New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Starting today we are taking a break to clean, plan and revise May 23-June 9. While most were home in quarantine we have been hard at it since day one of this current challenge. We are stepping back to observe and rest and keep our staff and guests safe. THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT. We look forward to seeing you June 9 and share our new vision and extension of hospitality. Be safe everyone, Cheers.
I don't have much to add, apart from stressing to you, the reader, that the stress is very real, and our owners and staff need a break.
As noted previously, it isn't only flipping a business model overnight from dine-in to carry-out; it's also assuming the responsibilities of the LEE Initiative outreach to displaced restaurant industry workers. That's two separate businesses in one, for-profit and non-profit, working amid all the myriad uncertainties of the pandemic.
My own two cents: Joe's most important point herein is "stepping back to observe."
The past two weeks of restaurant reopenings has revealed a division (not unexpected, by the way) among customers: some eager to turn back the clock and dine in again, others who are not willing to do so for some time to come, and yet another grouping of folks who are waiting and watching -- observing, as it were.
Pints&union is in a position to do the same. It isn't yet clear what reopening will bring for the restaurant industry.
Profits? Losses? A spike in infections? A placid return to normality? Will pent-up demand be sustained at the present unemployment rate? How long will it take for the economy to return to pre-COVID levels? Will it ever?
Even I don't know exactly how Pints&union will resume operations, only that we will. Literally and figuratively, all the cards are on the table. Allow me to echo Joe by thanking you for your support, especially for the growler program. There are a few already poured that may be made available for perfectly legal "speakeasy bootleg" sales next week. Stay tuned.
And with his wife, of course. Let's take a look at the calendar.
Oktoberfest? Nope.
The Fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona? Canceled.
Poperinge Hop Fest? No word yet, but "no go" would seem to be a foregone conclusion.
I'll concede to no longer being the type who enjoys large gatherings like Octoberfest and San Fermin. Poperinge's triennial paean to the magic cone is vastly smaller and better suited to my preferences. It's clear that all such gatherings will succumb to the coronavirus in 2020.
That's part of the reason why as years go, 2020 already has ceased to exist. For all intents and purposes, we're playing for New Year's Day, 2021.
My reaction to the global pandemic response recalls the words in 1914 of British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, who remarked to a friend as the United Kingdom's prepared to enter the First World War, "The lamps are going out all over Europe, (and) we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."
The lamps were lighted again, though it took a while. 106 years is one thing, 75 another (since the end of WWII), so nine years is sufficient for the rehash of an essay, given my inability at this late date to even remember the rationale for the original column.
First published in October of 2011, this essay was an attempt to explain the central place that pubs, libations, travel and their wonderful third spaces have occupied in my life.
However first a few words about the current fate of these third spaces.
During the pandemic an atheistic Dionysian public imbiber like me finds himself just as deprived of religious worship as any conventional believer. Without exaggeration, all the things I've truly cherished outside the boundaries of my own home are gone, with their return utterly uncertain, or whether they’re to come back in any recognizable form at all.
Depressing isn’t the word. It’s worse than that, of course in a metaphysical sense and not to be confused with a clinical diagnosis.
Seldom do I reference motion pictures to make a point, but I’m reminded of the Star Trek reboot a few years back wherein Spock watches as the planet Vulcan disintegrates before his eyes.
That’s the last six weeks for me, and for so many of us in the food and drink industry. 40 years and an entire working career, suspended in a flash. Forgive me if I’m unwilling to contemplate life without boisterous pubs with pints in Dublin, or relaxing beer gardens in Bavaria with 2,000 of your best friends. Being unable to go to places and experience them? Might as well amputate a limb or two.
Right now, I can’t fathom it. For me, here in America, pub culture always was the one sure antidote to our failed political experiment. Now the coronavirus has exposed the latter beyond any shadow of doubt, while also depriving us of the means to cope with (cov)idiocracy.
Hemingway’s empty bottle as a means of sovereign action serves no purpose if it cannot be thrown at the oppressor -- and if your oppressor is with you sheltering at home, your problems are far larger than a garden-variety hangover.
I’m not tremendously well. I’ll get better. Revolution works for me; it always has.
As Vonnegut would say, so it goes.
Here’s the 2011 rumination, touched up just a bit to fit my circumstances a decade later.
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Homes Away from Home (2011 - 2020)
We went for a stroll one Sunday a few years ago and passed a fly-by-night evangelistic church occupying an old shotgun house that had witnessed better days.
A graying middle-aged man I’d never seen before was standing out front, and he waved animatedly as we passed. I stopped and looked at him with as dull an expression as I could muster, but he was undeterred.
“Some Sunday, why don’t you come to church with us?”
I stopped and thought about it.
“Sure, as long as you’ll come to my church with me.”
Now he was the one pausing to think.
“Where’s your church?”
Got him.
“Any pub will do.”
We kept walking. I never saw him again.
---
Often in this space I write about otherwise forgettable days both near and far, and the fact of these days being forever marked in my memory by the presence of beer.
Well, isn’t beer always involved?
Whether opening a growler of lager on my own porch with a cigar nearby, or schlepping bottles filled with ale via bicycle panniers through the Belgian countryside, times are better with beer.
Human life spans are long and short all at once, and most of our days and nights are passed and beyond recall, and yet I’ll never forget that one time in Bohemia, walking to the neighborhood rail station pub tap for pitchers of draft beer, and then spending the afternoon drinking with good, kind, giving people, even though communication was a challenge owing to our linguistic divergences.
