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

New Albany retro, lost to history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not at all.

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

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

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

And there you have it.

THE BEER BEAT: Hew Ainslie, an early New Albany brewer and Scottish-American poet.

Hew Ainslie was New Albany's first commercial brewer. This biographical sketch below was written by Louisville goldsmith, writer and homebrewer Conrad Selle.

The sketch was first published in the FOSSILS newsletter circa 1994. Later it was a staple on the club's web site, and was reprinted at Potable Curmudgeon in 2005 and NA Confidential in 2012.

Many thanks to Conrad, whose tireless research into Louisville area brewing can be experienced in Louisville Breweries, co-written with Peter Guetig, and originally published in 1997. There was only one printing, but a few copies still are floating around. Just a few years ago, Peter was said to be preparing a revised edition, but I don't know if it was ever completed. If you have the information, please update me.

---

Many early brewers worked their trade as a sideline or temporary trade before moving on to other occupations. Hew Ainslie is unique for having been principally a poet.

He was born at Bargany in Ayrshire, Scotland on April 5, 1792. Hew was the only son of George Ainslie, an employee on the estate of Sir Hew Dalrymple Hamilton. He was educated in the parish school at Ballantrae, and later at the academy at Ayr. In 1809 his family moved to Roslin, about six miles from Edinburgh. He married his cousin Janet Ainslie in 1812, whose brother Jock had married Hew's sister Eleanora.

Ainslie studied law in Glasgow, and worked as a clerk in the Register House in Edinburgh. In 1820 he revisited Ayrshire on foot with James Wellstood and John Gibson and in the next two years wrote A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns, which was published in London in 1822. The book was an account of their travels and visits with some of Robert Burns's contemporaries, with songs and ballads by Ainslie that were much in the style of Burns, and illustrations by Wellstood.

In July, 1822, Ainslie sailed from Liverpool to New York with his friend Wellstood. Mrs. Ainslie and their three children joined him in the following year. Ainslie and Wellstood purchased Pilgrim's Repose, a farm at Hoosac Falls in Rensselaer County, New York. Ainslie and his family lived there for almost three years before joining Robert Owen's utopian socialist cooperative community at New Harmony, Indiana in 1825.

When Owen's community failed about a year later they moved first to Cincinnati, where Ainslie became a partner with Price and (Thomas) Wood in a brewery, then to Louisville. In Louisville, a town of 7,000, Ainslie opened a brewery in 1829 at 7th Street between Water and Main. Records show that B. Foster, Enoch Wenzell and Robert McKenzie worked there.

In February, 1832 there was a major flood of the Ohio River, with the river's waters rising to 46 feet above the low water level. A contemporary account of the "calamity" reads:

This was an unparalleled flood in the Ohio. It commenced on the 10th of February and continued until the 21st of that month, having risen to (an) extraordinary height ... above low-water mark. The destruction of property by this flood was immense. Nearly all the frame buildings near the river were either floated off or turned over and destroyed. An almost total cessation in business was the necessary consequence; even farmers from the neighborhood were unable to get to the markets, the flood having so affected the smaller streams as to render them impassable. The description of the sufferings by this flood is appalling ...

Ainslie's brewery was swept away with most of the neighborhood, but in the following years he remained in the beer business, working at the Nuttall brewery on the west side of 6th Street between Water and Main.

In 1840 he opened the first brewery in New Albany, the partnership of Bottomley & Ainslie. Soon that business was destroyed by fire. In the 1841 Louisville City Directory, Hew Ainslie is listed as a maltster; it was his last listing in the brewing trade. Discouraged by fire and flood, he gave up the brewing business altogether. Thereafter, his working life became somewhat intertwined with that of his children, particularly George and James Wellstood Ainslie.

Hew and Janet Ainslie had ten children, seven of them surviving to adulthood. George Ainslie, the eldest Ainslie son, had been apprenticed to Lachan McDougall around 1830 to learn the iron foundry and moulding trade, and he had acquired a solid business and technical education. He became a foreman at John Curry's foundry and married Mary Thirlwell, daughter of Charles Thirlwell, who was a brewer at the Nuttall Brewery (Hew Ainslie's one-time employer).

