ON THE AVENUES took a week off. Here's what I've been writing while on holiday.

There also was a house-painting project.

Having made it through six months of weekly ON THE AVENUES columns without a single rerun, I decided to celebrate by taking a week off and hopefully reloading for "the second half" of the year. The July 4 holiday weekend seemed perfectly placed for an intermission.

After all, July 4 is an extremely important date in human history; as of 2020, it's been 44 years since The Clash’s debut gig on the 4th of July, opening for Sex Pistols at a pub in Sheffield, England.

Regular readers already know that 2020 would see a curtailment of activity at NA Confidential, which has been rigorously pro bono and non-profit since its inception in 2004. My time has shifted to platforms where I'm writing for material reward. It's as simple as that.

I'll likely never be sufficiently organized to function as a true free-lancer; however, writing is my job as digital editor at Food & Dining Magazine, and it's a big part of what I'm doing at Pints&union, especially lately, with the pub largely dormant while awaiting the reopening (this week, maybe Friday), and a need to do something to help keep our clientele engaged during the down time.

Consequently, I'm delighted to have received so many positive comments about my series of "Staycation Stories," many of which have been reworked beer travel tales from the archive along with a few newly written vignettes. Most, if not all, have been illustrated with recently digitized photos.

Volga outing, 1999.

Following are the eleven most recent, with other available for perusing at my P&U Beer Blog.

Staycation Stories: My shoes are filled with Volga mud (1999), Part Two 

Staycation Stories: My shoes are filled with Volga mud (1999), Part One

Staycation Stories: The Birra Korça experience, and beer in Albania, 1994

Staycation Stories: of Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie, 1985

Staycation Stories: Under the volcano in Catania, Sicily (2016)

Staycation Stories: One fine evening at the Zlatý Dukát in Košice, 1991

My alternative “6 Bucket List Destinations for Beer Lovers

Staycation Stories: The late, once great Brauhaus Nussdorf in Vienna

Staycation Stories: The Dolphin, one of the great pubs in the world

Staycation Stories: Good times in the bike saddle at the Radler Tankstelle

Staycation Stories: A Bohemian countryside beer walk (1989)

On the Food & Dining Magazine side of the ledger, I'm responsible for two web posts each weekday (just one on weekends), with linkage to social media feeds. Some are short and functional, others longer and more detailed. We've started work on an autumn issue of the quarterly print publication (the summer issue was cancelled this year).

Here are a few F&D highlights from the past couple weeks

Hip Hops: How do craft breweries survive the pandemic? Any which way they can

Edibles & Potables: But what about the workers?

Celebrate July 4 at St. Benedict’s Brew Works in the shadow of The Dome (Ferdinand IN)

Board and You Bistro & Wine Bar prepares to broaden the charcuterie in New Albany

Hip Hops: Black Is Beautiful collabs are on, Fest of Ale is off (until 2021)

Edibles & Potables: Wet markets, food safety, food justice and Halal localism

Anthony Bourdain’s genius was not in the kitchen. His genius was in knowing which side he was on

I'm also charged with laying out weekly F&D columns contributed by others, including Marty Rosen, Susan Reigler and Ron Mikulak.

Marty's "Letter from the Editor" appears on Wednesday, and Susan's "Bourbon News & Notes" on Friday. Last week Ron began a weekly Tuesday column called "Comings & Goings." As an example, consider Marty's column last week, which deserves a wider audience:

Letter from the Editor: Face masks, yes. We have a collective responsibility to hold each other safe.

It would verge on redundant for me to point out that I'm by far the junior partner when it comes to the experience and skill of these writers. It makes me a better writer merely by arranging their pieces for publication.

The lesson we should be learning from the pandemic is that what we build may seem everlasting, when in fact it's ephemeral. Things change very slowly, then all at once. I'll be 60 very soon, but my new life and the next chapters actually began in May of 2014 when we closed the restaurant at Bank Street Brewhouse.

From that point, I understood something had come unmoored. There had been a conclusion in my life, and it would be followed by completely new developments. It all took some time, but the shift occurred. As oft times before, I came out the other side. Obviously, in order to come back, one must first go away, into the wilderness, for the required cleansing.

Consequently, I've no idea whether my currently productive era will last, and if it does, for how long. However, for the moment it is quite good, both personally and professionally, and I'm keenly aware of the irony inherent in making such a statement amid pandemic and social upheaval.

The very presence of irony points to the necessity of my staying involved, albeit minding my manners v.v. the local power structure, and advocating for change as it pertains to this dysfunctional shibboleth of a nation, fully half of it engaged in denial of a magnitude I can't recall witnessing.

