BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Don't forget tomorrow's Bock History lesson at Pints&union with Kevin Gibson and Paulaner Salvator.

As a reminder, Saturday afternoon is the launch of our history & beer "lecture" series.

BOCK of AGES: A GERMAN-AMERICAN BREWING TRADITION

Saturday, March 23 at 2:00 p.m.

Our good friend Kevin Gibson, who you know as a writer, musician and beer, joins us for a refresher course on Bock. In the heyday of pre-Prohibition brewing in Louisville, the annual spring Bock beer release was a beloved seasonal event in the German-American community.

On tap we'll have one of the Old World's greats, Paulaner Salvator from Munich.

Our brewing history begins with this beer. And the history of strong beer in Bavaria – it was the Paulaner monks who invented this bottom-fermenting double bock. We have been brewing the Salvator for over 375 years – always according to the original recipe, which has been continuously refined over the years. The head is the colour of caramel and the beer is chestnut brown, combined with a seductive flavour of chocolate to give a pleasing intensity on the palate. Along with this comes the finest Munich malt, rounded off by a light note of hops in the background. Often imitated but never duplicated: The father of all double bock beers, whose names always end in “-ator”!

INGREDIENTS: Water, hops, malt

HOP VARIETES: Herkules, Hallertauer Tradition

MALT VARIETES: Pilsner malt(light barley malt), Munich Malt (dark barley malt)

I'll be saying a few words about Bock as a beer style, while Kevin will focus on the way Bock's annual springtime arrival in cities like Louisville was a cause for celebration.

As a side note, congratulations to Kevin for his full-time gig at Insider Louisville.

You’ve read his reviews and profiles (and maybe a few of his books), so you are undoubtedly familiar with the work of Kevin Gibson. Insider Louisville is pleased to announce that we have hired him — again.

Kevin first started writing for Insider in late 2013 as a freelancer doing food reviews and random stories and assignments. He became a part-time employee in 2014 for a year. He kept writing as a freelancer continuously afterward, from spring 2015 until this March.

As a full-time reporter, Kevin will tackle the 3Rs — retail, restaurants, real estate — plus, economic development.

Come by tomorrow, have a pint and chat.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: New Ür Brewery in Philadelphia will recreate 18th- and 19th-century beer recipes.

I'm reminded of the Silo brewpub, Louisville's first, which opened in 1992. The following year, brewer David Pierce shed the brewery's shambolic ownership group and opened Bluegrass Brewing Company for the Hagans. Eileen Martin stepped into the Silo's brewhouse with panache, but unfortunately the owners remained as oblivious as before.

The Silo went down, then bobbed back to the surface with new money and an idea to rebrand as a restaurant: Louisiana Jack's at the Silo Brewery, or some such. I believe this was around 1995. Experienced homebrewer Brian Kolb started making beer for the new management, and for a while the entity survived. Ultimately it came crashing down a second time, and stayed that way.

The point to this sad remembrance is I can recall a conversation several of us had one evening to the effect that the Silo should just brew some history; Conrad Selle, author of the original Louisville Breweries book, had already done the research, and while the copyrights for old Louisville brands like Falls City, Fehr's and Oertel's might be out of circulation owing to having been acquired, dozens of other defunct breweries could serve as sources of names and recipes.

A few years ago when NABC at Bank Street Brewhouse was struggling, this idea came to me a second time. Why not completely overhaul and be historic? Forget the triple IPA and trend-chasing, and retrench strictly old school; be a taproom and museum, and build a monument to the Victims of Prohibition in America.

Personally, it's my view that I tend to give great idea. Not being able to pull these great ideas down to earth is another story for another time.

Accordingly, I simply adore what these guys at the Ür Brewery in Philadelphia metro are proposing to do. I've never been to Philly, but damn it, when they're up and running I want to go visit.

A new brewery in Lansdale will brew old-time Philadelphia beer, by Joe Six Pack (Philly Beer World)

One of Philly’s newest breweries is going to look – and taste – a lot like one of its oldest.

It will re-create long-lost beers that helped establish Philadelphia as the brewing capital of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Brands like Robert Smith’s India Pale Ale, Tiger Head Cream Ale and Robert Hare’s Colonial Porter will soon be brought back for the enjoyment of modern-day beer drinkers.