Thirlwell eventually acquired Nuttall and operated it until 1856. In 1842, George Ainslie became a partner in Gowan and McGhee's Boone Foundry. By 1845 Hew Ainslie -- still a poet throughout -- was employed as a finisher there as well as working as a contractor and in the building trades.

George and James Ainslie became highly successful in the foundry and machine business, enabling their father to devote more time to writing in later life. In 1853, Hew Ainslie made a long visit to New Jersey to visit members of the family of James Wellstood, undoubtedly providing the poet with a nostalgic link to the Scotland of his youth.

In 1855 a collection of Ainslie's verse, Scottish Songs, Ballads and Poetry, was published in New York. One latter-day commentator called Ainslie's songs of the sea "the best that Scotland has produced," and perhaps this assessment was borne out by the reception accorded Ainslie in Scottish literary circles in 1863, when he returned to Scotland for a final visit.

Janet Ainslie died in 1863 prior to Hew's last Scottish journey. In 1868 the elderly poet/brewer went to live with his son George in a new home on Chestnut Street (between 9th and 10th) in Louisville, where he spent the last decade of his life and was a familiar sight as he passed time tending the garden there. Ainslie died on March 6, 1878, and was eulogized in the Courier-Journal as "a poet of considerable merit to the people of his native land." Hew and Janet Ainslie are buried in Cave Hill Cemetery.

In addition to the many accomplishments noted previously, Ainslie is remembered for his height -- at 6 feet, 4 inches, he referred to himself in his works as "The Lang Linker" -- and for never losing his Scottish accent during almost six decades in America.

There is no specific information to be found as to the products of the breweries with which Hew Ainslie was involved in Louisville and New Albany, but we can surmise from the available evidence that they were typical small breweries of the time, with four or five employees, making ale, porter and stout. As a man who appreciated truth and beauty, it is likely that Hew Ainslie made good malt, and being conscientious with it, good beer as well.

The following poems by Hew Ainslie are copied from the Filson Historical Society's extremely rare copy of A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns and Poetry, Ainslie's 1822 work combined with later efforts and reprinted in 1892, the centenary of his birth.

(Author's note: I have heard a scrap or two of Robert Burns, and expect these are much better read aloud in Scots dialect.)

THE DAFT DAYS.
The midnight hour is clinking, lads,
An' the douce an' the decent are winking, lads;
Sae I tell ye again,
Be't weel or ill ta'en,
It's time ye were quatting your drinking, lads.
Gae ben, 'an mind your gauntry, Kate,
Gi'es mair o' your beer, an' less bantry, Kate,
For we vow, whaur we sit,
That afore we shall flit,
We'se be better acquaint wi' your pantry, Kate.
The "daft days" are but beginning, Kate,
An we're sworn. Would you hae us a sinning, Kate?
By our faith an' our houp,
We will stick by the stoup
As lang as the barrel keeps rinning, Kate.
Thro' hay, an' thro' hairst, sair we toil it, Kate,
Thro' Simmer, an' Winter, we moil it, Kate;
Sae ye ken, whan the wheel
Is beginning to squeal,
It's time for to grease an' to oil it, Kate.
Sae draw us anither drappy, Kate,
An' gie us a cake to our cappy, Kate;
For, by spiggot an' pin!
It's waur than a sin
To flit when we're sitting sae happy, Kate.

LET'S DRINK TO OUR NEXT MEETING.
Let's drink to our next meeting, lads,
Nor think on what's atwixt;
They're fools wha spoil the present hour
By thinking on the next.
Then here's to Meg o' Morningside,
An Kate o' Kittlemark;
The taen she drank her hose and shoon,
The tither pawned her sark.
A load o' wealth, an' wardly pelf,
They say is sair to bear;
Sae he's a gowk would scrape an' howk
To make his burden mair

Then here's , &c.
Gif Care looks black the morn, lads,

As he's come doon the lum,
Let's ease our hearts by swearing, lads,
We never bade him come.
Then here's, &c.
Then here's to our next meeting, lads,
Ne'er think on what's atwixt;
They're fools who spoil the present hour
By thinking on the next.
Then here's, &c.