On that occasion, we brought the beer back with us, but during the course of my decades as a professional drinker, I’ve preferred my consumption to be on premise, out in the open, and part of the public record. It’s a tightrope I enjoy walking, even if such openness sometimes has resulted in less than flattering recollections, both on my part and in the minds of those forced to witness my drunken antics.
Most of the time it doesn’t come to that, and there is a fundamentally positive dynamic at play. The reason why bars, pubs and other watering holes are the only places I’ve ever truly felt comfortable – my natural habitat, as it were – is in part a statement about my innate proclivities, and also owing to the historical function of those places as third spaces.
Nowadays most of us in America have living rooms of our own, but a social instinct still impels us to find another milieu to spend time apart from home and work, another comfortable spot – perhaps a gym, coffee shop, park bench … or even a church, in a pinch derived from sheer desperation.
Well, churches can be interesting to look at, preferably while drinking at a sidewalk café across the square.
These are functional examples, but all of them a bit dry for my taste. I prefer my third spaces to offer the possibility of consuming beverage alcohol, most often beer. When I’m surrounded by people who feel the same, anything is possible. This is especially true when you’re a wandering stranger, and find yourself welcomed, albeit temporarily, into the public living room of the locals.
It never gets any better than that.
An inviting barroom shifts the perspective of the traveler from the expansive outside looking in, to the inside looking back out ... at times, tightly. From five thousand miles away, you enter a cozy room and ask for a tankard of whatever is made right there, whether in the building, the town or the region.
Granted, one might have a lovely experience in Munich at a mock Pampas restaurant specializing in the beef and wines of southernmost South America, but really, shouldn’t you be going somewhere else for those?
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The late Bostonian ward-heeling politician Tip O’Neill rather famously commented that all politics is local, and in like fashion, my pathway is leading me inexorably to this conclusion: All beer drinking culture is local.
Although I’m no longer a craft brewery owner, and allow myself a broad range of geographical libational constructs, there remains an essence and primacy to what is being brewed at or near the place one drinks beer.
Truthfully the homebrewer’s self-made bounty is the purest possible example, followed by local commercial brewers and their products. If the beer comes from elsewhere, whether down the road or around the globe, there remains a commensurate importance in choosing genuinely local ownership of the establishments serving it.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to drive all the way to Chico, California, and drink Sierra Nevada at the “neighborhood” chain restaurant, Applebee’s. They may serve it, but chains don’t deserve my patronage.
Returning full circle to the man’s invitation those many years ago to come to church, it may sound as if I’m formulating commandments and theological doctrine. You bet it does. What do you think this philosophy major has been pondering all these years while balanced, at times precariously, atop those thousands of bar stools?
Beer drinking is my sacrament, and pubs are my sanctuaries. When the collection tray was passed, I put all of my money into beer. I got the true religion for sure, but it came from drinking the beer … not the Kool-Aid.
"In the end, that’s what all of us long for in a pub: somewhere to go in which we can have a relaxing drink in a convivial atmosphere and perhaps meet others with a similar aim. When it’s done well then it can feel like you’re in the only place you want to be in the world at that moment. And the very best pubs are timeless places in which that moment seems like it could last forever."
Brexit and the British Public House?
Not exactly, though someone's probably already written it. Today I'm offering two items for a "thinking person's" consideration of beer. First there's an extended analysis of the state of the British pub, followed by a collection of recent links to stories far and wide.
They’re under threat – but they’re fighting back. How famous London pubs are adapting to a changing world
Milky tea, fish and chips, the local pub: these were once the enticing mainstays of British life. They’re all still there, of course, but outside the home we drink far more coffee than tea, and on the high street the curry house and chicken takeaway long ago supplanted the deep-fried attractions of the fish and chip shop. Of the traditional triumvirate only the public house remains in a primary position, but that too is under threat.
It is estimated that Britain has lost 25% of its pubs in the last 20 years. There were around 60,000 in 2000 and now the figure is about 45,000. Closing time has taken on a new meaning, with on average one pub closing down every 12 hours. Of those that remain, many are unrecognisable from the locals of the past, having been re-themed as chain bars or gastropubs.
Is this a loss to the British way of life? Has some vital part of the social fabric been neglected and left to slowly fall apart?
Now for the links.
HISTORY BY THE PINT: Dayton's Carillon Brewing Company really does do it the old-fashioned way. It's the nation's only working brewery in a museum.
Back in prehistoric times, through at least the dawn of the World Wide Web, these Courier-Journal reviews were disproportionately important. Susan Reigler's review of the original Rich O's Public House in 1994 helped "break" us to a wider audience -- and on the Saturday evening after the review came out in the Scene, the deluge "broke" my damned back, although it was worth it in the long run.
I'm also reminded of the late, great Keith Moon's description of himself.
I'm the best Keith Moon-style drummer in the world.
Pints&union will be a year old on August 1, and we've already stayed entirely true to Joe's founding principles while evolving tremendously during this short time. It doesn't particularly matter whether we're English, Irish or New Albanian, only that we remain the best Pints&union-style pub in the region.
Because I'm a miscreant and a laggard, the C-J has me boxed out of seeing the review; I actually read the piece on Calvin's phone. Here's the link for those of you able to make the connection through yonder pay wall.
So here we are at Pints&union in li'l 'ol Nawbany, trying to emulate (if not copy outright) the soulfulness of the institution of the British pub, even as the British pub is the subject of incessant existential debate -- and in fact, has been for decades.
Are pubs doomed?
Theirs is a different culture; more specifically, it is a different licensing and taxation regimen. As can be gleaned from the following, there also are the cultural markers; prices are one thing, and potentially adjustable, but all is lost if coming generations decide to refrain from drink entirely for health reasons.