And the new brewery will feature open fermentation and krausening – traditional beer-making methods that – though they create a distinct, flavorful character – have been largely discarded in America ...

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: There's a place for retro beers, but for better or worse, they don't taste the same as they once did.

New Albany retro, lost to history.

Recently I indulged a digression about Falls City in both old and new incarnations, and my friend Scott pointed to something that may be worth a second look.

My question is, are any of the retro beers actually the exact same recipes as when we were teens or has our tastes changed as we have aged? City, Pabst, Sterling were undrinkable to me then. Just nasty like Miller Lite still is today. Stroh's was okay. That was my beer for a few years before I went up to Miller High Life.

Following is my answer, right or wrong, without having done the slightest research on the matter.

To me, it's just common beer sense that many, if not all, of the contemporary "retro" beer brands have little in common with their foundational predecessors.

By "retro" beer, we're pinpointing those brands available regionally (some were national brands) prior to the craft beer era, ones that ceased to exist for a time and since have been revived, almost always as brewed at a location other than their original brewery site.

Obviously, the beer portfolios of BudMillerCoors cannot be considered "retro" according to this definition, as they've continued in production since the end of Prohibition, and throughout the modern era. Granted, their multiple brewing locations muddy the waters, but not too much. The point is their continuity.

Conversely, a panoply of beers -- dozens nowadays, including Stroh's, Schlitz, Hamm's, Narragansett, Sterling, Champagne Velvet, and yes, even Falls City -- were born at a particular brewery, enjoyed long life spans and generated iconic branding that remains familiar, but they've long since ceased being brewed "at home," so to speak. They disappeared from sight, if not always in totality, and have been brought back to leverage the adjective "iconic" in terms of marketing, not to rediscover the original recipe.

Any way you look at it, there's almost no way these recipes could taste the same, even if they are the same on paper.

For one, even the Budweiser purportedly brewed in St. Louis according the the same formulation as used 125 years ago isn't the same now as then, because the barley and hops have evolved over this span of time. The same goes for everything we as humans consume. Does chicken today taste like it did in Mark Twain's day? Selective breeding and hybridization suggest it's highly unlikely.

There's also a slightly more obtuse consideration, although I believe it to be merited. I've been rereading Michael Jackson's Great Beers of Belgium, which the Beer Hunter published in 1992, with several updated editions appearing prior to his death in 2007.

Intentionally avoiding depth of detail in the interest of an overview, and acknowledging the passage of time, Jackson notes that numerous factors enter into a beer's flavor profile, including the obvious choices of malt and hops, but also water softness or hardness (nowadays adjustable through water treatment), as well as the chosen yeast, this being perhaps the least understood element on the part of beer drinkers who aren't well versed about beer making.

In short, while much of modern brewing history centers on the application of science to make yeast behave predictably, they remain living creatures with habits and eccentricities of their own. Jackson observes that in traditional brewery settings like Belgium during the period of his visits -- think of old industrial architecture and not the pristine operating theater of a modern hospital -- yeasts would come to adapt to their variable surroundings.

The same basic yeast strain carried to a different brewery eventually would adjust to the new environment; given that we're speaking of ales fermented at a higher temperature, these yeasts would contribute to the ultimate flavor profile of an individual beer, and if the same strain was used to brew more than one beer, there'd be a "house character" of sorts across the whole of the product line.

While it's true that the art of lager brewing advanced across the planet as a way of standardizing brewing science and reducing these eventualities, it isn't far-fetched to imagine that especially in the period prior to Prohibition, America's lager beer makers benefited from a similar serendipity, their recipes and yeast-driven house character coming into being just like at the Belgian breweries surveyed by Jackson.

Whether or not "fire brewing" in the context of Stroh's (direct flame on the kettle as opposed to jacketed heat) caused hot spots and added a little something caramelized to the finished beer, the brewery's choice of yeast probably did. Fast-forwarding, one might take today's Stroh's or leave it, but neither the yeast nor the "fire" process is the same in the reconstituted brand. 

At this precise moment, writing on a Sunday morning, I can distinctly recall what these beers mentioned by Scott tasted like when I was younger. He's correct in saying that our ability to taste is altered as we age, but this does not compromise my memories.

