BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Sun King’s Keller Haze IPA in growlers, available at Pints&union as of Thursday, April 30.

As a preface to what follows, something more important:

A reminder about Pints&union and the Restaurant Workers Relief Program.

The past six weeks have been surreal, to say the least, and the very last thing any of us saw happening in 2020 was creating a workers relief grocery store on the fly, running it out one door as we maintained the curbside food and drink carryout trade out the other, and having two completely separate operations -- one non-profit, one (barely) for profit -- in a building so damn small.

And now, beer. I've made similar comments at the Pints&union website, but because the inception of the beer blog there coincided with pandemic disruptions (read: no one knows about it yet), they bear repeating here.

On March 25, just after Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb eased restrictions on carry-out alcoholic beverage sales at establishments just like Pints&union, we were ready to pour growlers for one reason only, and that’s because Sun King Brewing Company made cases of their growlers available at cost, and the brewery’s Southern Indiana regional sales representative Chris Cox was willing to schlep a load from Indianapolis to the area.

My friend Kelly Conn, who with his wife Teri owns Pearl Street Taphouse in Jeffersonville, providentially clued me into Chris's offer to truck growlers from Indy to Southern Indiana. I'm grateful to them both for the hookup.

Chris has made several trips since, and as of last weekend I’d personally filled roughly 170 varied growlers for sale to our customers. A tad embarrassingly, in our particular case we didn’t even have any Sun King beers on tap and hadn't for a while, but this didn’t matter to them.

Well, it matters to me, and beer karma is real. This week, having finally cleared some tap space and established a working routine, it’s a good time to doff my chapeau to Sun King and fill some growlers with their newest year-round ale, Keller Haze IPA (as the name implies, a hazy IPA at 6.3% abv).

Sun King's anticipated Keller Haze roll-out last month unfortunately coincided with the coronavirus quarantines; it’s a few weeks later now, but the beer’s still plenty fresh. It's also fun to freshen up the presentation, and pour something that everyone can have a chance to buy (as opposed to the subscription-only Schlenkerla Fastenbier).

There’ll be further information about pricing and such on Thursday at Facebook. Thanks again to the folks at Sun King Brewing Company for their help.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: A Schlenkerla interlude before filling growlers of Fastenbier.

A month ago COVID-19 intervened just as I was trying to establish a regular writing routine at the Pints&union beer blog. Much of what I had planned to write was intended to address pub culture and the on-premise beer drinking experience, and these came to an abrupt end.

Fast forward a week, and suddenly we were allowed to sell alcoholic beverages for carryout, previously a coin flip of a privilege scattered randomly through the state of Indiana's impenetrable thicket of regulations.

Flipping one's business model overnight may not sound particularly challenging, but it is, and now more than ever before, something's better than nothing. It was good to start moving product again, if far more slowly than before. Beer is better when consumed, not as a museum piece.

There are two points I'd like to make today.

The first has to do with the way Pints&union specifically, and the restaurant business in general, has adapted on the fly to the challenges of the past six weeks.

In our case, Joe Phillips quickly embraced the need to participate in the relief effort for restaurant workers, and consequently we're now operating as a small grocery and commissary kitchen in addition to the evening hours of 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday for curbside carryout of food and drink.

Emergency reinventions have a way of becoming harbingers of the future, and I believe the pandemic responses are presaging an upheaval. At this juncture, I highly recommend reading this essay by a food writer in London. What he's saying here is what everyone in the business has been talking about.

Restaurants will never be the same after coronavirus – but that may be a good, by Jonathan Nunn (The Guardian)

 ... We are in uncharted waters: the industry has never seen this before, and all signs point to the likelihood that restaurants as we know them aren’t coming back for a while. To move forward, we must start by examining what we would like to save about the industry, giving space to the things that nourish us and our communities, and discarding what we believe doesn’t deserve to survive. After all, the real danger the restaurant industry faces isn’t annihilation – the danger is that it comes back the same as it was before.

Second, returning to the beer, I spent the past couple of days dreaming about smoked lager, Bamberg, travel and the occasional succulent sausage during the course of campaigning for the cause of all things Schlenkerla. These became Pints&union beer blog posts as a preface to seeing if the pre-selling of growlers from a special keg is an idea with legs.

