PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Harvest Homecoming pub program for 2019.

Joe Phillips opted for a storefront booth at Harvest Homecoming this year, and so we'll be serving food to the throngs. The menu: Fish & Chips (to be added to the regular daily menu at fest's end), Scotch Egg, Burger and Currywurst Frites.

 

Inside we've shifted into bedlam mode; glassware is gone, plastic cups reign and because we're here to turn a profit, I've stashed a boatload of mass market lager behind lock and key throughout the premise.

But as I explained at social media earlier in the week, this doesn't mean the core mission is compromised. We just try to adapt, and if business is good, make a little bank. Here's what I wrote.

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There are multiple consumer demographics layered through Harvest Homecoming's annual downtown overlay, and as a beer programmer it can be challenging to navigate these often contradictory preferences.

But I rather enjoy challenges.

In 2019 at Pints&union we'll have the usual draft, canned and bottled staples; just know YOU CAN DRINK BETTER BEER DURING BOOTH DAYS if that's your thing.

There'll be at least two interesting one-off drafts, too: Samuel Adams Octoberfest (a fine lager at a reasonable price point) and Bloomington Brewing's Persimmon Ale, as appropriate a seasonal specialty as can be found.

Draft Samuel SMITH Perry (imported English pear cider) will still pouring during booth days, and perhaps a surprise will follow it on tap.

Since 2006 and the late, lamented Bistro New Albany's Harvest Homecoming outreach, I've done my best to encourage the notion that better beer belongs at the table during the festival. It's gratifying to note the extent to which this goal has come to pass since those early, parched days -- so much so that the festival itself is sponsoring a beer festival by the river in 2019. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

I'm on the verge of completing six decades on planet earth, and if there's any one thing of which I'm sure, it's whenever someone says THIS is the way it's always been, THAT's how it has to work, or don't you even CONSIDER CHANGING these sacred rules -- well, my reaction is to toss a Metaphorical Molotov Cocktail at the tablets.

Come into Pints&union during booth days, and I'll do my best to have some fine beers ready and waiting.

Recbar 812 build-out underway. Here's my beer advice.

Always a pleasure to link to the IU Southeast newspaper.

Here's a suggestion for Recbar 812. If they're intent on 20 draft lines, then become an unofficial "tied" house for an Indiana brewery (obviously contractual agreements are not legal) and devote half those lines to them.

Sun King? Three Floyds? 18th Street? Daredevil? Be different, guys.

Or, just be an Indiana-beer-only draft house; it would be easy enough to do, and the inevitable mass market swill could be served in cans.

No charge. Just buy me a drink some time.

Recbar 812 powering up downtown New Albany, by Bryce Shreve (Horizon)

Jeffersontown arcade-bar’s owner looks forward to expanding

New Albany’s Pearl Street will soon be home to an expansion of Louisville’s popular arcade-bar known as Recbar.

The New Albany Recbar location will occupy more than double the square footage of its Louisville location. Founder and owner Corey Sims plans on housing over 200 games at Recbar 812, including Centipede, Donkey Kong and several mini-bowling lanes.

In addition to Recbar 812’s myriad arcade games and pinball machines, Sims plans on having between 16-20 brews on tap, similar to the Louisville location’s 16 taps.

Recbar’s announcement to expand in mid-April was a pleasant surprise to its Facebook followers, but Sims said it had been decided from the beginning.

“We always believed Recbar would be a concept that we could expand beyond our current location,” Sims said. “New Albany was the perfect fit” ...

Pints & Union Portfolio: The pub is taking the day off -- happy birthday to us all, staff and guests alike.

It was a year as of August 1.

Closed today, August 4th, to celebrate a full year of shenanigans at Pints&union. Thank you to every guest, staff member, journalist, and friend who has celebrated with us, supported us, or shared a meal or a drink with us this past year. We couldn’t have done it without you. Cheers to our first year at Pints&union! We’ll see you on Tuesday at 4.

Speaking only from my end as the beer programmer, when the pub opened last year and I began buying beer, it was obvious there'd be a learning curve. I'd only been away from NABC two and a half years at this point; however, it bears mentioning that from 2009 forward the Public House's guest beer program was in the hands of Eric Gray, seeing as my time was entirely spent with the brewing effort. That's a full decade of atrophied muscles.

At Pints&union the beer program has come along slowly during for first year, something purposeful for both it and me. Much of what I'd guessed has been accurate, though by no means all of it. I haven't been able to educate as hoped, primarily because we lack the space to teach in the method to which I'd become accustomed over the years.

It means I'll have to come up with something different as a means of furthering the mandate to educate, and this stands to be an ongoing process. It's a case I'm determined to crack, because now more than ever we need more understanding, not less. All those years at the Public House during the 90s was about learning something new every day, putting this knowledge into action, and improving progressively as a result.

What I've said about the retro-heritage-throwback-classic beer list approach applies just as much to me, personally: the fundamentals apply as time goes by. The first year for beer at Pints&union has been good, and the second will be better.

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

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

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

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

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

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Don't get around much anymore, but don't take it the wrong way. I like drinking beer in my own joint.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I'm a natural born contrarian.

When everyone else is on board with something, I'm filled with suspicion. If the conventional wisdom is being espoused, then it seems to me there must be an obtuse angle willfully neglected by the prevailing herd mentality. "Common" sense? It's another way of enforcing uniformity.

These days there's a fashionable default template for selling beer according to the logic of attention deficit's promiscuous kaleidoscope -- embracing an ever-changing, rapid-fire, tilt-a-whirl dizziness.

It's no longer the approach I favor. It doesn't work for me professionally, and the same applies to my own beer drinking. In the here and now, I'd much rather savor two or three servings of one great (and usually lower gravity) beer, and get to know it better.