What of cask-conditioned ale, that most glorious of beers when done correctly? It's almost exclusively British, and always fragile in modern economies of ease and scale.
The author's conclusion no doubt is true. There's be something new and different arising from the ashes of what came before. But when it comes to pub culture, it's a dialectic I'll be seeking to circumvent, even if I'm not British.
Rising prices and social diversification have scuppered the institution, making the boozer less of a priority for the young
From mayonnaise and diamonds to cinemas and golf, it seems no industry is safe from being killed off by millennials. Now pubs look to be suffering the same fate, closing at an alarming rate with net numbers down by almost 700 this year alone – and piling yet more misery on the Great British high street.
The most obvious reason behind the sharp decline in pub numbers seems to be the cost of going out. The average pint in London costs upwards of £5, while the national average of £3.60 is 60p more than most people think is reasonable ... and it’s not just financial reasons that are putting people off, the reality is that fewer young people drink, with research showing that 25% of people aged 16-24 described themselves as “non-drinkers” while between 2005 and 2015, the percentage drinking above the recommended limits had dropped by 15%. Often this has very little to do with cost, with most of my friends who don’t drink choosing to do so for their physical and mental wellbeing.
Normally I'm not prone to hyperbole, but I'll make an exception in the case of Pilsner Urquell.
While Joe Phillips and the boys were busting their buns at Pints&union with the Harvest Homecoming crowds, I was lurking behind the scenes, gaining some valuable yardage toward a few of our beer program goals.
Among these are access to a broader range of Fuller's, both on draft and in bottles; Christmas specialty pre-orders; and prospects for the "three pour" Pilsner Urquell draft set-up in the opening video.
As for the latter, all due credit to our Monarch/World Class sales rep Joe Underwood for getting the ball rolling. We both love Pilsner Urquell, and it's a natural fit for the beer program.
From the moment Joe mentioned it, my mind has been fixed on Pilsner Urquell. It remains a core comfort beer for me, and a love affair that stretches all the way back to 1982, when Big Dave Pelham introduced me to the world's original Pilsner.
On the topic of originality -- we know this beer by its German language name, which translates as "coming from the original source in Pilsen" -- it should come as no surprise that Pilsner Urquell's background has been subject to a degree of mythologizing.
Evan Rail, a Californian maintaining long-term residence in Prague, has written extensively about Czech beer in general, and Plzeňský Prazdroj (the beer's trademark name in Czech) in particular.
There’s something bizarre about a beer with a groundbreaking 175-year history that has to go around introducing itself.
“The most difficult thing is that the brand’s awareness is just really low,” says David Schmid, director of high-end imports for Tenth and Blake, about Pilsner Urquell, one of his company’s premier brands. “It’s a great beer. It’s got a great story. But very few people know about the beer and know the story.”
Schmid is talking about the situation in the U.S., of course, far from Pilsner Urquell’s homeland of the Czech Republic, but you’d still think that most Americans wouldn’t need an explainer for a brewery that gave its name both to a type of beer and a kind of malt, not to mention the traditional fluted Pilsner glass. Pilsner Urquell was being imported to the U.S. by 1873, three years before Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch launched their American Budweiser, and it had become the best-selling imported beer in the U.S. by the time Prohibition darkened our taverns in 1920 ...
Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of Rail's stellar sleuthing last year, when I finally got around to writing about my European travels in 1987.
These wanderings included an abortive attempt to visit the brewery during a day trip from Prague; communism wasn't very conducive to spontaneous decision-making, although I've made it inside on two occasions since the Velvet Revolution.
Following is a reprint of my account of our deterred pilgrimage in 1987. It was an epochal day nonetheless, and is best accompanied by Antonín Dvořák's Slavonic dances, which in my mind always will be synonymous with my passage through the Czech countryside.
For as long we’d been talking about visiting Czechoslovakia, Barrie and I had considered only two firm itinerary prerequisites. Prague obviously landed at the top of the chart. Perhaps less easy to understand at first glance was the city of Plzeň (or Pilsen), 65 miles southwest of Prague, with a present-day population of 178,000.
As a recorded settlement, Plzeň goes back to the year 976. The city remained Catholic during the Hussite wars and became an increasingly important trading center on the route to Germany. In 1869, the founding of the Škoda Works kicked off an era of rapid industrialization, which made Plzeň one of the arsenals of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
All those Škoda automobiles we saw in Czechoslovakia? They were manufactured in Plzeň, but we weren’t gearheads, and preferred to take the train, not drive, because drunk driving isn’t good, and our plan for Plzeň involved drinking a great deal of Pilsner Urquell beer -- or as it was known in Czechoslovakia, Plzeňský Prazdroj.
The very word “Pilsner,” as it has come to English speakers, is both an adjective and an appellation: Beer from Plzeň. Obviously, beer has been brewed in Plzeň for centuries, though the current Pilsner Urquell brewery dates from 1842.
The story goes something like this: Certain families in Plzeň had been granted brewing rights during medieval times, and this functioned as a monopoly of sorts, with no incentive to improve. Consequently, the quality of beer in the city deteriorated during the early 1800s, ironically at the very same time as modern brewing techniques were being harnessed to the scientific method elsewhere in Europe – significantly, in nearby Vienna and Bavaria.
In Plzeň, it gradually dawned on the diverse stakeholders that the spirit of the age, and the “higher tech” direction being traveled by beer and brewing science, suggested a pooling of resources to achieve better quality and competitiveness. The Pilsner Urquell brewery was capitalized and born from this revelation, at an indisputably ideal juncture.