THE HOOSIER .
We lads that live up in the nobs,
Tho' our manners might yet bear a rubbing,
We're handy at neat little jobs
Such as chopping and hewing and grubbing.
Tho' we roost in a cabin of logs,
And clapboards lie 'twixt us and heaven,
Our mast makes us fine oily hogs,
And from hoop-poles we pick a good living.
Right quiet -- to a decent degree --
it's seldom we guzzle it deep, Sir,
Tho' we don't mind a bit of a spree,
Provided the liquor is cheap, Sir.
Our neighbours, that live 'cross the drink.
May laugh at our fondness for cider,
But so long as we pocket their clink
They may laugh till their mouths they grow wider.
Our gals make our trousers, you see,
From that beautiful stuff called tow linen,
and in coats of the linsey -- dang me,
If we don't look both handsome and winning.
Our wives are our weavers, to boot;
Ourselves are first rate on a shoe, Sir;
We can doctor a tub with a hoop --
And hark ! we're our own ni__ers* too, Sir,
So here's to our Hoosier land,
The sons of its soil and its waters !
May the "nullies" ne'er get it in hand,
Nor demagogues tear it in tatters.
But still may it flourish and push,
Thro' vetos and all such tough cases,
Till railroads are common as brush,
And the nobs are as sleek as your faces.

*To provide context to Ainslie's use of the "N" word, "The Hoosier" was intended as an anti-nullification poem -- a direct slap at the slave-owning caste south of the Ohio River, and a self-mocking espousal of the poor but free residents to the north. If any reader can shed further light on the history involved, please do so.

THE BEER BEAT: Dollars and cents remain the most rational arguments against AB InBev.

Consider it equal time.

The author makes excellent points about the nadir of debate and dialectic, and the tribalism, and the chest-thumping.

Still, my fundamental stance v.v. AB InBev and other manifestations of Monstrous Chainthink remains unchanged, and for reasons that aren't at all emotional.

Rather, it's factual. Lots and lots of people with no connection whatever to beer or brewing already have done their homework as it pertains to what independent local business means; where the money goes, and where it stays. Two of them are here:

American Independent Business Alliance

Business Alliance for Local Living Economies

My rule of thumb: To know these principles is to be able to walk the walk when making beer choices.

Yes, it's a matter of shift, and no one's playing to be perfect, because when it comes to philosophical concepts, perfection simply doesn't exist.

There'll always be exceptions, but life is about the everyday. In the main, as a consumer, I'd like to know exactly where my money is going. Whenever possible, I'd like to see my money directed to indies.

It's as simple as that. If I couldn't get good beer without my money going to multinationals, then I'd either submit or stop drinking. However, this isn't the case.

Yet.

Dialectic Lost – We Can’t Talk about Beer Rationally Anymore, by Oliver Gray (Literature & Libation)

... There’s no dialectic where people are trying look at big beer’s practices objectively or taking a real critical eye to the BA, to figure out whos and whys and hows. There’s certainly never any talk of collaboration, because obviously, you never work with an enemy. There’s hardly even any exploration in why a thing deemed so bad is actually bad; I only need two fingers (one and two) to count the number of well written articles directly about AB-InBevs strategy. The rest of the bad will stems for theoreticals and hard headedism.

Early New Albany brewer and Scottish-American poet Hew Ainslie ... by Conrad Selle.

Hew Ainslie, New Albany's first commercial brewer, is the inspiration for NABC's Scotch de Ainslie, currently on tap at both locations. But who was Ainslie? This biographical sketch was written by Louisville goldsmith, writer and homebrewer Conrad Selle, with editing by the author. Originally it was published in the FOSSILS newsletter circa 1994. Later it was a staple on the club's web site, and was republished at Potable Curmudgeon in 2005. Many thanks to Conrad, whose tireless research into Louisville area brewing can be experienced in Louisville Breweries, co-written with Peter Guetig. There was only one printing, but a few copies still may be floating around.  