Before you ask, it doesn't matter at all that once upon a time, I was among the risk-taking pioneers of this disorienting tap shuffle. Seeing as these days most places embrace a scattershot, constantly rotating "system" of pouring whichever draft beer is new, while neglecting the possibilities inherent to an intelligent bottle and can list, you can count me out of the ensuing rat race.

The past is gone, and my head isn't there any longer.

My solution as beer programmer at Pints&union has been to return to school -- the old school. We emphasize comfort beers, teach neglected styles and offer the greatest beer hits of the 1300s through the 1900s, as placed alongside a few contemporary selections destined to become classics. Some of these come and go, but most stay put.

I'm very proud of what we've achieved with beer in less than a year by undertaking to narrow and solidify options, although the wonderful thing about doing business in our ever-evolving downtown New Albany is that if the old school isn't your bag, other establishments nearby offer plenty of new-wave beers. Generally speaking, downtown New Albany's eateries and watering holes are just a few minutes apart from each other.

Your mandate is clear: Walk about and check them out. At any given time, there surely are more than one hundred different beers available for consumption in downtown New Albany. Many of them won't be pouring during your next visit, while most of the ones at Pints&union will.

So be it, and I like it this way. That's because it may have occurred to you that a corollary of my mission at Pints&union, which is to assemble a classic selection of old-school beers, is my personal preference for precisely the same classic selection of old-school beers.

It follows that the bulk of my own beer drinking takes place at the very bar where I work, although I try not to abuse my privileges, and I don't indulge every night of the week. Rather, I pick my spots. I enjoy drinking the same beers I've chosen and stocked. Obviously this home field advantage also provides an opportunity to shoot the breeze with friends and customers, as well as educating visitors and staff alike.

The down side to Pints&union being my favorite place to drink beer is that I drink beer less often than before at other places, especially since my old stomping grounds at Bank Street Brewhouse have gone away. Part of the reason for my scarcity is a high-mileage liver.

Another is a tight household budget, and besides, there are are numerous other licensees in downtown New Albany (and Jeffersonville, and Louisville). While I try my best to support local businesses, acting as an honest broker of information who sincerely wants everyone to succeed, I can't patronize them all. 

None of this should be construed to imply personal disdain toward other establishments and their beer programs. Their choices aren't bad, just different; different beers for different peers. Diversity? It's good.

The ideal outcome in a district like downtown New Albany is for as many food and drink establishments as the free market proves are viable to co-exist with each other, refining their own offerings and being good at what they choose to do -- and with there being as many differing ideas about how to run a bar, cook food and build a beer selection as there are physical pieces of property to set up shop, the specific possibilities are endless.

I'm very fortunate to be able to purpose-build a beer program capable of pleasing customers and me, all at once. Because of this, Pints&union is my favorite place to drink beer, but for those among you with a tad more vim and vigor than I'm feeling lately, get out there and add to your Untappd totals.

You're just as likely to find me at Pints&union, curled up with a Pilsner Urquell or Fuller's London Porter. Nothing against anyone else; it's just that I really enjoy being a regular at the pub on top of working there.

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A few pub-related links:

What does it mean to be a pub regular, anyway?

In the Age of Seamless, Is the ‘Regular’ a Dying Breed? by Helene Stapinski (New York Times)

For years, they came out night after night. Born of a time before internet and smartphones — or at least before Seamless — the regular is as old as the bar stool, and possibly poised for extinction.

But is the tradition really endangered?

We posed the question to our readers: What makes a regular? And are you one?

More than 500 responded to the callout, and they were as varied a group as you could imagine. The regulars come from every ethnic group and occupation, making certain restaurants and bars their living rooms and dining rooms, where they discover community, nourishment, sometimes even love. They tend to be over 40, though the tradition also seems appealing to millennials.

But no matter the establishment — cafe, trattoria, dive bar, coffeehouse, doughnut shop, pharmacy, even — those who make themselves permanent fixtures almost all say the same thing about what makes a regular. When they walk in, the people behind the counter know who they are.

Regular or not, there used to be a measure of gender discrimination in places like Edinburgh, Scotland.

Bennets Bar (Atlas Obscura)

Edinburgh locals have been drinking at the building that houses Bennets Bar since 1839. Refitted with a new interior in 1906, the bar maintains many of its historic fixtures, including stained glass windows, beautiful tiles depicting cherubs, and a wooden bar. There is even a brass water tap for topping off one’s whisky. Perhaps the most unusual feature, however, is what locals refer to as a “jug” or “snug.”

As a closing bit of serendipity, regulars spent decades drinking in this Wisconsin bar without knowing what was behind a nearby wall.

Huge 19th Century Circus Poster Found in Walls of Wisconsin Bar, by Brigit Katz (Smithsonian)

It advertised an 1885 performance by the Great Anglo-American Circus

Since the 1970s, the family-owned Corral Bar has been serving drinks and hearty meals to diners in the small town of Durand, Wisconsin. But the property has a much longer history: it sits on land that was first surveyed in 1857 and has been home to a succession of stores, barber shops and saloons. As Eric Lindquist reports for the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram that one of the bar’s current owners, Ron Berger, recently revealed a vibrant relic of the Corral’s rich past: a nine-foot-high, 55-foot-long circus poster, long hidden behind the bar’s walls.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: The week's beer outlook includes a way to help the Food Literacy Project by drinking beer.

My ultimate goal is to provide updates like this one at the Pints&union website, then disseminate them by e-mail and Facebook links. We're gradually making progress toward making the web site functional in this regard, so until then I'll try to get in the habit of offering brief beer updates here at the blog.

We have ten draft lines, six of which don't rotate (the top two rows in the illustration) and the seventh pouring St. Bernardus Tripel most of the time, although St. Bernardus Abt12 will make an annual appearance in winter.