These brands had a definable house character. There was a Stroh's flavor, and a Sterling flavor, and a Budweiser flavor, and I always could pick them out. Some I liked, others not.

A few months back I drank a little 7-ounce bottle of Miller High Life, and it tasted largely the way I remember it from high school. However, the Stroh's we're carrying at Pints&union does not taste the way it did when I sat at the bar of Lanesville's K&H Cafe in the mid-1980s with my friend Doc Holliday and drained the night away, at least until he retreated back up the hill to Maverick Mountain and I navigated the corn fields home to Georgetown.

Miller High Life may have been tweaked and adjusted, but there is a continuity in the way it is brewed. Stroh's almost completely disappeared and was passed around from speculator to speculator. By the 1980s, the same was true of beers like Falls City and Sterling. They'd stopped being brewed at their "home" breweries, been reduced to bundles of discounted marketing imagery, and sold to whomever might squeeze a few more dollars from the bastardization before the older generation of loyalists died.

When these brands returned to liquid form and once again were real, tactile beverages capable of being discerned by human palates, and not merely the offspring of advertising wearables, there no longer existed any connection between what they had been and what they had become. Any seasoned contract brewer capable of rendering batches of competently rendered lager might now affix stylish old labels and roll out six new/old beers from the very same vat.

They'd be perfectly and professionally drinkable, just decidedly indistinct, and if tasted blind, it's doubtful many of us could tell the difference.

Or, they might use 6-row barley malt, corn or rice, and make an honest effort to more accurately recapture the older formulations. Still, I suspect that once lost, the genuine and individualistic house character of these old imperial warhorses -- those unique traits that made them taste the way they did before adulteration, debilitation and decline rendered them moot -- is gone forever.

Hence the conundrum. A beer like today's Falls City Classic Pilsner tastes nothing like the original ideal of its predecessor, but it tastes far better than its predecessor did during the death throes in the 1970s and 1980s. To me, the best example of this is Pabst Blue Ribbon. Today's PBR, the delight of hipsters and throwbackers, doesn't taste like PBR used to.

Not at all.

Rewind to 1980, and you'd find Pabst to be a forceful, float-a-penny-on-top, full-flavored concoction. You might not like the house character, but it could not be denied. It ran through all of Pabst's beers at the time. These days, it cannot be discerned at all, and the overall viscosity of everyday PBR matches that of the 1980s-era light Pabst.

I'm not sure there is a conclusion to any of this apart from one's own personal perspective and pocketbook.

The reason why Stroh's, Old Style and Little Kings are available at Pints&union is that I drank them in days of youth. Only the latter tastes close to my memory of it, but they're all quite drinkable, as is the Falls City Classic Pilsner on draft. I still prefer Pilsner Urquell.

And there you have it.

ON THE AVENUES: Maybe, just maybe, you really can go home again.

ON THE AVENUES: Maybe, just maybe, you really can go home again.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

You’ll recall that some months ago, a warning was served to habitués of this blog.

To wit: When Zero Hour arrives and the Pints&union project leaves dry dock, there’s a very good chance of my beer- and pub-related obsessions getting the better of me and monopolizing the conversation.

In short, dear readers, I’m presently doing a poor job of offering varied content. Then again, beer is my life, and much of my life has been spent reposing in pubs, observing people and their beers, so you’re just going to have to humor me.

(Pints&union will be opening for regular business hours next week. This much I know. Otherwise, please connect with the Facebook page to keep informed about details.)

As many of you know, I’m working for Joe Phillips, caring for the beers at his emerging establishment and purely grateful for the opportunity.

What I’m doing isn’t exactly “curating” (how I’ve come to hate that word). Rather, it’s picking the right beers, getting to know them all over again and organizing these beers the right way.

It’s about shedding unnecessary baggage, retaining useful devices, and making a short but expressive list of beers to be enjoyed in a casual pub setting.

In the current milieu, it’s also incorporates a sizable dollop of this timeless axiom: “Don’t do something -- just stand there.”

---

In 1983, I lucked into a part-time job downtown at Scoreboard Liquors and started learning about beer and the business of selling it.