Bamberg beer forever: Schlenkerla revisited (Part One).

Bamberg beer forever: Schlenkerla revisited (Part Two).

The few, the proud, the smoked: We have Fastenbier growler opportunities for Schlenkerla fans.

Indeed it was. This morning the quarter-barrel of Schlenkerla Fastenbier took less than 40 minutes to sell out, which is gratifying. The growlers will be poured on Thursday morning, paid and collected over the weekend, and then the proceeds will be enough to pay for a few cases of bottled and canned beer to fill in gaps.

We're not making much money this way, but subsistence is the art of survival for the pub, allowing worker relief duties to take place concurrently.

One of four $10,000 LEE Initiative “Grants for Good” is awarded to Pints&union to support restaurant workers relief efforts in SoIN.

The many significant ways, the world with which we re-engage after the coronavirus containment measures cease isn't likely to be the same as the one we inhabited just prior to St. Patrick's Day.

It isn't clear yet exactly what this means. Pouring a keg of Fastenbier dry via growlers on subscription isn't exactly what I thought I'd be doing in mid-April, but it's good enough for me at the present time as we await our new dimensions.

Speaking personally, I hope Schlenkerla and other breweries survive, and their beers continue to be available. At the moment, nothing seems certain.

THE BEER BEAT: There's one small problem with the Growler USA franchise coming to Jeffersonville, Indiana.

So far this week, I've learned that Louisville City FC's new stadium might include a brewpub (but why wouldn't it be Falls City?); Goodwood has decided not to feature Colin Kaepernick on its cans; and Dave Bailey of the Hardknott Brewery in West Cumbria gets it:

With apologies to all beer historians. I am not a beer historian. I am not sure if I understand where beer history truth ends and myth begins. I do care, but just haven't got the time to keep myself properly informed on such matters.

Exactly. Let's get back to storytelling, shall we?

Meanwhile, the News and Tribune informs us there'll be a new beer business down the road in Jeffersonville. The header says it's a brewpub, but I think not.

Brew pub, senior living facility planned for Jeffersonville's Bridgepointe Commons, by Danielle Grady (News and Tribune)

JEFFERSONVILLE — A chain microbrew pub new to Indiana and a 103-unit assisted living facility are the first confirmed tenants of Denton Floyd Real Estate’s 70-acre Bridgepointe Commons project along Ind. 62, north of the roundabouts.

Growler USA, which specializes in beer-infused food and craft beverages, including beer, kombucha tea, draft wine, hard cider and mead, plans to open a 19th location at Bridgepointe Commons. The location is the restaurant’s first in Indiana, Kentucky or Illinois. The chain was started in Eugene, Oregon and has 11 other locations “coming soon” to different states, according to the company’s website.

Brandon Denton, co-owner of Denton Floyd, said the restaurant will have a large patio and fire pits for gatherings.

“It’s going to be really nice,” he said. “A great place, like I said, for the community to go and have a beer or have a nice meal or sit down and watch the game.”

Construction has already started on the restaurant, and Denton expects for it to open this summer.

Recall that a brew pub brews its own beer on the premises, but Growler USA isn't one of these. Rather, the reporter Grady gets it right, because Growler USA is a "chain microbrew pub" with a profusion of taps.

Growler USA: America's Microbrew Pub

PRIME TERRITORIES AVAILABLE

Craft beer is the fastest growing retail product in America. Growler USA is a craft beer franchise poised to lead the nation. Good food. Simple operations

The ever helpful Franchise Gator explains that you can have one for yourself for less than $700,000 up front (an amount that all but precludes a brewing system), so what exactly is Growler USA?

What happens when you take the basic concept of a growler refill station and decide to take it national? Well, what happens is, you get something like Growler USA.

But let's hope the Jeffersonville franchisee isn't planning on pouring beer into actual growlers for off-premise sales, because doing so currently remains illegal in Indiana unless the beers are brewed in-house.

In short, if a Growler USA franchise eventually arrives in Jeffersonville, the beers on tap will be for in-house consumption only.