Modern malting processes now yielded consistent, pale malts. The water in Plzeň was soft, and hops grew in abundance nearby. The notions of selectively standardizing yeast strains and aging ("lagering") beer resulted in a mellow flavor profile. It was clear, not cloudy, and brilliant gold. Glassware was becoming affordable for all, and the color and clarity were accented by glass rather than submerged by dense ceramic or wooden mugs.
The new beer’s body was lighter and less sweet. A generous hopping rate helped make the beer crisp, and renewed the palate. Pilsner Urquell represented modernity, and became the prototype and yardstick. Soon dark, heavy beers were all but obsolete. The world wanted golden lagers brewed more or less (mostly less) like Pilsner Urquell.
Needless to say, we'd come to adore Urq, as Barrie called it.
The red star is no more.
When Barrie and I graduated from high school in 1978, Cut Rate Liquors in Jeffersonville was the only package store in Southern Indiana with a selection of imported beers. What we now categorize as craft barely existed, even in California.
Regular examinations of the wares at Cut Rate revealed the existence of exotic, unexplored modes of thinking and drinking. Most of them were golden lagers from around the world, but there also were dark lagers, British ales and even a few Belgians.
Money was tight, and sampling meant splurging. There was no source of information, apart from bottle labels and six-pack cartons. Still, every now and then we took the risk and tried a new beer. The flavors were different, and hinted at broader horizons.
In 1982, two of my good friends intervened with essential personal testimony. Both of them had "gone away" to college, to study in places less parochial than Floyd County. Larry returned to the fold singing the praises of Guinness Extra Stout, and Dave introduced me to Pilsner Urquell, then sold in four-pack cartons for a lofty $3.99 plus sales tax.
I was intrigued. I’d had Molson, Labatts and Beck’s, but what was the spicy character in Pilsner Urquell, that piquant bitterness cutting through creamy grain flavor? It was something I hadn’t experienced in Blatz. Dave wasn’t sure, but he thought it had something to do with hops. Guinness was black like coffee. It was dry, roasty and daunting in a way that defied categorization, and completely unlike any "dark" beer I’d had before.
Insight: You mean there were different sorts of dark beers, too?
These always had intrigued me, along with pumpernickel, rye and other departures from the Wonder Bread norm. Finally, liberated from the longnecks of our fathers, the notion of beer was starting to make better sense.
All I needed was a lot more money and a plane ticket.
It was left to Michael “The Beer Hunter” Jackson’s original book “World Guide to Beer” (1977), as culled from the remainder table at a mall bookshop, to become the cosmic text that wove all the threads into a coherent whole. An updated “New World Guide to Beer” was published in 1988.
Jackson offered the saga of beer as a long and fascinating one, ranging across all aspects of the human experience.
To him, beer is about science and art, farms and cities, social history, local culture and geography. It's about the places you've gone, and the ones you'd like to go. It's about different textures and flavors to match your mood, the time of day, the season, and the task at hand.
With Jackson’s book as a guide, the obscurities of these imported beer brands gradually became comprehensible. I began working at Scoreboard Liquors, a small store in New Albany, and was allowed to replicate Cut Rate’s import selection just so long as it was kept to one door of the six opening into the walk-in cooler.
Barrie and I drank bad beer often, but when the stars aligned and finances allowed, we drank better ones. My work discount helped, and after returning from my first European excursion in 1985, it became ever more difficult to return to the everyday Bud this, Miller that.
I wasn’t a snob so much as a flavor junkie.
(As an indication of the way one’s memory plays tricks, I was about to add that Jackson’s television series The Beer Hunter was an inspiration for our Ur-Quest in 1987, but it couldn’t have been. The series debuted in the UK in 1989, and in America the following year.)
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July 15, 1987
We caught a train from Prague to Plzeň, got there well before noon, and reconnoitered. From the station, the Pilsner Urquell brewery was easy to see and smell, although we knew to inquire at the official state-run Čedok travel agency (actually established in 1920, prior to communism), which surely would be located somewhere in the center of the city.
It was. This task was accomplished in due course, and we were summarily rebuffed. No one at Čedok had the slightest interest in helping us score a brewery tour. The lone English speaker we found was exasperated; didn’t everyone on the planet know that Pilsner Urquell brewery tours only took place once a week on, well, any day except today?
It was frustrating, but this was the nature of things during Czechoslovakia’s final years of erosion prior to the Velvet Revolution in 1989. There was no benefit for a travel agency employee to go out of his way to help us; perhaps a bribe might have helped, but our lone English speaker had a very hard face, indeed.
Plan B was commenced. We walked to the Pilsner Urquell brewery and made tepid inquiries at the guard shack. No English was spoken; at least the rejection was friendlier.
For years afterward, Barrie’s version of what happened next remained consistent and only slightly exaggerated:
“We couldn’t get inside the brewery, so I went over, kissed the lock on the gate, and we went to the tavern instead.”
The forbidden city.
Fair enough. To the left of the gate was the brewery’s “official” tavern. It seemed appropriately upscale, at least in contrast to the next closest Pilsner Urquell outlet, located across the street, which was on the ground floor of a 1920s-era structure, smaller and shabbier, and alluring in a counter-intuitive way.
We opted for the well-appointed “official” brewery tap first, probably because the odors of pork and dumplings were leaking through the windows and clinging to our clothes, and we needed to eat immediately. Once inside, we admired the wooden interior and beautiful windows.
Drinking, dining and pervasive deliciousness was the result, and there even was an inadvertent floor show, showcasing the intoxicated antics of a visiting delegation of North Koreans, who were having far too much fun in a communist country that actually had drinkable beer.