Back in those days, when Model T Fords were the norm on city streets and sewer pipes in New Albany were only a rumor bandied by the regulars at Ernie’s Tavern, there weren’t many “beer lists” at dining and drinking establishments in the metropolitan Louisville area.

Beer lists were not a thing, and one simply didn’t ask. To have done so would be to risk ridicule, ejection, or at the very best dumbfounded amazement, as though you’d waded into the Tumbleweed or Lancaster’s and spoken a dialect of Estonian.

Bartenders who bothered to keep a straight face would shrug: “We have both kinds of beer, High Life and Miller Lite.” 35 years later, down that long and winding road to nowhere, the beer list pendulum hasn’t merely swung to the other extreme.

It has become disengaged from the pivot, torn a gaping hole in the side of the building and currently is gaining warp speed at 35,000 feet in route to the next flavor-of-the-millisecond paradigm shift.

Consider that in 1992, I bought a poster called "Brewpubs and Craft Breweries," which showed a map of breweries operating in the United States, all 300 or so of them.

Or, fewer than were operating at the time in the Bavarian region of Franconia, which is the size of what we refer to as Southern Indiana.

Looking back, there was only one brewery each in Indiana (Broad Ripple Brewpub; Indianapolis), Kentucky (Oldenberg; Ft. Mitchell), and Tennessee (Bohannon's/Market Street). As of April, 2018, the brewery counts for these states are 137, 52 and 82, respectively. Combine the current numbers for these three states, and it’s almost as many breweries as in the entire country in 1992.

Today there are 6,000 craft breweries, and if each one of them brews six different beers a year, that’s 36,000 beers for us to try, except this production estimate is too conservative by half -- and what about imported beers, both craft and classic?

From this seemingly infinite and ever-changing array -- certainly tens of thousands of potential choices worldwide -- several hundred have been culled by wholesalers for availability to us in Indiana, perhaps one thousand or more annually if all the state’s breweries are included.

On the flip side, those establishments selling beer brewed by others find themselves challenged on a daily basis by finite spatial limitations. Even the manager of the most voluminous, warehouse-sized package store or cavernous walk-in cooler at the multi-tap must make hard decisions about which beers to keep in stock.

One solution, especially as it pertains to draft beer, is for on-premise restaurants, bars and pubs to constantly rotate their offerings. A regular customer who makes weekly visits to a bar with 15 handles might end the year having been exposed to two hundred different draft beers – and consumed more than a few of them.

Remembering is another story.

Of course I must concede to a significant role in helping create this model while serving my time with NABC at the Public House. But even in the early 2000s, it often occurred to me to speculate about my future consciousness once everyone else started emulating the scattershot kaleidoscope approach.

Would I go back to Stroh’s?

Stop drinking beer entirely?

Become a teetotaler and declare war on demon rum (and rum-barrel aged pastry stouts)?

Nah. The barroom chose me, and I’m not a quitter. At the same time, there’s a new goal in this beer drinker’s life: escaping the beer selection tilt-a-whirl and commencing a counter revolution. Why? As the late, great Norman "Doc" Holliday was fond of saying, "Why not? I can't dance."

Those of us condemned to diligently self-medicate our innate contrarianism know it isn’t a question of whether or not we’ll rebel, only a consideration of when.

At some point in the recent past I stepped into bar somewhere in America, saw a beer list of 50 drafts, found myself unable to recall half of the names on the chalkboard, and came down with a nasty case of the epiphany.

If someone like me in the craft beer business couldn’t keep up with new breweries and their beers, then what about the many guys and gals who like better beer but don’t wish to take a college course or remain glued to an iPhone app all evening long just to navigate the beer list and order a pleasant, tasty beverage?

And if the customers are confused, what about the employees during an epoch of constant turnover?

How many times have I heard a server say something to the effect of “That beer just got tapped, and I just started working here, and I don’t know much about it yet”?

And: That'll be $8 for a 10-ounce pour, please.

These past three years sitting on the end of the bench, slowly nursing my chronically burned-out inner world back to a semblance of ruddy good health and contemplating a return from the voluntarily retired list, it has become clearer than ever to me that better beer in America is somehow managing to alienate a silent majority of beer drinkers who find constant rotation of drafts (or hundreds of packaged selections at the liquor store) utterly bewildering.