Maybe I'll write about it for ON THE AVENUES this coming Thursday.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Hip Hops and doing another evolution.

This fact will shock and amaze some readers, but from 1990 through 2001, or thereabouts, I edited a monthly FOSSILS homebrewing club newsletter called "Walking the Dog," so named from the purported English male custom of tending to his canine's critical exercise needs as a pretext for visiting the pub and having one pint of elixir, maybe two.

During this entire 12-year period coinciding with the advent and growth of the Public House, "Walking the Dog" was produced with a photocopier, paper, staples and STAMPS (pub regulars received theirs along with the daily tipple). When it became apparent that a majority of the members had e-mail, we went electronic, a move I've never regretted, not even once.

As with putting up hay the old fashioned-way, one bale at a time on the hottest day of the year just before a thunderstorm, it's something I vowed not to do, ever again.

The point is that "Walking the Dog" began as a simple single-sheet meeting reminder that ballooned into a six-page (or more) monthly collection of beer writing, much of it mine but with quite a few contributions from others over the years.

Looking back, the experience reminds me that in the beginning, I was only barely aware of what beer writing was. It likewise informs me that writing about beer, and having my beer writing perused by folks of like-minded interest, was important enough to me that I tolerated the drudgery of producing it. One writes to be read. Consequently, I kept doing it.

If memory serves, the digital version of "Walking the Dog" was called "The Not Dog," and it would seem to have kept me occupied during the period 2001 - 2005, although I can't recall when I finally gave it up. Perhaps my involvement ceased around 2003, when NABC had started brewing and available time was becoming an issue. 

From 2005 through 2016 was the effective life span of my beer blog, The Potable Curmudgeon, which more often than not dealt with New Albanian Brewing Company news because we were too disorganized to do it at a web site of our own. Concurrently from 2005 - 2008 came a weekly blog called Publicanista! It functioned as a newsletter for NABC, intended to separate the business from the opinionated writer.

I still love the title. However, distinguishing between business and publican never seemed effective in practice. Synonymity? It's a real word.

After my departure from NABC, an aggravating three-year-long negotiation that began in 2015, the beer chat shifted entirely to NA Confidential, where it went from "Potable Curmudgeon" to "After the Fire," back to "The PC" and eventually "Beer with a Socialist" (the title is a joke deriving from a hurried misreading one morning of AtG's "Beer with a Scientist" promotion).

In addition, for roughly a year (2009 - 2010) I wrote a column in LEO called "Mug Shots," until the publication's then-editor tired of me ritually bashing Budweiser -- which spent lots of money on advertisements. Life lessons are hard, especially when swill wins. There also was the relatively short-lived Louisville Beer Dot Com web site, where I did a column by the "Potable Curmudgeon" moniker circa 2011 - 2012, maybe 2013.

At least I think so. They all mix together after a while.

The preceding is a ludicrously lengthy prelude to an announcement that isn't to be described as earth-shattering, but matters to me. I've been contributing beer columns to Food & Dining Magazine since its second year of operation, somewhere around 2005. In the beginning the columns were not given a title. Eventually the magazine's founder and publisher John White chose "Hip Hops" to identify them. 

Given my throwback proclivities of late, "hip" strikes me as deliciously ironic in tone and I intend to keep it.

Last July came the opportunity to serve as F&D's digital editor, a glorified way of describing the task of writing, editing and organizing the web site's face to the world.

And now ... drum roll please ... yet another weekly format for my fermentable musings.

I hope you enjoy them. Henceforth I'll be signposting F&D, not reprinting the contents here. In fact, at this moment, I'm not sure what "here" even means, or "there," and it's not just pandemic uncertainties speaking.

Reinventions come and go, as they must, and the gist that remains is beer. I'll keep commenting about beer. Even better, I'll keep drinking it.

---

Hip Hops: Introducing weekly scribblings about beer and brewing

For more than a decade, "Hip Hops" has been the title of my column for the quarterly print-edition of Food & Dining Magazine. Now it will be deployed on a weekly basis here at the web site to signal Monday afternoon posts about beer: news and notes, events, ruminations and probably a beer travelogue here and there.

Ironically, as the 40th anniversary of my involvement in various sectors of the beer business draws alarmingly closer (2022), "hip" in terms of the avant garde isn't exactly the way I always feel, especially as the word pertains to aching knees and a sagging jowl.