It transpired that using the restroom meant passing the Czech restaurant-standard coat check desk. There were few coats to check in high summer, but full employment meant staffing irrespective of the need, and at one point when the two of us walked past, the coat check attendant addressed us and sidled over.
In a low voice, she asked if we were American, and we nodded assent. She beamed, and proceeded to tell us in passable English that she still remembered the liberation of Plzeň by General Patton’s 3rd Army at the close of WWII.
The 40th anniversary had been only two years before our visit, and she cheerfully recounted the appearance of a handful of Patton’s elderly soldiers for the city’s commemorative event.
In late 1945, US troops withdrew from Czechoslovakia, which had been determined to fall within the Soviet sphere of influence, which of course became the Iron Curtain as coined by Winston Churchill.
The coat check woman preferred to remember how nice the American G.I.s had been, helping to rebuild Plzeň in the months before being withdrawn, and frequently gifting her and other children with chocolate bars.
Before we left the premises, she surreptitiously pressed coasters and postcards into our hands, as if to pay back those favors from so long ago.
It was sincerely moving, and I’ve never forgotten her hospitality.
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It was time for a visit to the dive bar, and as we emerged from the restaurant, things were heating up across the way.
Sadly, when I returned to Plzeň in 1989, the entire building was gone, demolished for a street widening project. Looking closely at the photo from 1987, there seem to be few signs of life in the upper three floors, so perhaps the tavern’s demise was a done deal even as we were drinking there.
At any rate, the pub with no name was a delight, and the regular crowd was shuffling in.
When Frantisek and the lads arrived, the party started. He was a cabbie playing hooky, rejecting an afternoon’s fares so he could drive himself and four of his finest friends from one tavern to the next. As long as his communism-pretend credentials were in order, it probably wouldn’t matter whether he worked or not, and if you’re not working, why not have a few beers on a lovely summer’s day?
They spoke no English and we spoke no Czech. Some German words could be shared. The longer we remained, the easier it got. Seasoned drinkers understand that communication becomes immeasurably simpler once all participants have reached the stage of “universal second beer language,” wherein thoughts and concepts expressed in otherwise indecipherable tongues suddenly make perfect sense.
Eventually Franta reckoned we needed an education in the merits of Czech rum.
Tuzemák, formerly called Tuzemský rum (English: domestic rum), is a term for a traditional Czech distilled beverage. It is a substitute good (ersatz) for true rum which is produced from sugarcane mainly in the Caribbean and Latin America. Since the 19th century, Tuzemák became one of the most popular spirits in the Czech lands.
Tuzemský is produced from potatoes or sugar beets, diluted and flavoured by various rum essences. In the 19th century similar substitutes were produced throughout the crown lands of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which had no access to tropical colonies; they were named Inländer-Rum (like Stroh in Austria, today produced from sugarcane molasses and therefore a genuine spiced rum), Domači or Čajni (Croatia) etc.
In 1987, it was simply called rum, and the less said, the better. After a couple belts of it, I undertook a laborious examination of the time, and came to a reckoning of my own: we needed to get back to Prague. As we departed, so did Franta and the gang, motoring toward the next pub on their taxi crawl.
As a final aside, a few architectural details on the brewery's exterior ...
... and the early evening return to our sports club hostel beds in Prague.
Next day, we caught the train to Munich, and a meticulously planned meet 'n' greet with our friend Bob and my cousin Don.
At approximately 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 2, 2018 the first keg to be emptied at Pints&union was Fuller's London Pride, with Guinness queuing close behind it.
This pleases me for a number of reasons.
From the start, we've been inspired by the classic British pub experience, while not going quite so far as to imitate it in the fashion of a puerile Disney facsimile. The fact that customers are drawn to Fuller's bears the stamp of vindication.
I've been to London and always enjoyed pints of Fuller's at the company's tied houses. In Louisville, the Irish Rover has had Fuller's ESB on tap for many years, and it's my go-to with fish and chips (oddly, the ESB is unavailable in Indiana).
In the following article, Alworth is wonderfully spot on. If you've been to the UK and found yourself absorbed in classic pub culture, enjoying cask-conditioned "real" ale and the occasional nibble, it sticks with you forever. At the same time, it's far easier to stock a reasonably authentic Belgian beer cafe or Bavarian biergarten in America than a British-style pub.
There'll be many kegs to come, but I'll always remember the first. Thank you very much.
Good luck finding a proper English bitter in the United States. You can more easily locate gose—an obscure, recently extinct beer made in only a couple of breweries in its native Germany—than the national ale of Britain. The same Britain, to underscore this irony, that served as the model for American microbreweries 40 years ago. Yanks still make pale ales by the legion, and our IPAs were at least inspired by the English predecessor. But a 3.8% bitter, with native yeast esters, local hops and bready malts blossoming under the effect of cask conditioning? You have to go to the source.
For reasons no one can untangle, Americans never took to cask ale. Maybe it’s because too few of us have managed to visit Britain, found ourselves in a cozy, wood-paneled pub, with hands encircling a third pint. Because for those of us who have, the experience has lingered and developed a patina in our memories. My first such experience is still the most indelible: the Jack Horner, in Bloomsbury, London, after a long flight from the West Coast. A Fuller’s pub, with meat pies and tall glasses of London Pride. If your dalliances happened with Timothy Taylor Landlord or Harveys Sussex Best or Adnams Southwold, I’m not going to argue. There are quite a number of excellent bitters in England—and even more lovely pubs in which to fall in love with them.
