craft House is one of them.

Saturday, February 15 from 6 - 8 p.m. at Crescent Hill Craft House

Enjoy a tapping of Against the Grain Beers at Crescent Hill Craft House and a chance to WIN tickets to Tailspin Ale Fest. No purchase necessary to win, but gain extra entries by enjoying Citra Ass Down IPA, A Beer or Pile of Face. Ticket drawing will be at 8:00 p.m.

MORE INFO HERE.

BUY TAILSPIN ALE FEST TICKETS

Tailspin Ale Fest
March 7, 2020
Louisville Executive Aviation Center

If you're going to attend a beer fest in Louisville this year (Keg Liquors Fest of Ale is in SoIn, natch), isn't Tailspin the one you should be selecting? Tisha and here team always have great beers. It's not 95 degrees outside. And, the part of importance to me whether or not I show up, it's a local show.

Consider it, and have fun.

The Great Taste of the Midwest is today. It is the best beer fest of them all, and Madison, Wisconsin is awesome, too.

As I'm reminded while scrolling through the Twitter feed, today is the Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison, Wisconsin -- my favorite beer festival as staged in a city where I'd love to live if not for a lifelong indifference to capital accumulation.

New Albanian Brewing Company was a part of GTMW for 10 years or thereabouts, and it was "great" fun. Following are two posts, both of which previously appeared at my Potable Curmudgeon blog: First an essay from 2016 (beware dated information), then photos from 2011.

---

October 10, 2016

AFTER THE FIRE: The Great Taste of the Midwest is the best beer fest of them all. 

For the second weekend of October, we went to Wisconsin to escape New Albany’s annual Harvest Homecoming festival. While in Madison, Fred Swanson joined us on Saturday afternoon for a couple of beers.

Fred’s been an organizer of the Great Taste of the Midwest beer festival from the start, and his official title these days seems to be “brewery liaison.” All it really means is that Fred and other members of the Madison Homebrewers and Tasters Guild work year-round to stage a bucket-list-quality beer gathering. They’re to be thanked and venerated for doing so.

The New Albanian Brewing Company participated in the Great Taste from 2005 through 2014, and I was on hand for perhaps seven of these appearances. NABC has dropped out the past two Augusts, which I find regrettable, but can do absolutely nothing about.

Que sera sera … and so it goes ... with this and so many other avenues in life.

Chatting with Fred back in wonderful Madison served as a reminder of those good times. It also got me thinking about the notion of beer festivals in a general sense. What follows is an amalgam of several previous ruminations, building to shameless praise for the Great Taste.

That’s as it should be.

---

Let’s begin during the halcyon days of my youth in Southern Indiana, when summer always brought a profusion of outdoor beer festivals.

So did fall, winter and spring.

At 17 years of age, looking more like 13, living at home, ducking prying eyes and requiring divine intervention to get served at rarely obliging package stores, natural settings constantly beckoned.

Priority was placed on those patches of isolated farmland belonging to folks who didn’t know or care that we’d found someone older to procure the cheapest swill possible, borrow a steel tub otherwise used to hydrate future beefsteak, buy ice, and await the grapevine-laden onslaught of teenagers who’d learned there was a field party abruptly in progress.

When it rained, we got soaked; not the worst conceivable outcome in hot weather, especially if any girls bothered to come -- which was seldom.

Every now and then, a measure of transcendence was achieved, and an enterprising reader might insert one of Bob Seger’s nostalgic AM radio hits to accompany this narrative, although I never liked his music very much after “Katmandu,” heard for the first time – where else? – at a summertime outdoor beer festival in the Knobs, with any style of beer you wanted for thoughtful sampling so long as it was Falls Sh(expletive)y, and tunes like Seger’s blaring from the subpar radio of a car stuck axle-deep in a muddy field littered with cigarette butts and spent plastic cups.

Decades have passed, and nowadays, lying about one’s age generally implies a downward revision of chronological information on Facebook. Falls City, our illicitly old-fashioned lunch pail lager, went away – and then reappeared with a craft nouveau makeover. It's not an expletive any longer.

Outdoor beer festivals have evolved considerably, too, bearing little resemblance to the midsummer’s night screams we staged during the presidency of Jimmy Carter – who, after all, legalized homebrewing, but probably never experienced the nuzzle of a well-turned beer bong in the steamy July drizzle.

---

As befits the era of “craft” beer’s ascendancy, today’s outdoor beer festivals take place in summer – and also in fall, winter and spring. They’re devoted to the exaltation of contemporary brewing, and follow a common template.

Ideally, breweries and wholesalers provide a diverse selection of beers, and when possible, brewers and beer sales representatives will be on hand to answer questions and provide insights. A festival entry fee covers numerous, if not always truly unlimited, wee tastes of these many beers.

Local purveyors vend food, and musical entertainment typically deriving from the rock, pop, blues and bluegrass spectrum is offered, although just once I’d love to hear a string quartet performing modern chamber compositions, or a rollicking Klezmer band covering the Ramones.