For more on Scotch de Ainslie, go here.

Many early brewers worked their trade as a sideline or temporary trade before moving on to other occupations. Hew Ainslie is unique for having been principally a poet.
He was born at Bargany in Ayrshire, Scotland on April 5, 1792. Hew was the only son of George Ainslie, an employee on the estate of Sir Hew Dalrymple Hamilton. He was educated in the parish school at Ballantrae, and later at the academy at Ayr. In 1809 his family moved to Roslin, about six miles from Edinburgh. He married his cousin Janet Ainslie in 1812, whose brother Jock had married Hew's sister Eleanora.

Ainslie studied law in Glasgow, and worked as a clerk in the Register House in Edinburgh. In 1820 he revisited Ayrshire on foot with James Wellstood and John Gibson and in the next two years wrote A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns, which was published in London in 1822. The book was an account of their travels and visits with some of Robert Burns's contemporaries, with songs and ballads by Ainslie that were much in the style of Burns, and illustrations by Wellstood.

In July, 1822, Ainslie sailed from Liverpool to New York with his friend Wellstood. Mrs. Ainslie and their three children joined him in the following year. Ainslie and Wellstood purchased Pilgrim's Repose, a farm at Hoosac Falls in Rensselaer County, New York. Ainslie and his family lived there for almost three years before joining Robert Owen's utopian socialist cooperative community at New Harmony, Indiana in 1825.

When Owen's community failed about a year later they moved first to Cincinnati, where Ainslie became a partner with Price and (Thomas) Wood in a brewery, then to Louisville. In Louisville, a town of 7,000, Ainslie opened a brewery in 1829 at 7th Street between Water and Main. Records show that B. Foster, Enoch Wenzell and Robert McKenzie worked there.

In February, 1832 there was a major flood of the Ohio River, with the river's waters rising to 46 feet above the low water level. A contemporary account of the "calamity" reads:

This was an unparalleled flood in the Ohio. It commenced on the 10th of February and continued until the 21st of that month, having risen to (an) extraordinary height ... above low-water mark. The destruction of property by this flood was immense. Nearly all the frame buildings near the river were either floated off or turned over and destroyed. An almost total cessation in business was the necessary consequence; even farmers from the neighborhood were unable to get to the markets, the flood having so affected the smaller streams as to render them impassable. The description of the sufferings by this flood is appalling ...

Ainslie's brewery was swept away with most of the neighborhood, but in the following years he remained in the beer business, working at the Nuttall brewery on the west side of 6th Street between Water and Main.

In 1840 he opened the first brewery in New Albany, the partnership of Bottomley & Ainslie. Soon that business was destroyed by fire. In the 1841 Louisville City Directory, Hew Ainslie is listed as a maltster; it was his last listing in the brewing trade. Discouraged by fire and flood, he gave up the brewing business altogether. Thereafter, his working life became somewhat intertwined with that of his children, particularly George and James Wellstood Ainslie.

Hew and Janet Ainslie had ten children, seven of them surviving to adulthood. George Ainslie, the eldest Ainslie son, had been apprenticed to Lachan McDougall around 1830 to learn the iron foundry and moulding trade, and he had acquired a solid business and technical education. He became a foreman at John Curry's foundry and married Mary Thirlwell, daughter of Charles Thirlwell, who was a brewer at the Nuttall Brewery (Hew Ainslie's one-time employer).
Thirlwell eventually acquired Nuttall and operated it until 1856. In 1842, George Ainslie became a partner in Gowan and McGhee's Boone Foundry. By 1845 Hew Ainslie -- still a poet throughout -- was employed as a finisher there as well as working as a contractor and in the building trades.