But even stripped of the nostalgia, my vote goes to Pride. It has that lovely woody color that confuses Americans and a palate that, to IPA drinkers, is anything but “bitter.” “Balance” would be a more apt name. In London Pride’s case, all the hallmarks of English brewing are in attendance: an orangy, marmalade nose of fruity ale esters, a touch of the toffee malts and a hint of delicately floral hops. Your attention can be drawn to any of them, or you can take in the way they form such a beautiful chorus. Also: the soft mouthfeel that can only come from the lower levels of natural carbonation, contrasted by the water’s minerality and stiffness. Yeast, malt, hop, water and cask-conditioning—a harmony in five parts ...
ON THE AVENUES: Maybe, just maybe, you really can go home again.
A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
You’ll recall that some months ago, a warning was served to habitués of this blog.
To wit: When Zero Hour arrives and the Pints&union project leaves dry dock, there’s a very good chance of my beer- and pub-related obsessions getting the better of me and monopolizing the conversation.
In short, dear readers, I’m presently doing a poor job of offering varied content. Then again, beer is my life, and much of my life has been spent reposing in pubs, observing people and their beers, so you’re just going to have to humor me.
(Pints&union will be opening for regular business hours next week. This much I know. Otherwise, please connect with the Facebook page to keep informed about details.)
As many of you know, I’m working for Joe Phillips, caring for the beers at his emerging establishment and purely grateful for the opportunity.
What I’m doing isn’t exactly “curating” (how I’ve come to hate that word). Rather, it’s picking the right beers, getting to know them all over again and organizing these beers the right way.
It’s about shedding unnecessary baggage, retaining useful devices, and making a short but expressive list of beers to be enjoyed in a casual pub setting.
In the current milieu, it’s also incorporates a sizable dollop of this timeless axiom: “Don’t do something -- just stand there.”
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In 1983, I lucked into a part-time job downtown at Scoreboard Liquors and started learning about beer and the business of selling it.
Back in those days, when Model T Fords were the norm on city streets and sewer pipes in New Albany were only a rumor bandied by the regulars at Ernie’s Tavern, there weren’t many “beer lists” at dining and drinking establishments in the metropolitan Louisville area.
Beer lists were not a thing, and one simply didn’t ask. To have done so would be to risk ridicule, ejection, or at the very best dumbfounded amazement, as though you’d waded into the Tumbleweed or Lancaster’s and spoken a dialect of Estonian.
Bartenders who bothered to keep a straight face would shrug: “We have both kinds of beer, High Life and Miller Lite.” 35 years later, down that long and winding road to nowhere, the beer list pendulum hasn’t merely swung to the other extreme.
It has become disengaged from the pivot, torn a gaping hole in the side of the building and currently is gaining warp speed at 35,000 feet in route to the next flavor-of-the-millisecond paradigm shift.
Consider that in 1992, I bought a poster called "Brewpubs and Craft Breweries," which showed a map of breweries operating in the United States, all 300 or so of them.
Or, fewer than were operating at the time in the Bavarian region of Franconia, which is the size of what we refer to as Southern Indiana.
Looking back, there was only one brewery each in Indiana (Broad Ripple Brewpub; Indianapolis), Kentucky (Oldenberg; Ft. Mitchell), and Tennessee (Bohannon's/Market Street). As of April, 2018, the brewery counts for these states are 137, 52 and 82, respectively. Combine the current numbers for these three states, and it’s almost as many breweries as in the entire country in 1992.
Today there are 6,000 craft breweries, and if each one of them brews six different beers a year, that’s 36,000 beers for us to try, except this production estimate is too conservative by half -- and what about imported beers, both craft and classic?
From this seemingly infinite and ever-changing array -- certainly tens of thousands of potential choices worldwide -- several hundred have been culled by wholesalers for availability to us in Indiana, perhaps one thousand or more annually if all the state’s breweries are included.
On the flip side, those establishments selling beer brewed by others find themselves challenged on a daily basis by finite spatial limitations. Even the manager of 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.
One solution, especially as it pertains to draft beer, is for on-premise restaurants, bars and pubs to constantly rotate their offerings. A regular customer who makes weekly visits to a bar with 15 handles might end the year having been exposed to two hundred different draft beers – and consumed more than a few of them.
Remembering is another story.
Of course I must concede to a significant role in helping create this model while serving my time with NABC at the Public House. But even in the early 2000s, it often occurred to me to speculate about my future consciousness once everyone else started emulating the scattershot kaleidoscope approach.
Would I go back to Stroh’s?
Stop drinking beer entirely?
Become a teetotaler and declare war on demon rum (and rum-barrel aged pastry stouts)?
Nah. The barroom chose me, and I’m not a quitter. At the same time, there’s a new goal in this beer drinker’s life: escaping the beer selection tilt-a-whirl and commencing a counter revolution. Why? As the late, great Norman "Doc" Holliday was fond of saying, "Why not? I can't dance."
Those of us condemned to diligently self-medicate our innate contrarianism know it isn’t a question of whether or not we’ll rebel, only a consideration of when.
At some point in the recent past I stepped into bar somewhere in America, saw a beer list of 50 drafts, found myself unable to recall half of the names on the chalkboard, and came down with a nasty case of the epiphany.
If someone like me in the craft beer business couldn’t keep up with new breweries and their beers, then what about the many guys and gals who like better beer but don’t wish to take a college course or remain glued to an iPhone app all evening long just to navigate the beer list and order a pleasant, tasty beverage?
And if the customers are confused, what about the employees during an epoch of constant turnover?