Furthermore, I believe these folks tend to keep this perfectly understandable confusion to themselves for fear of appearing uninformed at a time when the loud ubiquity of stylishness arbiters among the priestly caste stand forever eager to wield their superior knowledge against neophytes eager to dip a toe into the Dunkel. To the extent that I helped impel THAT type of attitude, many apologies.

Hence this Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924) USSR anecdote, which I’ve been peddling for years.

It's the stagnant Brezhnev era, circa 1970s, but Soviet scientists finally have solved the riddle of death, immediately applying the potion to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's embalmed corpse.

Lenin springs back to life, dusts off, and looks around the room. Asked by the scientists if they can get him anything, Lenin requests access to his office in the Kremlin and all the back issues of Pravda since he died. Fawningly, the scientists comply, and Lenin shuts himself in the office.

Day after day passes by, and while the scientists are terrified to bother Lenin, they eventually begin to worry. Finally they decide to break down the door. Inside Lenin's office they find issues of the newspaper strewn everywhere, but no Lenin.

On the desk he has left a note:

"Comrades, everything’s gone to hell in a hand basket, so I'm off to start the revolution all over again."

---

I could go on and on, as I have in the past, and will continue doing in the future, but the point of it all is the opportunity to begin a new chapter by applying old thinking.

The book on my nightstand is Michael “Beer Hunter” Jackson’s Great Beers of Belgium, published in 1992 and revised several times before Jackson’s death in 2007. This period of 15 years coincides with many of my visits to Belgium, when we maintained a beer list of several hundred at the Public House, of which perhaps 50 – 75 were Belgian.

It might as well have been 1892. Any number of seismic factors have changed the planet irrevocably since those early days at Scoreboard, running through the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the internet and the appearance of 6,000 breweries that didn’t exist when my feet first touched European soil in 1985. But in my noggin I remain the sum total of all these past experiences. They're valuable to me, and I sense there's a baton in need of passing.

Consequently, no sales figures were consulted in preparing the prospective beer list at Pint&union. Metrics and algorithms were completely shunned. Most of my final decisions didn’t even occur until the interior was nearly completed, when I could sit in different spots and imagine what beers would taste like alone in winter seated on a bar stool, with old friends in a booth, or leaning against the wall beaming with pleasure as a rookie tastes Schlenkerla for the first time.

Like Tommy and pinball, I play beer by intuition. There may eventually be a light, low-calorie lager on the list -- or an Anstich keg pouring from the counter, or both at the same time.

Now we’ll see how it all works out. Thanks, everyone.

---

Recent columns:

July 19: ON THE AVENUES: Confusion, exile, ignobility and resistance amid various other Chronicles of New Gahania.

July 12: ON THE AVENUES: Thanks to Joe Phillips, there'll be pints, union and good times downtown.

July 5: ON THE AVENUES: For Deaf Gahan and the Reisz Five, their luxury city hall will prove to be a Pyrrhic victory.

June 28: ON THE AVENUES: Said the spider to the fly -- will you please take a slice of Reisz?

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: When Old Mister Lew tells a story, you're advised to listen closely.

It's an American "craft" (microbrew?) history lesson from Professor Bryson, but don't panic. Think corrections, not catastrophe. The scene may seem to be in upheaval, but as Lew entertainingly points out, we've all been here before -- in the late 1990s.

As an aside, which may or may not be relevant to Lew's thoughts, I've finally started reading a book previously only skimmed: Michael Jackson's Great Beers of Belgium, first published around 1992.

My copy is the revised hardback edition from 2006, which was given to me as a gift. Jackson updated the text one last time in 2007, just before his death, and it came out in paperback form the following year. The book is wonderful, and Jackson's prose styling remains elegant and informative.

I miss his writing tremendously.

Whether good, bad or indifferent, the past few years for me have been a period of reckoning. Chronology afflicts me; so many deaths, so much change. Outside the walls of our house, where Diana and I constantly remind each other of how fortunate we are to be together and to live rich, loving lives, the chaos seems unceasing.

I'm a realist, and while circumstances differ, it's all happened before. When I look back on periods of my life that seem wonderful in retrospect, most of them were just as chaotic and uncertain as now. Perhaps one aspect was fantastic, and that's the part I've chosen to remember, and the way to keep the dissonance at bay.