George and James Ainslie became highly successful in the foundry and machine business, enabling their father to devote more time to writing in later life. In 1853, Hew Ainslie made a long visit to New Jersey to visit members of the family of James Wellstood, undoubtedly providing the poet with a nostalgic link to the Scotland of his youth.

In 1855 a collection of Ainslie's verse, Scottish Songs, Ballads and Poetry, was published in New York. One latter-day commentator called Ainslie's songs of the sea "the best that Scotland has produced," and perhaps this assessment was borne out by the reception accorded Ainslie in Scottish literary circles in 1863, when he returned to Scotland for a final visit.

Janet Ainslie died in 1863 prior to Hew's last Scottish journey. In 1868 the elderly poet/brewer went to live with his son George in a new home on Chestnut Street (between 9th and 10th) in Louisville, where he spent the last decade of his life and was a familiar sight as he passed time tending the garden there. Ainslie died on March 6, 1878, and was eulogized in the Courier-Journal as "a poet of considerable merit to the people of his native land." Hew and Janet Ainslie are buried in Cave Hill Cemetery.

In addition to the many accomplishments noted previously, Ainslie is remembered for his height -- at 6 feet, 4 inches, he referred to himself in his works as "The Lang Linker" -- and for never losing his Scottish accent during almost six decades in America.

There is no specific information to be found as to the products of the breweries with which Hew Ainslie was involved in Louisville and New Albany, but we can surmise from the available evidence that they were typical small breweries of the time, with four or five employees, making ale, porter and stout. As a man who appreciated truth and beauty, it is likely that Hew Ainslie made good malt, and being conscientious with it, good beer as well.

The following poems by Hew Ainslie are copied from the Filson Historical Society's extremely rare copy of A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns and Poetry, Ainslie's 1822 work combined with later efforts and reprinted in 1892, the centenary of his birth.

(Author's note: I have heard a scrap or two of Robert Burns, and expect these are much better read aloud in Scots dialect.)

THE DAFT DAYS.
The midnight hour is clinking, lads,
An' the douce an' the decent are winking, lads;
Sae I tell ye again,
Be't weel or ill ta'en,
It's time ye were quatting your drinking, lads.
Gae ben, 'an mind your gauntry, Kate,
Gi'es mair o' your beer, an' less bantry, Kate,
For we vow, whaur we sit,
That afore we shall flit,
We'se be better acquaint wi' your pantry, Kate.
The "daft days" are but beginning, Kate,
An we're sworn. Would you hae us a sinning, Kate?
By our faith an' our houp,
We will stick by the stoup
As lang as the barrel keeps rinning, Kate.
Thro' hay, an' thro' hairst, sair we toil it, Kate,
Thro' Simmer, an' Winter, we moil it, Kate;
Sae ye ken, whan the wheel
Is beginning to squeal,
It's time for to grease an' to oil it, Kate.
Sae draw us anither drappy, Kate,
An' gie us a cake to our cappy, Kate;
For, by spiggot an' pin!
It's waur than a sin
To flit when we're sitting sae happy, Kate.

LET'S DRINK TO OUR NEXT MEETING.
Let's drink to our next meeting, lads,
Nor think on what's atwixt;
They're fools wha spoil the present hour
By thinking on the next.
Then here's to Meg o' Morningside,
An Kate o' Kittlemark;
The taen she drank her hose and shoon,
The tither pawned her sark.
A load o' wealth, an' wardly pelf,
They say is sair to bear;
Sae he's a gowk would scrape an' howk
To make his burden mair

Then here's , &c.
Gif Care looks black the morn, lads,

As he's come doon the lum,
Let's ease our hearts by swearing, lads,
We never bade him come.
Then here's, &c.
Then here's to our next meeting, lads,
Ne'er think on what's atwixt;
They're fools who spoil the present hour
By thinking on the next.
Then here's, &c.