As billed, “craft” beer festivals enhance the genre’s visibility through heightened consciousness and increased recognition. They also give back to the community by supporting chosen charities – and if they don’t, suspicion is fully warranted.

Reduced entry prices for designated drivers and the encouragement of moderation theoretically illustrate that beer consciousness and social conscience go together like espresso beans and imperial stout.

In Louisville, the scrum known as Brew at the Zoo probably remains the largest outdoor “craft” beer festival. Keg Liquors Fest of Ale is the best, with props to Louisville Independent Business Alliance’s annual local brewfest and Tailspin Ale fest, although the latter are partly indoors and partly outside (in Louisville Slugger Field and a Bowman Field aircraft hangar, respectively).

Speaking personally, my favorite festive rite of summertime beer held in an outdoor setting takes place each year on the second Saturday in August: It’s the Great Taste of the Midwest, in Madison, Wisconsin.

---

The Great Taste of the Midwest is 30 years young, and has been directed from inception by the Madison Homebrewers and Tasters Guild. It is justifiably celebrated throughout Craft Beer Nation. There are more than 150 breweries in attendance, serving samples of 1,000 beers for five hours to more than 6,000 attendees who congregate amid the pleasing greenery of Olin Park on the shore of Lake Monona.

For the participating brewers, who occupy a finite number of display slots and abhor the thought of losing their place in line, the Great Taste is no ordinary festival gig. Brewers bring their “A” teams to Madison, and few beer festivals inspire such good-natured competition, with rare ales and lagers aplenty, and limited releases occurring throughout the afternoon.

(As a side note, Fred remarked that one brewery recently eschewed the practice of hyping “special limited releases” in favor of organizing its everyday core lineup in precisely the same teasing manner: “At 4:00 p.m. – Kӧlsch,” or some such. That’s wickedly appropriate).

Lucky ticket holders cherish these liquid rewards, and fortunate they surely are, because to be sampling within the compound means beating considerable odds. The Great Taste of the Midwest sells out months in advance, and last-minute road trips are discouraged unless you have a guaranteed “in.” For those lacking ducats, there’s a thriving “resale” market under the trees near the festival entrance, and of course, the usual proliferation of on-line scalpers’ bazaars.

There simply is no equal to the Great Taste. It is savory and savvy, its clientele customarily well-behaved, and the organizers among the friendliest and most efficient you’ll find anywhere. Best of all for an unreconstructed social democrat like me, the state capital has a noticeably leftist tinge, so much so that Wisconsin residents of a more right-leaning persuasion routinely refer to the city as the People’s Republic of Madison.

Consider this:

Since this IS Wisconsin, children whose attending parents wish their children to sample beer must pay the full admission price. Parents of consuming children cannot allow their children to ask for pours. The parent must hand the minor the drink and must remain with the minor at all times. No exceptions!

In Indiana or Kentucky, we'd be in jail for this.

When your number comes up at a future Great Taste ticket lottery, plan ahead. Reserve hotel rooms early, and save time for the proliferation of fine breweries in Madison (Great Dane, Ale Asylum, Vintage, Next Door, Karben4, One Barrel, Rockhound, Wisconsin Brewing, and on, and on) as well as nearby, including Capitol in adjacent Middleton, Grumpy Troll and Lake Louie, and New Glarus’s namesake brewing shrine roughly 25 miles south.

On the day of the show, start by attending the incredible farmers’ market, which surrounds the Wisconsin capitol on all four sides and features edibles ranging from ostrich jerky to the freshest squeaky cheese curds on record. Bring a camp chair and some sunscreen, and drink plenty of water during your session. Study the program, and target your choices, because some of them won’t last long.

The Great Taste of the Midwest represents the thinking man’s way of drinking. Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, you can take more from the Great Taste than it takes from you.

---

August 13, 2011

Great Taste Roadtrip 2011: Saturday, August 13 (GTMW).

No comments ... just a crazy, fun and enriching day by Lake Monona with the Craft Nation faithful.

New Albany Beer Week, Part One: Long live Keg Liquors Fest of Ale, an indisputable annual beer institution.

Fest of Ale home page

Fest of Ale ticket information here.

---

I celebrated my 14th birthday on August 3, 1974 -- in Wyoming, perhaps, or maybe Montana. We were on vacation, headed toward Washington state and a reunion with one of my dad's World War II buddies. On August 9 at the Mount Rainier National Park lodge we joined a crowd gathered downstairs in the lobby, standing around a lone radio atop a chair by the fireplace.

The occasion was Richard Nixon's resignation speech.

A couple months later my beloved Oakland A's won a third consecutive World Series against the Dodgers. Nixon quit, then the A's won. My favorite album was Deep Purple's Burn. I can remember little else about 1974, the year I celebrated my 14th birthday.