There isn't one answer to a multiplicity of life's questions, but we can do as Lew advises -- and in his own unique voice, Jackson surely would have seconded -- by filling a glass, breathing deeply and embracing the narrative. Put down your phones, and have a conversation. Tell stories. Teach and be taught.

In a universal context, time's always running out for each one of us. The trick is to address those diminishing sands in the hourglass by slowing down, not speeding up. 

THERE ARE REASONS FOR CONCERN, BUT THE SKY ISN’T FALLING, by Lew Bryson (All About Beer Magazine)

 ... The sky is falling!

Breathe, brothers and sisters. Grab a can, fill a glass, take a seat at the bar … and breathe, while Old Mister Lew tells a story.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Recalling "Love on the Beach" and taking note of changing times.

In my view, the game is won.

Numerous details remain to be sorted through, but in large measure, decades of struggle toward greater choice in better beer have brought us past the period where heightened vigilance is necessary. I can relax, live a little and have some fun.

As in this most ancient of beer jokes: Why is American beer like making love on the beach (or in a canoe)?

Because it's fucking close to water.

The joke has become obsolete, but it illustrates the beer lover's mindset during those long, lean years from the advent of mass-market "light" beer (late 60s) through the 1990s, when the first wave of the beer revolution crested. Those were watery times, but during the past 15 years, the American beer scene has changed beyond recognition.

Perfection is an unattainable state of existence, and yet the pendulum has swung decisively toward greater choice in beer, to the extent that rather then critiquing too few good beers on an establishment's list, contrarians like me can't complain that too many of them are hoppy IPAs.

“Love on the Beach: Our Finest Swill List,” was an indisputable classic from the Public House beer list binder during the 1990s. It addresses a state of consciousness in wartime, emanating from righteous indignation that seemingly few beer drinkers would step outside the norm and try something different.

Contrary to popular wisdom, there always were suitable alternatives.

The first draft lager featured at the Public House was Carlsberg, later replaced by Pilsner Urquell. There were milder beers in bottles, like Warsteiner. Happily, most visitors ultimately were willing to give choice the old college try. Some never escaped brand loyalty to the giants, and this always struck me as sadly limiting. 

Granted, I could be an asshole about it, but most of the time a helpful one.

Swill left the building entirely in 2002 with the advent of brewing on site, but in the interim, the King of Beers eventually rose in price to $8.50 at a time when most places asked $2.00 — and one schmuck actually bought one. I hope it was royal enough for him.

That was then, and this is now.

Pints & Union, or Pints&union (stay tuned for the explanation) will be opening at some point in the next 10 days. There'll be alcoholic drinks other than beer, including wine, cider, distilled favorites and cocktails, but of course my role is to devise and administer the beer program, and toward this end pub owner Joe Phillips and I spent much time brainstorming (and drinking) beer.

As stated previously, the beer list will be firmly classicist, with many legacy/heritage brands and golden oldies -- the greatest beer hits of the 1300s through the 1900s.

However, there'll also be "new" classics, maybe even a hazy IPA, as well as a few beers I'd never have opted to offer at the Public House: Old Style, Stroh's and Little Kings among them.

But -- and this is very important -- Pints&union isn't the Public House, and it so happens that Old Style, Stroh's and Little Kings were personal favorites of mine in the pre-craft era.

I'm not a beer snob any longer, and Joe's joint won't be trading in white whales. His goal is egalitarian, and I eagerly subscribe to this ethos. Diversity in beer implies a broad range and hard thinking about price points. Taking these into consideration isn't a compromise at all. 

I'll always be synonymous with the "Love on the Beach" subsection of the beer binder, and that's fine by me. It is inseparable from a time and place, and I'm proud of the work we did. Two decades have passed, and the Public House remains even though I've moved on.

The war, whether internal or external, is over, at least for the moment. It gladdens my heart that a unique and distinctive tradition will be created at Pints & Union, which will be a synthesis of all the experiences preceding it.

We're just about there. In the coming days, I hope to keep readers informed of our progress.

THE BEER BEAT: The path to 6,000, or one helluva big difference in 25 years.