It remains that beer is my life's work. All of my interests collide while savoring a lovingly rendered pint: history, sociology, geography, pub architecture and just the sheer cultural depth of it. Is there a word for this obsession?

Some people call me a beer “expert,” although being painfully aware of how much I don’t know about the topic would seem to preclude it. “Geek” is too techno-adolescent and “snob” is a nasty pejorative. “Connoisseur” and “aficionado” both strike me as pretentious, and Jerry Seinfeld's “soup Nazi” didn’t improve a horrible and objectionable word that should not be used in any context, let alone one pertaining to a beer drinker.

Hence I'm left with simplicity: "I'm a professional beer drinker, and here are a few local beer news items of potential interest to you."

On May 1, three huge components of the Indianapolis beer scene departed all at once: Nuvo, the independent weekly newspaper where my friend Rita Kohn has written for many years about the confluence of beer and society; Brugge Brasserie, since 2005 a Belgian-themed brewery and eatery in Broad Ripple; and the Indiana Microbrewers Festival, which was postponed until a projected return in 2021.



Best future wishes to all the folks involved with these entities. These are tumultuous times for craft beer in America, as noted by the New York Times:

Demand for draft beer dried up, and Bauhaus (Brew Labs, Minneapolis) kegs and cans filled its distributor’s warehouse, with no need for new inventory. On April 21, in a scene reminiscent of Prohibition, the brewery decided to send more than 900 gallons of perfectly good beer down the drain. For Bauhaus and other craft breweries, kegging or canning beer that can’t be sold would be a wasted expense. And the beer is quickly approaching the dates set for peak freshness and quality, which then start to decline.

To my knowledge such a scene hasn't been witnessed in metropolitan Louisville, at least yet. In fact, there's an opening to report. Gallant Fox Brewing in Clifton is open for to-go beer sales.



"We will be open Thursday through Saturday each week from 12-6pm until things return to normal," according to the brewery's Facebook page. "We will post more permanent hours for our taproom at that time."

Louisville Business First has been chasing local stories about the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding, and reporter Haley Cawthon learned that Against the Grain Brewery, Goodwood Brewing, Gravely Brewing Co. and Monnik Beer Co. all were approved for PPP loans. The breweries are pursuing different strategies to make use of these loans.

"I do wish there was a little more leeway for businesses in the use of the funds, because it’s really hard to make a blanket statement and say, 'This applies to every business,'" Gravely's founder Nathan Gravely told Cawthon. "Obviously, every payroll and lease structure are all so different from business to business and it’s hard to say ‘Oh here’s this one thing — everybody do it.'"



Personalized improvisation is the watchword of Beer 2020. Mile Wide Beer Company announced its forthcoming Owensboro location back in February, then the pandemic put these best-laid plans on temporary hold, as with the new Monnik facility in New Albany. But Mile Wide's brain trust has found a way to keep their expectant Owensboro fans supplied in the interim.

Owing to COVID-19, it isn't entirely clear when Louisville City FC fans will be able to celebrate in person the advent of their new Lynn Family Stadium. However Falls City Beer has collaborated with the team and the playing field to produce a drinkable commemoration "in limited-edition cans that feature images of the 11,700-seat stadium."

It's a Kölsch-style beer in the fashion of straw-gold ale made famous by brewers in the German city of Köln (Cologne), coming in at 5% ABV and 18 IBU (or, squarely in the range of mass-produced American lagers).

“With the excitement of the stadium opening this year, we decided it was time for a new beer in our collaboration with Lou City FC,” said Falls City Brewing Co. General Manager Drew Johnson. “Our new Lou City Kolsch is a crisp, easy-drinking beer that will be perfect all season long.”

This week's cover photo is from the brewhouse of the Pivovar (brewery) Eggenberg in the lovely Bohemian town of Český Krumlov (Czech Republic), as snapped during a visit in 2004.

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.

---

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

---

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.

On charting simpler beer pleasures.

For the past eight months, I've awakened each morning to espresso, kippers and a dual internal soundtrack: Political campaigning on one side, and all the aspects of a normal life on the other.

Full disclosure: Some days I ate cereal.

My losing effort last Tuesday was like a road sign at a wilderness crossroads, informing me that one way forward is blocked for now, but the other route remains wide open for transit.

Well, okay. So be it, and let's see where the road leads. After all, turning back isn't a viable option.

As for New Albanian politics and community affairs the next four years, The Libertines aptly peg it: "We're going nowhere, but nowhere's on our way."