Consequently three draft lines currently are changeable, although Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier (the standard golden/amber variety) will continue pouring through the end of August, giving away to Oktoberfest come September. For those who favor the Dunkel (dark) version of Weihenstephaner's famous wheat ale, it is available in bottles.

Meanwhile Sierra Nevada Hoptimum is described as a Triple IPA. I took a nip while changing the keg and it fully resembles these remarks:

Our brewers selected the finest, most flavorful hops, pushed them beyond their limits and forged them into this all-new triple IPA. This reimagined Hoptimum is our hoppiest beer yet, providing a blend of tropical and citrus hop aroma that delivers a refined yet aggressive character.

The Akasha Brewing Company crew visited Pints&union last week for the unveiling of Otterburn English Brown, and it's a wonderfully characterful slice of northern English ale insinuation, subtle and quaffable. When Otterburn depletes, there's a partial of Cigar City Maduro Brown waiting to be finished. My muse has yet to inform me what happens after that.

Queued and ready to replace Sierra Nevada Hoptimum is another exciting choice from Central State Brewing in Indianapolis: Honey Bop, a Farmhouse India Pale Ale with honey and sea salt. It's a collaboration with a bar/eatery in Indy.

Inspired by Love Handle's culinary genius in combining diverse ingredients to create the perfect dish, we took a simple base of flaked oats & Indiana malted barley and added orange blossom honey, a touch of sea salt, and a ridiculous amount of Citra and Simcoe Cryo hops.

Here's the list of bottles and cans. Note that Monnik IPA in 12-ounce cans currently is out of stock. We went through two cases in a little over two weeks, which is very good for a pub our size. Even though I seldom drink IPAs these days, Monnik's version is pleasing to me, simple and good: "American IPA featuring only 2 malts and hopped with Centennial, Cascade and Mosaic."

A final note about the new Pint Night Partnership at Pints&union:

Beginning Thursday, June 6 we’re offering a new Pint Night initiative to give back to our community in a more productive way. We’ll be selecting a charity or nonprofit to feature each month and donating a dollar from every regularly priced draft beer sold on Thursday nights. These programs and projects also will have a platform to inform the good people who frequent our little pub.

For the month of June, we’ll be partnering with The Food Literacy Project, which provides farm-based experiential education and entrepreneurial youth development programs that bring the field-to-fork experience to life for local youth.

Folks from the FLP Stewards Program will be here to chat about their farms and programs and will gladly accept any additional donations. Food and cocktail specials featuring produce grown in their fields are in the works. We’re really excited to be helping a good cause and look forward to hearing and tasting all the good things the Food Literacy Project has to offer. Check them out at www.foodliteracyproject.org

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

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

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

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

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

Roger, Joe and Calvin.

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

Food & Dining Magazine, Spring 2019 (Volume 63)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Recent columns:

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

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

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

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

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Pokemonification? The beer market is plenty big enough for legacy brewers to benefit from segmentation.

I wrote these words three years ago.

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Food and drink lend themselves to constant reinvention, and yet it cannot be denied that there are eternal “classics” amid the bedlam. Clichés become such precisely because they contain an element of truth, and certain aspects of the human experience stand the test of time, whether an umbrella, mouse trap or De Koninck.

If I were to start over, conveniently ignoring pesky realities like rent, logistics and aching knees for the mere sake of conjecture, my plan of operation would be just this sort of time-tested, sustainable, “Classic Beer” programming, the fermentable equivalent of Stairway to Heaven, twice daily.

At my former business, we eventually incorporated our own brewery, guest taps, and hundreds of bottles into a bloated beer program that eventually had to be aggressively pruned to avoid capsizing itself.

I’ve no such grandiose ambitions in my dotage, and I don’t care to run a brewery, ever again.

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.

Interpreting songs written by others may be the best singing I ever did, or might yet do.

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The following essay got some measure of play on social media, perhaps owing to the clever title use of Pokemon, a phenomenon that means almost as little to me as mowing the lawn or visiting Disney World.

Kendall Jones is a well-established beer writer and appears to be an old guy, which I appreciate. This said, I'm finding his argument urging legacy brewers to embrace the logic of the kaleidoscope a tad fallacious, in the sense that Jones seems to accept his conclusion as a foundational premise -- short attention spans are the only conceivable beer market -- then argues his way back to supporting the premise as conclusion.

But is this really true? I think the premise bears examination.

The flagships may be down, but they're hardly out. Numerous beer lovers in America as yet snag a six-pack of Sierra Nevada or Anchor Steam from a supermarket shelf while doing the weekday shopping. Legacy brewers are making beer for a mindset and a generation that has decided it doesn't need bells, whistles and season tickets to the tilt-a-whirl in order to find enjoyment. 

We're eight months into Pints&union, and while there are numerous tweaks still to be addressed, my basic beer program strategy of emphasizing classics and saving the Purple IPAs for periodic seasoning seems to be working.

And for this I am grateful.

THE LEGACY BREWERY BLUES AND THE POKEMONIFICATION OF CRAFT BEER, by Kendall Jones (Washington Beer Blog)

The independent craft breweries that deserve so much credit for starting and fueling the craft beer revolution of the past 30-plus years are facing a challenge these days. I call it the legacy brewery blues. If I had to draw a line, I’d say that any brewery nearing the 20-year milestone, or older, qualifies as a legacy brewery. Some would draw that line to include 10-year-old breweries, but that seems a bit unreasonable to me.

Some legacy breweries, like Deschutes Brewery, for example, are refusing to go down without a fight. They aren’t alone. Most legacy breweries are working hard to remain relevant as the craft beer industry that they created and nurtured charges headlong into the future. The breweries that are not at least trying to keep up will inevitably fall behind the ever-growing herd and face extinction ...