How many times have I heard a server say something to the effect of “That beer just got tapped, and I just started working here, and I don’t know much about it yet”?
And: That'll be $8 for a 10-ounce pour, please.
These past three years sitting on the end of the bench, slowly nursing my chronically burned-out inner world back to a semblance of ruddy good health and contemplating a return from the voluntarily retired list, it has become clearer than ever to me that better beer in America is somehow managing to alienate a silent majority of beer drinkers who find constant rotation of drafts (or hundreds of packaged selections at the liquor store) utterly bewildering.
Furthermore, I believe these folks tend to keep this perfectly understandable confusion to themselves for fear of appearing uninformed at a time when the loud ubiquity of stylishness arbiters among the priestly caste stand forever eager to wield their superior knowledge against neophytes eager to dip a toe into the Dunkel. To the extent that I helped impel THAT type of attitude, many apologies.
Hence this Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924) USSR anecdote, which I’ve been peddling for years.
It's the stagnant Brezhnev era, circa 1970s, but Soviet scientists finally have solved the riddle of death, immediately applying the potion to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's embalmed corpse.
Lenin springs back to life, dusts off, and looks around the room. Asked by the scientists if they can get him anything, Lenin requests access to his office in the Kremlin and all the back issues of Pravda since he died. Fawningly, the scientists comply, and Lenin shuts himself in the office.
Day after day passes by, and while the scientists are terrified to bother Lenin, they eventually begin to worry. Finally they decide to break down the door. Inside Lenin's office they find issues of the newspaper strewn everywhere, but no Lenin.
On the desk he has left a note:
"Comrades, everything’s gone to hell in a hand basket, so I'm off to start the revolution all over again."
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I could go on and on, as I have in the past, and will continue doing in the future, but the point of it all is the opportunity to begin a new chapter by applying old thinking.
The book on my nightstand is Michael “Beer Hunter” Jackson’s Great Beers of Belgium, published in 1992 and revised several times before Jackson’s death in 2007. This period of 15 years coincides with many of my visits to Belgium, when we maintained a beer list of several hundred at the Public House, of which perhaps 50 – 75 were Belgian.
It might as well have been 1892. Any number of seismic factors have changed the planet irrevocably since those early days at Scoreboard, running through the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the internet and the appearance of 6,000 breweries that didn’t exist when my feet first touched European soil in 1985. But in my noggin I remain the sum total of all these past experiences. They're valuable to me, and I sense there's a baton in need of passing.
Consequently, no sales figures were consulted in preparing the prospective beer list at Pint&union. Metrics and algorithms were completely shunned. Most of my final decisions didn’t even occur until the interior was nearly completed, when I could sit in different spots and imagine what beers would taste like alone in winter seated on a bar stool, with old friends in a booth, or leaning against the wall beaming with pleasure as a rookie tastes Schlenkerla for the first time.
Like Tommy and pinball, I play beer by intuition. There may eventually be a light, low-calorie lager on the list -- or an Anstich keg pouring from the counter, or both at the same time.
Now we’ll see how it all works out. Thanks, everyone.
I've been taking photos throughout the Pints&union renovation, hoping to make some sort of time-lapse collage at the end.
As noted yesterday, the finish line is close, indeed. These views are from Thursday afternoon, July 12, and omit only the bar itself, as yesterday the top of the bar was being readied for finishing.
Extol Magazine's June/July issue is on the street, and there's a preview of Pints & Union. Go here to read it or pick up Extol at the usual locations.
June? Well, maybe. Yesterday Joe Phillips posted this at the P&u FB page:
"Making some adjustments, finishing kitchen and posting a set date within a few days ... "
It's close, the fog of start-up warfare is lifting, and the goal remains to get things rolling as soon as humanly possible. Joe's daughter Roxy put together this stellar poster, and the question mark will be removed quite soon.
"Punter" can mean several things, but in British pub-speak it's "the regular sort of person who hangs out at places like pubs."
And: "boozer" is just a synonym for pub, and in the United Kingdom, most (maybe all) pubs are based on counter service, hence the opening section about the art of the queue.
Who’s next?
Like good guitar bands or working-class actors, Britain still produces exceptional bar staff but their numbers have dwindled alarmingly. Professionals who can process that “invisible” bar queue with the confident oversight of an air traffic controller, while filling multiple glasses with octopus-like efficiency, are now a real rarity. In most pubs, that queue has to manage itself and responsible drinkers must lead by example to ensure it does not descend into chaos.
In fact, these rules of etiquette should come across as common sense for anyone who has consumed drinks in public, anywhere at all. They're not really new, but then again, teachers teach the same topic over and over to incoming classes who are unaware of the importance. So it goes.
The number of UK pubs is falling and there is less consensus about how punters should behave. Here’s a guide to getting the most out of a trip to the boozer
In 2018, the pub occupies a rather uncertain place in British society. There are 50,000, nationally. But that figure has dropped by 10,500 since 2000. People are drinking less, drinking less frequently and, arguably, there is far less consensus these days about how to behave in pubs. Ahead of Beer Day Britain on 15 June then, here’s a fresh look at pub etiquette. How can we all get along in the modern boozer?
The build-out pace has quickened since my last blog update, which was a March 27 link to the video at New Albany Social, but Joe Phillips has been tearing it up on Facebook, including unveiling the pub logo.
Following are some interior views from last week, when Lt. Governor Suzanne Crouch stopped by and visited the future pub, as well as observing the ongoing renovation of The Root next door, also by Resch Construction (thanks to Rep. Ed Clere and the historic preservation contingent for including me and Joe's wife, Regina).