Returning to the here and now, the 14th edition of Keg Liquors Fest of Ale will take place at New Albany’s Riverfront Amphitheater on Saturday, June 1. It will be the fourth iteration of the festival in New Albany. Last year was a sellout, with somewhere around 2,000 area beer fans in attendance.

This might sound like a crush of humanity, but it isn’t. The major regional stops on the beer festival tour sometimes host as many as 8,000 guests, with Port-A-Lets extending around the entire perimeter like Donald Trump’s walled-in Marred-Ameri-Lago.

Festival founder and package store owner Todd Antz has grown Fest of Ale slowly and organically, from the parking lot adjacent to his original Clarksville store to St. Anthony’s lawn, and now along the banks of the Ohio. It’s an urban area, and yet still presents a pastoral scene of greenery, passing barges and the rising sun architectural imagery of the amphitheater itself.

We pause now for a misty-eyed flashback to the halcyon days of my youth in Southern Indiana -- say, during the James Earl Carter administration -- when men were men, beer was beer and craft was a mail order do-it-yourself birdhouse.

---

Summertime invariably inspired a profusion of outdoor beer festivals, as did fall, winter and spring.

At 17 years of age, looking more like 12, living at home, ducking prying eyes and requiring divine intervention to get served at rarely obliging package stores like the one Todd’s father ran (in fact we never went to Keg because they ALWAYS carded), natural settings constantly beckoned as an alternative.

Priority was placed on those patches of isolated farmland belonging to folks who didn’t know or care that we’d found someone older to procure the cheapest swill possible, borrow a steel tub otherwise used to hydrate future beefsteak, buy ice, and await the grapevine-laden onslaught of teenagers who’d learned without the benefit of social media that a field party was in progress.

When it rained, we got soaked; not the worst conceivable outcome in hot weather, especially if any girls bothered to come -- which was seldom.

Every now and then, a measure of transcendence was achieved, and an enterprising reader might insert one of Bob Seger’s nostalgic AM radio hits to accompany this narrative, although I never liked his music very much after “Katmandu,” which I heard for the first time – where else? – at a summertime outdoor beer festival in the Knobs, with any style of beer you wanted for thoughtful sampling so long as it was Sterling or Falls Shitty, and with tunes like Seger’s blaring from the crackly sub-par radio of a car stuck axle-deep in a muddy field littered with cigarette butts and spent plastic cups.

Decades have passed, and nowadays, lying about one’s age generally implies a downward revision of chronological information on Facebook. Falls City, our illicitly old-fashioned lunch pail lager, went away – and then reappeared with a craft nouveau makeover. It's not an expletive any longer, thank heavens.

Outdoor beer festivals have evolved considerably, too, bearing little resemblance to the midsummer’s night screams we staged during Carter's presidency. Billy's brother legalized homebrewing, but he probably never experienced the welcoming nuzzle of a well-turned beer bong in the steamy July drizzle.

---

As befits the era of “craft” beer’s ascendancy, today’s outdoor beer festivals are devoted to the exaltation of contemporary brewing, and follow a common template.

Ideally visiting breweries and wholesalers provide a diverse selection of beers, and when possible, brewers and beer sales representatives are on hand to answer questions and provide insights. A festival entry fee covers numerous, if not always truly unlimited, wee tastes of these many beers.

Local purveyors vend food, and musical entertainment typically deriving from the rock, pop, blues and bluegrass spectrum is offered, although just once I’d love to hear a string quartet performing modern chamber compositions, or a rollicking Klezmer band covering the Ramones.

As billed, “craft” beer festivals enhance the genre’s visibility through heightened consciousness and increased recognition. They also give back to the community by supporting chosen charities – and if they don’t, suspicion is fully warranted.

Reduced entry prices for designated drivers and the encouragement of moderation illustrate that beer consciousness and social conscience go together like espresso beans and imperial stout.

The template might be common, but the execution separates the pros from the amateurs. In Louisville, the collegiate scrum known as Brew at the Zoo probably remains the largest outdoor “craft” beer festival, although perhaps it has been eclipsed by Tailspin Ale Fest, held at Bowman Field.

In terms of organization, there is no comparison. Unlike the zoo free-for-all, Tailspin is a class act conceived and organized by Tisha Gainey, Todd’s cousin; as you can see, good taste and attention to detail runs in the family. Tailspin is tops in Louisville, and Fest of Ale has no competition in Southern Indiana.

(Speaking personally, my favorite festive rite of summertime beer held in an outdoor setting takes place each year on the second Saturday in August: It’s the Great Taste of the Midwest, in Madison, Wisconsin. If you’re a beer nut, you owe it to yourself to install the Great Taste in one of your bucket list slots.)

Let’s close with a flashback to Saturday, June 2, 2007. It was the second Fest of Ale, held behind the store on Highway 131 -- had it yet been renamed Lewis & Clark Parkway? – and what I’ll never forget is what happened when a brief thunderstorm slammed the fest site.

