Where to find better beer in downtown New Albany during the Harvest Homecoming onslaught.

(This posting will be revised as information becomes available ... JR's update at 12:30 p.m.)

Tomorrow's annual Swill Walk looks to be a soggy one, but contrary to popular perception, I wouldn't wish rain on any pub crawl -- even the ones boasting of so much Bud Light Lime and various other forms of carbonated urine.

Rather, it is my modest aim to let you know where better beer actually can be found, downtown, during Harvest Homecoming. Indeed, it is a festival seldom confused with progressive thinking or drinking, but it doesn't mean there are not viable alternatives, as offered by downtown New Albany's more recently established food and drink purveyors.

Naturally, there is Fringe Fest Version 7.0 at Bank Street Brewhouse, featuring the usual lengthy collection of beers of proven merit, as well as three seasonal releases: Wet Knobs Hop Harvest Ale, Phoenix Kentucky Komon and Strassen Bräu.

Ryan Rogers of Feast BBQ submits his current list, with an addendum: "We've been hoarding kegs of Zombie Dust and Dreadnaught from 3 Floyds for this weekend, the if we can push through a few other beers first."

From Ian Hall at The Exchange: "Here is our current draught lineup @ The Exchange. Avoid the swill!"

Feast BBQ and The Exchange both are located on Main Street, opposite the YMCA.

Dragon King's Daughter's (corner of Bank and Elm) weekend list looks like this:

JR's Pub is engaging in interior renovation and will not be open until Saturday, October 11. When JR's reopens, these beers will be on tap: Three Floyds Robert the Bruce (and behind it, Sun King Wee Mac); Falls City Hipster Repellant; BBC Bourbon Barrel Stout; NABC Hoptimus; Jack-O Traveler; and Dogfish Head Palo Santo.

I've checked in with the Big Wick, and when I receive the Wick's Pizza report, it will be inserted here. If you see craft beer on tap downtown, send me a photo and I'll post it here. Mail to: roger(at)newalbanian(dot)com.

At today's Be Local Expo, there will be soothing progressive pints from NABC.

I'm pleased to announce that Blake Montgomery will join me this afternoon at 5:00 p.m. at the Calumet Club, as we vend NABC Community Dark and Tafel Bier at the Be Local Expo. This cash bar arrangement is courtesy of Mark Bliss, whom we thank for the opportunity.

ON THE AVENUES: The bleak house on Do Nothing Avenue.

ON THE AVENUES: The bleak house on Do Nothing Avenue.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

As I began writing this column early on Thursday morning, the usual cacophonous parade of block-long semi-trailers began thundering past on Spring Street.

We’ve been in this house for a decade, and I can’t recall witnessing this high a volume of engorged, steroidal truck traffic. It may well remain an apocryphal observation, given that there exists no entity in the city prepared to consider the problem or to deal with it – perhaps with the exception of Dan Coffey, who on more than one occasion has denounced the absence of weight enforcement as it pertains to football-field-sized vehicles destroying city streets.

Here’s the punch line: In the course of my early morning walks, I’m seeing plenty of trucks. What I’m not seeing is them ever stopping anywhere. They are traveling east to west, from one end of the city to the other. Apart from Padgett, which is the ultimate 800-pound gorilla when it comes to street grid reform, the fleets typically making deliveries to downtown businesses are comprised of smaller trucks of the sort that don’t shake structures while speeding past.

I believe it’s the first manifestation of bridges-evasion-borne, pass-through traffic.

I believe the city will do absolutely nothing, either to acknowledge the problem, or to act towards curbing it.

I believe this default inaction serves as an effective antidote to any meaningful concept of revitalization.

Of course, if social dysfunction is inevitable, one might as well pour a Progressive Pint and enjoy it. Consequently, I believe I need a drink … and some earplugs.

---

Snow when it melts ranks highly among life’s mixed blessings.

On the one hand, as the ice gradually clears from the sidewalks, walking on them becomes easier. At the same time, the more one is able to go outside and walk, the greater the volume of refuse, litter and garbage peeking back out from beneath the blackened white stuff, eloquently delineating New Albany’s sovereign territory.

These are the times when we are brutally reminded that at New Albany’s scabrous heart, it remains a filthy, unreconstructed river town, which Matt Nash noted in 2013.

http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2013/03/in-time-it-took-for-matt-to-write-this.html

Over the last couple of years, as the weather started to get warmer and the official end of winter was right around the corner, I have noticed how much garbage was just lying around. You might not see it when you are driving along the roads in an automobile, but if you go for a walk or ride a bike around town, you will begin to notice it nearly everywhere.

All the proclamations issued to the contrary by various poseurs and their agencies do little to alter the fundamental reality, because they’re unwilling to do anything to change the paradigm, and their words are to be taken with a grain of salt, if any still exists after most of it was dumped on the ground this winter.

Really, shouldn’t New Albany’s official seal be a wadded-up Rally’s bag resting atop a mound of cigarette butts, with a polar pop cup (or eighteen) scattered in the background, slightly out of focus, ever present but ill-defined? It’s an artistic image, indeed – or perhaps an autistic one.