Note the beer shelf on the rail and the bar top. The wood encasing the railings has been repurposed and is from the original structure.
I believe we're in the stretch run. There is a tremendous amount of work yet to be done, but it's gradually getting there. Stay tuned and thanks for the many messages of support.
I saw this article a couple of days ago, and it was strange, because the author was being attacked by the usual IPA-powered-cyber-know-nothings for not grasping the craft beer revolution, or some such nonsense.
Swift's modest proposal, and all that.
Beer is crucial to the notion of a British pub, but it isn't the real point here, although it's worth noting that if there is any single aspect of a British pub which genuinely is elusive in the States, it's the tradition of cask-conditioned ale. More on this another time, but it should suffice to say that excepting the proximity of like-minded small breweries, we lack the proper supply chain for it.
Galling -- and true.
Another caveat: As the Belgians made clear a long time ago, there are Belgian ales, and there are Belgian-style ales; the former come from Belgium, and the latter from elsewhere in emulation of them.
Logically speaking, there cannot be British (or Irish) pubs in America. They can be British-style and Irish-style, which is why so far during the short life of the Pints & Union project, I've taken great pains to clarify that inspiration is being derived from British pubs.
We're building a pub, not a Disney cookie cutter.
What Farrar addresses are American societal norms. He actually is hitting the center of the target, because of course mainstream American culture won't ever grasp the timeless virtues of pub culture in the British sense. We're too ephemeral and appearance-driven for this.
Fortunately, the American mainstream is mostly irrelevant in this context. My experience informs me that there is a niche for this sort of establishment, and in the end, a niche is nothing more or less than undervalued terrain for providing a specialized service and making a living from it -- I won't be gauche and use the term "market segment" or the like, which is verbal Viagra for business fetishists.
There'll surely never be a British-style pub on every American corner, but precisely because this is true, there is plenty of niche demand for one on a random corner, every now and then.
Pints & Union will be located at 114 E. Market, at the corner of the street and an alley. Now we need only complete the beginning, and the hypothesis can be tested.
I’ve recently been re-watching “The Cornetto Trilogy.” It’s a terrific series of farcical British genre spoofs from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. One thing I love about the series is the feeling that I’m getting a small taste of authentic British culture, a great deal of which comes from ubiquitous scenes set pieces anchored to a corner pub. In “Shaun of the Dead,” the neighborhood pub, The Winchester, functions almost like a character, and “The World’s End” — the 12th (!) pub on our heroes’ epic pub crawl — actually, literally, speaks. Clearly, Pegg and Frost are infatuated with pubs. In a 2013 Vulture interview, Frost says of recreational bar-hopping with Pegg, “We used to go every Sunday! We used to walk down into Camden at 10:30 a.m. on a Sunday and spend the day. We’d mooch around and get Thai food and sit in a pub all day.”
That’s something you’re not likely to hear an American admit, and although it rarely needs to be said, it’s a concise example of what makes our culture so un-Continental. Whether it’s our history of temperance that’s shamed us out of being proud barflies, or the mere existence of the horrendous term “barflies,” the implication that a post-adolescent adult could spend “all day” in a bar borders on an a priori insult in American English. After all, who wants to spend more than a handful of daytime hours in a “dive,” a “club,” or a “bar & grille”? Even our crude imitation of British whistle-whetting culture, the “gastropub,” sounds more like something with a copay and a waiting room than it does a pleasant outing with friends, and what’s more, it rarely tastes better ...
For so many years, I’d do the ordering and stashing; write, rewrite and publish the program; disseminate the propaganda; rig tap handles; produce signage; and count glassware … and by the time all of it was ready, it felt like I knew each one of those kegs personally. Farmers must feel that way when they take their piggies to market.
I am compelled to make this link because it turns out that the managing editor of Indiana on Tap didn't even know about Gravity Head until this year, and in three articles (1, 2, 3), my name doesn't come up even once.
That's just fine by me.
Mark Lasbury does an excellent job of describing what Gravity Head looks like to the uninitiated (bizarre insanity), so take it to the bank: what makes me mildly churlish isn't the absence of personal recognition, but the fact that beer history is routinely neglected these days -- and there's a lot of history to Gravity Head.
In point of fact, while I may be a Session Head these days, I'm damned proud of it.
The verdict: maybe I've been away long enough, and it's time for a comeback. In this vein, here's an update about the emerging Pints & Union project.
The News and Tribune piece appeared as we arrived in Porto. I toasted it with an ice-cold Super Bock, about which there'll be more to say as the jet lag dissipates.
NEW ALBANY — Joe Phillips and Roger Baylor both have experienced the thrill of being on the cutting edge.
Phillips, a 27-year veteran of the service industry, has helped set up trendy Louisville favorites, such as Copper & Kings and The Butchertown Social. Baylor was an original founder of the New Albanian Brewing Co., which effectively introduced craft beer to Southern Indiana.
The latest brew they’re whipping up for the Louisville area is about going back to the comfortable basics: a United Kingdom-inspired pub with classic drinks and no televisions, planned for the former Vickie’s Good Times Bar & Grill at 114 E. Market St. in downtown New Albany. The building's interior and exterior are being completely renovated.
Pints & Union will likely feature eight taps, curated by Baylor, with five that he plans to keep the same all the time. So far, he knows of three beers that the bar will definitely provide: a Guinness stout, a Pilsner Urquell and a Fuller’s London Pride — all fairly standard, historically speaking. The beers won’t possess crazy high alcohol contents, either, with most staying around 5 percent.
It’s a little different than the constantly rotating taps and beer choices embittered by hops that Baylor’s focused on in the past ...
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