Instead of running for cover, everyone grabbed the tent framework’s steel rods with one arm to keep it from blowing to Oz.

The other arm?

Priorities, my friend, because there's no "here, hold my beer" for the truly pure of heart.

I reported on the 2007 event.

“Yesterday was the second annual Fest of Ales at Keg Liquors in Clarksville, and store owner and beer enthusiast Todd Antz surely must be happy with the results.

“After last year’s inaugural event, Todd did some necessary tweaking. He moved the date back six weeks, brought in even more breweries and wholesalers, and relentlessly advertised. I’d guess that attendance was triple that of 2006, and in spite of an hour of stormy gusts and hard rain (given the steaminess of the day, this may have helped entertain the crowd rather than hurt), those present seemed to be having a wonderful time throughout.

“The Curmudgeon’s picks of the litter?

“Upland Brewing’s Eileen Martin brought a 750 ml bottle of experimental strawberry lambic; sorry there wasn’t enough for everyone. I’m trying to score some for sampling at the annual Lambic by the Glass on June 30 at NABC.

“World Class Beverage had New Holland’s Existential on hand. It is another creative excursion into crossover territory, with the gravity and heft of a barley wine, but with an overt hoppiness that derives from ten hop additions. It has a clear, well defined balance between the malt and the hops. Who says one can’t enjoy gravity beers like this and Ol’ Shag, a barley wine from Browning’s Brewery, on a hot, sultry day? Not the Curmudgeon, for he did enjoy them.

“Another surprise for me was the complex and tasty Shmaltz He’Brew Origin Pomegranate Ale, brewed with (duh) pomegranate juice. It’s handled in Indiana by Cavalier.

“Louisville-area breweries were well represented, too, and all the styles I tasted were quite good, and to conclude, who doesn’t like fresh-fried, Elector-battered grouper from Bistro New Albany’s Dave Clancy?

“Fest of Ale is sure to grow next year. Try not to miss it.”

Mighty prescient of me, wasn’t it?

Fest of Ale has grown tremendously during the past decade, and one way to look at it is by calculating the number of beers available for sampling (an estimated 250 from 100 breweries in 2018), although an even better indication of the fest’s success is Todd’s justifiable pride at having topped the $100,000 mark in donations to the Crusade for Children ($16,000 in 2018 alone).

That’s doing it the right way.

In 2019, a committee of downtown food and drink purveyors is organizing a calendar of events during the week preceding Fest of Ale (beginning on May 25). This loosely structured celebration on all things beery is to be known as New Albany Beer Week, and in part two I'll be charting the dimensions.

Part two here.

Remember, Fest of Ale is today at the Riverfront Amphitheater.

Todd Antz posted earlier:

There are still a few Fest of Ale tickets available today at both Keg Liquors locations and online.

We also have a handful of bus tickets available from Drake's St. Matthews and Pearl Street Tap House in Jeffersonville. Bus tickets will go off sale at noon.

The fest runs from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m., and the weather looks to be ideal. I'd act quickly if you're still in need of tickets.

ON THE AVENUES: Long live Keg Liquors Fest of Ale, an indisputable annual beer institution.

If you're going to Fest of Ale today, perhaps we'll see each other. I'll be representing Food & Dining Magazine, and Joe Phillips will be on hand to chat about Pints&union.

Don't forget the after party at Gospel Bird:

ON THE AVENUES: Long live Keg Liquors Fest of Ale, an indisputable annual beer institution.

ON THE AVENUES: Long live Keg Liquors Fest of Ale, an indisputable annual beer institution.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

---

Fest of Ale home page

Fest of Ale ticket information here.

---

Lucky thirteen.

Superstition is bunk, and 13 was my varsity baseball uniform number, inherited from an upperclassman named Kevin who was one of my sporting idols of the time.

I asked for 13 in basketball, too, and was compelled to settle for 31. It was deemed impractical to reverse and reattach the digits, and this has annoyed me to the present day. My headband was banned, too, being deemed far too exhibitionistic and ABA-like to suit the Bob Knight fans in the Knobs.

My contrarianism has honest roots, and now to the point.

The 13th edition of Keg Liquors Fest of Ale will take place at New Albany’s Riverfront Amphitheater on Saturday, June 2. Up to 2,500 area beer fans will be in attendance, which might sound like a crush of humanity, but it isn’t. The major regional stops on the beer festival tour host as many as 8,000 guests, with Port-A-Lets extending around the entire perimeter like Donald Trump’s walled-in America.

However, festival founder and package store owner Todd Antz has grown Fest of Ale slowly and organically, from the parking lot adjacent to his original Clarksville store to St. Anthony’s lawn, and now the banks of the Ohio. It’s an urban area, and yet still presents a pastoral scene of greenery, passing barges and the rising sun architectural imagery of the amphitheater itself.

We pause now for a misty-eyed flashback.

