“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
― Ferris Bueller
Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
― Simon and Garfunkel, “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”
Either you’re pumping the brake, or flooring the accelerator, but there also exists a little-known third category: the car suddenly vanishes, and you’re standing by yourself in the middle of nowhere, out of Google Maps range, when this friendly black dog comes trotting up.
A self-reliant survivalist I’m not, and this is no prelude to instructions for brewing a beer from random potatoes and fruit in an old gas can using wild yeast. Rather, I’d start walking downhill in hopes that the black dog finds it boring, and refrains from devouring me whole.
Here in Food & Dining Magazine Land, it has been a rough year. There is a compelling argument to the effect that we no longer exist apart from a sort of shadow reality, which only seems real because of my intrinsic, contrarian and other-worldly stubbornness.
What it means for me in practical terms is a little bit of weekly effort to keep John Carlos White’s creation in front of you, hoping that by doing so there’ll come a miraculous pivot to something different, yet similar.
Meanwhile, the balance of my time is being devoted to “40 Years in Beer” (now 44 years), at least when there is a break from house husbanding.
“I dust a bit,” Ignatius told the policeman. “In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
John Carlos always encouraged me to use this space as a platform to promote my own projects; I’d earnestly thank him, and in appreciation, endeavor to keep the self-aggrandizement to a minimum. Obviously, times and conditions change.
“Hip Hops” is a column about beer, and “40 Years in Beer” is an autobiographical series … about beer. In a perfect world, there’d be time for both; and in the past, I’ve often managed it.
But since John Carlos took his leave, everything is muddled. Whether I like it or not, and emphatically, I don’t, there’ll need to be a reconsideration of my time and resources. If I knew exactly what this actually means, I’d reveal it now. However, the gist remains elusive, and I’ll likely be cohabitating with ghosts in my cranium for a while longer.
Comprising “Hip Hops” this week are three beer-related references to my ongoing “other” (non-remunerative) gig.
First, links to the last ten installments of “40 Years in Beer.”
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83: Full frontal hops in Poperinge, Bamberg and Žatec (1999)
The expedition known as “F.O.S.S.I.L.S. Ultimate Road Trip IV: Continental Beer Paradise 1999” was a 12-day motorcoach tour that incorporated beer, breweries, festivals, beer gardens, a malting house, a hop research institute and whatever else I’ve forgotten after a quarter-century — and then my pal Rick and I set off for Hungary and Slovakia.
84: Y2K and the Belgian beercycling inaugural (1)
Bicycling by day and drinking beer by night in Europe, where conditions and attitudes supported riding, and the beer was better anyway. It made sense but took a long while to implement. In 2000 beercycling was birthed in Belgium, and my European travel instincts were reborn.
85: Belgian beercycling concludes with the Delirium Tremens escapade, and more (2)
Tournai concluded with a Danish-American feast, followed by rides from Poperinge to Ieper, Westvleteren and Cassel (France). The Delirium Tremens tour in Ghent-Melle made us glad we’d taken the train from Brugge. Beercycling 2000 then concluded with the beach in Zeebrugge and a transfer to Leuven, where my 25-year-long boycott of Stella Artois commenced with Chimay and beefsteak.
86: Beer, writing, and my life in and out of F.O.S.S.I.L.S., 1990 – 2026
During the 1990s, and into the early 2000s, the homebrewing and beer appreciation club known as F.O.S.S.I.L.S. was a huge part of my life, especially the monthly newsletter (Walking the Dog), which was my baby, and scratched the polemical itch. The club still exists and prospers, although without me. Why? Because the only constant in life is change.
87: Travel 2001 with English John, Le Tour ― and a gutting personal loss
Personally, the period 2000 – 2003 was challenging, but beer travel remained my primary coping (escapist?) mechanism, and the trips kept right on coming. Euro #18 (March, 2001) involved a pursuit of cask ale in the United Kingdom with the late John Richomme, and Euro #19 (July/August 2001) provided the chance to beercycle in Belgium and Germany; unfortunately, my father died while I was abroad.
88: From Tokaj to Żywiec, and Achouffe to Poperinge (Travel 2002)
Two fact-finding missions with my groups, by bus: May in East-Central Europe (Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic and Austria), and September brewery hopping in Germany and Belgium, culminating with the triennial hops fest in Poperinge.