However, this sentiment is true only for the city of New Albany and our intellectually vacant ruling doctrine of Gahanism, and not for me, personally.

I'll surely entertain future political options, and they'll become clearer as time passes. Meanwhile, I'll still be right here at NAC, spearheading the underground opposition to reigning doltishness wherever and whatever its sources.

Otherwise, it's time to complete the process of decoupling from NABC and begin devoting my available time to discovering what I'm going to do with my life at the ripe old age of 55. Seeing as some of you have asked why there must be an uncoupling, the most honest answer I can can give short of devoting 50,000 words to the topic (although this might yet happen; stay tuned) is the simplest:

It has been 25 years, and it is time.

My eight-month sabbatical clarified something I already knew: I'm burned out, though not burned out on beer itself. Rather, I'm exhausted by, and finished with, the parameters of my relationship with beer up to this point.

In the end, business is business; I've had my time on the inside, and now I'd like to view it from a different angle. Also, at this point in time, beer appreciation in America is several miles wide and quarter of an inch deep. I find this situation appalling, and yet think there's a place in it for me, combining expertise, entertainment and education. I find myself thinking like an ex-coach in color commentary mode.

Hence, an evolving project I'm calling Roger's Simple Beer Pleasures, dedicated to the proposition that it's possible to avoid being in a hurry, taking your time, and beering locally.

I'm older now, and simple beer pleasures are the most meaningful to me. They tend to be encountered locally. It is my aim to get unplugged and explore some of them, slowly and thoughtfully. I'd tell you where it's leading, except that I've no idea ... and that's the whole point of the journey: To find out.

This endeavor may or may not lead to writing, events, demonstrations, audio-visual, and travel. For the moment, it's back to writing about beer more often at Potable Curmudgeon, and tying the writings together on social media a bit differently.

I also plan to continue helping to build the New Albany Restaurant & Bar Association, and if possible, to be involved in some way with the Brewers of Indiana Guild, which I'll be compelled to leave as a director once the buyout is final.

In summary, the revolution doesn't cease. It merely changes form. Thanks for reading.

The PC: Ripped straight from the pages of an Onion satire: “13 white males not really so eager to discuss issues like racism and sexism.”

I don't always use space at NAC to tout my beer writing at Potable Curmudgeon, but today is an exception. The column appears on Mondays. You may or may not agree, but in any event, thanks for reading.

The PC: Ripped straight from the pages of an Onion satire: “13 white males not really so eager to discuss issues like racism and sexism.”

 ... I’ve changed my mind many times when presented with persuasive evidence contrary to my previous assumptions. I used to be satisfied drinking Stroh’s – then I wasn’t. My mind and my tastes evolved, and an immensely enjoyable 30-year journey through the world has followed. Changes in latitude could not have occurred without changes in attitude.

ON THE AVENUES: The pea outside the pod.

ON THE AVENUES: The pea outside the pod.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

I find that it suits my inner Socrates somewhat gloriously.

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

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

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

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

That was a joke.

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

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

Time to get liberated.

It’s always a refreshing and necessary act.

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

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

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

All past columns are archived here.

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

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

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

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

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

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEONDecember 8, 2013

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

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

Written by Roger Baylor

Panic attack: "Craft Writing" symposium coming in February, with me as a speaker.

I was asked some months ago to participate in a symposium called "Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture," to be held at the University of Kentucky (my mom's alma mater) on February 15, 2014.

Now it's dawning on me that among a group of stellar and high-powered craft beer luminaries, including personal heroes like Stan Hieronymus, Mitch Steele and -- gasp -- Garrett Oliver, I might well be the most recent call-up from Double-A ball.

Will I be hazed?

A Twitter friend suggested mild intoxication as a coping strategy, but why depart from the tried and gonzo habit of "full" intake? Perhaps breakfast at West 6th would do the trick.

But seriously: My usual last-minute improv routine may need some polishing for this one. If I remain the localist and embrace the radicalism inherent in being an unknown, it should be okay.

Practice, practice, practice.

Do they still make Mr. Microphones?

At LouisvilleBeer.com: Tears of joy.

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

Tears of joy at the Augustiner, 1985

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

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

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

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

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

Baby come back.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEONAugust 15, 2013

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

ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to wherever we're going.

ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to wherever we are.

By ROGER BAYLOR
Local Columnist

I’ve never been very adept at working for someone else. Even before there was a viable option of self-employment, it was evident that my propensity for refusing the bridle would not mesh very well with the typical disciplinary constraints of corporate America.