---

During the halcyon days of my youth in Southern Indiana, when men were men, beer was beer and craft was a mail order do-it-yourself birdhouse, summer invariably inspired a profusion of outdoor beer festivals.

As did fall, winter and spring.

At 17 years of age, looking more like 12, living at home, ducking prying eyes and requiring divine intervention to get served at rarely obliging package stores like the one Todd’s father ran, natural settings constantly beckoned.

Priority was placed on those patches of isolated farmland belonging to folks who didn’t know or care that we’d found someone older to procure the cheapest swill possible, borrow a steel tub otherwise used to hydrate future beefsteak, buy ice, and await the grapevine-laden onslaught of teenagers who’d learned there was a field party abruptly in progress.

When it rained, we got soaked; not the worst conceivable outcome in hot weather, especially if any girls bothered to come -- which was seldom.

Every now and then, a measure of transcendence was achieved, and an enterprising reader might insert one of Bob Seger’s nostalgic AM radio hits to accompany this narrative, although I never liked his music very much after “Katmandu,” which I heard for the first time – where else? – at a summertime outdoor beer festival in the Knobs, with any style of beer you wanted for thoughtful sampling so long as it was Falls Sh(expletive)y, and with tunes like Seger’s blaring from the crackly sub-par radio of a car stuck axle-deep in a muddy field littered with cigarette butts and spent plastic cups.

Decades have passed, and nowadays, lying about one’s age generally implies a downward revision of chronological information on Facebook. Falls City, our illicitly old-fashioned lunch pail lager, went away – and then reappeared with a craft nouveau makeover.

It's not an expletive any longer, thank heavens.

Outdoor beer festivals have evolved considerably, too, bearing little resemblance to the midsummer’s night screams we staged during the presidency of Jimmy Carter – who, after all, legalized homebrewing, but probably never experienced the welcoming nuzzle of a well-turned beer bong in the steamy July drizzle.

---

As befits the era of “craft” beer’s ascendancy, today’s outdoor beer festivals take place in summer – and increasingly, also in fall, winter and spring. They’re devoted to the exaltation of contemporary brewing, and follow a common template.

Ideally, breweries and wholesalers provide a diverse selection of beers, and when possible, brewers and beer sales representatives will be on hand to answer questions and provide insights. A festival entry fee covers numerous, if not always truly unlimited, wee tastes of these many beers.

Local purveyors vend food, and musical entertainment typically deriving from the rock, pop, blues and bluegrass spectrum is offered, although just once I’d love to hear a string quartet performing modern chamber compositions, or a rollicking Klezmer band covering the Ramones.

As billed, “craft” beer festivals enhance the genre’s visibility through heightened consciousness and increased recognition. They also give back to the community by supporting chosen charities – and if they don’t, suspicion is fully warranted.

Reduced entry prices for designated drivers and the encouragement of moderation illustrate that beer consciousness and social conscience go together like espresso beans and imperial stout.

The template might be common, but the execution separates the pros from the amateurs. In Louisville, the collegiate scrum known as Brew at the Zoo probably remains the largest outdoor “craft” beer festival, although perhaps it has been eclipsed by Tailspin Ale Fest, held mostly indoors and partly outside in a Bowman Field aircraft hangar.

In terms of organization, there is no comparison. Unlike the zoo free-for-all, Tailspin is a class act conceived and organized by Tisha Gainey, Todd’s cousin; as you can see, good taste and attention to detail runs in the family. Tailspin is tops in Louisville, and Fest of Ale has no competition in Southern Indiana.

(Speaking personally, my favorite festive rite of summertime beer held in an outdoor setting takes place each year on the second Saturday in August: It’s the Great Taste of the Midwest, in Madison, Wisconsin. If you’re a beer nut, you owe it to yourself to install the Great Taste in one of your bucket list slots.)

Let’s close with a flashback to Saturday, June 2, 2007. It was the second Fest of Ale, held behind the store on Highway 131 -- had it yet been renamed Lewis & Clark Parkway? – and what I’ll never forget is what happened when a brief thunderstorm slammed the fest site.

Instead of running for cover, everyone grabbed the tent framework’s steel rods with one arm to keep it from blowing to Oz.

The other arm?

Priorities, my friend, because there's no "here, hold my beer" for the truly pure of heart.

---

“Yesterday was the second annual Fest of Ales at Keg Liquors in Clarksville, and store owner and beer enthusiast Todd Antz surely must be happy with the results.

“After last year’s inaugural event, Todd did some necessary tweaking. He moved the date back six weeks, brought in even more breweries and wholesalers, and relentlessly advertised. I’d guess that attendance was triple that of 2006, and in spite of an hour of stormy gusts and hard rain (given the steaminess of the day, this may have helped entertain the crowd rather than hurt), those present seemed to be having a wonderful time throughout.

“The Curmudgeon’s picks of the litter?