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

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

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

Cult of beer personality?

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

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

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

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

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Beer diversity is bitter and malty, sweet and sour, big and small, foreign and domestic.

The current draft lineup at Pints&union is a very good representation of what I've been hoping to achieve in a concise, ten-tap setting.

Taken in concert with the bottle and can selection, our beer list might not be the biggest or even the "best," whatever THAT means these days, but there can be no doubt that it is downtown New Albany’s most thoughtful: bitter and malty, sweet and sour, big and small, foreign and domestic.

The "classic" quotient is high and the "trendy" buzz low, and purposefully so, but if all the others are kaleidoscopic hamster wheels, intelligent and stable design becomes the most revolutionary concept of all.

Thank you for your support.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Notes from the underground.

Monday is the day for ordering beer. Since the selection at Pints&union largely is fixed by design, only a few draft slots are open to periodic rotation, as well as three or four spaces on the shelf for changeable bottles and cans.

When you choose to approach the staging and vending of rotating drafts as I do, with fewer of them as intended to complement the majority of year-round offerings, lots of weird variables pop up.

Generally speaking I'm looking for established brands with a lineage, now undervalued owing to the predominance of the new and (occasionally) ephemeral. They can be ales and lagers, hoppy and malty, American and imported -- but my objective is that they fit together and provide balance with contrast. We have ten draft lines, and the one thing I don't want is for all of them to be examples of India Pale Ale.

I don't like to drink at places with 15 draft lines and 12 IPAs, and the reason I feel this way is equal parts personal and professional.

Personally, it's simply overkill. There are dozens of beer styles and sub-styles, calibrated to enhance one's life in myriad ways, although this isn't possible when hops outweigh everything. I don't eat burgers three meals a day, and it isn't my objective to drink the same style of beer each time.

Professionally, it makes no sense to me to cannibalize the sale of IPAs among multiple handles when it remains true that a majority of the beer drinking public does not support such a division. By all means, have some of them on tap; IPAs drive the market when it comes to noise, activism and perception, but you can't convince me that the biggest slice (IPA) of a minority product (craft beer) constitutes a majority.

Find a market for an undervalued beer that isn't IPA and brings people back for more, and you're nurturing the sort of loyalty that survives shifting trends.

The problem I didn't expect to experience in all this is the difficulty of sourcing neglected classic beers. Often I'll peruse the wholesaler books and see brewery listings with availability restricted to their IPAs. It's a tad frustrating at times. Then again, I knew going in that the counter-revolution would be as much of an uphill route as the original revolt.

Viva the restoration! Coming up soon on the rotating taps at Pints&union:

Monnik King George (English Brown)
Abbaye du Val-Dieu Tripel (Abbaye Tripel)
Central State Nephilim (Russian Imperial Stout w/coffee)

Don't worry, hopheads; there'll be IPAs rotating through as commensurate with scale and variety -- just not all at the same time. After all one of the very best is Bell's Two Hearted, and it's on tap every day of the year.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: If beer choices constantly rotate, then it's revolutionary to rotate them less often -- or not at all.

The Spring 2019 issue (Vol. 63) of Food & Dining Magazine will hit the streets in March. My beer column is returning with a brief overview of Pints&union, emphasizing our revolutionary beer program.

My stand is clear, and the time for a “back to basics” movement is now. I believe there exists a silent majority among American beer drinkers who find the kaleidoscopic tilt-whirl of short attention spans – this frenetic hamster wheel approach to beer appreciation – utterly bewildering.

If you're thinking this isn't revolutionary at all, I beg to differ. The core definition of revolution is "involving or causing a complete or dramatic change." There's an inescapable relativity to this. If beer choices constantly rotate, then it's revolutionary to rotate them less often -- or not at all.

Ah, but BUSINESS -- consumers demand kaleidoscopic hamster wheels, therefore businesses are compelled to provide them or go bust.

Not entirely, and in fact I've never really believed this is true. If I had, would there have been a Rich O's Public House in 1990 offering unknown beers when consumers were demanding a dozen more tasteless frozen light lager "choices"?

Besides, if every bar in town is showing the Stupor Bore, then I want my joint to do something different as a haven for the minority preferring anything but football. Businesses are compelled to find markets, not pander to any particular model.

This is as good a segue as any into a nationwide campaign to restore a dollop or three of equilibrium to the reign of short beer attention spans.

Why #FlagshipFebruary?

What sometimes gets lost amid the constant stream of special releases are the beers that paved the way for today’s remarkable global beer market, or in other words, the flagship beers that got us here.

When the current keg of Monnik Mild George depletes, there'll be two kegs of Anchor Steam to pour in connivance with #FlagshipFebruary, although I can't say exactly when this will begin.

San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Co. is widely acknowledged to be the first modern-day craft brewery in the United States. It is less appreciated that the company’s flagship beer, Anchor Steam Beer, is the first American craft beer in modern times. Because of its status as the last survivor of the steam beer style, which was once widespread in the American West, the beer appears to be a missing link between historic and craft beers. However, the circumstances of its reinvention in 1971 show it to be something far more important.

Finally, at Good Beer Hunting the forever well-informed and provocative Bryan Roth turns the very notion of "flagship" inside out. It's very interesting reading, which makes me more determined than ever to create, nurture and sustain an alternative beachhead.

We’ve Created a Monster — What Does it Mean to Talk Flagship Fatigue?

... Advocates spent the last 40 years decrying the problems of mass market Lager and clamoring for more options and experiences via “small and independent” craft brewers. They can hardly complain when those wishes come to fruition, and when 85% of 21-and-over Americans live within 10 miles of a brewery. This is the future liberal, promiscuous drinkers want, old-guard flagships be damned.