89: A millennial upsurge with Cumberland Brews, Browning’s, BBC Brewing Co. (2000 – 2003)
From 2000 through 2002, new-era brewing in Louisville abruptly pole-vaulted forward as the Louisville metro area welcomed four new independent “craft” breweries: Cumberland Brews, BBC Brewing Co., Browning’s Brewery and New Albanian Brewing Co. They were to enjoy remarkably long lives, all told, albeit with occasional shape-shifting.
90: A brewery for the New Albanian in all of us, Lite-free NABC debuts in 2002
Or how the interrupted paths of Tucker Brewing Co. and Silver Creek Brewing Corporation eventually merged, leading to NABC’s brewery … and the fruition of the Lite-Free Zone … and the happy “accident” of Elector Ale, then as now making democracy pointless
91: New Albany’s brewing history, prior to NABC resuming it
As NABC’s brewery came into being in 2002, the concept was linked as often as possible to New Albany’s previous brewing history, which ended in 1935: poet/brewer Hew Ainslie from Scotland, the German heritage Paul Reising brewery, Ackerman’s, and others. An amalgam of better beer, new urbanism, localist advocacy and counter-revolution was emerging in New Albany.
92: Pentecostal pews, beer judging exams and Bixology(2001-2003)
Three time capsules from the new millennium (2001 – 2003), with nothing in common except the beer consumed along the way: (1) church pews, sociology and beer in Nail City; (2) the BJCP exam I was supposed to fail; and (3) road-tripping to Davenport, Iowa for beers and Bix Beiderbecke.
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Second, what’s coming next.
Generally new chapters should appear weekly on Tuesday mornings, except for the last two weeks in September, which is a scheduled Maine reverie.
- #93 Myths, facts, and the Great NABC vs. Big Red Liquors War of 2003. Time again to revisit the most renowned grudge match in Indiana craft beer history: NABC vs. Big Red Liquors in Bloomington, perhaps offered with newfound humility and self-criticism. Or maybe not.
- #94 Frankfurt to Vienna: Beercycling 2003, a month on two wheels along the glorious Danube Bicycle Path in Germany and Austria, with ample tankstelle along the way.
- #95 2003 Travel Closeups: Augustiner Bräustübel in Salzburg, Austria and Moran’s Oyster Cottage in County Galway, Ireland.
- #96 The NABC beer festival dossier (2002 – 2007. Gravity Head was only the start at the Public House, to be followed by Lupulin Land, Lambic by the Glass, Saturnalia, Your Name Here Fest, Sandkerwa NA and probably others I’m forgetting.
- #97 Tour de Trappiste, 2004. The circumnavigation of Belgium by bicycle as we visited all the Trappist breweries in that awesome nation.
- #98 The 2004 Euro Motorcoach No Holds Barred Finale (including the most breweries ever visited) to Czech Republic and Bavaria.
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Third, a reminder.
The preceding can be accessed at the The 40 Years in Beer Compendium: links, previews, and coming attractions along with affiliated ephemera. Next week’s episode will put me over the 300,000 word mark with twenty years of stories left to tell. That’s a book or two, maybe three.
I’m unaware that Proust drank beer; if so, I hope it was a wonderful and scandalously neglected French country ale.
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Previously at Hip Hops:
Hip Hops: Beers by the light of day, but no longer at German rail platforms
Roger Baylor is an entrepreneur, educator, and innovator with 44 years of beer business experience in metropolitan Louisville as a bartender, package store clerk, brewery owner, restaurateur, writer, traveler, polemicist, homebrewing club founder, tour operator and all-purpose contrarian.
As a co-owner (1990 – 2018) of New Albanian Brewing Company Pizzeria & Public House in New Albany, Indiana – founded in 1987, 1992, 2002 and 2009 – Roger played a seminal role in metro Louisville’s contemporary beer renaissance. He was beer director at Pints&union in New Albany from 2018 through 2023.
Roger’s “Hip Hops” columns on beer-related subjects have been a fixture since 2005 in Food & Dining Magazine, where he currently serves as associate editor and contributor. He is a former columnist at both the New Albany Tribune and LEO Weekly, and founder of the NA Confidential blog (2004 – 2020). Visit RogerBaylor.com for more.
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