“Upland Brewing’s Eileen Martin brought a 750 ml bottle of experimental strawberry lambic; sorry there wasn’t enough for everyone. I’m trying to score some for sampling at the annual Lambic by the Glass on June 30 at NABC.

“World Class Beverage had New Holland’s Existential on hand. It is another creative excursion into crossover territory, with the gravity and heft of a barley wine, but with an overt hoppiness that derives from ten hop additions. It has a clear, well defined balance between the malt and the hops. Who says one can’t enjoy gravity beers like this and Ol’ Shag, a barley wine from Browning’s Brewery, on a hot, sultry day? Not the Curmudgeon, for he did enjoy them.

“Another surprise for me was the complex and tasty Shmaltz He’Brew Origin Pomegranate Ale, brewed with (duh) pomegranate juice. It’s handled in Indiana by Cavalier.

“Louisville-area breweries were well represented, too, and all the styles I tasted were quite good, and to conclude, who doesn’t like fresh-fried, Elector-battered grouper from Bistro New Albany’s Dave Clancy?

“Fest of Ale is sure to grow next year. Try not to miss it.”

Mighty prescient of me, wasn’t it?

Fest of Ale has grown tremendously during the past decade, and one way to look at it is by calculating the number of beers available for sampling (an estimated 250 from 100 breweries in 2018), although an even better indication of the fest’s success is Todd’s justifiable pride at having topped the $100,000 mark in donations to the Crusade for Children.

That’s doing it the right way.

---

Previously:

THE BEER BEAT: Fest of Ale returns on June 2, so please allow me to revive an idea for pre-fest fun next year.

---

Recent columns:

May 17: ON THE AVENUES: Ghosts within these stones, defiance in these bones.

May 10: ON THE AVENUES: Seeing is believing.

May 3: ON THE AVENUES: Sadly, the Kentucky Derby no longer is decadent and depraved. It’s just another vacuous capitalist bait ‘n’ switch.

April 26: ON THE AVENUES: The wonder years.

ON THE AVENUES: A stern side view of Gravity Head, nineteen times over.

ON THE AVENUES: A stern side view of Gravity Head, nineteen times over.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Before the drinking starts, let’s return to the analogy of a ship leaving the dock and making for open water.

This was something we experienced first-hand just last year aboard a big Baltic ferry, first leaving Tallinn for Helsinki, then again on the trip back later the same day.

At night, the specific sensation might be described as lights fading, but by day it is the gradual disappearance of land as the ship moves farther away from shore. Depending on the weather and the strength of one’s eyesight, there comes a split second when land no longer is visible. It’s a melancholy feeling, like the place itself has ceased to exist apart from the imagination.

From this point forward, until the next port of call begins slowly to materialize past the bow, the journey becomes synonymous with the undulating rhythm of the sea. In 2016, our trip was a loop, as we returned to Tallinn after a lovely day in the Finnish capital. In 1985, when the ferry to Italy finally left Corfu and the Albanian coastline well behind, my 24-year-old self was pondering exactly when I’d visit Greece next.

It hasn’t happened yet. Maybe soon. If possible, I’d really like to do it the same way, by sea, from Italy … and close the circle.

Similarly, most aspects of business ownership that consumed my daily existence for a quarter-century – the good, the bad, the drunk and the sublime – finally have dissolved into distant invisible headlands. Now it’s just the rocking of the waves, and one really important question.

Where’s this damned boat going, anyway?

I’ll let you know when something comes into focus on the horizon. Only then will the chorus erupt with a sturdy “Land ho!” Will the anchor be dropped, or not?

We'll see.

---

Comes that ancestral imperative time again.

When Gravity Head calls, familiar space and time continuums are briefly altered. Normal routines appear Byzantine by comparison. Life’s infinite horizons narrow. On reverts to existence by the hour, or minute by minute. Passing through the looking glass is boring by comparison.

As for the fest’s actual commencement on Friday morning, once the opening bell sounds there is a collective observance of Sidney Freedman’s immortal dictum from television’s M*A*S*H:

“Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice - pull down your pants and slide on the ice.”

Gravity Head might be staged differently, but as they pertain to what unexpectedly has become a bona fide tradition, an array of minor and often weirdly eccentric points adds up to a greater sum.

It’s just another beer fest, and yet it’s more, and decidedly unique. From the very start, when it was decided to have a second Gravity Head in 2000, no one had any idea what the “proper” way of running a beer festival was supposed to be. Conventional wisdom completely eluded us, for which I remain grateful.

The aim was, and remains, to provide regular pub customers and locally-based friends with as many opportunities as possible to taste an array of special beers over a period of time – at least a month, and usually longer.

That’s the sum of it.

The beers never have been served all at once. They unfold in waves over a period of weeks. There are no 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, of course, because they’re strong.

Gravity Head’s opening day has become somewhat of a scrum, and a singular tradition all its own. Folks seem content with the interior logic occurring at the fest’s beginning, but this isn’t what every celebrant looks 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 moments that lead to feelings of timelessness.