I've been one of these advocates, who now finds his innate contrarianism to be as infinitely mutable as the beer marketplace itself. I'm proud of what we've accomplished so far, and I will continue to work on improving the beer experience at Pints&union.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: #FlagshipFebruary is right in my wheelhouse, and Pints&union will do its little bit for the cause.

When can we get those cans?

I'm a beer-first kind of guy, which isn't altogether hard to understand. But if we take it a step further and inquire exactly which beer comes first, things get a tad murkier.

I've answered this question in many different ways during the past four decades. There were imports, and later microbrews; the latter morphed into "craft" beers, and eventually "craft" beers were being imported, too. I was fine with St. Pauli Girl until it became clear that the very best German beer originated in an obscure valley somewhere in Franconia; last month in Munich, I drank my weight in Paulaner. I was a hophead, a gravity head, a sourpuss and a dedicated follower of fashion.

Then I wasn't any longer.

I suppose there are many more reasons for this conversion than sufficient space allotted to list them, although in a very fundamental sense, if one awakens each morning to a planet seemingly gone insane, it's understandable to begin reconsidering the merits of focus and stability.

What gives us hope and strength even if they take our iPhones away? A pint of tasty, timeless and honest beer, that's what.

More power to anyone and everyone who defines their beer lives via the new norms of brute strength, elusive rarity and sheer hoardability. I'm happy to have done my part in bringing you to this juncture. Rock on and have fun, while I reverse field, flee the neo-conformist pack and recall the wonderful wisdom of Joe Stange, quoted in this space just last year.

What one word, or phrase, do you think should be used to describe beer that you’d like to drink?

Comfort.

In the beers I try I'm not looking for one-night stands. I'm looking for future wives. I'm looking for the ones you invite into your house because you might want to live with them, to grow more familiar with them; they walk in on you in the bathroom and you don't even mind. Few beers are so easy to get along with. Few offer the sort of depth that allows a lifetime of getting acquainted.

Thus the beer program at Pints&union, once aptly described by my wife as a conscious attempt to recreate a portion of the Rich O's Public House ambiance  from around 1997 -- with or without the couches in the barroom.

• Or, beer's greatest hits ... and some that will be.
• Or, 47 beautiful beer classics ... and four ugly ones (Louisvillians will know the reference)
• Or, comfort beers, golden oldies, brews you can sing along to ...

Here's the list, updated last week.

What the majority of these beers have in common is being idiotically undervalued in on-premise settings, having been supplanted by the "always a new beer hourly" approach of coddling short attention spans.

Last week the beer writer Stephen Beaumont addressed this phenomenon and offered an idea to do something about it.

A New #FlagshipFebruary Campaign Aims To Save Core Beer Brands Before They Disappear, by Tara Nurin (Forbes)

Deservedly or not, millennials get blamed for a lot of things, not least of all the slow demise of the flagship beer. Called everything from fickle to promiscuous, millennial craft beer drinkers stereotypically flit between the newest, hottest, rarest releases with no regard for the workhorse core brands that, to apply the most common cliché, “keep the lights on” for brewers who bank on their steady sales for sturdy ongoing revenue.

Beer writers like me do a lot of hand wringing over this, particularly as it pertains to the old classics–Sierra Nevada Pale Ale gets mentioned most often–that built the craft beer industry in the first place. Our laments are more than sentimental. The nation’s most pioneering and influential old craft breweries, all of which built their businesses on a flagship or two, are struggling mightily – and not so successfully -- to compete in a world where a decent number of upstarts don’t even craft a core beer.

“A lot of beer drinkers have developed a sort of ADD with respect to the beers they drink, so going for a glass of beer at the bar or pub becomes less a pleasant distraction and more a relentless search for what’s new and exciting. In this mad rush towards the unusual and unknown, we tend to forget the great, familiar and still-wonderful beers that guided us all along the path to the craft beer renaissance,” emails globally renowned beer journalist Stephen Beaumont, who’s authored 13 books on the subject.

On Tuesday, Beaumont decided to officially do something about this important but admittedly first-world problem. He’s launching a campaign called #FlagshipFebruary, a month-long international celebration of flagship beers.

Bravo! This is my kind of crusade; so is Lew Bryson's Session Beer Project, which is referenced in the article.

At Pints&union, where the beer program largely has been built around the notion of rediscovering classic and flagships, we'll be doing our little bit for #FlagshipFebruary by tapping Anchor Steam at month's beginning. We're getting two kegs, which is all the wholesaler has; as I've learned during the past seven months, it's not easy to return to a flagship mentality when wholesalers systematically reduce the presence of classics in favor of overstocking one-offs, seasonals and specialties.

On the general topic of my beer life as of January, 2019, the following was ranted last evening at Facebook. I approve these words, given that I wrote them; moreover, they're a composite snapshot of my mood entering the new year.

---

Back in the early 1990s at the original Rich O's Public House, we started selling what I considered to be "good" beers to lots of you who remain friends today. I didn't always know what the hell I was doing with these beers, but I believed strongly in the VALUE and SUSTAINABILITY of what I was doing with them. Although I'm unsure from whence this confidence came, there was no doubt in my mind that better beer was a trend, not a fad.

I cared very little about what others were doing with their beer programs, because for the most part, beer programs didn't even exist -- and I knew I could do it better than most of them, regardless. The local scene has changed IMMENSELY since then, and in metro Louisville, lots of folks are doing wondrous things with beer, whether as brewers or better beer bars. No one appreciates their success more than me. But I still have my shtick, and my shtick abides.

The Pints&union beer program is getting close to where I want it, although there's still tweaking to be done and a few adjustments to be made. The chief virtues of this list are stability and timelessness, and there are no apologies to be made for this "greatest hits" approach.