Of course, a fire pit -- now there's a game-changer.

Plymouth Day 6: Fortescue and Mutley Plain.

In early afternoon, we grabbed a bus from our base in Honicknowle, which is a few miles north of Plymouth's city center, to Mutley Plain -- a street, but also the name for the neighborhood. The crown jewel of Mutley Plain is the Fortescue Pub, winner of the local Campaign for Real Ale chapter's "best of" numerous time.

Around eight well-tended cask ales are pouring at any given time, and my attention was drawn to the Blue Anchor Spingo Special, a rarity from a pub brewery in Cornwall. At 6.6%, it's strong by English standards (though not by Hoptimus's standards). In the photo above, I'm holding a Spingo in one hand and a plastic cap from a tub of Sancho Miguel's Salsa. I promised them I'd take a photo.

While nursing the Spingo, I noticed that St. Austell Proper Job was available, which led to a second pint, which led in turn to two more pints of Proper Job in the handy carry-out container, to be enjoyed back home in the garden. Fastened by a clip, it forms a spout reminiscent of elementary school milk cartons. Unlike growlers, it needs to be consumed quickly.

We may have played a game of Scrabble in the blue, red and grey. If so, I imagine I lost.

(The account of our visit to the UK is being posted piecemeal, backdated to the actual day)

At NPR: "Guess Who's Fighting To Keep Indiana Dry On Sundays?"

"Indiana is the only one where you can't buy packaged beer, wine and liquor on Sundays."

Wrong.

In fact, even reporters based in Indiana invariably miss a key point: You most certainly can get cold beer to go on Sunday in Indiana ... from the state's 65+ small craft breweries. The first day for such sales was July 4, 2010.

Indiana's small wineries have been able to sell their wine to go on Sunday for many years, too.

Guess Who's Fighting To Keep Indiana Dry On Sundays?, by Sara Wittmeyer (NPR)

When you think summer, you might think of cold beer at a barbecue, maybe a bottle of wine with a Sunday picnic. A lot of people take it for granted that they can just go to the store and pick up alcohol.

Not in Indiana.

While many states have laws restricting liquor sales, Indiana is the only one where you can't buy packaged beer, wine and liquor on Sundays, and it's the only state that regulates alcohol sales based on temperature. Only liquor stores can sell cold beer.

"Non-chain-think" Super Bowl Sunday at Bank Street Brewhouse: Asian Chicken Wings and to-go growlers.

Straight up, and as a prelude to what follows, kindly note that in the purest and most objective of senses, I believe that whenever Bank Street Brewhouse's Chef Josh Lehman has his Asian Chicken Wings on the menu, BSB is the place to go for wings -- in all of Kentuckiana.

Chef Josh has revealed that for the Super Bowl on February 6th, the BSB kitchen will be preparing Asian Chicken Wings for consumption both in-house, and carry-out. Not only that, but there'll be special Super Bowl pricing.

Your first dozen wings purchased on Super Bowl Sunday cost $9; nine is the total Super Bowl wins between the two teams, with the Green Bay Packers winning three, and the Pittsburgh Steelers six.

Each additional wing (after 12) will cost .45 cents apiece, this being Super Bowl XLV.

You must purchase the first dozen before the individual .45 cent wings can be purchased, and you are highly encouraged to call ahead for orders larger than two dozen.

If, like me, you're wondering why BSB's Asian Chicken Wings are so consistently good, here is Chef Josh's explanation.

The chicken wings are brined for twenty four hours to impart moisture and flavor, deep fried, and then tossed in a mixture of hot chili sauce, sweet chili sauce, soy, sesame oil, ginger, coriander and rice wine vinegar.

Furthermore, if you ask me, the quality of chicken that Chef Josh uses is far above the local standard, and his wings are invariably plump, juicy and delicious.

Also on Sunday, don't forget that NABC's Bank Street Brewhouse is the only establishment in Floyd, Clark and Harrison counties (and points beyond in Southern Indiana) permitted to sell carry-out beer. The growlers should be going out the door quickly, and alongside those wings ... heavens. I might even be able to tolerate the idiotic commercials.