And without timelessness, beer is far less interesting to me.

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The 19th edition of Gravity Head begins tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. at NABC’s Pizzeria & Public House. The brewery partner for the opening day tap takeover in 2017 is Dark Horse Brewing Company from Michigan, of whom I know too little, though the starting lineup looks as solid as ever.

GRAVITY HEAD 2017 STARTING LINEUP

Cascade The Vine (2015) 9.73%
Dark Horse Barrel Aged Plead the Fifth 12.00%
Dark Horse Bourbon Barrel Scotty Karate 9.75%
Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree (2016) 12.00% * JUST ADDED*
Dark Horse Plead the Fifth (2015) 11.00%
Dark Horse Sapient Trip Ale (2016) 9.50%
Dark Horse Scotty Karate (2014) 9.75%
Dogfish Head Fort 18.00%
North Coast XIX Barrel Aged Old Rasputin 11.20%
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot (2011) 9.60%
Stone Xocoveza 8.10%

As an aside, last year’s Gravity Head honoree was Stone Brewing Company. I’ve always had a soft spot in my teeny-weeny, Grinch-sized heart for Stone, and especially its co-founder and CEO, Greg Koch, who visited the Pizzeria & Public House in 2007 while touring the Midwest.

For Gravity Head 2016, I’d already gotten the ball rolling with Stone’s then-regional sales representative Mark Kocher, but by the end of the year, Mark was gone from Stone, along with other longtime brewery personnel in an internal “rationalization” borne of an expensive international expansion effort. It was a harbinger of sorts.

Coincidentally or not, numerous other figures of note in “craft” brewing circles made similar professional exits last year, voluntary or otherwise, ranging from Mitch Steele (the brewer, from Stone) to Dan Kopman (the part-owner, from Schlafly). My seven years as a director on the board of the Brewers of Indiana Guild came to a necessary end, too, and I miss it.

Combined with the many “craft” breweries purchased in 2016 by multinational conglomerates, these various developments suggest to me that the original dynamism of the “craft” segment, while still intact in many artistic and creative ways, gradually is yielding to the deadening reshaping tendencies of capitalism as we tend to tolerate it.

As a revolutionary, I was hoping for better. As an exceedingly reluctant capitalist, it’s no longer a comfortable place for me.

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I never got around to attending Gravity Head opening weekend in 2016, and my consecutive year streak of liver damage ended at 17. It didn’t faze me at the time, though in retrospect, I feel equal measures of annoyance and regret having missed the chance for what would have been a final Gravity Head toast with my friend Kevin Richards, who died unexpectedly last fall. Gravity Head 2017 simply cannot be the same without him.

Part of the reason for my absence last year was pique, pure and simple. At the time, it was starting to become clear that my payout for a quarter-century of business ownership likely would be calculated at pennies on the dollar, if even that.

However, now it is twelve months later, and I’ve done my best to make peace with the past, hence my advice to one and all: If given the choice between cash and infamy, choose the latter. Money comes and goes; notoriety is forever.

The buyout saga began in earnest in late 2015, and (finally) I believe a resolution is coming soon, as early as next month. I’ll be absorbing a vicious metaphorical beating, and a financial one as well, but true freedom isn’t ever free.

Meanwhile, by all accounts Gravity Head 2016 proceeded just as it had before, and I have every reason to believe it will perform in 2017 according to the same trajectory, exactly as it always has. In a tremendous exception to standard operating procedure, I managed to arrange the beer program succession quite intelligently, and my protégés at NABC constantly make me proud.

For those about to rock, I salute you.

At the precise moment of writing, I’m not sure whether I’ll make Gravity Head this coming weekend. As divulged yesterday, my mother’s health is uncertain, and it doesn’t strike me as the best time to debilitate myself with Imperial Stouts and Barley Wines. Besides, I’ve evolved into a session-strength advocate, intent on challenging the new orthodoxy.

It’s always something, or so I’m told.

Once upon a time Gravity Head was my idea, and now it’s no longer about me, assuming it ever was. Gravity’s the law, and it’s bigger than you and me. Feel free to go forth these next few gravity-laden weeks and propagate daddy’s scant pension fund – and while you’re at it, have one for … no, not me, but Kevin Richards.

He absolutely would have done the same for you. Cheers, mate. Of all the eras seemingly passing into mist beyond the stern as we navigated 2016, his loss still affects me the most.

(Variations of this column have appeared previously.)

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Recent columns:

February 16: ON THE AVENUES: In 2014 as in 2015, then 2016, now 2017 ... yes, it's the "Adamite Chronicles: Have muzzle, will drivel."

February 9: ON THE AVENUES: I'd stop drinking, but I'm no quitter.

February 2: ON THE AVENUES: A luxury-obsessed Jeff Gahan has packed a board and now seeks to break the New Albany Housing Authority. Can we impeach him yet?