Yesterday, amid 14 consecutive hours of joyous Kentucky Derby downpour, I started rummaging through my collection of posters, photos and bric-a-brac suitable for hanging.

This one, called "Brewpubs and Craft Breweries," is a poster that dates from 1992.

It came from the publishers of On Tap: The Guide to U.S. Brewpubs (1991) and The On Tap Companion (1992 update), both by Steve Johnson.

The FOSSILS homebrewing club began in 1990, and the Public House in 1992. One way we kept up with the advent of new breweries was zymurgy, the homebrewing magazine, which came in the mail (huh?) and had bi-monthly listings of openings and closings.

I'm not sure if there were further editions of Johnson's guide. In 1994, author Michael "Beer Hunter" Jackson visited Louisville (and Rich O's) in preparation to write a book about the new generation of American breweries. He subsequently abandoned the project, because the pace of change was so relentless that his information became obsolete faster than he could revise it.

By then, the instantaneously updatable internet was coming into our lives -- and the rest is Untappd, or some similar wasted exercise in missing the soul of beerdrinking.

Back to the old-school, tactile poster, focusing on the heartland:

It's mind-boggling to recall the time when there was only one brewery in Indiana (Broad Ripple Brewpub), one in Kentucky (Oldenberg), and one in Tennessee (Bohannon's/Market Street).

As of April, 2018, the statistics are 137, 52 and 82, respectively. In America as a whole, the number of breweries has surpassed 6,000. For Kevin Gibson's most recent news in LEO Weekly about a few of the ones located in Louisville Metro, go here.

To conclude, a few of the beer-related posters unearthed yesterday. It has become apparent to me that taken together, I have enough posters, photos, coasters, labels and travel memorabilia to plaster the walls of the Pentagon.

A personal beer history museum with a nice beer bar inside? It's a pleasant thought; maybe some day down the road.

THE BEER BEAT: "Bock brings the Germans rushing to the beer garden."

In the USA: on the Bock imagery of goats.

Doppelbock is the perfect example of a seasonal beer style redolent of history and faraway places, and yet deemed insufficiently sexy for narcissistic, hop-laden, shoe-gazing geeks.

No bitterness in this soul, mind you.

There actually was a Bock Fest in NuLu yesterday, and maybe I should have gone over and taken stock, but after being in Munich 20-odd years ago during Starkbierzeit (strong beer time) ... well, you know.

It might not be the same, although I commend the organizers for furthering Bock recognition in Louisville.

Apart from every other consideration, and whether one prefers malty or bitter, it is the seasonal nature of Doppelbock that we found enticing during the dawning age of better beer consciousness. Celebrator and Salvator were available during the warm weather months, but who wants to drink them in July?

Summertime was, and remains, intended for Bavarian-style wheat ale.

Even before the inception of Gravity Head, we'd time the arrival of draft Doppelbocks at the Public House for the Lenten season, as in Bavaria. More often than not, is was still chilly outside. In a word, ideal.

At Pints & Union, we'll keep a bottled version of Doppelbock (as well as Hefeweizen) year-round, but there'll be only two spare faucets for rotating drafts, and these will be scheduled to pour as we used to do it, traditionally and seasonally.

No one ever described the theory and practice of Doppelbock quite as wonderfully as the late Beer Hunter, Michael Jackson. This piece is from 1998.

Bock brings the Germans rushing to the beer garden

After the dark months of winter, the Bavarians are now venturing cautiously into their beloved beer gardens, even though the weather is not yet reliably warm enough to ensure comfort.

They can always give themselves a little central heating with a Bock Beer. In Germany, this is a brewery's strongest beer, unless - as is often the case - it also has a "double" Bock.

Both variations are seasonal specialties for cool weather, and the Doppelbocks are especially associated with Lent. Extra-strong beers were originally made at this time of year by monastic breweries as "liquid bread" to see the brothers through the weeks when their diet forbade not only meat but also fish.

The notion of beer as liquid bread is not fanciful. In the dawn of civilisation, bread was baked as a raw material for brewing and in some corners of the world "traditional beers" are still something of an alcoholic porridge.

A rich, malty beer like a Doppelbock is quite filling and does not, like the lighter, hoppier styles, further arouse the appetite ...