As Irving Thalberg told the Marx Brothers prior to Night at the Opera, it can't be constant comedic fireworks and ceaseless hamsters spinning their wheels; comedy has to play AGAINST something fixed and solid. So does good beer.

If you need to have a different beer every time you come in, there are approximately 60 on this list -- that's more than two months' worth, and let me know when you come out the other side; I'll see what I can do in a post-graduate sense.

I'm too old to be all adrenaline-charged and cocky, and yet the beer I know how to do, I can still do well. I've had 35 years of practice. Thanks again to Joe C Phillips for the opportunity to prove it.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: St. Bernardus Tripel (heritage) and Sierra Nevada Narwhal Imperial Stout (serendipity) to debut new draft lines this Thursday, September 20.

Or, a beer list's incremental progress.

Regular readers already know that I'm a pendulum theorist. As the pendulum pertains to the wonderful world of better beer, it recently has been swinging back toward the center. Old-school is the new counter-revolution.

For me, comfort beer is a fastball with no movement, right down the center of the plate. Accordingly, my aim as beer director during the first eight weeks of Pints&union has been to re-establish the concept of a beer list purposefully designed to showcase world heritage classics -- not ignoring contemporary craft creativity, but contextualizing it.

In short, you can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been.

As such, phase one of the bottle and can list at Pints&union largely is complete. We have a few housekeeping tasks to complete with regard to storage, then phase two can commence, boosting the everyday list to around 50 selections, with room for a few rotating guests.

Meanwhile draft sales have been the steady engine we hoped they'd be, and in spite of being frustrated by wholesaler outages, a firm template is in place: eight lines, six of them fixed and two rotating, albeit it very slowly on a seasonal basis.

We're using a basic, short-draw keg box system for draft, and all along there has been space in each box for a 1/6 barrel keg. I wanted to take a few weeks to assess the sales landscape, and accordingly we can now begin to use these two draft lines, beginning on Thursday (September 20).

In terms of formatting, one of these taps will be devoted to heritage, and the second to serendipity.

By "heritage" I mean ales like St. Bernardus Tripel.

Belgian Tripel derives from the Trappist brewing tradition, and especially in terms of its typical deep golden-orange hue, it stands as a relatively recent adaptation of old-school brewing methods.

Hendrik Verlinden of the Drie Linden brewery, brewing scientist and yeast specialist, had been formulating a golden ale to combat the celebrity of pale beers in Europe in the early 1930s (he helped Westmalle in the 1920s as a consultant of sorts). In 1932, he released Witkap Pater (now Witkap Tripel). His beers were marketed as Trappist, which wasn’t altogether apropos with those monasteries, but because of his earlier role in assisting their brewing, he was the sole non-Trappist brewer allowed to market his Witkap Pater as a Trappist-style beer. His role in helping Westmalle develop its tripel is nebulous, but it is known that the monks were also tinkering with this new style by 1931. Westmalle introduced its tripel, and newly built brewhouse, in 1934. It is still considered the standard by many. Ever the perfectionists, Westmalle’s esteemed Brother Thomas tweaked the recipe to include more hops. It has remained unchanged since 1956.

Note that Pints&union also carries Westmalle Tripel on bottles, but the draft of the moment comes from the St. Bernardus brewery, one-time Trappist supplier, now a producer of "abbey" styles -- signifying a connection to the Trappist legacy.

Located in Watou, just 12 kilometers (about 7 miles) from Westvleteren, St. Bernardus brewed the “Trappist Westvleteren” beers under a license from the monks at Sint Sixtus Abbey from 1946-1992. There’s a billboard from that era in the St. Bernardus tasting room that reads: “Brouwerij Sint Bernardus: alleenvervaardiger van de bieren van de abdij van West-Vleteren,” or “Sint Bernardus brewery, the sole producer of the beers of the Abbey of Sint Sixtus in Westvleteren.”

That arrangement came to an end when the license expired in 1992. A new brewing facility was established in Westvleteren. Crucially, St. Bernardus retained all the recipes they had brewed for Sint Sixtus during the 46-year relationship, including that of the Westvleteren 12, a 10.2% ABV Strong Ale which RateBeer awarded “Best Beer in the World” in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2013.

Although St. Bernardus is just a few clicks from Poperinge, a town I've visited many times, somehow I've never been to visit the brewery. This omission will be rectified in 2020. Pints&union also carries bottles of the epochal St. Bernardus Abt 12, which is the finest Trappist that isn't a Trappist at all.

Moving to the second new draft line, we'll be inaugurating it with Sierra Nevada Harwhal Imperial Stout, which dates to 2012. Interestingly, the idea of brewing stout goes all the way back to Sierra Nevada's inception almost 40 years ago.

When Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi opened Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico, California, in 1980, the first beer they made was a stout. Sierra Pale came along shortly after but took almost a dozen tries to get the recipe dialed in to their liking. In his book Beyond the Pale: The Story of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Grossman says the pair spent a lot of time “trying to decide exactly what flavor and aroma profile our flagship beer should have. We knew we needed to create our own style of beer that would stand out as being unique and distinctive.”

Of course "imperial" stout is the boldest and strongest of the stout family.

Though the history of imperial stout is somewhat murky, it was indeed a London brewery that is credited with popularizing the style as a strong, exported stout. Around 1781, Barclay Perkins began exporting its stout to assorted ports in the Baltic region. Purposely brewed to be a formidable beer, it would easily withstand the voyage. The serendipitous extension of this attribute was that it was also perfectly suited for the cold, gnarly climate, where spirits were very much favored. When Empress Catherine II discovered it, its place in Russian legend was cemented. The commercial viability of the brew ensured that the style endured.

Recently the enduring mystery of the narwhal's distinctive "tusk" has been partially resolved: it's used to immobilize prey as an aid in fishing for food.