January 26: ON THE AVENUES: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

THE BEER BEAT: Tailspin Ale Fest returns to Bowman Field on Saturday, February 18.

In my view, Tailspin Ale Fest has become Louisville's premier beer festival, and it's the brainchild of New Albany's own Tisha Gainey.

• 2016: Local + good cause = Tailspin Ale Fest (Feb. 20), so let Connecticut host its own damn gig.
• 2015: Read all about Tailspin 2015.
• 2014: Watch video of the Tailspin Ale Fest, yesterday at Bowman Field in Louisville.

This year's Tailspin date is Saturday, February 18, by which time temperatures might be in the 80s, so yet again we turn to Kevin Gibson for the festival preview. Click through to view the master beer list.

Tailspin Ale Fest expands space, beer list, buses and bathrooms for 2017, by Kevin Gibson (Insider Louisville)

Now in its fourth year, Tailspin Ale Fest has been one of Louisville’s best attended and highest regarded beer festivals. In fact, says co-founder Tisha Gainey, the one consistent complaint has been about the portable toilets.

And so for Tailspin 2017, set for Saturday, Feb. 18, not only will there be a roughly 15 to 20 percent increase in physical space and 25 additional breweries — the full beer list can be viewed at the end of this story — there also will be expanded options to make the lines move more quickly when bladders get full.

The bathroom expansion comes in the form of a 20-foot-by-8-foot converted shipping container that will house 13 individual urinal stalls, drawing many men away from the Port-o-Potties.

“I’ve never said a urinal is sexy, but man, that thing is sexy,” Gainey says. “We’re the first in Louisville to get it. I get excited about the little things.”

Gee, I wonder what NABC is bringing? I'm so old I can remember when they used to have a Propaganda Ministry. Anyway, tickets for Tailspin are on sale now.

Tickets to Tailspin Ale Fest are $45 for general admission and $75 for VIP, and can be purchased online. Designated driver tickets are available for $15.

Also check the Tailspin event page at Facebook.

Keg Liquors Fest of Ale will move to New Albany's Riverfront Amphitheater in 2016; the 11th annual edition slated for June 4.

Saturday, June 4th remains the date for the 11th Annual Keg Liquors Fest of Ale, but the 2016 edition of the festival will be held at the Riverfront Amphitheater in New Albany.

Here's the press release from Todd Antz.

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Fest of Ale on the move.

New Albany, Ind. (February 2016) – After 10 successful years in Clarksville, the Keg Liquors Fest of Ale is changing venues. The 11th Annual Fest of Ale will be held on June 4th, 2016 at the New Albany Riverfront Amphitheater.

“Moving the event was a tough decision, but we felt that we had outgrown the space we were using at St. Anthony’s,” said Todd Antz, owner of Keg Liquors. “St. Anthony’s has been very generous with their facilities and support over the years, and we could not have grown the event to the size it is today without their help.

"We felt that the event was becoming a bit too taxing for their neighbors and parishioners, and that it was best for both parties if we moved on. We’ve always had a great relationship with St. Anthony’s and look forward to working with them in any future opportunities that may come up. I can’t thank everyone at St. Anthony’s enough for their support over the last 7 years of hosting our charity event. We could not have done this without them.”

The New Albany Riverfront Amphitheater, located below East Main Street at the foot of Pearl Street, is home each spring and summer to numerous free concerts, productions, festivals and other events.

The move to the Riverfront Amphitheater will allow the Fest of Ale to expand in size, provide more parking, as well as having access to all of the great restaurants and businesses in downtown New Albany.

“The Fest of Ale has always been a grassroots festival that promotes independent breweries and businesses, so moving the event to an area that has reinvigorated itself with all of the great shops and restaurants made perfect sense to us,” continued Antz. “The City of New Albany was very excited to help us with the event, and we look forward to working with them to make this the best Fest of Ale ever.”

Tickets for the 2016 Fest of Ale will go on sale at the beginning of April.

Keg Liquors
Keeping Kentuckiana Beer'd since 1976
http://www.kegliquors.com

617 E. Lewis and Clark Parkway
Clarksville, IN 47129
812-283-3988

4304 Charlestown Road
New Albany, IN 47150
812-948-0444

In Lafayette for Beers Across the Wabash on Saturday, August 24.

Saturday began with the Lafayette Farmer Market, downtown. The variety of produce on sale seemed to be a bit more diverse than New Albany's, but Lafayette arguably has fewer total booths.

Set-up for the beer festival began early on the John T. Myers Pedestrian Bridge between Lafayette and West Lafayette, the latter lying beyond the trees in the photo. As a beer festival organized by veteran brewers, Beers Across the Wabash simply is nonpareil; only Hoosier breweries are present, and the crowd well-behaved and knowledgeable. Next year, the event will take place again, but not on the bridge itself, owing to renovation work. It will return to the bridge in 2015. No matter. We'll be there.