If (in theory) both impaired driving and littering are illegal, and if bar owners like me are held responsible every minute of their working lives for the potentially devastating behavior of customers driving impaired, then why aren’t the fast food joints held responsible for eaters who repeatedly litter?

Then again, if social dysfunction is inevitable, one might as well pour a Progressive Pint and enjoy it. I hear they go wonderfully with a Big Daddy Double. The abandoned wrapper is blowing merrily past as we shovel it down.

---

My wife is a social worker.

For the uninitiated, here is a random web definition of her job:

“A social worker is a professional trained to talk with people and their families about emotional or physical needs, and to find them support services.”

Once upon a time, returning to her office, my bride noted that we’d just come back from a trip to Europe.

Came the immediate reply: “Did you fly or drive?”

No, not from a client struggling with mental illness.

From a co-worker.

I’m trying to imagine a European, even one with only an elementary school education, working in a similar position and proffering a similar comment, but I cannot. It’s simply inconceivable.

Has anyone ever determined why we Americans so often accept insufficient education with pride, almost as a birthright?

My bet usually is placed on the Barnum Axiom, wherein a sucker is born every minute – all the better to fleece him. We require an inadequately educated populace to render the average citizen less resistant to absurdly incessant sales pitches, so that the consumer economy can continue to hum along toward its goal of producing the most obese collection of poverty-stricken people the world has yet seen.

But if you try to make sense of it, maybe read a book once in a while, just be careful. In these parts, they’re always shopping for used rags and chloroform.

I’ve long since gotten over it, accepting as gospel that just about anything anyone might choose to say to me of a critical fashion will never spring directly from the critic. If it does, as with the perennially reeking derailment known as Professor Airwrecka, the comment will be made pseudonymously, or more often, anonymously.

My life is filled with backhanded compliments like these, because the ability to express oneself never goes unpunished by the semi-literate. I’ll never know what it’s like to feel threatened by ideas, and consequently, a degree of compassion must be retained. Take a deep breath. Walk a mile in their shoes.

Or, if their social dysfunction is inevitable, one might as well pour a Progressive Pint and enjoy it, while walking down the street, through the swirling detritus of unenforced ordinances, past the sacred slumlord empowerment districts, and against the headwind created by elephantine trucks.

Walking.

Since it’s the one thing they never seem willing to do, it may well be the best form of individual protest.

Photo essay: Bank Street Brewhouse almost ready to brew, and the north patio is getting closer.

Note: The illustration at the top is the ad in next week's LEO Weekly, which you'll want to read because of Cary Stemle's feature article about revitalization in New Albany.

Bank Street Brewhouse status report: Brewing system examination day.

I’ll try to post regular updates on our progress with the NABC Bank Street Brewhouse, beginning with this one, and continuing whenever there’s time and energy.

Yesterday we had a lengthy conference call with the good people at DME, fabricator of the brewing system that will be officially on order just as soon as the bank package closes, which we hope will be in the next ten or so days.

The system specs were reviewed line by line. Architectural plans will be sent to DME and another check made to ensure that everything will fit as it should. When the build-out is completed in front and the taproom can open for business with beer supplied from Grant Line, our owner/contractor can begin roughing in the brewery floor plan and ready the building for shipping the system, which DME reckons can be delivered by May 1. It will take three to four weeks to install, and then brewing can begin at Bank Street.

Of course, we still have federal and state regulatory paperwork to complete as pertains to brewing. The Indiana three-way retail hearing is February 3, and then we should be clear to vend.

With the providential intervention of the marvelous Louisville-based architect Mose Putney, the interior and exterior designs for the building have undergone a complete transformation. The feel will be modern and contemporary, and it’s going to be a blast in warm weather with the garage doors up and the outdoor patio open.

Chef Josh Lehman, late of Le Relais, is supervising the kitchen completion and acquiring the equipment he will need to prepare the modified Belgian-style café menu that we’ll be offering.

In addition to ongoing duties at the original brewery location, which will remain operational as the source of seasonal and specialty beers, brewers Jesse Williams and Jared Williamson are heavily involved with the Bank Street planning phase. We’ll be hiring another brewer to join Jesse downtown come summer, while Jared will run the Grant Line facility.

Kelsey Donovan, a veteran of Schlafly’s brewpubs in St. Louis, will be the bar manager downtown. John Campbell, formerly of Schlafly and Bluegrass Brewing Company, is the marketing director and brand manager, charged with outside sales in Louisville metro and Indiana once production begins in earnest.

Gregg Rochman of the Rocklee Company is the project manager, numbers cruncher and professional prodder, and I’m drinking beer, signing checks and writing promos like this one. My official title is carnival barker, and Gregg’s my interpreter. We couldn’t have gotten this far without him, and now the heaviest lifting will start.

Barring the unforeseen, the soft opening will commence circa the middle of February. Opening times, kitchen hours and the like will be variable for a while as we get a feel for what will fly.

We’re excited about the prospects when we join the existing downtown dining and drinking establishments, as well as the forthcoming Toast on Market and the River City Winery, in creating critical mass in the historic business district.