The narwhal is the unicorn of the sea, a pale-colored porpoise found in Arctic coastal waters and rivers. These legendary animals have two teeth. In males, the more prominent tooth grows into a swordlike, spiral tusk up to 8.8 feet long. The ivory tusk tooth grows right through the narwhal's upper lip. Scientists are not certain of the tusk's purpose, but some believe it is prominent in mating rituals, perhaps used to impress females or to battle rival suitors. Females sometimes grow a small tusk of their own, but it does not become as prominent as the male's.

Here is Sierra Nevada's description.

A malt-forward monster, highlighting the depths of malt flavor, Narwhal Imperial Stout is inspired by the mysterious creature that thrives in the deepest fathoms of the frigid Arctic Ocean. Featuring incredible depth of malt flavor, rich with notes of espresso, baker’s cocoa, roasted grain and a light hint of smoke, Narwhal is a massive malt-forward monster. Aggressive but refined with a velvety smooth body and decadent finish, Narwhal will age in the bottle for years to come.

At 10.2% abv, Narwhal Imperial Stout is a "gravity" beer and will be served in 10-ounce glasses. To me it's a dessert beer in itself, to be sipped after a meal.

For St. Bernardus Tripel, we have 25 cl signature glasses. Pair with a Croque Madame and seasoned frites.

As for what will follow these two beers, I'm not sure. I'd like to keep the Tripel on tap for at least two weeks, at least until Harvest Homecoming. Narwhal's a one-off, and I'll see what's available before rendering a decision.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: In the on-deck circle to pinch hit, it's Bell's Porter.

The unfortunate truth of the matter is that with the exception of Hoosier brewers, who can deliver their wares to a licensed pub or restaurant in Indiana, an on-premise establishment must rely on the wholesaler for inventory.

No inventory at the wholesaler, no beer at the tavern. The three-tier system giveth and taketh away, often in equal measure.

This is my subtle, back-handed way of informing the Pints&union beer-drinking customer base that tonight or tomorrow, Bell's Porter will take the place of Anchor Porter on the draft list. There are no kegs of Anchor Porter at the wholesaler, and they will not return until early October.

Coincidentally, early October is the predicted time for Fuller's London Pride to return to the draft lineup. You'll recall we sold three kegs of Fuller's in 12 days, thus depleting the entire state. Wychwood Hobgoblin has been filling this spot in the weeks since.

Outages like these aren't as much of an issue for the majority of establishments that follow the relatively new trend of rotating draft selections on a constant basis. For Pints&union, where we've vowed to institute a significant degree of stability on tap, it's a big deal. We'll continue improvising where necessary, while hoping the pipeline eventually will work as we desire it.

Here is information about Bell's Porter. Overall, I'm a tremendous fan of Bell's, and if current sales continue, Pints&union may become one of the bigger draft Two Hearted Ale accounts in Southern Indiana.

But don't underestimate Bell's Porter. It's very good in its own right.

Bell's Porter

Our award winning Porter bridges the gap between malty brown ales and heavily roasted stouts. Notes of chocolate, coffee and roasted barley are offset with just a slight hop bitterness. Enjoy any time of the year.

Alcohol By Volume:
5.60%
Original Gravity:
1.06

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest is on tap, and here's a style primer.

Like most of the world's beer styles, the tasty delight we refer to as Oktoberfest comes to us as a product of evolution within the context of tradition.

See also: The seasonality of Oktoberfest in time, beer and year.

This beer began as a dark lager brewed in spring, and held until harvest festival season in autumn. It changed in step with advancements in malting technique and shifting popular tastes, lightening from dark brown to orange/amber, and nowadays to tawny golden, though with the basic full, malty flavor balance remaining consistent throughout.

Everyone knows that Munich's Oktoberfest is the most famous such celebration, a two-week paean to sheer excess as calculated to explode heads with numerical overkill via the total of liter beers drained and roasted chickens consumed, not to mention whole oxen on a spit. It begins this year on September 22.

At Pints&union, we decided to get a head start on "official" Oktoberfest by tapping Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest. More about that in a moment. 

Beer writer K. Florian Klemp is one of the best we have when it comes to explaining beer styles. His MÄRZEN/OKTOBERFEST lesson is at All About Beer. First came Märzen (in German, the month of March), the forerunner of Oktoberfest, and Vienna is a kissing cousin of both.

The first Oktoberfest was a communal celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig I) of Bavaria and Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. It was held just outside Munich and attended by both royalty and citizens. The epic event started on Oct. 12, 1810, and lasted five days. The festival grounds were named Theresienwiese, or Therese’s Meadow.

The festival became an annual event, a celebration of autumn, harvest and agriculture. The timing was perfect for tapping that year’s locally brewed Märzen—still a dark beer, suitably aged and in prime condition for fall consumption.

By the 1870s, Josef Sedlmayr, Gabriel II’s brother and brewer at Franziskaner (today part of Spaten), was keen to the changing landscape, noting that lighter beers were becoming quite popular. The Sedlmayrs were among the most prominent brewers in Munich, and the penchant for tinkering was apparently an inherited trait. Josef got busy working on a Vienna-style lagerbier, finally hitting his mark and rigorous standards in 1871. He brewed it the following March and introduced it in 1872.

It was poured in the Schottenhamel Banquet Tent by Michael Schottenhamel, a carpenter from the Palatinate who erected a small barn on the Theresienwiese in 1867. Called Franziskaner-Leistbrauerei Ur-Märzen (original Märzen), it was pricey, but sold like crazy. The newly stylized beer was hastily copied by other Oktoberfest brewers and soon enough became the event’s signature brew.