These days, no matter how good, bad, ugly or just plain weird things sometimes get at work, it remains better than most of the alternatives. I’m the first to admit that after almost 20 years of self-employment, I’m otherwise unemployable, and so be it.

In a purely existential sense, it is my view that life’s all about fighting to the last gasp against the eternal void, and there’s no better way to pursue this mission than transforming work into a personal crusade on behalf of a better way – and against the laggardly forces of hidebound doltishness.

I am what I do, and this is okay by me, even if it unnerves random dullards.

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A couple of years back, NABC’s three operating business partners agreed to stake their respective domestic ranches on craft beer’s glowing future. Consider today’s column a status report of sorts.

In early 2009, we opened Bank Street Brewhouse (a “gastrobrewpub”) in downtown New Albany, absorbing the myriad duties attendant to all newborns, human or business.

By summer of the same year, we were brewing on site, the distribution effort beginning with draft beer, augmented with 22-oz “bomber” bottles as of April, 2011. For the short term, our task is to use the bottles to expand our reach throughout Indiana and Kentucky, and to increase production to the point where a further brewing expansion is an option. Then, we’ll see what happens.

The front of the house at Bank Street started slowly. We were ambitious, perhaps overly so, but we kept at it, making small and coordinated changes in offerings, hours and procedures. Over time, traffic got steadily better, and I believe we’ve found the sweet spot where customer expectations and our ability to meet them are matching.

Any independent small business is only as good as the people working there, and NABC has been fortunate to have so many of them, but turnover is inevitable. As owners, there are times when we handle it well, although other times, not so much. At Bank Street Brewhouse, six of seven “key” people on duty in March, 2009, now have departed.

Indeed, trying to find that elusive “perfect chemistry” can be maddening. I try to keep it in perspective, and remember that somehow, the Yankees have survived and thrived as a baseball team even after Babe Ruth, Joe Dimaggio, Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson no longer played.

In 2011, Chef Josh Lehman moved on, as did other important employees, including Jared Williamson, brewer at the NABC Grant Line branch (R & D Brewery). A general manager change recently has been made at Bank Street Brewhouse. For the most part, we continue to try first to promote from within, and without exception, newly assigned employees have stepped up to the challenge.

All the while, we’ve tried to stay nimble and continue adapting as we go. I’m the very first to admit that Bank Street Brewhouse has survived so many egregious management errors (most of them mine) that I cringe when recalling them, but when asked recently what advice I’d give others about to dive into a brewing start-up, all I could say was this:

“Try to have a good attitude about the sheer (expletive) number of mistakes you’ll make, and don’t stew over them as long as you try to learn something from each one.”

And so, here we are, still standing. The anticipated daily trench warfare continues, with steady, incremental progress amid the personnel changes, vicious economic vicissitudes, and the natural ebbs and flows of downtown revitalization – the latter not peculiar to New Albany alone, but experienced anywhere in the country.

When I think about the many optimistic, forward-looking people in the food and drink business who have invested in downtown New Albany – the majority of whom are surviving, if not printing fresh greenbacks on a daily basis – it makes me proud of what my town has achieved, and not a little stubborn, too.

While NABC’s downtown experiment may have been occasionally inelegant in execution and stumbled, it was the right move for us to make, and at the right time.

In like fashion, the downtown New Albany food and drink contingent is here to stay, joining the assortment of retail and service businesses that previously outlasted the seismic changes of long decades separating New Albany’s post-war commercial acme and the present revival. Together, we’ll continue to fight, until the next wave of specialized retail and expanded housing takes shape.

But will some of the older dogs downtown be able to learn new tricks, and become part of the solution as we move the perimeter forward? I hope so. If not, I suppose they’ll be swept away by the cruel logic of the ever-mutating market.

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Regrettably, NABC’s prolonged expansion grind has deprived me of the necessary time to write regularly about beer, apart from fulfilling my carnival barker’s duties to call attention to our own output. That’s too bad, because we’re living in a golden era, with the dizzying growth of craft brewing providing voluminous material for consideration.

In terms of beer writing, the biweekly LEO “Mug Shots” gig sufficed for a few years, until the unfortunate and unnecessary “don’t insult well-heeled mega-swill advertisers” imbroglio in June of 2010. Away went my soapbox, although sometimes standing up for a sacred principle does that.

On this front, there now is a comeback strategy: The embryonic LouisvilleBeer.com web site, founded by my friend John Campbell, which will provide me with a biweekly column format at a brand new cyber locale. Look for it at http://louisvillebeer.com, and expect an August 1 site launch.