Just a bit longer …

Bank Street Brewhouse status report: Cross your fingers for February.

It has been a wee bit stressful these past few weeks, and some days I’m a wreck.

Beer, cigars and visits to the YMCA comprise useful therapies, and yet sometimes it seems that I'm getting way too old for this. However, it now appears that things are firmly back on track with respect to NABC’s new downtown location, the Bank Street Brewhouse.

Get ready for the world’s lengthiest soft opening. I'll try to explain.

First and foremost, the financial game plan is far clearer than before, and we believe that these negotiations should be concluded by early January, at which time we can begin spending like drunken sailors.

In the interim, the final stages of the taproom build-out at 415 Bank Street will proceed: The bar, seating, HV-AC, restrooms and kitchen. There’ll be sufficient time for the requisite inspections.

There is a definitive Indiana ATC hearing date fore the retail Riverfront Development 3-way license during the first week of February, which means that barring the unexpected, the taproom can open immediately after the last rubber stamp falls silent.

In the beginning, the beer will continue to be brewed at the original Grant Line Road location, because the DME brewing system can’t be purchased until the money’s in the bank to make a down payment, after which approximately four months are required for construction, delivery, installation and the production cycle of the first few batches.

Once the Bank Street brewing system is operational, we’ll use it for the brewing of beers primarily designed for distribution in Kentucky and Indiana, with the smaller existing Grant Line Road kit slated to make small batch specialties and seasonal beers. Jesse Williams and Jared Williamson remain the brewers of record, with a third brewer to be hired in 2009.

John Campbell will be the brand manager and outside sales director. Louisville distribution is through River City, and we’ll retain self-distribution in New Albany itself. The wholesaler for the remainder of Indiana has yet to be determined, so stay tuned. There are no plans to distribute outside hese two states for at least the first year.

We have a chef on board, Josh Lehman, and very soon, we’ll be able to begin buying kitchen equipment for him. Josh is a culinary arts graduate of Sullivan University, and until recently was the sous chef at Louisville’s prestigious Le Relais. His menu at the Bank Street Brewhouse will incorporate as many local ingredients as possible in what might be called an adaptation of fare found in Belgian café and French brasserie settings.

There will also be a full-time bar manager for the front of the house. When the biographical details arrive, I'll tell you more about her.

Note that the Bank Street Brewhouse will be serving neither the traditional pizza menu nor the guest beers as is the case at Grant Line, where things will remain as they are. The idea all along has been a different approach for growing NABC’s brewing operation in a downtown setting. We're interested both in preserving old traditions and creating new ones.

Eventually there will be micro-canning capability at Bank Street (750 ml "oil cans"), as well as a sizeable outdoor beer garden and a green roof on the top of the building.

With the taproom interior largely finished by January 17, we’re planning a special one-day indoor event in honor of Benjamin Franklin’s birthday and our annual release of NABC Old Lightning Rod, a Colonial-style dark ale brewed with grain, corn and molasses. Look for more information on this event in early January.

I’m expecting that the next six weeks are going to be frenetic. I’m glad, because almost imperceptibly, we’ve been shedding ballast and achieving goals. There was a rough patch in September and October, but the cumulative effect has been to push ever closer toward fruition, even if we haven’t always been able to see the gains until the past few weeks. Happily, the hard work’s not been in vain.

The real heavy lifting is about to start. I’m confident that in spite of the stressors, it’s going to be much more fun.

An accolade for Rich O's Public House: RateBeer's Best Beer Bar list "gold" for 2007.

Something akin to a press release ...

Rich O’s Public House has achieved gold status for the second consecutive year in RateBeer’s annual list of Best Beer Bars. According to the popular web site’s 2007 rankings, we finished in sixth place out of 93 establishments worldwide that were awarded gold certification.

I'm a realist, and grains of salt always come in handy at times like this, but it's very flattering just the same, and we’re sincerely appreciative of the honor. The list in its entirety can be viewed here: Best Beer Bars 2007. I've been to some of the other gold-medal beer bars mentioned, and they're high-powered, indeed.

For those just tuning in:

Rich O’s Public House, founded in 1990, is the pub arm of the New Albanian Brewing Company, which also incorporates Sportstime Pizza, which predates the Public House by three years and will be celebrating its 20th anniversary later this summer on July 14. The pub and pizzeria offer 34 taps pouring NABC house beers and rotating guest beers from America and around the world; 650+ beers have been on tap at one time or another since 1987. The bottle list includes 225+ hand-selected brands of beer, cider and mead. Our food menu specializes in pizza, lasagna, sandwiches and salads.

RateBeer is an on-line forum for beer drinkers to exchange information and share opinions of beer. In addition, users can write opinions of cider, mead and sake. RateBeer has more than 1,112,000 ratings, lists nearly 60,000 beers from 7,270 breweries, and has grown to become the largest beer information web site in the world in addition to serving as a forum for discussions about the craft brewing industry (the preceding is courtesy of Wikipedia).

Thanks to Steve Hall for tipping me. Crossposted at the Potable Curmudgeon site.