THE HOOSIER .
We lads that live up in the nobs,
Tho' our manners might yet bear a rubbing,
We're handy at neat little jobs
Such as chopping and hewing and grubbing.
Tho' we roost in a cabin of logs,
And clapboards lie 'twixt us and heaven,
Our mast makes us fine oily hogs,
And from hoop-poles we pick a good living.
Right quiet -- to a decent degree --
it's seldom we guzzle it deep, Sir,
Tho' we don't mind a bit of a spree,
Provided the liquor is cheap, Sir.
Our neighbours, that live 'cross the drink.
May laugh at our fondness for cider,
But so long as we pocket their clink
They may laugh till their mouths they grow wider.
Our gals make our trousers, you see,
From that beautiful stuff called tow linen,
and in coats of the linsey -- dang me,
If we don't look both handsome and winning.
Our wives are our weavers, to boot;
Ourselves are first rate on a shoe, Sir;
We can doctor a tub with a hoop --
And hark ! we're our own niggers too, Sir,
So here's to our Hoosier land,
The sons of its soil and its waters !
May the "nullies" ne'er get it in hand,
Nor demagogues tear it in tatters.
But still may it flourish and push,
Thro' vetos and all such tough cases,
Till railroads are common as brush,
And the nobs are as sleek as your faces.

To provide context to Ainslie's use of the "N" word, "The Hoosier" was intended as an anti-nullification poem -- a direct slap at the slave-owning caste south of the Ohio River, and a self-mocking espousal of the poor but free residents to the north. If any reader can shed further light on the history involved, please do.

Rep. Baron Hill belongs to the House Small Brewers Caucus. He is encouraged to support H.R. 4278, too.

I may have written this previously, but if not: Alone among Indiana's delegation in the House of Representatives, Baron Hill (9th district) has signed on as a member of the House Small Brewers Caucus.

Thanks to Rep. Hill for doing so.

However, not one Indiana member of the House has yet declared co-sponsorship of H.R. 4278 (excise tax reduction legislation).

H.R. 4278 is the result of months of intensive effort on the part of Representatives Richard Neal (Massachusetts, 2nd District) and Kevin Brady (Texas, 8th District), individual Brewers Association (BA) member breweries and BA staff to ensure American small brewers are given the best chance to remain strong and competitive.

Representative John Yarmuth (Kentucky, 3rd District) recently climbed on board.

I encourage Rep. Hill to do so.

Video: "I Am A Craft Brewer."

As a proud member of the craft brewing community, I get misty-eyed, patriotic and feisty watching this video.



I Am A Craft Brewer from I Am A Craft Brewer on Vimeo.

Watch the video and get a hint of why I feel so strongly about the bond between creative enterprises like craft beer and the revitalization dynamic.

David Pierce joins NABC as Director of Brewing Operations.

I’m pleased to announce that the New Albanian Brewing Company has hired David R. Pierce to fill the newly created position of Director of Brewing Operations.

David, who will begin work immediately, joins NABC’s two veteran brewers, Jesse Williams and Jared Williamson. Their popular beers like Elector, Hoptimus, Beak’s Best, Community Dark, Mt. Lee, Kaiser and Thunderfoot will remain the foundation of NABC’s game plan, both on-premise at our two locations and as part of the evolving off-premise distribution.

David will begin work immediately, familiarizing himself with NABC’s portfolio of beers, and serving as de facto project manager overseeing the installation of our new 15-barrel (30-bbl fermenter) DME brewing system, which is slated for shipping in late April or early May to our new downtown New Albany production brewing facility, the Bank Street Brewhouse.

He’s not coming aboard to formulate his own beers. He’s coming to help us make full use of the new system and to achieve the full potential of our existing brands.

You should know that during his 17 years in commercial brewing, David has done it all. He opened Louisville’s first two brewpubs in the modern era, the Silo (now defunct) and Bluegrass Brewing Company, and formulated their rosters of on-premise beers. He sold and installed DME brewing systems, and served as a widely sought consultant to brewers nationwide. More recently, he has specialized in all aspects of BBC's production brewing, quality control and coordination for off-premise distribution.

He’s just the man we need to take it to the next level, and beyond. I’ll happily answer any questions you might have – after I get some sleep.