With the development of refrigeration about the same time by Karl Von Linde in Germany, brewers were able to make beer year round, rendering the literal, traditional definition of Märzen moot, but useful as a simple stylistic designation. Märzen became identified with amber lagerbier because of the festival, and by default, both it and Oktoberfestbier became synonymous.

I'd like to say that Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest will pour through the month of September, but of course this depends on the wholesaler's inventory -- and the lesson I've learned the fastest since undertaking the construction of the Pints&union beer program is not to depend on what wholesalers tell you about their inventory.

My aim is to keep an Oktoberfest beer of one or another variety on tap into October. Klemp summarizes Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest in this addendum to his article, and I think he nails it.

Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest

ABV: 5.8

Tasting Notes: The Hacker-Pschorr brewery was founded in Munich in 1417, making it one of the longest-standing operations in the world. Its Oktoberfest-Märzen is one of six brews poured at Oktoberfest. Full reddish-amber in color, it offers up floral noble hop and warming malt aromatics. Some extra sweetish malt flavor is backed up by a firm dose of bittering hops. Complex maltiness, with both lighter grainy notes as well as a good dose of darker varieties. Nicely balanced, with a bit more hop character than some of the others. The finish is somewhat light and dry.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: About a burger, and draft list notes.

A beer update follows, but first, let's eat.

The "Oklahoma" burger was introduced earlier this week at Pints&union. It's a riff on the Oklahoma Onion Burger, with homemade ketchup, mustard and pickles, and buttered with Duke's Mayonnaise.

The burger is $6, and a side of fries is $2. Throw in two Imperial pints of Falls City Classic Pilsner at $4 each, add tax and gratuity, and it comes to $23. That's a good price point for quality food and drink.

Owing to difficulties with installing the kitchen hood, the food program was the last component of Pints&union to be "dialed in," and the process continues. To date, I've enjoyed everything I've tried.

It's important to know that we are a bar with a kitchen, not a full-service restaurant. Small plates inspired by international street food make up the menu, and there'll be changes from week to week, although the burger is an everyday item.

Elsewhere, the pub got some good ink at SoIn. Thanks, Mikael.

Pints&union: Commune with the Past in the Present, by Mikael Attebury (Clark-Floyd Counties Convention-Tourism Bureau)

 ... This isn’t the place to watch the game – not that there’s anything wrong with sports bars. Pints&union just is not that kind of place. It is a place to talk to your neighbors, to read, to write, or simply to revel in the joy of existence with friends, pint in hand.

I'll spare readers the longer narrative about beer wholesaler iniquity, a fact of life that I've re-learned surprisingly quickly after a decade away. Here's the short version.

Pints&union began operations a month ago with the stated intent of specializing in Fuller's London Pride on tap; we sold three kegs in 12 days, and suddenly the entire state of Indiana ran dry, with reinforcements not expected until October.

On Monday I ordered a keg of Anchor Porter, only to be informed that the wholesaler is depleted and cannot restock for at least a month.

I substituted Wychwood Hobgoblin for Fuller's, and now a fill-in for Anchor Porter must be determined next week. Suitable temporary replacements include Bell's Porter, Founder's Porter and Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, the latter back in Indiana after a decade or longer away.

All three are solid, but the point to this digression is that having determined to buck the on-premise trend of tilt-a-whirl draft lists, it appears my war also will have to be fought with the wholesalers, who understandably have adapted their purchasing to reflect constant rotation, as opposed to stability.

And that's okay.

I've spent my entire career in the beer business swimming against the tide, and it's too late to stop now. To complain would be churlish; rather, it's time to go over the heads of wholesalers, grit my teeth and do their jobs for them as in days of old by directly contacting breweries and importers.

I did it before, and look forward to doing it again.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: The weekly schedule adds Sunday afternoon hours -- and some small plate photos.

The first "full" business week at Pints&union begins today at 4:00 p.m., and Joe has published a schedule (below), followed by some food views.

As a side note, yesterday I floated a trial balloon about the possibility of resurrecting my IU Southeast "Here's to Beer" class of old for Tuesday evenings at the pub, and there was a positive response on social media, so I'll continue working on the plan.

I'll also be devising a program for Thursdays, having waited for a routine to settle into place. My regular "beer evenings" will be Tuesdays and Thursdays, with other nights as serendipity dictates. I'll almost surely be at the pub for the beginning of Sunday hours later this week.

Speaking of which, if I'm calculating correctly, Pints&union hours are 4:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Tuesday through Friday; 12 noon to 2:00 a.m. on Saturday; and 12 noon to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday.

Tuesday: Industry night with $3 whiskey shots and $4 imperial pints of Falls City, plus Game Night upstairs at 8:00 p.m.

Also, tonight is the collective downtown restaurant and bar fundraiser for the family of Matt Brewer, and 10% of today's sales will be donated.

Wednesday: Bike Night. Non-motorized bikes welcomed.

Thursday: Acoustic open jam upstairs.

Friday: Ladies Night, $1 off champagne cocktails.

Saturday: Opening at 12 noon.

Sunday: "Hangover Menu" 12 noon - 4:00 p.m. with Woodrow (on the Radio -- Woody's Roadhouse) spinning records.

Following is a collection of small-plate food views from the past couple of weeks, as the kitchen gradually has escalated. I don't have a menu to show you, at least not just yet. The kitchen is small, the flavors international, and to program evolving as I write. Pints&union is a pub with counter service, not a full-service restaurant, and these dishes are twists on pub grub.

And they've been well received, so stay tuned for further details.

The pub has gotten off to a very good start, and the list of 1,001 necessary details has been reduced to 250, which are being dialed in each business day. In my capacity as beer director, kindly allow me to express how much your support is appreciated.

The beers are moving all across the list, and that's all one can ask at the start. As the weeks pass, a gradual notching-up of the beer program will take place, and I'm looking forward to it.